Lower level of concern for Syrian civilians?
The lives of some foreign people are worth more than others.
That’s a conclusion that reasonably can be drawn from the revelation the safeguards imposed by the Obama administration last year to reduce the risk of civilian deaths from drone strikes are not being applied to military strikes in the current anti-ISIS operations in Syria and Iraq.
A little more than a week ago, there were reports from Syria’s Idlib province that a U.S. Tomahawk missile strike on the village of Kafr Daryan killed perhaps a dozen civilians, including women and young children.
The U.S. military had information the village was occupied by members of an al-Qaida-linked terror organization known as the Khorasan Group, which was planning attacks on international aircraft.
According to a report by Yahoo News, members and staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee were briefed last week by Syrian rebel commanders who related women and children were among those pulled from a home for displaced civilians that was leveled by the U.S. cruise missile.
“They were carrying bodies out of the rubble. … I saw seven or eight ambulances coming out of there,” said Abu Abdo Salabman, who attended the briefing as a representative of a Free Syria Army faction, Yahoo News reported. “We believe this was a big mistake.”
At this point, U.S. officials are claiming to have no evidence to support the allegations of civilian casualties, though they promise to investigate.
But the bigger issue may be the relative recklessness with which strikes like these are being conducted.
Under the rules applied to drone strikes by President Obama last year, such attacks could not be launched unless there was a “near certainty” there would be no civilian casualties, according to the Yahoo News report. The president called it “the highest standard we can meet.”
But it’s not being applied in Syria and Iraq, Yahoo News said, citing confirmation by Caitlin Hayden, a National Security Council spokeswoman.
Hayden said the “near certainty” standard is in place “only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time. That description – outside areas of active hostilities – simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now.”
Harold Koh, the top lawyer at the State Department during Obama’s first term, said U.S. forces appear to be operating in a “gray zone.”
“If we’re not applying the strict (civilian safety) rules to Syria and Iraq, then they are of relatively limited value,” he said.
One person who’s not losing any sleep over the reports of civilian deaths in Syria is U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois who told Yahoo News, “I did hear them say there were civilian casualties, but I didn’t get details.” Kinzinger, who wants to ramp up military action in Syria, added “nothing is perfect,” and any civilian deaths caused by U.S. bombs are “much less than the brutality of the Assad regime.”
Perhaps we should conduct a survey of Syrian women and children to see if they prefer the risk of being oppressed and brutalized by Assad’s forces to being vaporized by U.S. Tomahawk missiles. They might want to take their chances with a despot.