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Showing posts with the label Airwars

Iraq and Syria: The True Cost of War

Beginning in 2014 and 2015 respectively,  US and Russian interventions would in time lead to some 75,000 air strikes against Iraq and Syria. However much the coalition’s actions against ISIS (Daesh) and Russia’s support for Assad differ in intent and context, both have been disastrous for people on the ground; the bombing campaigns alone have killed between 20,000 and 55,000 Syrian and Iraqi civilians. The alliance’s figure of 1,417 civilian deaths has been widely contested. In December 2021 a  New York Times  investigation based on a review of 1,300 Pentagon reports concluded that ‘the air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting, and the deaths of thousands of civilians, many of them children, a sharp contrast to the American government’s image of war waged by all-seeing drones and precision bombs. The coalition claims it values transparency and is willing ‘to work with anyone making allegations or providing new, credible information’, b

Saving the Other

The following is a drivel by me, nothing of it gets closer to an analysis aimed at radical readers or intelligent people. "The coalition task force fighting IS in Iraq and Syria reported on 26 September that it had conducted 34,573 air strikes between August 2014 and August 2019, and that at least 1,335 civilians had been unintentionally killed. But Airwars believes between 8,214 and 13,125 non-combatants are likely to have been killed as a result of coalition actions over the same period." But "the price is worth it." "Collateral damage" is inevitable and necessary. Saving coalition forces' lives is crucial. We are helping you to destroy evil, so you must make some sacrifices. I am sure those who lost their loved ones will understand the situation and the difficulty that faces pilots. We will give them some money.  What about if some of them go and join the "jihadist" groups out of anger and frustration? We strike them... After 9/1
In think Airwars is making too much fuss. The killing of civilians is "a collateral damage" in achieving the higher, ultimate goal of the civilized and liberating mission by defeating the so-called Islamic State whose militants have beheaded our men, and Yazidis, and whose "jihadists" have killed our people in France, Germany and the US. "The price is worth it". Coalition airforces kill "hundreds" of Mosul civilians