Civilian victim in Pandora Box
of the war in Afghanistan
I recently set up my free Pandora Radio station on the Internet. I picked the music of Bob Dylan to form the heart of my radio station. Listening to it today I heard a popular song by “The Youngbloods” called “Get Together”. Although the refrain, which in part is “Everybody get together, try to love one another right now” was familiar, I had not really heard the verses. The first line of the first verse really struck me. It is “Love is but a song we sing, and fear’s the way we die.” Love is a song and fear is dying kept running through my mind.
I read today in my son’s Rolling Stone magazine the infamous article about General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, the article that cost him his position. I can understand how he lost his job for his demeaning remarks about politicians, but what really struck me was his efforts to change the rules of engagement in Afghanistan to avoid civilian casualties. He called it “insurgent math”: that for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies. His efforts were met by a tremendous backlash among his own troops who had been trained in reflexive killing, shooting on instinct and not conscience. His actions were based on a controversial counterinsurgency theory called COIN. This theory changes the military, expanding its authority to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare. Soldiers are to live among the civilian population, win its trust and help to rebuild the society. The article goes to great lengths to say how ‘real soldiers’ were not buying these new rules of engagement. The article makes one wonder if these new rules of engagement did not have as much as his words to do with his removal. A military based in part of love of persons we are there to protect is quite different than one based on fear of all persons.
As any reader of www.nonviolentcow.org knows I have low tolerance for the teaching of reflexive killing at an Army base like the officer training program at Marquette University. Reflexive killing is based on fear; kill anything that might be a danger in a war zone. If a soldier dares to work and know the people of Afghanistan, it makes it difficult to kill civilians.
Pandora Radio plays the songs we sing, love, and the Rolling Stone, a music magazine, article describes what happens when the fear of war, dying, gets in the way.
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