Kunduz, Afghanistan, 2002 - Steve McCurry
It’s a white thing…you wouldn’t understand.
Game over, hipsters. This is the single-most ironic instance of tee-shirt-wearing ever.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a sergeant in the Marines, is president of the Georgetown University Student Veterans Association. He served as a rifleman in the 1st battalion, 6th Marines in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010.
… The images of the Boston bombing reminded me of things I saw in southern Helmand province, not the streets where I usually do my Christmas shopping. Many witnesses described the marathon carnage as “a war zone,” and indeed it was: mangled flesh, shocked faces, splattered blood.
… I deployed to Afghanistan believing my presence in that country would help stop attacks such as Boston’s from happening. But instead, my war has spilled over, striking the city where my 22-year-old brother goes to school and where my mom, until recently, felt perfectly safe eating lunch outdoors.
THE SPRING fighting season in Afghanistan began this month with explosions of violence all over the country.
Taliban suicide bombers dressed as Afghan soldiers attacked a courthouse in Farah Province and killed 53 people. A NATO convoy carrying five Americans was blown up by suicide bombers in Zabul province. Among the dead was a U.S. diplomat. On April 7, a joing Afghan-NATO airstrike in Kunar Province killed 12 children and one woman, and injured six other women.
The civilian deaths triggered a by-now familiar response from the U.S. military, the mainstream media and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. A spokesperson for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) released a statement saying, “ISAF takes all reports of civilian casualties seriously, and we are currently assessing the incident.” But much later, coalition forces will quietly, with little media attention, take responsibility for the slaughter, offer apologies to the families and offer cash payments.
In an attempt to justify the killing of civilians, the U.S. military claimed that the women and children were family members of senior Taliban commanders—guilty by association. And once again, the press reminded us that the Taliban and other anti-government groups are responsible for 81 percent of all civilian deaths—another way to minimize the death and destruction that NATO is responsible for. Never acknowledged, though, is that there wouldn’t be civilian deaths caused by an insurgency if there wasn’t a war and occupation by the U.S.
Per usual, President Karzai talked out of both sides of his mouth and accused the Taliban of using civilians as human shields and then condemned ISAF for killing innocent women and children. Two months ago, Karzai ordered a complete ban on Afghan security forces calling in NATO airstrikes in residential areas. But NATO doesn’t answer to the president of Afghanistan. According to political analyst Habib Hakimi, airstrikes will continue when it’s “tactically necessary.” Which is often.
In the war on Afghanistan, civilian deaths are nameless and faceless collateral damage. There won’t be heartfelt stories about 12 children’s lives tragically cut short by a U.S. air strike.
In this recent round of casualties, the mainstream media focused on 25-year-old Ann Smedinghoff, who worked for the State Department as a public diplomacy officer. She was killed on a trip to deliver books to a new school in Qalat. Secretary of State John Kerry said she was “a brave American determined to brighten the light of learning through books written in the native tongue of the students that she had never met, but whom she felt compelled to help. And she was met by cowardly terrorists determined to bring darkness and death to total strangers.”
As if the mission of the U.S. State Department is to deliver books to Afghan children. In fact, it is the U.S. war machine that has brought darkness and death to the people of Afghanistan for over 11 years.
The alleged Boston bomber has been officially charged with “using a weapon of mass destruction to kill, injure and cause widespread damage.” That may be true, but the U.S. government commits this crime every single day in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc., etc….
The sad thing is, while we (rightly) condemn the actions of the 19 year-old who detonated a bomb at the Boston Marathon, we send 19 year-olds overseas to drop bombs on people in situations that all-too-frequently lead to the deaths of innocent children, women, and men. Far from facing condemnation for their actions, however, this latter group of youths are either given immunity or outright praise for their violence.
This is an incongruity and contradiction which America cannot sustain if it ever wants to see peace, at home or abroad.
[TW: Violence, photo of dead body]
Don’t hold your breath waiting for these massacres committed by the US military in Afghanistan to be remotely treated in the same way as the Boston violence. No one will question the religious background of these soldiers, nor whether their terrorism indicts military culture itself. There will be no moments of silence held for their victims, nor will most Americans even know that this tragedy had taken place.
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Three years ago, the U.S. was stunned by a horrific story that emerged from the front lines of the war in Afghanistan: Several members of an Army platoon had killed at least three unarmed Afghan civilians, apparently for sport. The soldiers referred to themselves as ‘the Kill Team”—a nickname that seemed tailor-made for television news, which devoted hours of coverage to the case.
Yesterday, at 7:05pm Eastern Time, Boston Police received a report that suspected terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding in a boat in Watertown.
At 7:15pm, a drone was heard overheard. Seconds later, an enormous explosion destroyed the boat, as well as 10 nearby homes.
Sources say 46 Watertown residents were casualties of the missile strike, including 7 children.
…
Wouldn’t that be an unconscionable end to this ordeal?
If so, then why are we okay with us doing this in Pakistan?
And if you’re not okay with us doing that, then you don’t get to wave an American flag and chant “USA USA!” when we catch a terrorist.
Why? Because that same flag is painted on the side of the missiles we use to commit our own acts of terror.
Now what are we gonna do about this?
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Civilians ‘killed when an air strike hit their houses’
At least ten children are among the dead in eastern Afghanistan, according to officials in the country, following a NATO bombing overnight.
“Eleven children and a woman were killed when an air strike hit their houses,” said Wasefullah Wasefi, a spokeperson for the governor of Kunar province, where the attack took place.
In total, reporting on Sunday indicated that more than two dozen people were killed in the latest example of civilian casualties in the ongoing US war in Afghanistan.
This is a photo taken in Watertown, MA, as cops and soldiers go door-to-door looking for terrorists
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From Iraq and Afghanistan to your front door.
“The idea that some lives are worth less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” - Dr. Paul Farmer
(Boston, Afghanistan)
Matthew Keys, the social media editor at Reuters, posted audio of a reporter asking White House Press Secretary Jay Carney if U.S. bombings that kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan constitute an “act of terror” given the labeling of the Boston Marathon bombing as “terrorism”. She specifically refers to a U.S. airstrike earlier this month that killed 11 children, just the latest in a seemingly endless line of Afghan civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. government.
… I transcribed the exchange in full:
REPORTER: I send my deepest condolence to the victims and families in Boston. But President Obama said that what happened in Boston was an act of terrorism. I would like to ask, Do you consider the U.S. bombing on civilians in Afghanistan earlier this month that left 11 children and a woman killed a form of terrorism? Why or why not?
JAY CARNEY: Well, I would have to know more about the incident and then obviously the Department of Defense would have answers to your questions on this matter. We have more than 60,000 U.S. troops involved in a war in Afghanistan, a war that began when the United States was attacked, in an attack that was organized on the soil of Afghanistan by al Qaeda, by Osama bin laden and others and more than 3,000 people were killed in that attack. And it has been the President’s objective once he took office to make clear what our goals are in Afghanistan and that is to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat al Qaeda. And with that as our objective to provide enough assistance to Afghan National Security Forces and the Afghan government to allow them to take over security for themselves. And that process is underway and the United States has withdrawn a substantial number of troops and we are in the process of drowning down further as we hand over security lead to Afghan forces. And it is certainly the case that I refer you to the defense department for details that we take great care in the prosecution of this war and we are very mindful of what our objectives are.
… Americans still see terrorism as a high-stakes public policy issue, though it has almost disappeared altogether from their list of the nation’s top problems. A Gallup poll released Monday — which was conducted in early April — found zero percent of Americans volunteering “terrorism” as the country’s most important problem. Terrorism has ranked at 1 percent or below in six separate priorities polls conducted before the Monday Gallup poll, compared to above 20 percent in the year after the attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
I find this incredibly interesting, especially because certain members of America’s ruling political class seem to be yearning for a return to the climate of lockstep fear and obedience which prevailed in the months and years after 9/11/01; a “better” time when people were more afraid of Muslims “over there” than the bankers and bigots who rule our country “over here”.
The fact of the matter is that, far from the notion that “nothing’s happened since September 11th,” the reality is that most Americans’ perspectives on the “war on terror” have changed because so MUCH has happened — decades-long wars on Afghanistan & Iraq, Guantanamo, PATRIOT Act, financial collapse, CEO bonuses, corporate bailouts, yawning economic inequality, multiple revolutions in the Middle East, the Occupy movement, and so on.
Yes, we have all learned much from the aftermath of 9/11/01. But I would submit that the most important of these lessons is that to voluntarily acquiesce one’s humanity to the forces of fear, racism, xenophobia, militarism, and blind-obedience to authority, when confronted with tragedy, hatred, and violence, is to ultimately do worse injury to oneself than that which was inflicted in the first place.
A year ago today, US soldier Robert Bales murdered 9 children, 3 women, and 4 men in two separate villages in Afghanistan. He cut off their limbs and set them on fire. They were all civilians.
I wonder how many minuets of silence was observed by America in their memory. Or was American time too precious to be wasted in the names of these brown bodies?
I wonder how many minuets of silence was observed by America in their memory. Or was American time too precious to be wasted in the names of these brown bodies?
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Neha Ray Panjwayi Massacre. Don’t forget. |
