Tag Archives: Airstrikes kill civilians

What do you believe is the best way to deal with ISIS?

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I was privately asked by someone on The Student Room forum the following question:

Your sig has intrigued me for a while (Studying to support my peace activism), and if you don’t mind me asking, I was wondering if you could expand further upon your views especially with respect to current issues involving ISIS? What do you believe is the best way to deal with ISIS?

Bear in mind I still consider myself a student of peace studies and my opinions are not as well-informed as I want them to be.

Firstly, I don’t think we should have got ourselves in this position.  I was one of those who thought the Second Gulf War was going to be a stupid mistake.  Arranging for the disposal of Gadaffi was another.

Change should not be brought about on a national scale so quickly; people can’t adjust and accommodate it.  A transition from a tyranny or autocracy to democracy takes generations and we have plenty of evidence—especially in Africa—to show this.  It is necessary to educate the majority of the population in justice and political theory and let them experience it for themselves before they will be the force that demands it and supports it.

However, having made the mistake and created government-less states, we should have imposed one.  We could either have used the colonial model which we know how to do (and would be unpopular) or invented a completely new model such as a UN Peacekeeping Government formed from a committee of the security council and stable Middle East representatives with a 20 year plan.  Use the experience of the Marshall Plan as a model.  Putting in a puppet government was doomed to failure, as it always has been throughout history.

But most of all, don’t intentionally topple a government without a plan for what happens next. That was just irresponsible stupidity.

However, that’s not where we’re at.  We didn’t do go in with a proper plan and so it went belly up.  What a surprise.  (I’ve only got 15+ years of project management and I could see it was not planned properly.)

So, instead of a stable government we have a guerilla force taking territory.  They cannot be fought by airstrikes or conventional warfare.  Every war that stopped came to end because the fighting stopped and talking started.  That talking should have begun in September 2001 by the USA saying “What on Earth did we do to make you so angry?” rather than saying “A bit of shock and awe will make them behave“.  The days of gunboat diplomacy are long over.  Another 2,000 words are needed to explain what I mean but essentially the USA should have engaged with Middle East countries and opened up communication to understand differences.  Hopeful, they would have acknowledged that cultural imperialism really is just as bad, if not worse, than military imperialism.  At least the Romans would let you run your own country and not force you to learn Latin, buy their products and worship their gods.  The USA has no idea (and no experience) of how to run an empire so their attempt at capitalist cultural imperialism is causing this global hatred that is surprising them so much.

But that communication didn’t happen, so now we have huge areas of angry people.  Is it legitimate they are angry?  Subjected to cultural imperialism and imposed American business who have a bad reputation, especially with regard to mineral rights, overseas human exploitation and not caring about the local environment overseas.  Then having their governments toppled with the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process.  Yeah, I think they might be entitled to be grumpy.  Like most terrorists, they are trying to be heard but nobody is listening.

When the listening starts, the fighting can stop.  Not talking, listening.

Now for some old, and new, saws:

  • “Peace cannot be kept by force.  It can only be achieved by understanding.“
  • “War doesn’t fix war.  It’s not wrong if someone gives up — he’s not actually losing, he’s saving people’s lives.“
  • “All wars have to end in some kind of political compromise.“
  • “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.“

I am aware I haven’t answered your question yet.

What do you believe is the best way to deal with ISIS?

Bear in mind you are asking me for the solution to a problem that Putin, Cameron, Assad, Merkel, Obama and others have not solved.  They have rather more resources and advisers than I have.

Either:

  1. flood the entire area with hundreds of thousands if not millions of peacekeepers (think of what we did in Northern Ireland street corners, but for the entire IS territory) (I wish we had done that when Yugoslavia had started to collapse);
  2. try and kill everyone in the entire IS territory, or all the males at least, until the remaining women beg their remaining menfolk to surrender (I think history will call that a genocide) which seems to be the current plan;
  3. call a cease-fire and open communication to come up with a negotiated settlement.  This will be a toughie since the UN does not want to recognise the Islamic State organisation as a legitimate state.

(Oh, and we move Heaven and Earth to re-take the the oil fields and stop buying the fecking oil off them, FFS.)

Personally, I’d go for the third option and go into negotiations wielding a humongous military threat: we’ll recognise you as a state IF you agree to democracy within 10 years, complete cease fire, votes for all, compliance with international human rights, education to age 16 for all, a government model based on the historic moderate Caliphates not a militaristic Islamist state, etc. and we will fund the replacement of the destroyed infrastructure.  If they refuse say we re-start the assassinations and large scale bombing.

They will accept – they will have to because it gives them what they want.  But it will collapse within weeks into in-fighting (civil war is inevitable, it always happens in these situations – warriors are not politicians [with the remarkable exception of Fidel Castro, of course]).  That is the opportunity to ‘assist’ and bring stability by starting to apply option one.  In those areas where stability can be brought either impose a government or, if possible, re-instate the previous local government under international direction and supervision.

Effectively, create a state similar to Iran, then work on making it more moderate by keeping communication open, re-establishing trade and tourism (“peace through tourism”) and keep the big fist in plain view.

If they want recognition as a state give it, but on terms the rest of the world find acceptable.  That’s the deal: the only alternative is assassinations, massive military invasion, total destruction, war trials and an imposed government.  Complete destruction and replacement.

As for justice for the killings – forget it.  Go for a ‘peace and reconciliation’ exercise like that which worked in South Africa and trade justice for peace.  It is controversial but has worked many times.

(I expect a few quiet assassinations accidents might occur when names and locations of certain unpleasant individuals are leaked to Mossad, Putin and the like.)

Bear in mind, this is off the top of my head and not backed up by teams of advisers and academics.

And you will also note I am not an absolute pacifist (although I respect and support those who are.  But if war is required, plan it properly, execute it efficiently and have a proper plan for what is to follow.  War solves nothing, it only destroys.  Peace has to be built.

NATO has alienated the Afghan people by excessive reliance on air strikes that have caused high civilian casualties

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Whoosh!  Boom!  Ha, ha!  We killed loads of insurgents!  Oh, weren’t they?  We’ll have a full inquiry.  Ooh, look, here’s some more!  Whoosh!  Boom!

I started putting together a list of the most serious incidents in Afghanistan where coalition forces have targeted and killed civilians.  I still have about a score of tabs open in my browser each listing different incidents.  This is some of the highlights lowlights.

July 2008: A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were travelling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found today. The bride was among the dead.  The US military initially denied any civilians had been killed.

2008: The Red Cross said 250 people had been killed or wounded in five days of military action and militant attacks in the past week.  The UN said that nearly 700 Afghan civilians had lost their lives in 2008 – about two-thirds in militant attacks and about 255 in military operations.

September 2009: NATO airstrikes kill villagers syphoning fuel from two abandoned petrol tankers.  NATO’s International Security and Assistance Force discounted reports that civilians were among the dead.  “After assessing that only insurgents were in the area, the local ISAF commander ordered an air strike, which destroyed the fuel trucks, and a large number of insurgents were reportedly killed and injured.”  Whoopsie – made up fibs.  “90 people were dead, but that number included senior Taliban militants.”  Whoopsie, more fibs.  “Local people are telling me 130 people have been killed.”  And finally, “NATO missiles wiped out much of the village of Omar Kheil.”  Whoopsie indeed.

May 2011: Two homes were bombed supposedly being used as a base, killing 14 civilians, including up to 12 children.  NATO later apologies for calling in an airstrike on “a residential compound”.

2012: The UN mission in Afghanistan said 83 civilians were killed and 46 wounded in aerial attacks by international military forces in the first half of 2012.

June 2012:   The US-led military coalition says it will only use airstrikes as a self-defence weapon of last resort for troops and would avoid hitting structures that could house civilians.  That followed a bombardment that killed 18 civilians celebrating a wedding in eastern Logar province, which drew an apology from the American commander.

February 2013: The number of civilian casualties blamed on allied forces decreased by 46 percent, with 316 killed and 271 wounded in 2012.  Most of those were killed in NATO airstrikes, although that number, too, dropped by nearly half last year to 126, including 51 children.  The death of civilians in military operations, particularly in airstrikes, has been among a major source of acrimony between Karzai’s government and foreign forces.

March 2013: A NATO helicopter killed two children and wounded eight civilians during an attack on Taliban fighters.  The helicopter opened fire as it supported Afghan soldiers near the town of Ghazni despite president Hamid Karzai forbidding troops to call for foreign air support.

April 2013: Figures are released saying that between 2006 and 2012, 10,737 civilians were killed by anti-government forces in Afghanistan, and 3,436 by pro-government forces and 2,006 not known.  So between 21% and 34% were killed by ‘friendly fire’.  This is by air and ground troops.  Messy, a civil war, isn’t it?

November 2013: A letter from US president Barack Obama said the US had already “redoubled our efforts to ensure that Afghan homes are respected by our forces” and continued to “make every effort to respect the sanctity and dignity of Afghans in their homes and in their daily lives, just as we do for our own citizens“.

November 2013: The number of civilian deaths from airstrikes fell by more than one third in the first half of this year, but around 50 people were killed, according to United Nations statistics. Overall, the Taliban and other insurgent groups were responsible for three-quarters of civilian casualties.  [That’s progress.  In 2008 one third of civilian deaths were ‘collateral damage’, by 2013 it was only one in four ‘accidental’ innocent civilian deaths by the coalition.]

December 2014: An airstrike by coalition forces killed three Afghan villagers who were “heavily armed” but not part of the Taliban insurgency.  The governor of eastern Logar province said the coalition had told local authorities the dead were Taliban insurgents, but that villagers said the dead were civilians protecting their land from nomads.

October 2015: Barack Obama promises full probe into suspected US airstrike on Kunduz hospital.  Blah, blah, blah.  Fourteen years of airstrikes killing civilians and fourteen years of “The Department of Defense has launched a full investigation“.  In the UK we call that a ‘cover-up’.  It should take 20 minutes to find out who is the commander in that area, ask who was the officer on duty, ask who ordered the airstrikes and then ask them why.  It was supposed to be “jaw-jaw instead of war-war” not “jaw-jaw so we can carry on with war-war”.

“NATO has alienated the Afghan people by excessive reliance on air strikes that have caused high civilian casualties.”
General Stanley McChrystal, USA commander in Afghanistan

More airstrikes against civilians

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: airstrikes kill civilians.  It is what they are designed to do: destroy infrastructure that is operated mostly by civilians.

I hadn’t got as far as writing about what Russia were up to in Syria and why the UK government is so cross about it (it’s because fighters trained by us were targeted and we may have special forces embedded with them) before NATO destroyed a hospital in the middle of the night in Afghanistan.  Médecins Sans Frontières personnel were killed as were patients.

I am always amazed by the work of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) personnel.  Imagine doing all those years in university studying to be a doctor or even a surgeon and then, instead of going off to do a job that pays very well indeed, going to some hell-hole and making a difference to people’s lives.  It is an incredibly generous gift they make of their time, comfort, skills and earning potential.  When the government says you shouldn’t go somewhere on holiday because of disease or war, that is where they go.  As an organisation they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 for their humanitarian work around the world.

They do amazing work under incredible pressures and stress.  For example, here is an account of a trauma hospital having to deal with the effects of local fighting:

“By midday our hospital was on the front line, with fighting right outside the gate.  Bullets have come into the hospital, some even through the roof of the intensive care unit.  But despite being in the middle of the fighting, our hospital and staff have been respected and we’ve been able to carry on our work.  We’ve received 296 wounded patients, including 64 children.  Most have gunshot wounds from being caught in the crossfire.  The hospital has been completely full of patients.  We normally have a capacity of 92 beds, but we expanded immediately and increased the number of beds to 150.  There have been patients in the offices, in the examination rooms, and being stabilised on mattresses on the floor.”
Dr Masood Nasim

Nine Médecins Sans Frontières personnel were killed in the NATO airstrike and 19 more wounded, along with 18 others.

The airstrike was against the trauma hospital being described above.

In the last five days this hospital in Kabul had treated 394 people in near front-line conditions.  In about 75 minutes, the six waves of bombs in the airstrike caused 46 more and prevented the treatment of future casualties by gutting the buildings; they were still burning in morning.

What a marvellous night’s work, bringing peace and hope to the region, uniting people of violently contrasting views, bringing people together despite their differences … by bombing and killing civilians.  How much long-term damage has this caused by creating hatred?

Good job here were no boots on the ground.  A soldier might have got hurt, instead of doctors and nurses, and without a hospital, how would they get treatment?

“No humanitarian can make war.  And no humanitarian can make peace.  These are political responsibilities, not humanitarian imperatives.”
Dr. James Orbinski, Médecins Sans Frontières International Council President

What a terrible waste of those volunteer physicians’ lives, the training, the investment society had made in them, the funding and support that was given to enable them to help others.  Very special people: generous, selfless people who are willing to travel to a war zone to help complete strangers.  How must their friends, families and colleagues at home feel?  Every civilian death from an airstrike is a tragedy, but these are amplified: these were people who saved other people.  How many casualties will now die or be crippled because these specialists are no longer there to help?

And how must the people of that city feel, living on the front line, now knowing their local hospital has been destroyed?  That nothing is safe, anything could be bombed with no notice in the night.  Little wonder there are so many refugees.

Bombing for Peace. This time: Syria.

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1.  Cameron loses Commons vote on Syria action

“It is clear to me that the British parliament…does not want to see British military action”

“”David Cameron, Prime Minister, 20th August 2013

BBC: “MPs have rejected possible UK military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government to deter the use of chemical weapons.  David Cameron said he would respect the defeat of a government motion by 285-272, ruling out joining US-led strikes.”

Had that very close vote gone the other way, we would be attacking Syria’s government, troops, infrastructure and, inevitably, civilians as “collateral damage”.

2.  MPs support UK air strikes against IS in Iraq

Intervention at the request of the Iraqi government was “morally justified” to combat a “brutal terrorist organisation” and was clearly lawful.  Britain has a clear “duty” to join the campaign, and IS is a direct threat to the UK and I am not prepared to “subcontract” the protection of British streets from terrorism to other countries’ air forces.

Paraphrasing of David Cameron, Prime Minister, 26th September 2014

BBC: “The UK Parliament has backed British participation in air strikes against Islamic State extremists in Iraq.  After a seven-hour debate, MPs voted for military action by 524 votes to 43.  Some MPs expressed concerns about the prospect of future engagement in Syria.”

3.   David Cameron believes ‘there ​i​s a case to do more’ in Syria

“British MPs need to think again about what else British forces can do to help moderate forces in Syria.”

David Cameron, Prime Minister, 2nd July 2015 via Downing Street

Guardian: “No 10 stressed it would be better if military action, likely to be air strikes, only went ahead if there was a consensus in the Commons.  Michael Fallon, defence secretary, said Isis was directed and led from northern Syria.  He vowed that if there was any decision to include air strikes in Syria as part of a full spectrum response (spot the weasel words), the government would seek the approval of parliament. “Our position remains that we would return to this house for approval before air strikes in Syria.  We are clear any action we take must not provide any succour to Assad’s regime.”  The prime minister’s spokeswoman stressed that British military assets were already flying over Syria, and British forces were helping to train members of the Syrian Free Army outside Syria itself.”

So we’re training ‘freedom fighters’ / ‘insurgents’ / future terrorists?  Isn’t that the classic mistake the CIA has been making for decades?

4.   Syria air strikes conducted by UK military pilots

” ”  ← (i.e. nothing so far)

David Cameron, Prime Minister, 17th July 2015

BBC: “UK pilots embedded with coalition allies’ forces have been conducting air strikes over Syria against the Islamic State group, it has emerged.  Crispin Blunt, Conservative MP and Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said the 2013 vote on action in Syria was a “totally different decision” to the question of strikes on IS and that that decision had not been undermined.  Labour has indicated it would not oppose military action in Syria. Acting leader Harriet Harman has said the case for air strikes was now different to the situation in 2013, when Labour voted against UK military action in Syria.”

When was this discussed and arranged?  Apparently a couple of days ago when the Greece crisis was all over the news.  What a good day that was to bury bad news.

Both sides of the Commons are all for this.  Politicians are odd creatures: opposition in everything, everything, as a matter of principal, regardless of the logic, yet unity in wanting to extend violence.  There is something about the desire for power that results in a mind-set of wanting to see others hurt.  [ note to self – there’s a psychology essay to be written based on that last sentence. ]

It seems there are three sides in Syria:

  1. Assad’s regime which is being attacked by the US and allies.  UK troops may or may not be embedded and supporting these attacks.
  2. The revolutionaries trying to bring down Assad’s regime (sorry, who are these people exactly?) who are being trained by the UK.
  3. IS / ISIS / ISIL / whatever we are to call-them this week are being attacked by the US and allies and (covertly) the UK.

This is like the proxy wars of the Cold War in the1900s where NATO and the Warsaw Pact tested and demonstrated their weapons’ capabilities in other countries by supporting opposing sides.  At least then the West and East could pretend we/they were on opposite sides.  Now the West seems to be supporting the fighting on all sides.

Had the 2013 vote gone the other way (requiring a difference of just 7 MPs’ votes), we would be openly bombing all of Syria.  No wonder Moslems think there is a Holy War going on.

As for training the rebels (the next generation of elite mercenaries and terrorists) trying to bring down and take over Assad’s government, how many of them are now fighting for, leading, arming or training the IS / ISIS / ISIL forces?

Presumably, if and when IS / ISIS / ISIL have been defeated, the airstrikes will continue but against the Syrian government.  Therein lies the inevitable argument of the next few days: “We may as well start bombing Assad now to prevent his resources falling into IS / ISIS / ISIL hands“.  Yep, I predict a scorched earth policy, although it will not be called that.

Here we are in 2015, still bringing peace with bombs.  And how well has that been working since 2003?

No boots on the ground

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Amongst the comments under the Jeff Danziger cartoon of 22nd June 2014 was:

Better to put drones in harms way than our young men and women.

The use of drones is exactly the sort of behaviour that promotes terrorism. They create impotent fear in the citizens of the target country which results in the development of more creative ways of hitting back.  When that creativity is coupled with opportunity and resources, new terrorist groups form.

Putting boots on the ground puts faces to the attackers and allows the victims to see it is real people attacking them, not just the whim of some anonymous uncaring president of an elitist, violent, uncaring country. Those real people can be talked to, traded with, bartered with and relationships formed. That prevents terrorism.

The more America attacks people in such remote, cowardly ways as using missiles and drones, the more they will be confident you are frightened of them – which, of course, America is.

You’re not just ‘playing into the hands of terrorists’ by using drones, you are creating the terrorist response. Unless, of course, you intend to kill everyone in the target countries.

The major casualties of war are civilians

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“Armies are now so protected and their weapons so effective that the major casualties of war are civilians.”

Dave Turner, Open University tutor and course leader of criminology at the University of Gloucestershire.

By all means continue to fret for “our boys out there” and the body bags they come home in.

But spare some time to fret for yourself and the civilians our brave boys are killing and maiming and orphaning and widowing in our name.

Depending on whose figures you use, the 2nd Gulf War resulted in between 15 and 30 civilian deaths for each US soldier killed.

“Because of new body armour and advances in military medicine, for example, the ratio of combat-zone deaths to those wounded has dropped from 24 percent in Vietnam to 13 percent in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, the numbers of those killed as a percentage of overall casualties is lower.”

Christian Science Monitor, 29/8/2006

That’s good news, it really is.  But civilians don’t get any body armour.  And when they are being targeted by drones where the operator is in another continent, they won’t be getting any first aid from their attackers, never mind military medicine.

Not starting the 2nd Gulf War would not have just saved nearly 5,000 US troops, it would have prevented hundreds of thousands of orphans too.

Coalition & allied forces killed: 25,286
Coalition & allied forces wounded: > 117,961
Iraqi combatants and insurgents killed: 34,144 – 37,344

Still, Saddam got strung up, so it was all worth it in the end, wasn’t it?

So that really was the best way to topple his regime, wasn’t it?

And in case you’re not bothered about the human cost, here’s what Wikipedia has about the financial cost:

In March 2013, the total cost of the Iraq War was estimated to have been $1.7 trillion by the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University.[361] Critics have argued that the total cost of the war to the US economy is estimated to be from $3 trillion[362] to $6 trillion,[363] including interest rates, by 2053.

A CNN report noted that the United States-led interim government, the Coalition Provisional Authority lasting until 2004 in Iraq had lost $8.8 billion in the Development Fund for Iraq. In June 2011, it was reported by CBS News that six billion in neatly packaged blocks of $100 bills was air-lifted into Iraq by the George W. Bush administration, which flew it into Baghdad aboard C‑130 military cargo planes. In total, the Times says $12 billion in cash was flown into Iraq in 21 separate flights by May 2004, all of which has disappeared. An inspector general’s report mentioned that “‘Severe inefficiencies and poor management’ by the Coalition Provisional Authority would leave no guarantee that the money was properly used”, said Stuart W. Bowen, Jr., director of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. “The CPA did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractual controls to ensure that funds were used in a transparent manner.”[364] Bowen told the Times the missing money may represent “the largest theft of funds in national history.”[365]

Wouldn’t it have been better to ring up Saddam Hussein and say “Here’s $1,000,000,000 up front and $100,000,000 per year for life on the condition you clear off and don’t come back” ?

According to the UK National Audit Office, the UK spent £850 billion on the bank crises in 2009 alone.

The long term effect of airstrikes

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When the airstrikes begin, such as they did at the start of the second Gulf War, and as is desired by US, UK and French leaders against Syria, large numbers of government buildings are attacked, resulting in the deaths of large number of civil servants in the country being attacked.

(The legality of targeting civilians is another question worth considering another day: link1, link2, link3, link4, link5, link6.)

The elimination of these civil servants has the desired effect of damaging the military organisation of the target country: supplies are not ordered, shipments are not arranged, payroll does not happen, communication is disrupted: information does not get escalated and orders do not get distributed, intelligence is not analysed.  In this way the machine of war is halted despite the troops and armour being intact because the troops have no food or bullets, the guns have no shells, the tanks have no fuel, the aircraft have no targets.  It is a seemingly ‘humane’ way of disabling an opponent or one party in a civil conflict.

The reality is, the combatants are left intact while the civilians are killed, maimed or forced to flee, adding them to the numbers of refugees.  Amongst those refugees will be the pacifists, the civil rights specialists, the conscientious objectors and the fearful who left the country during the crisis.

How very ironic is it that those who speak for our armed forces say killing civilians instead of soldiers is more humane?  That makes it quite clear where their allegiances lie.

If the external influence is effective, and the targeted government falls, then who will form the civil service of the new administration?  Certainly not the corpses and the cripples and the refugees of the deposed government.

It will be recruited mostly from the victorious liberating army, that group of ‘rebels’, ‘terrorists’, ‘insurgents’ and ‘insurrectionists’ that became redefined as ‘freedom fighters’ because their winning suited our political convenience.  An army including reactionaries, the vengeful, hot-blooded young anarchists, psychos, criminals, malcontents, sufferers of post-war stress syndrome and anyone who decided to pick up a gun and kill their police officers, armed forces members and government officials despite them being fellow citizens.  It is from these ranks the new government’s officials will be constructed.  Those who can answer the questions:

“What did you do in the war, Daddy?“

and

“How many did you kill?“

Experienced administrators from the previous government, those who left because of their conscience, the displaced – these people are least likely to get their old jobs back.

So is it any wonder that when we interfere with another country by applying airstrikes that the incoming government is itself full of turmoil with police recruits shooting their colleagues, suicide bombers, corruption, instability, ongoing car bombs and ultimately another revolution?

Perhaps if we stopped killing their filing clerks, accountants, data analysts, IT staff, secretaries, junior supervisors, PAs, human resources officers, trainers, typists, middle managers, and office cleaners then maybe their future governments might be competent, organised, capable and stable.

The outcome of using airstrikes are:

  • the deaths or injury of many fit, intelligent, taxpaying, civilians;
  • the armed forces and their matériel are left intact;
  • ongoing national incompetence for many years;
  • the need for greater external influence in maintaining stability;
  • those who may have a bias towards peace and reconciliation become personae non gratae;
  • a continuation of civil disorder and violence;
  • the likelihood of major armed conflict in the future.

So what are the real agenda when airstrikes are used?  Anyone would think it was advantageous foreign policy, commercial interests and the maintenance of the arms industry.  It certainly is not humanitarian reasons.

Airstrikes: the victims are civilians

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Airstrikes are a tempting solution for large Western government to use against lesser states as a means of reprisal, punishment or warning. What are the targets and who gets killed?

Targets of planned airstrikes include military command headquarters, military intelligence buildings and sources of power such as power stations and oil refineries.  Blowing up these buildings is done as a warning or to reprimand the leaders of foreign countries, but the leaders do not reside in them.  In the former they are typically occupied by civil servants (civilians) with a number of seconded military personnel (so non-combatants at the time) and the latter are occupied by civilians.

So successful airstrikes kill receptionists, cleaners, clerks, administrators, IT staff, accountants, canteen workers, overnight security guards, office visitors, facilities management staff, technicians as well as the operational staff on site.

How does that provide justice for anyone?  Especially when disrupting ‘the command, control and communications network‘ actually means blowing up a TV station, killing 16 people and injuring 16 more.

The good news is that we are better now at targeted bombing than we were back in the WWII days of carpet bombing.  For example, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, there were only 90 or so incidents in which civilians being killed, with an average of only about 5 or 6 civilian deaths per incident.

“Statistically speaking, civilian casualties were lighter than any other conflict involving modern mass air power.“

Bombing refugees once or twice, is considered bad form – good job Yugoslavia wasn’t in the UN at the time.

Unsuccessful airstrikes – those where we thought we knew who we were killing from thousands of miles away – are even less pleasant.

The 1993 revenge attack on Iraq for trying to blow up George Bush Senior involved firing 23 cruise missiles – costing between US$13m and US$33m – at the Iraqi Intelligence Service HQ.  It destroyed three houses and killed eight civilians.  Not a very effective use of taxpayers’ money; the Israelis can achieve the same thing with bulldozers.

7th May 1999.  NATO bombs supposedly aimed at the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement were actually hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three people and injuring 20 more.

As for drone killings, well, do your own search to see how effective they are at killing civilians.

The targets are not evil tyrants, tanks, artillery, missiles, or armed soldiers.  They are buildings containing mostly civilians.

Even if the airstrikes hit the intended targets, it is civilians that get killed.  Are you OK with that?