There's a Future for You, Willie Pete...

...on yet another topsy-turvy day in the Obama administration, I'm thinking of white phosphorus, what it does, what it means, what it makes us do.

In response to local outrage over recent civilian casualties, among which are wounds inflicted by white phosphorus shells, on May 10 we issued a flat denial with a suggestion that it must have been somebody else burning little children, not us. Next day the Pentagon released summaries of incidents in which Taliban/Al Qaeda forces used white phosphorus against NATO/ISAF, rolling with the previous day's hypothesis. The release consists of one-line Pentagon accounts, without a timeline, eyewitnesses, photos, video or local Afghan government corroboration. Human Rights Watch isn't buying it.

This response is interesting to me: the pattern of denial is craven, where the Bush pattern was merely brazen. When confronted about WP use in Fallujah, the Bush DoD said first that it didn't happen, contradicting soldiers' accounts, then acknowledged use of white phosphorus but stressed that such use was legal. Sure we fired incendiary devices into civilian areas, devices whose contents chemically bind to adipose and burn until fuel or oxygen is removed, and it was legal.

The deny-and-shrug was also used in last winter's war in Gaza. The IDF's first response to charges that it had fired white phosphorus into densely populated areas in Gaza was a flat denial, followed by a promise of investigation. When the investigation concluded, Israel determined that any such use was legal.

The NYT piece covering the investigation's release called the dispute over the use of white phosphorus a "proxy" for larger discussions of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, Israeli fears about Iran, usw.

Which is funny because civilian casualties are the whole ballgame. The "larger issues" boil down to civilian casualties. Israel's vision of itself as a willing partner in peace is put into question by its own perpetration of war crimes. (And that's not me, that's HRW again.) The threat that Hamas-Iran pose is mooted by white phosphorus. White phosphorus is a battlefield illuminator. What interested parties then need is their own paper trail, a counterargument, any counterargument.

Debate, no matter how absurd, excuses the main issue from our concern. As soon as two sides can set up camp -- HRW vs. NATO, UN vs. IDF -- the issue is up for grabs. It is only at the level of debate that discussion of things like war on innocents can be taken up neutrally. No one can be pro the execution of civilians; there has to be some other thing to talk about. Only then can writers point to "the broader picture," revealing brutally burned children to be part of a "proxy argument."

SO, congratulations to the Obama administration -- the "blame the other guy" response creates a much more interesting debate than the Bush administration's "when we do it it's not illegal" response. Now, instead of asking Is Hamid Karzai governing anything?, or Can we begin finally to distinguish friend from foe?, or How do we get reconstruction aid / hearts-and-minds work going?, or Why are we making Afghanistan safe for a bunch of opium barons?, or What the Christ are we doing in a place that crippled Alexander the Great?, we're busy figuring out whose WP shells those were, what size the Russians used thirty fucking years ago, etc., etc. And there's definitely a future in that...
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