Double Standards

The U.S. does not practice in Syria what it preached to Israel during its war against Hamas.

Washington significantly criticized Israel’s approach against Hamas in Gaza not so long ago. “The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians,” said a spokesperson for the State Department back then. Now, it is the United States’ turn to lead a war in Iraq and Syria against a terrorist organization — and civilians are dying because Islamic State fighters mingle with civilians; just like their Hamas colleagues did. Things can change very quickly.

Indeed, the U.S. has admitted to having decreased its tolerance level for civilian deaths. President Obama introduced a rule last year that civilian casualties need to be ruled out with significant certainty for any airstrikes against terrorists. This rule has now been suspended for the Islamic State group. The U.S. will instead only be bound by the usual ethical standards of warfare.

The U.S. and its allies like France and the U.K. face the same dilemma as Israel in its fight against Hamas: How can a democratic society lead a war and conform to international law against terrorists who disregard international law and hide behind civilians? There are only two choices: Either you let the other side win, or you have to accept that civilians inevitably die in wars, even when you are heavily invested in trying to prevent that from happening. Western nations just learned that lesson in Afghanistan. That’s why it is even more astonishing that whenever Israel faces the same dilemma, [the West] immediately assumes that dead civilians are inherent proof of unethical warfare. It is also striking that the Western public is far less interested in civilians that are killed by U.S. airstrikes in Syria than those killed in Gaza, as if there were a certain standard, which the Western world only applies to Israel — and then forgets about fairly quickly once one’s own country joins the war against terror. One could call that hypocrisy.