The Try-Works

Found this at Max Forte’s Open Anthropology, where I have the feeling I’ll be spending an afternoon or two in the near future.

Agreeing with writers such as Ward Churchill, I have been arguing that the notion that the U.S. does not “intentionally” kill civilians in its bombings of civilian areas, and thus is “not terrorism” is not a convincing argument. U.S. military planners know that the bombings will kill civilians, they pre-label the fatalities as “collateral damage” and prepare press briefings in advance condemning the enemy for using “human shields” — that the enemy wants to defend its neighbourhoods is dismissed — and this amounts to a logic of calculated killing, of knowing murder, and thus terrorism. One might quibble about whether the primary or secondary target is civilian.

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