December 10, 2001

AT WHAT COST?
Examining the Hidden Costs of War

Grades:  6-8,9-12

Subjects:  American History, Civics, Current Events, Social Studies

Related New York Times Article
"War's Hidden Cost, By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.", December 10, 2001

Overview of Lesson Plan:: In this lesson, students explore the civilian costs of war and the concept of "moral equivalence."

SUGGESTED TIME ALLOWANCE:  1 hour

OBJECTIVES:
Students will:

  1. Respond to a quotation about the inevitability of civilian casualties in times of war.
  2. Explore civilian casualties in Afghanistan, Dresden, My Lai and Hiroshima through reading and discussing the article “War’s Hidden Cost.”
  3. Research the basic circumstances surrounding the military actions in Dresden, My Lai, Hiroshima and Belgrade and the civilian casualties of those actions.
  4. Discuss the moral costs of civilian casualties and the concept of "moral equivalence."
  5. Conclude whether there is a moral equivalence to killing civilians in a terrorist attack and in military operations in wartime.

RESOURCES / MATERIALS:

ACTIVITIES / PROCEDURES:

  1. WARM-UP/DO-NOW: Students respond to the following prompt in their journals, written on the board prior to class: "'This much is all but certain: when bombs fall, some of them will fall on the wrong people.' Free-write in your journal a response to this quotation." Encourage students to share their answers.
  2. As a class, read and discuss “War’s Hidden Cost,” focusing on the following questions:
    1. What is “collateral damage”?
    2. What is “fratricide” or “friendly fire”?
    3. Why does the author of this article feel that the term “friendly fire” is chilling?
    4. Where did dozens of non-combatants die the first week of December 2001?
    5. According to the Pentagon, what did the United States military hit?
    6. Why aren’t Taliban tallies of civilian casualties trusted?
    7. Why isn’t the Pentagon making an attempt to estimate how many civilians its bombs have killed?
    8. Who might try to attempt an accurate tally of the civilian casualties?
    9. Under what circumstances would an investigation of a military action be carried out?
    10. Why does the author assert that “it is clear that in the current conflict... no civilian is safe" in Afghanistan?
    11. What did interviews by the International Committee of the Red Cross find two years ago?
    12. What are the Geneva Conventions?
    13. Why is the American public shocked by images of widows and orphans hospitalized by an American air raid?
    14. In Europe, how have people reacted to repeated reports of civilian casualties?
    15. How have people reacted in Pakistan and other nations within the Islamic world?
    16. How were the air strikes in Belgrade that killed civilians rationalized?
    17. Although civilians were killed and injured in Tora Bora, according to the Pentagon, was the target a military target?
    18. Why was the Pentagon confident that there were no collateral damage worries when planning the air campaign?
    19. What does a senior officer at Central Command speculate about why there were civilian casualties?
    20. What does Doctors Without Borders call the number of civilian casualties?
    21. According to Doctors Without Borders, what is the American-led coalition’s responsibility?
    22. Why does Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismiss such remarks by non-governmental relief agencies or N.G.O.’s?
    23. Why would the task of getting rid of civilian casualties and fratricide be “even tougher”?
  3. Divide students into four groups. Assign each group one of the following military conflicts mentioned in the article: Dresden, Hiroshima, My Lai and the air campaign in Belgrade. Allow students twenty minutes to answer the following questions about their assigned topic, using all available classroom resources (questions written on the board for easier student access):
    • How was the United States and her allies involved in this military campaign?
    • What was the intended purpose of this military campaign, and did it serve this purpose? Explain.
    • How many civilians died?
    • Were the civilian casualties deliberate or accidental? Explain.
    • What was the reaction in the United States to reports of civilian casualties? Give specific examples, if possible.
    After twenty minutes, each group should choose a reporter to report upon the answers to these questions to the class.
  4. Arrange desks in a circle and, drawing on what students now know about these four past military campaigns and the current campaign in Afghanistan, hold a round-table discussion using the questions below as a guide. You may want to keep a speaker's list, in which you write down students' names as students raise their hands to respond to a question and then call on them in the order of the list.
    • Are civilian casualties the inevitable outcome of war?
    • How do you define “moral equivalence"?
    • Is the accidental killing of civilians in a military campaign morally equivalent to the deliberate killing of civilians in a terrorist attack?
  5. WRAP-UP/HOMEWORK: In their journals, students respond to the following questions in a reflective essay (written on the board or dictated for students to copy prior to leaving class): "Based on what you have learned about past and present military campaigns, and considering your own views, do you think that civilian casualties are an inevitable cost of war? Is killing civilians deliberately in an act of terror morally equivalent to killing civilians 'collaterally' in an act of war?" At a later date, students may wish to share their essays.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

EVALUATION / ASSESSMENT:
Students will be evaluated based upon their initial journal responses, thoughtful participation in class discussion and group research, and well-crafted reflective essays.

VOCABULARY:
collateral, comrade, fratricide, chillingly, noncombatants, evidently, fortified, encampment, tallies, assess, justifiable, retribution, pinpoint, precision, inevitability, indistinguishable, speculate, redoubt, proportionality, equivalence

EXTENSION ACTIVITIES:

  1. According to the article read in class, the military assesses the risks to civilians before every air strike to ensure that the risks are justifiable. Imagine that you are a legal officer at the Pentagon. How will you define a justifiable risk? Draft a set of guidelines for the military use to assess the risks to civilians in planning air strikes. (You may choose to research, if available, what guidelines are currently in place.)
  2. What are the Geneva Conventions? Research the Geneva Conventions and create a pamphlet explaining them. Imagine that you are distributing the pamphlets to your classmates and to Afghan refugees. How will you explain the complexities of the Geneva Conventions?
  3. Research the N.G.O. (non-governmental organization) Doctors Without Borders. Interview someone who works for the organization, either by phone or via e-mail. How does the organization receive funding? What sorts of limitations are placed on them? What kind of things can they do as a non-governmental organization that they might be precluded from doing as a government agency? Create a poster explaining who they are and what they do. Alternatively, you may choose a different N.G.O. currently working in Afghanistan as the subject of research.
  4. If you were to create an N.G.O. to work in Afghanistan after the current conflict, what sort of N.G.O. would you create? What needs do you think will have to be met? How would you choose to aid the civilian population? Create an operating plan for your N.G.O.
  5. Read primary source coverage of any of the events mentioned in the article: the bombing of Dresden, the bombing of Hiroshima, the My Lai massacre and allied air strikes in Belgrade. Read a historical account of the events written later. Compare and contrast the accounts. [Historic New York Times articles covering these events can be found in the On This Day in History archive (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/archive.html)].
  6. There is ongoing interest in the story of John Walker Lindh, an American found to have been fighting with the Taliban against the American-led coalition. For one week, keep a journal of the coverage of story. At the end of the week, write a reflective essay about the coverage and about what you think should happen to Mr. Lindh when he returns to the United States.

INTERDISCIPLINARY CONNECTIONS:
Economics – Compare the United States defense budget to its budget for reconstructing the Pentagon and its aid to New York City in the wake of the September 11 attacks. How do they compare?

Language Arts – Read "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut. Respond to the following questions: How does Mr. Vonnegut draw upon his wartime remembrances of the firebombing of Dresden? How is it reflected in his work?

Technology – According to the featured article, Americans have come to expect “pinpoint precision” from 21st century weapons. To what sort of weapons is the author referring? Research the type of weapons that may be being used in Afghanistan. How do they work? How do they compare to the weapons used in World War II and in Vietnam? Present your research on a poster.

Copyright 2001
The New York Times Company

Unterricht konkret