more dead children

murdered children were in the news again yesterday, but not white ones killed in a classroom: this time it was brown children killed outdoors

the australian army shot and killed two afghan boys it seems, the soldiers apparently mistaking the children for armed threats. 

depending on what you read, the boys were out herding cattle (BBC) or collecting firewood (The Australian)

i only heard about it yesterday, but it appears the story is already old news and has been pulled from the cycle; just now when i went to check the reported ages of the deceased the stories were no longer headline

but maybe it's foolish of me to think that a story as minor as children being killed by our armed forces should make the news for more than a few hours. after all, it's a war over there and mistakes like this happen in war. it's tragic, sure, but hey, that's part of war. 

but im not quite sure that explanation sits right with me. after all, the war in afghanistan is no ordinary one.

for starters: it has been going on for a while, for basically half my life in fact. the invasion took place when i was in primary school and i am now fully grown. (it is worth nothing that the boys killed in a hail of true-blue rifle-fire almost certainly lived their whole lives under foreign occupation, and the soldiers who did the killing probably enlisted while the war was already well and truly underway)

and that's a good introduction to my second consideration: FOREIGN OCCUPATION

what would it be like to experience a decade+ occupation at the hands of a vastly superior power, totally unconcerned with whatever collateral civilian casualties it might cause? for arguments sake, let's imagine the occupiers are completely alien in terms of language and culture, and for good measure let's imagine your country has a long history of resistance to foreign occupation

in the aforementioned situation, i cannot imagine the young men of any nation or ethnic group complying with the demands of the occupiers. resistance would be a matter of personal and national pride

yet the continued rag-tag resistance by local militias continues to astound the australian media. for them, the war is not a story of local resistance to a bizarre and semi-permanent occupation. rather, every shred of news that comes from the graveyard of empires is made to fit within the embarrassingly-dated "war-on-terror" narrative.

those who attack our soldiers, it is reported, are radicals who would attack the west if given the chance. our soldiers are there to protect the vulnerable, like women, against the barbarous islamists and promote our cherished values (like capitalism and more naked capitalism)

now there may be some merit to the argument that our forces are protecting afghan women and girls from the ravages of the taliban (certainly the taliban are cruel to women), except of course, this suggestion is complete shit when considered against the wider context of the war.

the argument might have a tiny shred of credibility were it not for the fact that australian and other NATO soldiers regularly kill large numbers of civilians "mistakenly". i mean perhaps im wrong, but it seems to me that if you are conducting a zillion-dollar occupation of a country for the benefit of its own people then you might be a tad more concerned with not accidentally killing them all the time.

furthermore, if our soldiers are really there to help our afghan brethren (whose lives, it must be assumed, are therefore roughly equitable to australian ones) why is it that the killing of two children by australians gets a minimal amount of coverage while the deaths of australian servicemen are reported ad nauseum?

i do not rejoice when i hear of a soldier dying in war; it is always sad when life is lost. however, in this country, soldiers make a choice to become soldiers: they know the risks. i know many ex-servicemen who have told as much. children, on the other hand, and especially children born into a perpetual occupation, have much less of a say about the extent to which they are placed in harm's way by conflict.

hence, i really do consider myself justified in feeling sickened by the different ways in which australian and afghan deaths are reported. without a doubt, any clear thinking person should feel sickened: because the glaringly obvious implication is that the lives of austrlalian soldiers are worth more than those of afghan children, let alone afghan adults. never mind that this completely demolishes the wafer-thin "protect the locals" rationale for the war itself.

even the explanation for the mistaken killing exposes this attitude.

the ADF said the children were killed after the soldiers mistook them for some men who had fired at them earlier. so it was just a tragic mistake, you see, the solders thought they were in danger and took steps to say stafe. it's tragic, but it's a clear case of self-defence.

and i suppose it is a tragic mistake, so long as you are willing to forget that the soldiers are supposedly there explicitly for the purpose of helping the afghan youth, forget that they are heavily armed, well supplied and thoroughly trained, and forget that they enjoy a historically unprecedented advantage over their opponents. if you can conveniently forget all this information then yes, the killings are to some extent excusable: the soldiers thought they were in danger, and they acted to save their own lives.

all the same. there is something about a group of heavily-armed men shooting dead kids in my name that still sticks in my craw. call me an idealist if you must

i mean,

if i were an australian general (and if god is kind, one day i will be) then i would stress to my soldiers that civilian causalities should be avoided at all costs, even if it means placing yourself in danger. why? because that is literally what soldiers are for. soldiers get paid to be in dangerous situations and help achieve objectives, not to kill. killing may or may not be required, and it might be what most of them sign up for these days, but in reality it is the danger they get paid for. these kids were unarmed, they just happened to be in the vicinity of nervous soldiers. that's not a reason to be shot

and if i were an australian reporter (and i pray to god this never comes about) then i might spend a bit more time on the story of how representatives of the australian government killed two boys in the country they have been occupying the last ten years. especially if the week before i did a six-part series on the latest australian causality over there.

i might consider doing a bit more reporting on the afghans who must endure the war, and who unlike australian soldiers dont get a say in it. it might seem strange to my journalist brain that i regularly take interviews from climate-change deniers in the name of "balance", but i never make an attempt to speak to the people our brave diggers are apparently there to help.

i might even question the merits of a decade+ occupation. i might do any number of things

but hell, maybe im overthinking this.

i suppose that maybe in a roundabout way it's a good thing those two boys died. i mean think about it. imagine if it was an australian soldier that had died! we would never hear the end of it! it would be all over the news for DAYS and not to mention ACTUALLY tragic.

there would be his background story, accounts of how he died, live coverage of his coffin in transport and the funeral itself, as well as the pontifications of the major politicians on how brave australian soldiers are.

instead, and thanks to some quick thinking (and shooting) on the part of the soldiers involved, we here in australia only had to deal with one or two short accounts of the incident that quickly passed from the public sphere. i mean, two children had to die, and that's bad, but the australian soldiers remain alive to continue their important work, and that's good.

it's sad and all those kids died and everyone is real sorry it happened but dead kids are just part and parcel of perpetual war. build a bridge and get over it why dont you