According to a March 27 New York Times article, the recent airstrike in Mosul, Iraq resulted in a civilian death toll of over 200, possibly one of the worst American military strikes in Iraq. Some Iraqi officials believe that this increase is due to President Trump's push to expedite the battle — resulting in missile strikes that take down entire structures. U.S. officials, however, argue that the death toll is in part due to Iraqi forces fighting terrorist groups. What do you think about U.S. involvement in these airstrikes and should there be reform in the way that they are approached?

Prof. Paul Janowski (HIST)

The Pentagon has denied lifting the protocols governing airstrikes around Mosul and clearly has nothing to gain and a great deal to lose by antagonizing the local population. Target acquisition in dense urban areas, even in the right cause, has yielded such accidents before — during the Kosovo air war in 1999, launched to prevent ethnic cleansing there by Serb units, five American guided bombs struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. But we are a very long way from the 1940s, when American bombing killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese and German civilians in order to win the war, and the 1960s, when American forces could not and did not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in entire swathes of Vietnamese territory. In any case, the new Administration seems so determined to swell the ranks of the Jihadis with new sympathizers that it would hardly need added measures of this sort.

Prof. Paul Janowski (HIST) is a professor of History.

Prof. David Patel (HIST)

We should differentiate between three types of airstrikes. The first are those in Mosul (and, soon, Raqqa) to support allies’ ground operations to expel ISIS. This is difficult urban combat, and ISIS wants civilian casualties. Deaths are inevitable. The second are U.S. drone strikes targeting ISIS and al-Qaeda operatives in Syria, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere. The pace of such targeted assassinations has increased, but we do not know if the Trump administration has relaxed rules of engagement meant to minimize civilian casualties, or has delegated authority to launch such strikes to military commanders. The third type, though, kills many more civilians: Saudi and Emirati airstrikes in the Yemeni civil war, which the U.S. increasingly supports militarily and logistically. Thousands of Yemeni civilians will die from violence or starvation this year, and the U.S. public is paying little attention to this ongoing tragedy and our growing culpability.

Prof. David Patel (HIST) is a Senior Research Fellow with a focus on social order, religious authority and identity in the contemporary Middle East.

Amina Fahmy ’17

I believe that this is the point where the U.S. must reconsider its involvement in the fight against ISIL, in conjunction with others on the ground, including the Iraqi military, PMUs (officially affiliated Shia and Sunni militias) and the Kurdish Peshmerga. If the continued use of airstrikes is determined by all parties to be the best course of action, more intelligence gathering must be done to prevent civilian casualties. If the cause of this death toll is determined to be President Trump’s push to expedite the battle, it is imperative from both national security and human rights standpoints that this approach be reconsidered. When US airstrikes result in civilian deaths, not only is the U.S. failing to weaken ISIL, anti-Western sentiment is amplified, adding fuel to ISIL’s cause.

Amina Fahmy ’17 is majoring in International and Global Studies, as well as Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. She is the Middle East section editor of the Brandeis International Journal and an IMES Undergraduate Departmental Representative.

Ravi Simon ’19

Drone strikes are a critical part of the fight on terror, but this is likely little consolation to the families of the hundreds of civilians who died in the recent strike. Clearly, drones are necessary for taking out leaders of terrorist organizations and combatants in war zones, but the lack of intelligent discretion shown by the military is frankly unacceptable. The strike in Mosul was done with no individuals on the ground or near the site of attack able to confirm the target. Furthermore, the target of the strike was a building right next to the Mosque, meaning even a small mistake could result in collateral damage. These are mistakes that we cannot allow. When we kill the very people we are trying to protect, we ally more and more of them with our enemies. The very reason we despise ISIS is in large part because of their willingness to kill civilians in pursuit of their aims. We ought to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Ravi Simon ’19 is the Europe section editor for the Brandeis International Journal and a member of the Brandeis Academic Debate and Speech Society. He is also a staff writer for the Justice.