David Park
New member
A Merciful War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
February 1, 2002
One of the uncomfortable realities of the war on terrorism is that we Americans have killed many more people in Afghanistan than died in the attack on the World Trade Center.
Over the last couple of months I've tried to tabulate the Afghan death toll. My best guess is that we killed 8,000 to 12,000 Taliban fighters, along with about 1,000 Afghan civilians.
So what is the lesson of this? Is it that while pretending to take the high road, we have actually slaughtered more people than Osama bin Laden has? Or that military responses are unjustifiable because huge numbers of innocents inevitably are killed?
No, it's just the opposite.
Our experience there demonstrates that troops can advance humanitarian goals just as much as doctors or aid workers can. By my calculations, our invasion of Afghanistan may end up saving one million lives over the next decade.
Ever since Vietnam, the West has been deeply squeamish about the use of force — particularly European and American liberals, who are often so horrified by bloodshed involving innocents that they believe nothing can justify it. But Afghanistan shows that guns and bombs can save lives as much as scalpels and IV tubes do.
Look at the numbers. In each of the last few years, without anyone paying much attention, 225,000 children died in Afghanistan before the age of 5, along with 15,000 women who died during pregnancy or childbirth. There was no way to save those lives under the Taliban; indeed, international organizations were retreating from Afghanistan even before 9/11 because of the arrests of Christian aid workers.
But now aid is pouring in and lives are being saved on an enormous scale. Unicef, for example, has vaccinated 734,000 children against measles over the last two months, in a country where virtually no one had been vaccinated against the disease in the previous 10 years. Because measles often led to death in Afghanistan, the vaccination campaign will save at least 35,000 children's lives each year.
"You're going to see an immediate jump" in Afghanistan's health statistics and school attendance, says Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United Nations Development Program. But he adds that truly building the country up will be a hard slog over 10 or 20 years.
Of course, the gains depend on stability in Afghanistan, and that is not guaranteed. But if the West lives up to its obligations to help Afghanistan, and not abandon it as we all did a decade ago, then the potential savings in human lives are staggering.
Heidi J. Larson of Unicef says that if all goes well, child and maternal mortality rates will drop in half in Afghanistan over the next five years. That would mean 112,000 fewer children and 7,500 fewer pregnant women dying each year
Likewise, a desperate rush to train 20,000 new teachers and open new schools means that some 1.5 million Afghan children will be able to enroll in elementary school when the term begins next month — more than double the number of children who were in school a year ago.
Denunciations of the American bombing in Afghanistan pop up regularly in the United States and even more boldly in Europe and the Muslim world. A Pakistani columnist, Humayun Gauhar, described the war in his country's typically subdued prose: "The stench of Afghan flesh, the sweet smell of their children's blood (garnished lightly with one dead American) has overpowered the quest for prime target Osama bin Laden."
Yet these critics seemed less exercised by the much larger number of preventable deaths in Afghanistan from routine ailments. I've sat in mud huts with parents sobbing as their children died of diarrhea, and trust me: Their grief is every bit as crushing as that of parents who lose children to bombs.
Working from United Nations figures, if Afghanistan eventually improves just to the wretched levels of neighboring Pakistan, that would mean 115,000 fewer deaths a year of children under the age of 5, along with 9,600 fewer women dying in pregnancy each year.
All this underscores a simple truth, and enough time has passed since Vietnam that we should be able to acknowledge it: Military intervention, even if it means lost innocent lives on both sides, can serve the most humanitarian of goals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/01/opinion/01KRIS.html?todaysheadlines
I thought this op-ed was an excellent response to the column in this thread. It's nice to see some critical thinking from the Times.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
February 1, 2002
One of the uncomfortable realities of the war on terrorism is that we Americans have killed many more people in Afghanistan than died in the attack on the World Trade Center.
Over the last couple of months I've tried to tabulate the Afghan death toll. My best guess is that we killed 8,000 to 12,000 Taliban fighters, along with about 1,000 Afghan civilians.
So what is the lesson of this? Is it that while pretending to take the high road, we have actually slaughtered more people than Osama bin Laden has? Or that military responses are unjustifiable because huge numbers of innocents inevitably are killed?
No, it's just the opposite.
Our experience there demonstrates that troops can advance humanitarian goals just as much as doctors or aid workers can. By my calculations, our invasion of Afghanistan may end up saving one million lives over the next decade.
Ever since Vietnam, the West has been deeply squeamish about the use of force — particularly European and American liberals, who are often so horrified by bloodshed involving innocents that they believe nothing can justify it. But Afghanistan shows that guns and bombs can save lives as much as scalpels and IV tubes do.
Look at the numbers. In each of the last few years, without anyone paying much attention, 225,000 children died in Afghanistan before the age of 5, along with 15,000 women who died during pregnancy or childbirth. There was no way to save those lives under the Taliban; indeed, international organizations were retreating from Afghanistan even before 9/11 because of the arrests of Christian aid workers.
But now aid is pouring in and lives are being saved on an enormous scale. Unicef, for example, has vaccinated 734,000 children against measles over the last two months, in a country where virtually no one had been vaccinated against the disease in the previous 10 years. Because measles often led to death in Afghanistan, the vaccination campaign will save at least 35,000 children's lives each year.
"You're going to see an immediate jump" in Afghanistan's health statistics and school attendance, says Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United Nations Development Program. But he adds that truly building the country up will be a hard slog over 10 or 20 years.
Of course, the gains depend on stability in Afghanistan, and that is not guaranteed. But if the West lives up to its obligations to help Afghanistan, and not abandon it as we all did a decade ago, then the potential savings in human lives are staggering.
Heidi J. Larson of Unicef says that if all goes well, child and maternal mortality rates will drop in half in Afghanistan over the next five years. That would mean 112,000 fewer children and 7,500 fewer pregnant women dying each year
Likewise, a desperate rush to train 20,000 new teachers and open new schools means that some 1.5 million Afghan children will be able to enroll in elementary school when the term begins next month — more than double the number of children who were in school a year ago.
Denunciations of the American bombing in Afghanistan pop up regularly in the United States and even more boldly in Europe and the Muslim world. A Pakistani columnist, Humayun Gauhar, described the war in his country's typically subdued prose: "The stench of Afghan flesh, the sweet smell of their children's blood (garnished lightly with one dead American) has overpowered the quest for prime target Osama bin Laden."
Yet these critics seemed less exercised by the much larger number of preventable deaths in Afghanistan from routine ailments. I've sat in mud huts with parents sobbing as their children died of diarrhea, and trust me: Their grief is every bit as crushing as that of parents who lose children to bombs.
Working from United Nations figures, if Afghanistan eventually improves just to the wretched levels of neighboring Pakistan, that would mean 115,000 fewer deaths a year of children under the age of 5, along with 9,600 fewer women dying in pregnancy each year.
All this underscores a simple truth, and enough time has passed since Vietnam that we should be able to acknowledge it: Military intervention, even if it means lost innocent lives on both sides, can serve the most humanitarian of goals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/01/opinion/01KRIS.html?todaysheadlines
I thought this op-ed was an excellent response to the column in this thread. It's nice to see some critical thinking from the Times.