NATO’s duty

LITTLE ROCK — Tragic mistakes all too often accompany combat operations, even when the military objectives are humanitarian. That is what seems to have happened in the Libyan farming village of Majer in August. Amid the confusion of a rebel advance and a retreat by Gadhafi loyalists, successive NATO bomb runs there killed at least 34 Libyan civilians, including women and small children, according to journalists, human-rights organizations and UN investigators.

The refusal by NATO to fully investigate and disclose what happened in Majer and other places where there are credible claims of civilian casualties means that the alliance won’t be able to learn from such tragedies. It has cast a pall on a campaign fought for the right reasons, one that likely saved tens of thousands of Libyans from Moammar Gadhafi’s murderous wrath.

NATO planners made extraordinary efforts to minimize civilian casualties. Fighter jets relied exclusively on smart bombs, which are guided by laser or satellite, to pinpoint intended targets. Bombing guidelines excluded legitimate military sites if hitting them also endangered civilians. But smart bombs are no more accurate than the intelligence used to program them, and pilots flying at high speeds can only avoid civilians they know about. Most of the targets struck in Libya were not pre-planned, but chosen in flight on the basis of imperfect information.

Implausibly, NATO insists it knows of no “confirmed” civilian casualties during its entire seven-month Libyan bombing campaign. “Confirmed,” as our colleague C.J. Chivers pointed out in last Sunday’s Times, means confirmed by NATO, which has shown little interest in investigating credible independent claims of civilian fatalities, including a 27-page memo submitted by the Times last year documenting nine separate attacks where the evidence pointed to unintended victims.

NATO has also declined to cooperate, on jurisdictional grounds, with an expert international panel appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, led by a distinguished Canadian judge, Philippe Kirsch. That is not an acceptable response-for Libyans or for NATO.