Friday, June 22, 2007

Stop Killing Civilians, Damn It!


Has NATO completely lost its senses in Afghanistan or is it that its commanders and officers just don't give a shit about innocent Afghans any more?

NINE WOMEN, THREE BABIES and an ELDERLY MULLAH were among 25-villagers wiped out this morning in a NATO airstrike on an Afghan village. And, in case you're skeptical, that's the report from the Afghan police chief in Helmand province.

Standard pattern. An inconclusive firefight between Taliban guerrillas and NATO forces. The Taliban fall back into a village. NATO jets arrive and bomb the hell out of the place. Victory - dead villagers everywhere! And let's face it, the way NATO is going there's a good chance those babies would have grown up to become insurgents anyway, eh? And those women? Probably just breeders churning out more Taliban, eh? We sure showed those villagers, didn't we?

NATO spokesman, Lt. Col. Mike Smith reported while an unknown number of innocents may have lost their lives, the fault for that was entirely the enemy’s: “In choosing to conduct such attacks in this location at this time, the risk to civilians was probably deliberate. It is this irresponsible action that may have led to casualties.”

For the record, Smith claims we killed 30-insurgents. Let's see - 25 dead villagers, five relatives for each vowing revenge on NATO, let's just round it off at an even hundred new recruits for the other guys.

No Colonel Smith, you cretin, the risk to civilians arose when NATO, that's our sided butthead, decided to greet the villagers with a display of aerial bombardment.
Why do we keep doing this? The Afghan president has begged us to stop. The country's parliament has demanded that we stop. The Afghan people are outraged by it and take to the streets in fury over it. They're coming to hate us for it. The only people who seem to want to do this are us - and, of course, the Taliban. They absolutely love it when they can goad us into doing something this insanely stupid. We're playing straight into their hands with every bomb and every dead kid.

This is disgusting and it's happening again and again and again. I've had it. There's no honour in this mission, none at all. It's a disgrace. Canada should have no part in this. Support the troops? I don't blame them, this is the doing of the brass and politicians, but I can't support them either while they're part of this butchery.

2 comments:

  1. Speaking of playing into the hands of the Taliban, don't suppose you'd ascribe any blame to them in any of this, would you?

    No, of course not.

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  2. ALW, that remark is genuinely and profoundly stupid. I don't equate our soldiers to central Asian insurgents and neither should you, at least if you respect them.

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