Stop killings in Afghanistan
01/08/2009 10:16:00 AM GMT
By Linda Heard
War is abhorrent. There’s a reason the words war, pestilence and plague are related. But out of the three, war is the worst of all because it is deliberately inflicted by man upon mankind. It seems to me extraordinary that while we have the ability to put a man on the moon and possibly produce clones of ourselves, the human race appears unable or unwilling to resolve its differences without resorting to primitive violence.
Harry Patch, who was the last living soldier to have fought at Yves during World War I until he died a few days ago at the age of 111, understood this. “War, is organized murder, and nothing else.” He despised it so much that he refused to speak on the subject until he was over 100-year-old when the terrible memories had faded. Some 15 million people were killed in the so-called Great War and an estimated 60 million during World War II, yet decades on we’ve learned nothing. Today, nations still glorify war.
Moreover, the aggressors often act on the flimsiest of excuses. The US went into Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos as part of its anti-Communist containment policy but achieved nothing except an estimated 6.5 million fatalities, a toll that includes 58,000 American soldiers.
Similarly, the Iraq War was billed as a necessity until the deception was exposed. More than a million died to remove one man from office. Those who perpetrate the killings on “our side” are invariably heralded as heroes; their counterparts on the other side are always dehumanized, while innocent civilian victims are mostly written off as ‘collateral damage.” In reality they are all victims of fat cats in suits with the power to take life and death decisions over the lives of others in the name of policy.
Although Iraq is now acknowledged to have been a blunder of immense proportions until recently, Afghanistan has been generally perceived as a “good war” or, at least, a necessary war. This is because it was sold on two tracks; the first, to get the dastardly brain behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks Osama Bin Laden and, the second, to bring freedom to the Afghan people. On those two counts it has failed miserably. As far as we know Osama is still alive and kicking while most Afghans are not in a position to enjoy the fruits of democracy or an improved lifestyle since most reconstruction projects have been put on ice.
Speaking at a Stop the War Coalition rally last week, Afghan MP Malalai Joya called for NATO troops to quit her country forthwith and for the Afghan government to cleanse itself of criminals, warlords and U.S. puppets. She says Afghans are overwhelmingly against the occupation and must take responsibility for liberating themselves. She maintains that her people have suffered at the hands of occupation forces and Afghan warlords alike and complained about the ongoing lack of security. Indeed, she has been lucky enough to survive five assassination attempts on her own life.
Unable to put on display smiling, happy, liberated Afghans or Bin Laden “dead or alive,” we are now being told by the White House that the reason U.S. and NATO troops will remain there for the foreseeable future is to protect Western cities from a resurgent Al-Qaeda and the Taleban. Of course, this is complete nonsense. If that were the case, then all NATO would have to do is seal Afghanistan’s borders from weapons and foreign fighters while ensuring that those up to no good can’t get out. How can the Taleban be a threat to Washington or London when they don’t have warplanes or sophisticated missiles?
Here it’s worthwhile remembering, too, that not a single 9/11 terrorist was Afghan.
And you may be interested to know that on the FBI’s Web page titled “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” Bin Laden naturally appears. But wait for it…“for the bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.” When columnist Ed Haas contacted the FBI’s headquarters to ask why there was no mention of Sept. 11, he was informed that Bin Laden hasn’t been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 “because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.” If that’s the case, then why was Afghanistan invaded? But with Afghanistan a fait accompli, a far more pertinent question is: What are the US and its allies still doing there, and why are they so intent on remaining despite rising troop casualties (55 fatalities in July) as well as waning public support?
A former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and a former employee of both the Pentagon and the National Security Agency, Karen Kwiatkowski thinks she has answers. But first, she doesn’t believe the war in Afghanistan in winnable because victory hasn’t been defined. “There is no empirical data to support that we’re making any progress whatsoever,” she says.
She believes that U.S. President Barack Obama is pursuing the war under pressure from his political opponents at home because, as a Democratic president, he doesn’t want to appear weak on defense. On a strategic level, she says Afghanistan is a long-term trajectory of U.S. Middle East policy of manipulation and occupation orientated around “not Afghanistan, not Iraq, but Iran.”
“The reason we are in Afghanistan is because of Iran,” she says. “We want to be in a military position, an operational position to threaten in some way, to look good on our threats,” maybe we’ll threaten verbally and with the military right next door to pinch Iran both from Iraq, where we haven’t really reduced troops, and Afghanistan, where we have increased troops.” Ms. Kwiatkowski is adamant that Iran, like Iraq and Afghanistan, is not a threat to the U.S. “in any shape or form” but America’s larger Middle East policy “necessarily embraces our interest in supporting or facilitating things for Israel.” Hers is one view. But one thing is certain. It is time for the people of America and Europe, whose young men are dying or losing limbs on those foreign sands, to demand the truth about a war that is seemingly without purpose or end.
First published in Al Jazeera.com
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