Open letter to Pete Hegseth on targeting civilians
Open letter to Pete Hegseth on targeting civilians
by Russell Vandenbroucke
551 words
Dear Secretary Hegseth:
At Wednesday’s press conference, you answered a question about a reported strike on a girls’ school in Iran, “We’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets.” I am glad you are investigating but hasten to add why “of course” is so troubling.
Do you know any of our country’s long and ugly history of targeting civilians?
Are you aware the Senate has not ratified the 1977 protocols of the Geneva Conventions that prohibit attacks on civilians?
Do you hope your performance of bravado will be mistaken for truth?
With celebration of the Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary near, I also hope you endorse Santayana’s familiar wisdom, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Hoping none of us is so condemned, permit me to share a few examples of our country targeting civilians. Your Princeton education, focused on politics, may have overlooked these. Still, I would have hoped that in the decades since, let alone after being selected for such a weighty position, you might have learned some of the discomfiting history that undermines comforting myths of American exceptionalism and perfection in all things, always.
–According to Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs, following 9/11, direct violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan killed over 400,000 civilians;
–That’s such a large number, Vietnam’s My Lai Massacre is easier to fathom. In 1968, American soldiers murdered 109 “Oriental human beings,” according to the court-martial of Lt. Calley. He was found guilty, sentenced to 20 years, then 10, then released after 42 months of house arrest. Note: while some soldiers joined in the murder of unarmed civilians (the My Lai memorial lists 504 men, women, and children) others, like helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, rescued children while still others helped bring the massacre to the public’s attention.
–Perhaps a single targeted civilian is easier to comprehend. Phan Thi Kim Phúc is the child you’ve seen in pictures, running down a road moments after our pilots bombed her village in South Vietnam, our ally. The skin peeling from her naked body was caused by napalm, secretly invented at Harvard, and first used to firebomb Japan. Surely you realize that indiscriminate burning of entire cities cannot distinguish civilians from combatants. An estimated 100,000 civilians died in Tokyo March 9-10, 1945.
–Finally, I hope you recognize the cosmic irony of the purported rationale for attacking Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Ours is the only country to have used them, twice, against civilians, and we have partnered with Israel, the only nation in that region to possess them.
I do not think our country’s record of targeting civilians is unique.
Nor are we unusual among nations in betraying annunciated ideals or ethical behavior to seek short-term, self-serving goals.
Nor are we alone in behaving like bullies ever certain that might makes right.
All nations display themselves the best way possible.
All prefer to blame others than admit their faults.
Your “of course” is only two syllables, but when I hear the national anthem’s “bombs bursting in air,” I think of civilians and the bombardiers targeting them
And when I hear “liberty and justice for all,” I assume that a single syllable—“all”—includes everyone not just my compatriots.
Sincerely,
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Russell Vandenbroucke, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is professor emeritus of theatre at the University of Louisville, where he was Founding Director of its Peace, Justice & Conflict Transformation Program.
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