08.10.07 - 10:08am
At first it was an irritant, now it is becoming like someone hammering a nail into my skull, I hear it and read it every single day on the television and in the newspapers. And every time I hear the phrase “hearts and minds” I flinch.
If Iraq is to be “stabilised” the US needs to win hearts and minds. Civilian deaths in Afghanistan are hampering efforts to win hearts and minds. Hearts and minds and hearts and minds and hearts and minds.
Hearts no longer beating, minds scarred forever due to loved ones being killed in the murderous disaster of the occupation of Iraq.
Hearts won over to an irrational terrorist ideology in reaction to the invasion, brains smeared across stone and scattered into the sand by a “coalition” airstrike.
How exactly are we winning hearts and minds?
In Iraq, America is supposedly fighting Al-Quaeda, never mind that there was no such presence there prior to the invasion and occupation, as has been extensively documented. Apparently the US military has been arming former Sunni insurgents to allow them to tackle Al-Quaeda themselves. So it must be Sunni hearts and minds we are trying to win. But the US has been fighting a predominantly Sunni insurgency since the “end of major combat operations”, waging a bloody battle in the so-called Sunni Triangle. In suppressing the Sunni insurgency, no doubt the coalition hopes it can strengthen the predominantly Shiite government of Nouri al Maliki. But America is bombing Shiite areas of Baghdad, such as Sadr City, the stronghold of the Mahdi militia led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a man who is actually an on-off member of the government the coalition claims to be supporting. Meanwhile in the south of Iraq the British Army is pulling back out of the city of Basra to the airport outside the city, still desperately clinging to the public relations line that is preparing to “hand over” the city to Iraqi responsibility even as British soldiers continue to die pointlessly at the hands of the people whose hearts and minds they claim to be winning.
The insanity of it all is mind-boggling. The coalition claims to be trying to win hearts and minds while at the same time it is bombing, shooting and raiding both Sunnis and Shiites all over the country it shattered with sanctions and war.
In Afghanistan the so-called battle for hearts and minds is no less incoherent. According to today’s Guardian:
Tension between British and American commanders in southern Afghanistan erupted into the open yesterday as a senior UK military officer said he had asked the US to withdraw its special forces from a volatile area that was crucial in the battle against the Taliban.
British and Nato defence officials have consistently expressed concern about US tactics, notably air strikes, which kill civilians, sabotaging the battle for “hearts and minds” and infuriating Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.
In Helmand province alone, this year alone, 300 Afghan civilians have been killed in the conflict, the vast majority by NATO forces, according to the New York Times. Civilian casualties are rising all the time in Afghanistan and it is us that’s killing them not the Taleban. Even the figure of 300 should be treated with scepticism as the media appears to need documentation in triplicate signed by the Pentagon before it will regard reported deaths as having been “independently verified”.
Such is the concern about winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan that NATO plans to go that extra mile. Yes, the organisation wants to start using smaller bombs. I can almost feel the surge of warmth from the Afghan population as I write this.
Adds the Guardian story:
Unnamed British officers were quoted yesterday as saying the US had caused the lion’s share of casualties in their area and that after 18 months of heavy fighting since British forces arrived in Helmand they were finally making headway in securing key areas, but were now trying to win back support from people whose lives had been devastated by bombing.
Good luck in winning the hearts and minds of the families and friends of those who have been killed, people whose lives have been “devastated”.
As the media continues to chant this mantra about winning hearts and minds, they seem oblivious to the sordid history of the phrase. It may have that ring of positivity about it, it may almost drip with sincerity and benevolence but anyone who is actually paying attention to the historical record would shiver every time they heard it.
The first modern usage of the phrase may well be during the Malayan Emergency, as the British colonial forces struggled to suppress an uprising in Malaya throughout the 1950s, fighting against the Malayan National Liberation Army. The phrase was used to refer to British efforts to stop Malayans supporting the insurrection and siding with ethnic Chinese guerrillas. No doubt incidents such as the Batang Kali massacre, when British troops killed 26 unarmed men then torched their village, helped raise the morale of the population. Another glorious day in the British Empire.
The Batang Kali massacre has been referred to the as the “British My Lai”, neatly dovetailing with the even more notorious use of the phrase “hearts and minds”, to describe efforts by the Americans to win the support of the people of South Vietnam.
Lyndon Johnson used the phrase 28 times during his presidency (sometimes inverting it to “minds and hearts”) in relation to American efforts in Vietnam. This was at a time when the US military was devastating the nation of South Vietnam, spraying the countryside with chemicals, killing and rounding up hundreds of thousands and later millions of people, trying to defeat a popular insurgency much of the population was willingly supporting. At a meeting of the Texas Electric Cooperatives Inc. in May 1965, Johnson told his audience: “So we must be ready to fight in Vietnam, but the ultimate victory will depend upon the hearts and the minds of the people who actually live out there. By helping to bring them hope and electricity you are also striking a very important blow for the cause of freedom throughout the world.” I fear there was little hope and even less electricity for the countless Vietnamese poor the US military freed from the woes of life.
The common thread, running through Malaya, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq is clear. The very people whose hearts and minds the west claims to be trying to win are the ones who are on the receiving end of its enormous destructive military power. And thus the bankruptcy of such claims is revealed. How can you win the support of people whose family and friends you are killing?
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