 |
Show Transcript Casualty Phobia
Produced August 1, 1999
|
|
Main
Show Page
Related ADM Videos
CDI Resources
Ask the Expert Interview Transcripts
| NARRATOR: Kosovo, June 1999. After 78 days of NATO area bombardment, Yugoslavian President Milosevic gives in. For the US and NATO, no ground troops are ever called, no combat casualties suffered. But for many, it doesn't taste like victory. BOBBY MULLER: How many thousands of innocent people have had to die while we failed to engage the enemy to protect our own lives? LAWRENCE KORB: I think the idea that American men and women can't risk their lives in combat goes against everything that the military stands for. NARRATOR: Was this the right way to fight a war? Or, do we have an acute case of Casualty Phobia? ["America's Defense Monitor" program introduction.] Actor GEORGE C. SCOTT as GEN GEORGE PATTON: "Be seated. Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."[From the movie "Patton" (20th Century Fox).] NARRATOR: War and death. The two have gone together since the first lance was hurled in anger. During the Civil War, Matthew Brady's battlefield photographs brought the horrors of war to the people back home. World War I's trench warfare produced such carnage that leaders sought to form a League of Nations to put an end to war forever. In the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, this picture captured the moment a bullet struck a loyalist soldier. For many, it summed up the isolation and brutality of war. Others claimed it was staged. World War II brought the horrors of war to an unprecedented scale. More than 50 million people died in that war. Russia alone lost more than 20 million. More than half a century later, Hollywood filmmakers are still trying to accurately capture the reality of combat. (Film excerpt from "Saving Private Ryan" (Paramount/ Dreamworks).) [Text on Screen]"Casualties? What do I care about casualties?" -- MGEN Hunter-Weston, Gallipoli, where half-a- million were killed or wounded 1915-1916. MR. MULLER: I graduated the honor man in my Marine Corps basic training and could have any job I wanted, basically, and I chose infantry and I chose Vietnam as my duty station. NARRATOR: Today, Bobby Muller is president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and was co-founder of the Campaign to Ban Landmines that won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. Thirty years ago in Vietnam, Lieutenant Muller came to know the barrel-end experience of being a combat casualty. MR. MULLER: I was very eager to get over there and to mix it up and to get into combat. NARRATOR: Muller was leading a combined force of US and South Vietnamese infantry against a dug-in North Vietnamese unit when a bullet tore through his chest. MR. MULLER: I can't really describe what it felt like other than it's like you were in a big bell and somebody went "bong," or like the windshield of a car that just shatters into a thousand pieces. And then all of a sudden, everything got very mellow and I just started slowly to recede in consciousness and I realized I was going to die. NARRATOR: Minutes before, Muller had called in Medivac helicopters to take away other wounded. He soon found himself being ferried to a nearby hospital ship. MR. MULLER: Had I arrived a minute later, I would have been dead. Both lungs had collapsed. The bullet went in, went through both lungs. And it was really the chest injury and not so much the spinal cord getting severed that was the critical part of being wounded. And when I woke up on the hospital ship, my reaction was absolute disbelief and also total ecstasy. I mean, I don't remember how many tubes I had in me. I had, you know, more tubes than you could probably count, but I made it and I was ecstatic. And people don't understand that if you really think that, you know, you cashed out, if you're given a second chance at life -- you know, it doesn't matter if you're missing limbs, or if you're paralyzed, or whatever, you know, you're really grateful to be here. NARRATOR: He will never forget the sounds of the intensive care unit. MR. MULLER: There's always somebody screaming. You know, the guys that would cry the loudest would be the traumatic amputees, you know, from land mines that had their dressings changed or sometimes the burn cases. And, you know, you hear it, grown guys calling for their mother. It's unbelievable. But being submerged, so to speak, in that reality, I got to tell you, even if I could have, I don't think after that I could have gone back on the battlefield, honestly. It's a -- It's a different reality. [Text on screen] "You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end, it will be you who tire of it."- Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese Communist Leader NARRATOR: Vietnam is often called "the first television war." Reporters and cameramen roamed a guerilla battlefield with no defined fronts. [From a television news broadcast, Khe Sanh, Vietnam] 1st SOLDIER (Over loud gunfire.): "Not knowing where they are, that's the worst thing. Down around -- run into sewers and the gutters, anywhere, could be anywhere. Just hoping to stay alive from day to day. I just want to go back home and go to school." REPORTER: "Have you lost any friends?" 1st SOLDIER: "Quite a few. We lost one the other day. This whole thing stinks, really." 2nd SOLDIER: "Awful sick of here. I'll be so glad to go home." REPORTER: ("Inaudible.") 2nd SOLDIER: "I don't know. It's just -- It's the worst jam we've been in since I've been in Vietnam." REPORTER: "Do you think it's worth it?"" 2nd SOLDIER: "Yeah. I don't know. They say" -- "They say that we're fighting for something. I don't know" -- [Loud explosion.] [From Television News Broadcast] President LYNDON JOHNSON: "We intend to convince the communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms." NARRATOR: Over TV dinners, Americans watched newscasts brimming with statistics meant to measure the "progress" of the war. In the process, Vietnam became a "war of the body" -- "body counts," "body bags," young men fighting and dying in a quagmire far from home even as the government spoke of "a light at the end of the tunnel." Still, a majority of Americans supported the war effort for the first four years. ANNOUNCER (1967): "One town's answer to the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. It's a 'Support Our Men in Vietnam" rally, organized by high school senior Paul Christopher and it draws 25,000 people." NARRATOR: Yet the Pentagon came out of Vietnam convinced that media coverage, especially images of casualties, had undermined public support. The military was determined not to let this happen again. The media was completely barred from the 1983 invasion of Grenada. Subsequently, a pool system was devised that limited the number of reporters and allowed the military to control their access to combat operations. US Military Press Officer (to a group of reporters): "Okay. If you'd just follow me then." NARRATOR: The 1991 Persian Gulf War was so carefully choreographed that it began according to an advertised schedule live from Baghdad. The dominant image of that war was aerial gun camera footage that showed US missiles neatly striking anonymous targets. In stark contrast to the enemy body counts of Vietnam, military leaders in the Gulf War displayed little interest in the number of Iraqi dead. Press Briefing, 27 February 1991: Reporter: "Will there ever be any sort of a counting or head counts made or anything like that?" GEN NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF: "No. There will never be an exact count." NARRATOR: The Pentagon deliberately kept images of death to a minimum. Even the Army's own cameramen were discouraged from recording enemy casualties. This footage of US troops burying Iraqi war dead was shot by Army cameramen and released only following a Freedom of Information Act request well after the war was over. US SOLDIER (off-camera): "The last thing the BC (battery commander) said to me was, 'Make sure nobody takes pictures.' Just -- We're just showing the incongruity of it all. Wanted to make sure we didn't bring cameras out and take pictures." NARRATOR: Two years later, widespread famine in Somalia led to a humanitarian mission by US troops. An aura of surrealism surrounded the scene when Marines found themselves greeted by throngs of news cameras as they made a nighttime landing near Mogadishu. The food crisis was resolved in a matter of weeks. But what was not explained to the American public was how the mission had shifted from famine relief to nation-building and a hunt for a local warlord. A brutal firefight resulted in the deaths of 18 US Rangers. When television showed a jubilant Somali crowd dragging the remains of a dead GI through the streets, the US quickly decided to end the Somalia operation. Many policymakers concluded that the public has no stomach for American casualties in peacekeeping operations. STEVEN KULL: The polling shows that that's not the case, that the American public did not respond that way in Somalia and that it is very unlikely that they would have responded that way in Bosnia or Kosovo. NARRATOR: Steve Kull has conducted extended polls in focus groups on American attitudes on policy issues and recently co-authored Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism. MR. KULL: The critical question in the public's mind is whether or not the operation succeeds. NARRATOR: In a poll taken the same night the news reports showed the American GI's body in the streets of Mogadishu, less than 40 percent of respondents wanted the US to withdraw immediately from Somalia. MR. KULL: In fact, the majority said that they wanted to respond by beefing-up forces, by bringing in more forces. There was a feeling that we need to get out eventually, but that was already in place before the fatalities. So, in fact, there really wasn't a major change in attitudes about the Somalia operation as a result of the fatalities. NARRATOR: But an angry and vocal minority, calling for an immediate withdrawal, made a bigger impact on Congress and the media and gave the impression of being a majority. A few months later, another African country -- Rwanda -- experienced massive ethnic violence. From a NEWS REPORT: "Rebel troops and regular army forces have turned the capital into a battleground." NARRATOR: Despite well-placed warnings with Western governments, but with Somalia fresh on policymakers' minds, no peacekeeping action was taken and more than a half-million Rwandans were killed in just 100 days as a result of a campaign of genocide. A panel of military experts later concluded that a peacekeeping force of 5000 troops could have prevented the slaughter. [Text on screen] "Violent attacks, though costly at the time, save lives in the end." - GEN George Patton, 1947 NARRATOR: March 24, 1999. President Clinton goes on television to announce that he sees no alternative to military force to stop the persecution of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by Yugoslav militiamen. President BILL CLINTON: "Kosovo's crisis now is full blown. And if we do not act clearly, it will get even worse. Only firmness now can prevent greater catastrophe later." [White House Press Room, March 24, 1999.] NARRATOR: The same day, the president rules out the use of ground forces, asserting that air power alone will quickly bring Yugoslavian President Milosevic to the bargaining table. Three weeks later at the White House, many members of Congress urge Mr. Clinton to use ground troops to get the job done. Senator MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): "My hope is that he won't rule out any option. I think that would be the best message to send to Milosevic." [White House entrance, mid-April 1999] NARRATOR: For decades military strategists have emphasized the necessity of combined forces -- air, land and sea -- in order to achieve victory. Many experts criticized the decision to hold back even the threat of ground troops. LAWRENCE KORB: From a military point of view, it was a terrible strategy. NARRATOR: Larry Korb is a former Navy pilot and served as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. MR. KORB: By relying only on air power from a very high altitude, you did not stop the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians in Kosovo, and that was one of the purposes of the war. And because you relied only on air power, some million people were either displaced or had to leave the country. NARRATOR: Although the Kosovo war was fought for moral purposes -- to stop ethnic cleansing -- many felt that the way in which the war was conducted soon came to undermine the moral basis of the NATO campaign. Withholding ground forces extended the war's duration and shifted the burden of violence on to the civilian population. KENNETH BACON, Pentagon Spokesman: "It is difficult to say that we have prevented one act of brutality at this stage. This is being done very upclose and personal by the Yugoslav army and special police forces in small groups."[Pentagon Press Conference, March 30, 1999] NARRATOR: Bombing from 15,000 feet protect pilots resulted in target mis-identification and civilian deaths. REPORTER, Television News Broadcast: "After first proposing several theories for why it may not have been responsible, NATO admitted that one of its warplanes did attack a refugee convoy, killing nearly 70 civilians."MR. KORB: I think it's immoral not to risk casualties on your side when you have a chance, by taking that risk, to prevent innocent civilians from being killed. NARRATOR: When air strikes against military targets failed to force Milosevic to give in, NATO began bombing civilian targets, such as power grids and water supplies, in an attempt to turn the population against their leader. WILLIAM COHEN, Secretary of Defense: "His oil refining capacity was eliminated, more than 40 percent of his military fuel supplies. And then, of course, the campaign started to take it to the so-called elite in Belgrade, when they found that the factories which they controlled and which helped to sustain the military machine were being targeted, as well as his propaganda efforts and his television coverage, all of that contributed to the undermining of his power base." [at Senate hearing, July 20, 1999] NARRATOR: But this also resulted in more civilian casualties and the continuation of a disturbing trend in modern warfare. At the start of the 20th Century, less than 10 percent of combat casualties were civilians. Now, on average, civilians make up 90 percent of the victims of war. Bobby Muller's organization seeks to reverse this disturbing trend. MR. MULLER: I think for a lot of people in this country that have never been on a battlefield and don't really know about war firsthand, it's sort of easy to throw the baby out with the bath water and say, "Ah, that's conflict." No, it's not. Historically, it hasn't been. Currently, it is, but that doesn't make it right. It's wrong. And we have a substantial body of international law designed to prevent that. Unfortunately, it hasn't had any real effect. [Text on screen] "Every waking and sleeping moment, my nightmare is the fact that I will give an order that will cause countless numbers of human beings to lose their lives." - GEN Norman Schwarzkopf, February 1991 NARRATOR: No American wants US troops put at unnecessary risk and they strongly support diplomatic efforts to resolve problems without resorting to force. But polls suggest that policymakers underestimate the public's ability to accept the consequences of military action. MR. KULL: Well, it's not that the public has some kind of unrealistic idea that there are no risks involved in these kinds of risks; they think there are such risks. And, nonetheless, they feel that in many cases, it is very important if the operation does succeed in fulfilling an important objective like stopping ethnic cleansing, then they say that they will accept even a significant number of casualties. NARRATOR: Key to public support for military action is whether the justification for it has been well-communicated beforehand. MR. KORB: It's incumbent on our political leadership, particularly the president of the United States, to make sure before he sends men and women into battle that he clearly articulates to the American people the purpose of it, why it's necessary. NARRATOR: Some claimed the Kosovo conflict represented a new era in which air power alone could win wars. Under-reported has been the fact that there was a ground offensive -- carried out by the well-armed Kosovo Liberation Army -- that helped change the direction of the war. The Pentagon released this chart, which shows how ineffective air power was against ground targets through the first 60 days of war. But once the Kosovar army began its attacks and forced the Serbian military to come out in the open and engage them, the success of air strikes rose exponentially. Two weeks later, Milosevic agreed to a peace settlement. Bobby Muller's experience in Vietnam against an entrenched North Vietnamese unit points out the irreplaceable role of ground forces: MR. MULLER: Before we did any ground assault up on that hill, I had an hour-and-a-half of 155mm guns, boom, right on target. I had four jet strikes come in, drop their payload, boom, right on the target. I had eight US gun tanks and two flame tanks, and the gun tanks used half their allowance of ammunition. One of the flame tanks came up and burned the hill. And with all of that, you know, the tank commanders would still see some of the NVAs popping their heads up and they were bloody from the concussion of, you know, everything we dropped in ordinance on their heads, and there would be blood from the nose and from the ears. But it just illustrates what are the hard lessons you learn in these situations: That when you have a dug-in enemy, they can take on heck of a pounding, and at the end of the day, you've got to engage them. NARRATOR: Some military leaders are concerned about the effect on morale when troops are told their first goal is to avoid casualties. The much-vaunted but low-flying Apache helicopters were dispatched to Kosovo, but were never used for fear of losses in combat. MR. KORB: I think if you tell American fighting men, whether it's air, land or sea, that we're not willing to suffer any casualties and, therefore, we're not going to fight this war in the most militarily effective way, that that is corrosive to the military ethic and everything that the military stands for. NARRATOR: Some within the military are also concerned that their zero casualty record in Kosovo has created an impossible standard for future operations and that now a single casualty might brand the mission a failure. But pollster Steve Kull sees no such illusion among the American public: MR. KULL: The American public went into the situation in Kosovo with the assumption that there would be some fatalities, and they were obviously glad that there weren't. Does this mean that they now have the assumption that there will be no fatalities or casualties in the future? There's no evidence to that effect. The American public is fairly realistic about these issues. NARRATOR: The Pentagon likes to play the casualty issue to its advantage, as well. The Air Force wants to replace its top-line F-15 fighters, unmatched in the skies, with the controversial F-22, which would cost more than three times as much. To make its case, the Air Force circulated a brochure emphasizing casualties of past conflicts. A chart depicts "Casualties per day" of major wars, showing a steep decline from World War Two to the Gulf War. "America Demands This Trend Continue," it reads. The brochure even claims there will be a 25 percent reduction in casualties with the plane, which is still at least five years from operational service should it be built at all. [Text on screen] "...one Paris night will replace them." - Napoleon, in reference to the 75,000 casualties at Borodino, September 1812 [On-screen excerpts from "Robot Wars" (Paramount).] NARRATOR: Robot wars, in which machines fight in place of men, have long been the stuff of science fiction. But in many ways, for the US military, remote-control war is already a reality. Far from Kosovo, Navy warships launched Tomahawk cruise missiles which were guided by Global Positioning System satellites to their targets, accurate to within a few yards. Well beyond the range of ground fire, high-flying aircraft dropped precision-guided munitions that used laser, radar, and satellite information to deliver them to distant targets. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, as they are called, can perform missions too dangerous for pilots. These remote-controlled drones can loiter over enemy territory while sending back images of the ground below, or can help direct laser-guided weapons fired from above crowd cover. NEWSPAPER HEADLINE: "Pilotless Planes Suffer Brunt of Allied Casualties." NARRATOR: In Kosovo, UAVs took the bullets several times in situations that would have called for piloted planes in previous wars. Immediately after the war, weapons manufacturers began an advertising campaign to sell even more high-technology weaponry to the Pentagon. MR. KORB: The United States has weapons that are so technologically superior to the rest of the world -- as was shown in the war in Kosovo, where you bomb for 78 days with literally no casualties -- that it doesn't need to keep pushing that technology, pushing it into production. NARRATOR: But the fact that the United States can inflict devastating damage without suffering casualties itself has troubling implications. Many countries now fear such battlefield dominance will make the US "trigger happy" when dealing with future global problems. MR. MULLER: There's a fundamental moral equation that I think is necessary to be kept in the process of war. And that has to do with -- if something as a principle or value is important enough that you're going to kill people for it, then you ought to be prepared to die for it. NARRATOR: One of the cornerstones of democracy is civilian control of the military. Ultimately, the decision to use force -- including ground troops -- rests with the president of the United States. MR. KORB: The problem is not with the men and women of the American military. They're willing to risk their lives in order to accomplish a greater good and that's why they join the military. The problem is only in the mind of politicians who are afraid to bear the political cost of trying to convince the American people of why it's necessary to use force.
|
