https://doi.org/10.1177/2329496519842055 Social Currents 1–16 © The Southern Sociological Society 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/2329496519842055 journals.sagepub.com/home/scu Article U.S. politics today is characterized by its polar- ization and rancor. But members of both politi- cal parties agree on at least one point: the nation’s military is the most powerful in the world. Indeed, no other country’s military can rival that of the United States when it comes to the mobilization of sheer firepower around the globe. But while politicians from both parties lavish praise on the military, it has nonetheless been unable to deliver decisive victories against more poorly armed opponents in both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and in the Vietnam War that preceded these conflicts (Bacevich 2016). Scholars and journalists have suggested a number of possible factors that can help explain this paradox. Some point to the U.S. government’s partnerships with corrupt and unpopular regimes in the nations it has occu- pied, which have failed to gain legitimacy among local populations and often, in fact, inspire violent opposition (Hayes 2016). Others place blame on the U.S. government itself, arguing that its incompetent manage- ment and misplaced priorities in war and 842055SCU XX X 10.1177/2329496519842055Social CurrentsBonds research-article 2019 1 University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA, USA Corresponding Author: Eric Bonds, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mary Washington, 1400 College Ave., Fredericksburg, VA 22401, USA. Email: ebonds@umw.edu Callous Cruelty and Counterinsurgency: Civilian Victimization and Compensation in U.S.-Occupied Iraq Eric Bonds 1 Abstract Randall Collins coined the term callous cruelty to refer to the bureaucratic development and application of violence, which frequently results in widespread civilian impacts even when unintended. The U.S. military itself identified such outcomes as a major obstacle to success in counterinsurgency warfare during its occupation of Iraq, and consequently sought to more carefully target insurgents in ways that avoid or minimize civilian harm by further rationalizing its violence. When violence resulted in harm regardless, U.S. officials in Iraq sought to ameliorate it by providing monetary payments to war victims. This article presents an analysis of U.S. Army documents from this compensation program. The files studied here depict the routine nature of civilian harm in Iraq even under the counterinsurgency approach. The files further reveal the most common ways by which U.S. military action killed civilians. Finally, the documents show that the compensation program was administered in a way that frequently re-inscribed, rather than diminished, the callous cruelty of counterinsurgency war. Keywords Iraq war, counterinsurgency, civilian victimization, violence, compensation