War, What Is It Good For?

We are absolutely right to condemn the suicide bomber’s targeting of innocent civilians and mourn his victims. But as we have seen, in war the state also targets such victims; during the 20^th century, the rate of civilian deaths rose sharply and now stands at 90 percent. In the West we solemnize the deaths of our regular troops carefully and recurrently honor the memory of the soldier who dies for his country. Yet the civilian deaths that we cause are rarely mentioned, and there has been no sustained outcry in the West against them. Suicide bombing shocks us to the core; but should it be more shocking than the deaths of thousands of children in their homelands every year because of land mines?  Or collateral damage in a drone strike?  “Dropping cluster bombs from the air is not only less repugnant: it is somehow deemed, by Western people at least, to be morally superior, says British psychologist Jacqueline Rose… The colonial West had created a two-tiered hierarchy that privileged itself at the expense of “the Rest.” The Enlightenment had preached the equality of all human beings, yet Western policy in the developing world had often adopted a double standard as that we failed to treat others as we would wish to be treated. Our focus on the nations seems to have made it harder for us to cultivate the global outlook that we need in our increasingly interrelated world.

-        Karen Armstrong – Fields of Blood