The deadly semantics of NATO bombings
By Howard Zinn, 05/28/99
Isn't it time we stopped using the word ''accidental'' to
describe the NATO bombing of Yugoslavian hospitals, residential
neighborhoods, buses, trains, trucks, and refugees on roads that has
killed or maimed at least 1,000 civilians, including children?
The word ''accident'' is not an accurate description of the mayhem we
have caused in Yugoslavia. True, the world ''deliberate'' does not fit
either. It is understandable that Serb leaders would call it
''deliberate,'' just as it is understandable that our leaders would
call it an ''accident.'' Both words are propaganda devices that blur a
reality more complex than that two-word vocabulary can convey.
An accident implies something unforeseen. True, a recent bombing - to
take an example of the hospital bombed in Belgrade - may have been
unforeseen as a specific consequence of bombing the city. But it was
foreseeable, given the magnitude and nature of the bombing, that some
hospital, school, village, or bus would at some point be hit, and
civilians would die.
If I drive my car at 80 miles an hour down a street crowded with
children, and 10 of them are killed, I cannot dismiss this as an
accident, even if I had not intended to kill these particular
children. When an action has inevitable and terrible consequences, it
cannot be excused as ''accidental.''
That is an imaginary situation, but let me describe a real one. Just
before the end of World War II, flying as a bombardier with the Eighth
Air Force, I dropped canisters of napalm on a French town on the
Atlantic coast of France. I have no idea how many civilian inhabitants
died because of what I did - my target was ''military,'' that is, a
bunch of German soldiers waiting for the war to end. But can I claim
that the deaths I caused - how many were children I have no way of
knowing - were the result of an ''accident''?
When Serbian troops in Kosovo kill Albanians, the proper word is
''deliberate.'' But when our planes drop cluster bombs on a
residential neighborhood and children are either killed or left in
agony because of the steel fragments penetrating their bodies, that
should not be passed off as an accident, even if it is not
''deliberate'' in the same sense as Milosevic's evil deeds. Both are
war crimes, legally and morally.
I am focusing on children as victims because they are true innocents.
We are bombing Yugoslavia every night, and citizens there report that
their children cannot sleep and live in constant fright. Bombing a
city at night is a form of terrorism, because even if the target hit
is a ''military'' one, the entire population must live in fear.
Indeed, whether in World War II or Vietnam, the terrorizing of the
civilian population has always been an objective of bombing, no matter
how official propaganda denies it.
We can expect NATO and US officials to use language intended to
absolve their guilt. But why do reporters, who are not supposed to
parrot the propaganda of governments, keep using words like
''accidental'' and ''mistake,'' which suggest an innocence not
appropriate to the massive bombing of towns and cities?
The attempts by officials to defend the deaths of civilians border on
the absurd. In defending an airstrike on a village, the administration
said that Kosovars were used as ''human shields.'' Do ordinary
civilians not live in villages? Were the patients who died in the
devastated hospital forced into their beds? Were the civilians killed
on the bombed train deliberately sent on that trip?
That explanation brought back the ugliest of memories of My Lai and
other Vietnam massacres, justified by ''the Vietnamese babies are
concealing hand grenades.'' It also brought Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright's response afer Pakistani troops had fired into a
crowd of Somali citizens: ''They are using civilians as shields.''
Another explanation used by the administration is that the deaths
caused by NATO bombings don't compare to the numbers that Milosevic
has killed. Does one horror excuse another? In the simplest of moral
mottoes told to all of us as children: Two wrongs do not make a right.
For us to react to violence with more violence is especially
reprehensible when our violence has no effect in stopping a
catastrophe and, indeed, makes it worse, as it is clear our bombing
has made things worse for the Kosovars we claim to care about.
If we cannot deny culpability in the killing of large numbers of
innocent people by claiming ''accident,'' if these deaths are the
inevitable result of our policy, the conclusion should be clear: We
must stop our bombing. And we must go to the negotiating table - not
deliver ultimatums with the arrogance of a superpower - to end the
horrors committed by both sides in Yugoslavia.
Howard Zinn is professor emeritus at Boston University and author of
''A People's History of the United States.''
This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 05/28/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
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