鈥淭ECHNOLOGICAL progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards,鈥� argued Aldous Huxley in typical dystopian fashion. With military technology he has a point: can we really describe a technology that kills people more efficiently as progress? Throw in the fog of war and political spin, and deciding the moral value of such technology becomes an incredibly complex problem.
The present war in Iraq was supposed to be different: a high-tech war in which smart bombs and missiles would minimise 鈥渃ollateral damage鈥�. The logic was spelled out at the start of the war in New 杏吧原创 (22 March 2003, page 6): 鈥淧reventing bombs from killing civilians and destroying infrastructure will pay dividends after the war has concluded, by fostering the public support among Iraqis that will be vital for a smooth transition to a new leadership.鈥�
So the news last week that as many as 98,000 Iraqis may have died as a direct result of the coalition鈥檚 actions comes as a shock. (This figure does not include any deaths in the continuing assault on Fallujah.) The study, conducted by a team of US and Iraqi researchers and published online by The Lancet (), is controversial because the figure is an extrapolation from interviews with more than 950 households around Iraq about family members who died before and after hostilities began. Government officials on both sides of the Atlantic were quick to criticise the methodology, and the researchers themselves admit the margin for error is wide.
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But in the absence of official statistics 鈥� neither the US nor UK governments admits to keeping tabs on the number of Iraqi deaths 鈥� the research seems to offer the best estimate available. Even if the absolute numbers are taken with a pinch of salt, the trends identified by the research are clear enough: since March 2003, violence has become the leading cause of death among Iraqis. Most violent deaths are attributed to coalition forces, mostly through air strikes. And most of those killed in these attacks were women and children.
So what happened to the smart war with its precision-guided ordnance and minimal collateral damage? Perhaps the technology does not work. Or the strategy of precision targeting is not viable in urban warfare, or it has been abandoned altogether since the main offensive ended. Perhaps the coalition鈥檚 intelligence is so poor that smart weapons are taking out the wrong targets. Whatever the reason, there are grounds to question whether the ideal of a 鈥渃lean鈥� war could ever be reached.
An altogether different type of technology that has been called into question played a part not in this Iraq war but the last. Troops heading to the Gulf in 1991 were given a drug to reduce the impact of nerve agents, and liberal quantities of organophosphate insect repellents. Again, while these substances were issued with laudable intent, it now appears they harmed some of those they were meant to protect.
鈥淭he trends are clear enough: since March 2003 violence has become the leading cause of death for Iraqis鈥�
These chemicals all interfere with a critical pathway in the nervous system, and there is a growing consensus among US researchers who have studied the issue that, either singly or jointly, they can be blamed for a consistent set of symptoms: Gulf war syndrome (see 鈥淭he disease that never was?鈥�). There are signs that the US government is starting to take this suggestion seriously, though the UK government remains in denial.
Both smart weapons and the drugs given to troops were technologies wheeled out in the firm belief they could minimise loss of life, even in an armed conflict. But war has a way of blasting good intentions to smithereens, as it may have done with these technologies. We certainly still do not understand the costs and benefits of their use.
It is clear that getting to the truth of how technologies really perform in warfare demands more honesty from governments than they have shown in the past. As New 杏吧原创 went to press the American people were voting to decide whether George W. Bush or John Kerry should be their president. Whoever wins, the next administration needs to be open about the success or failure of the smart war in Iraq. The British government too needs to look again at the science behind Gulf war syndrome. If we fail to grasp the flaws of military technology, we are condemned to make the same mistakes again. And in nobody鈥檚 language can that be called progress.