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Activist Post
May 30, 2017
In an interview with CBS’ Face The Nation, Secretary of Defense James Mattis was briefly asked about the view of the military when it comes to civilian casualties as it stands with America’s alleged new strategy of “annihilation” of ISIS. Mattis briefly responded with feigned sorrow at the loss of innocent life that “Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation. We do everything humanly possible consistent with military necessity, taking many chances to avoid civilian casualties at all costs. The American people and the American military will never get used to civilian casualties. And we will – we will fight against that every way we can possibly bring our intelligence and our tactics to bear.”
As Americans, we have been hearing rhetoric like this for many years. In fact, our society has become so habituated to our own aggression and violence as well as being so culturally degraded that statements of “acceptable casualties” and “collateral damage” actually rings as something representative of a strong leader and a dominant military in the ears of many. Such is an unfortunate reality.
However, since both the Secretary of Defense and the American public have accepted the concept that civilians will be killed in military conflict and that the deaths of innocent people are “facts of life,” then why, we must ask, is it a war crime if Syrian or Russian airstrikes accidentally kill civilians?
After all, throughout the entirety of the Syrian conflict, the Syrian military has been publicly crucified for any civilian deaths that may have come about as a result of airstrikes targeting Western-backed terrorists. Likewise, after the Russians joined the fray, the Western corporate press simply couldn’t get enough of blaming Russia for civilian casualties as if Russia was intentionally targeting innocent people.