Por Michael Slager
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Cooper with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photograph Source: U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Michael Ito – Public Domain
Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command whose responsibilities include coordinating attacks on Iran, recently testified at a Senate hearing. Cooper said that when it comes to Iranian civilian deaths caused by US missiles, the United States has done a practically flawless job. The New York Times reported that Cooper suggested: “the US military’s record … had been near perfect.”
According to Admiral Cooper, near perfection apparently translates to an estimated 1,700 civilian deaths in Iran since February 28, when the United States and Israel began an unprovoked war of aggression. Unprovoked military attacks are major crimes under international law. In fact, they are a violation of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter.
That nearly perfect record includes the deaths of about 254 children, 120 of whom (and likely more) were killed on the very first day of the illegal war when a Tomahawk missile slammed into an elementary school. About thirty teachers and parents were also killed.
Closer to home, we are approaching the fourth anniversary this month of a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were murdered. One does not need a law degree to know that shooting up a school is against the law, too.
Would it be remotely acceptable—or sane—to opine that Salvador Ramos, the shooter at Uvalde, would have had a nearly perfect, practically spotless body count to his name if just one or two children were killed? Many legislators certainly don’t fuss over these fine distinctions since they could not have cared less about any number of murdered school children in Texas or Iran, a sentiment that in itself is criminal, but not in any formal legal sense. No, they proceeded in a perfectly legal manner when they resisted calls for substantial gun safety legislation. It also seems to be perfectly acceptable to the US Congress to not restrain a president from unprovoked war making.
After Uvalde, lawmakers instead offered their perfectly usual platitudes and prayers. They also professed their boundless love for the Second Amendment and their seething hatred of the tyranny that would surely arise if even a little of the deadliest ordnance Americans can lay their hands on were ever fenced off from public access. To their credit, however, they didn’t get in front of the TV cameras in the US Senate to say that Ramos, unlike the Trump administration and the Pentagon, exhibited nearly perfect conduct.
Near perfection only applies to those wielding high-tech weapons worth billions of dollars that eviscerate a comparatively small number of innocent people; it of course does not refer to a psychopath with a gun that was purchased at Outback Sports to slaughter a score of children.
Near perfection only applies to polished functionaries dressed in uniforms and business suits, not to some maladjusted, enraged teenager fatally cosplaying Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.
Admiral Cooper said that the school bombing in Iran is under investigation. Just that one, though, not the estimated 22 other schools that were reportedly turned into rubble and ash. He found that number impossible to verify even though it could be. The military also seems uninterested in the bombings of hospitals, clinics, and residential areas. Ignoring those other deaths would preserve a self-described excellent record of avoiding civilian deaths.
Why might the killing of ordinary adults and children in Iran be a nearly perfect illustration of blameless violence?
One reason is that the victims in Iran were not people at all because, as we are told over and over again, they want to hurt us. Those in the media who claim expert knowledge but know nothing about the Middle East and Islam constantly treat us to lectures about how angry Arabs and Persians harbor a blind hatred for us that compels them to seek the West’s destruction. They are beasts who prefer Oriental depots to lord over them, and that sort of evil should be consigned to oblivion. Importantly, we can apparently achieve near perfection in our struggle against them if fatalities hover around some arbitrary number.
By contrast, the children in Uvalde were people. They lived in our country and were Christians, so they were allowed a small measure of pity. Also, there were a lot of victims in that case. More than normal. Those murders fueled tepid outcries and fleeting national grief. That they were tepid and fleeting was shown in what didn’t happen after those 19 funerals: What didn’t happen was a fulsome and broad shouldering of national trauma over the dismembering of small bodies by swarms of bullets. Such home-grown atrocities should have resulted in voters showing many lawmakers the door at the very first electoral opportunity.
But that didn’t happen. In other countries, legislators enact more effective firearm laws after mass shootings, but meaningful change doesn’t happen here; our leadership is able to cultivate perfectly undamaged careers in the aftermath of deaths that they largely ignore. Sometimes, they claim that extinguishing the lives of children is the price of freedom.
We are so accustomed to our culture’s hideous violence that it goes unchecked and, depending on the body count, often passes unnoticed. One would think we haven’t a blemish of violence here at home given lawmakers’ stubborn refusal to address it. However, when lots of child-sized body bags are required, our atomized population starts to pay attention, but it still feels largely powerless to stop what happens on the next block or in the next state. When the public does pay attention, that can be dangerous for planners; frightening people and engendering a sense of helplessness impedes focused attention on officially sanctioned criminality. Barring deflection, attention and anger could otherwise become threatening to those in power.
And forget halfway around the world where, according to some notable government officials like Ron DeSantis, non-people are intent on killing infidels and establishing Sharia law. Unaccountable exported violence stamped with “Made in the USA” comes with a guarantee that the deaths of brown Muslims will be described as perfectly fine, especially when, like here at home, the numbers are relatively small.
Similar to the Uvalde mass shooting, things become uncomfortable when the fatality count sharply rises. For example, the United States has been helping Israel turn Gaza into a wasteland for more than two years. Recent estimates show that nearly 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 21,000 children. Americans have expressed increasing opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank to the point that almost 60 percent have considerably negative views of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Interestingly, about the same proportion of Americans believe that gun control laws should be much stricter.
The divide between political elites and the population is vast. The former has no problem with generating a perfect number of victims, just enough so that we do nothing about it. When fatalities increase, they can simply be ignored, or pundits and planners can reach into a deep reservoir of Islamophobia to justify murder. However, that can change because we have power in numbers.
Michael Slager is an English teacher at Loyola University Chicago.
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