At least two critiques have raised questions about the motivation behind, and the framing of, the New York Times exposé of the civilian death toll stemming from US airstrikes in Syria and Iraq in the 2014 to 2019 time period. The Global Times, in an editorial denouncing the callous disregard of the U.S. military for civilian lives in its combat zones, suggests that the Times may actually be part of the Pentagon’s game. “Some analysts believe that even the disclosures the NYT had made on its own initiative are a small part of the entire ‘American game,’ GT says. “It tries to create an impression that public opinion supervision is ‘effective’ by releasing the information’s tip of the iceberg. But since it’s hard for US political elites to gain actual benefits from the revelations about what has happened in the Middle East, no lasting attention will be paid to those disclosures.”
Norman Solomon, a veteran anti-war activist writing for Common Dreams, argues that the civilian death toll from U.S. air strikes is the entirely predictable result of U.S. government policies, but he, too, expresses reservations about the Times expose. “What should not get lost in all the bold-type words like ‘failure,’ ‘flawed intelligence’ and ‘imprecise targeting’ is that virtually none of it was unforeseeable. The killings have resulted from policies that gave very low priority to prevention of civilian deaths,” he writes. “The gist of those policies continues. And so does the funding that fuels the nation’s nonstop militarism, most recently in the $768 billion National Defense Authorization Act that spun through Congress this month and landed on President Biden’s desk.”
