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TechnoratiA Short Till-Death-Do-Us-Part History of Bush's Wars
It was a tribal affair. Against a picture-perfect sunset, before a beige-colored cross and an altar made of the very Texas limestone that was also used to build her family's "ranch," veil-less in an Oscar de la Renta gown, the 26 year-old bride said her vows. More than 200 members of her extended family and friends were on hand, as well as the 14 women in her "house party," who were dressed "in seven different styles of knee-length dresses in seven different colors that match[ed] the palette of... wildflowers -- blues, greens, lavenders and pinky reds." Afterwards, in a white tent set in a grove of trees and illuminated by strings of lights, the father of the bride, George W. Bush, danced with his daughter to the strains of "You Are So Beautiful." The media was kept at arm's length and the vows were private, but undoubtedly they included the phrase "till death do us part."
That was early May of this year. Less than two months later, halfway across the world, another tribal affair was underway. The age of the bride involved is unknown to us, as is her name. No reporters were clamoring to get to her section of the mountainous backcountry of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. We know almost nothing about her circumstances, except that she was on her way to a nearby village, evidently early in the morning, among a party 70-90 strong, mostly women, "escorting the bride to meet her groom as local tradition dictates."
It was then that the American plane (or planes) arrived, ensuring that she would never say her vows. "They stopped in a narrow location for rest," said one witness about her house party, according to the BBC. "The plane came and bombed the area." The district governor, Haji Amishah Gul, told the British Times, "So far there are 27 people, including women and children, who have been buried. Another 10 have been wounded. The attack happened at 6.30AM. Just two of the dead are men, the rest are women and children. The bride is among the dead."
U.S. military spokespeople flatly denied the story. They claimed that Taliban insurgents had been "clearly identified" among the group. "[T]his may just be normal, typical militant propaganda," said 1st Lieutenant Nathan Perry. Despite accounts of the wounded, including women and children, being brought to a local hospital, Captain Christian Patterson, coalition media officer, insisted: "It was not a wedding party, there were no women or children present. We have no reports of civilian casualties." The members of an Afghan inquiry, appointed by President Hamid Karzai, later found that, in all, 47 civilians had died, including 39 women and children, and nine others were wounded.
Here's another American take on what happened: "The US military has denied allegations that its forces... killed dozens of people celebrating a marriage... 'We took hostile fire and we returned fire,' said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations... He said there were no indications that the victims of the attack were part of a wedding party."
Oh, my mistake. Kimmitt was denying that a different wedding party had been obliterated -- in the Western Iraqi desert, near the Syrian border, in May 2004. In that case, the wedding feast was long over. The celebrations had ended and the guests were evidently in bed when the U.S. jets arrived. More than 40 people died, including children, women, musicians, and a well-known Iraqi wedding singer hired for the event. According to Rory McCarthy of the British Guardian, who interviewed some of the hospitalized survivors, 27 members of one extended family died when the jets arrived.
In response to reports on that 2004 slaughter, Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, asked the following question: "How many people go to the middle of the desert... to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?" And, in an email responding to questions from a New York Times reporter, General Kimmitt later offered what was, by U.S. military standards, little short of an admission: "Could there have been a celebration of some type going on?... Certainly. Bad guys have celebrations. Could this have been a meeting among the foreign fighters and smugglers? That is a possibility. Could it have involved entertainment? Sure. However, a wedding party in a remote section of the desert along one of the rat lines, held in the early morning hours strains credulity."
The comments of Mattis and Kimmitt deserve, of course, to go directly into the annals of American military quotes, right next to that Vietnam era classic: "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."
But back to the subject of collateral ceremonial damage in Afghanistan. Consider this passage from a news report headlined, "No US Apology over Wedding Bombing," in the Guardian:
"Afghans claim the wedding guests, who were celebrating near Deh Rawud village, in the mountainous province of Oruzgan, north of Kandahar, had been firing into the air -- a Pashtun wedding tradition -- when American planes struck. But a U.S. spokesman claimed yesterday that the shooting was 'not consistent' with a wedding, saying that the planes had come under attack. 'Normally when you think of celebratory fire... it's random, it's sprayed, it's not directed at a specific target,' said Colonel Roger King at the U.S. airbase at Bagram. 'In this instance, the people on board the aircraft felt that the weapons were tracking them and were [trying] to engage them.'"
That was indeed Afghanistan -- not in July 2006, however, but four Julys earlier, when at least 30 people in a wedding party were wiped out, most of them, again, reportedly women and children. Here's how Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan foreign minister at the time, described that American air attack. It killed, he said, "a whole family of 25 people. No single person was left alive. This is the extent of the damage."
Oh, and let's not forget the ur-incident in wedding party destruction in Bush's wars. In late December 2001, a B-52 and two B-1B bombers, using precision-guided weapons, essentially wiped out a village in Eastern Afghanistan (and then, in a second strike, took out Afghans digging in the rubble). At the time, it was claimed that Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders had been killed "in their sleep." It was also claimed that surface-to-air missiles had been fired at the American planes. A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command issued a congratulatory statement after the attack occurred with this passage: "Follow-on reporting indicates that there was no collateral damage."
Except, of course, as Guardian correspondent Rory Carroll, then in Afghanistan, put it, "bloodied children's shoes and skirts, bloodied school books, the scalp of a woman with braided grey hair, butter toffees in red wrappers, wedding decorations. The charred meat sticking to rubble in black lumps could have been Osama bin Laden's henchmen but survivors said it was the remains of farmers, their wives and children, and wedding guests."
In fact, according to Time Magazine's Tim McGirk, out of 112 Afghans in the wedding party, only two women survived. In this case, it seems that the Americans were fed disinformation by an Afghan official out to settle scores and acted on it.
That makes four wedding parties blown away by U.S. air power in Iraq and Afghanistan since the end of 2001. And there was probably at least one more. Back in May 2002, it was claimed that U.S. helicopters wiped out a wedding party in the eastern Afghan province of Khost, killing 10 and wounding many more. An Agence France Presse report at the time concluded: "A wedding was in progress in the village when people fired into the air in traditional celebration and US helicopters flying over the area could have mistaken it for hostile fire. An aircraft later bombed the area for several hours." On this event, however, the documentation is far poorer.
All these "incidents" have some obvious features in common: the almost immediate claims by the U.S. military, for instance, that those who have been hit were adversaries, not wedding parties; the ultimate dismissal of the killings as the usual "collateral damage" in wartime; and, above all, the striking fact that, for none of these slaughters of celebrating locals, did the U.S. ever offer a genuine apology.
The mainstream media tends to pick up such stories as he said/she said affairs. Of course, "she" never actually "says" anything, being dead. But you get the idea. As with the most recent Afghan wedding-party slaughter, such pieces -- generally wire service stories -- are to be found deep inside American newspapers where only the news jockeys are reading. In fact, your basic wedding party wipe-out report is almost certain to share at least some space in the story with a mini-round-up of other kinds of recent death and mayhem in the region in question. The language in which such stories are written is generally humdrum and, in the military mode, death is sanitized (except in rare instances like Carroll's fine reports for the Guardian).
We Americans have only had one experience of death delivered from the air since World War II -- the attacks of September 11, 2001. As no one is likely to forget, they shocked us to our core. And you know how those deaths were covered, right down to the special pages filled with bios of civilians who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the repeated invocations of the barbarism of al-Qaeda's killers (and barbarism it truly was).
These wedding parties, however, get no such treatment. Initially, they are automatically assumed to be malevolent -- until the reports begin to filter in from the hospitals, the ruined villages, and the graveyards, and, by then, it's usually too late for much press attention. When that does happen, their deaths are chalked up to an "errant bomb," or that celebratory gunfire, or no explanation is even offered.
Nothing barbaric lurks here, even though we can be sure that these civilians were hardly less surprised by the arrival of the attacking planes than were the victims of 9/11. For their deaths, no word portraits are ever painted. No one in our world thinks to memorialize them, nor is there any cumulative record of their deaths. Whole extended families have been wiped out, while the dead and wounded run into the hundreds, and yet who remembers?
Here's the truth of it: In Bush's wars, the wedding singer dies, the bride does not get a chance to run away, and the event might be relabeled my big, fat, collateral damage wedding.
In the process, we have become a nation of wedding crashers, the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses, tore up the place, offered nary an apology, and refused to go home. It's a remarkable record, really, and catches the nature of the Bush administration's air war not on, but of and for terror in a particularly raw way. And yet, in this country, when the latest wedding party went down, no reporter seems even to have recalled our past history of wedding-party obliteration. So it goes.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site, has just been published. Focusing on what the mainstream media hasn't covered, it is an alternative history of the mad Bush years.
Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt
19 Comments so far
Show Allveracity: I read your responses then, and again just now. I did not comment further because I felt that the string was getting old, and because they essentially validated my accusations made earlier in the string.
Even a mad killer and child rapist can be a brilliant oncologist. Emotional problems do not usually exclude rational thought. How many of us know that smoking is bad, but can't give it up? To listen to you two, one only needs to clear the cobwebs of our past, and we will magically know how to beat back imperialism. To so dismiss historical materialism serves the capitalist masters very well, and I remain unmoved. In fact, even highly confused therapists can understand the compelling logic of revolutionary communism, if they can overcome the propaganda that they have integrated.
I accurately described your approach as do-nothing agnosticism, because it refuses to take a political position and it results in doing nothing in the political sphere! Instead, your reader is forced to wade through a swamp of ten-syllable psychobabble, and arrive at the end with no clue about what anyone - demented or perfected - might do to stop imperialist-created war and poverty. Calling me arrogant because I take a stand underscores your insistence on remaining neutral in the midst of a mass murder. Yours is not humility, it is cowardice!
This is not a personal attack, as I am sure you are kind and dilligent, but on the plane of social movements, you are serving the enemy, and on that level you must be pounded. Fortunately for a rusty red like me, you are an easy mark.
P I S S A N T _ N O B O D Y,
Both Uncommon-Dreams & I responded in detail,
but you never got back, to comment
Namaste « Presence »
That's cute, Little Brother! Even as a respectable looking white guy, my experiences with American police have been 10:1 bad. Many police enter the service with genuinely high ideals, but soon they are whipped into shape as enforcers of injustice.
Foreigners often get special treatment in China, and my example probably does not represent the life of the average toiler there. I was mainly trying to say that our (engineered...) beliefs about America being so much freer than other places is exaggerated. There is pervasive, though often subtle, corruption in China. China is on the brink of capitalist counter-revolution in any case, but key socialist features remain in place, and must be defended and expanded. Old man Deng prefered to let wild market forces prevail rather than allow anything like workers' democracy to blossom, quite in the despicable, petit bourgeois Stalinist tradition. Political revolution is necessary there, to toss out the Stalinists and the quickly metastasisizing generation of capitalist exploiters, and establish workers' democracy.
It's easy to throw out the baby with the bathwater, if one is not thoughtful. In the USA, China, Botswana, or wherever, we must build upon the advances that are in place. One could site the horrible madness of Mao's 'cultural revolution' as an example of doing the opposite.
People often cite the supposed inherent inefficiency and corruption of socialism, such as Thomas More's underwear example from another post. Is he saying that it is impossible for dedicated people in a fair society to do things intelligently? Ridiculous! Bureaucratic mismanagement, which is hardly exclusive to socialist countries, stems from shortage and corruption. The goal of communism is to erase the basis of state bureaucracy, and wither the state to its minimal size, by achieving superabundance of the essentials of a good life for all. This is not possible in a world of desperate need. Corruption, and attendant lack of accountability, are at the root of the bureaucratic mismanagement we have witnessed in the Stalinist workers' states.
TM's concession that the Swiss example is neither ideal nor broadly applicable supports my assertion that there is no global capitalist solution to the problems before us. There are only socialist solutions, even in the realm of theory. This new world would have different challenges, but there is no reason that we could not overcome them.
Finally it is a huge mistake to equate democracy with capitalism, and socialism with totalitariansim. There are certainly plenty of vicious and corrupt capitalist states - including our own! Most of the freedom Americans enjoy today has more to do with affluence than something inherent to Americamn capitalist democracy. No communist worth a pile of doodoo would advocate stifling the democratic gains of free expression and personal mobility, for example. We are all about EXPANDING freedom, not crushing it. Again, it is the vile Stalinists who have branded communism as the rule of tyranny.
"I spent several months in China, and actually felt MORE free than in the USA, despite their harsh laws."
"I recall asking directiions once in Beijing, and being walked a half mile to my destination. Is that even imaginable in NYC or even Peoria?"
Visiting somewhere and living there are very different. Your opinion of their freedom certainly doesn't seem to be shared by a great many Chinese.
I can't imagine it in NYC, don't know about Peoria, but if you are in Texas, I guarantee you most Texans would do exactly the same. (excluding Dallas and Houston that contain very few Texans any more)
I'm not an admirer of Switzerland, I was just saying that you could consider them as better than the US for their situation. But its limited to the privilaged few.
Democracy is certainly messy and it can certainly be abused as we found out the last 12 years. But Communism and Socialism are inherently corrupting.
And inefficient. Remember the example of the underwear.
At least I'm consistent too, even if you think its me thats wrong. In many countries we couldn't talk like this, one or the other would be in jail.
We are better than you think....I think.
I recall asking directiions once in Beijing, and being walked a half mile to my destination. Is that even imaginable in NYC or even Peoria?
_____________________________________
Just think of how much FASTER you'd have made that half-mile if you'd been running from a drawn Taser!
DogLeg: I was trying to say that the Russian Soviet Revolution proved that a workers' socialist government, as opposed to one under the thumb of capital is possible. Also, that capitalism can never bring justice, prosperity or peace to general humanity. The fact that the workers' democracy was ultimately reversed by horrific petit bourgeois reaction under Stalin does not change either of those assertions. It's not like every bourgeois revolution has had a happy ending, after all. The main reason the US bourgeois-democratic revolution was successful was a series of historical conditions that made it too hard for Brtain to stop it. History always moves in fits and starts. Next time, we need to make sure that no Stalin rises.
Thomas More: See DogLeg response above, and also consider the implications of your Switzerland comment. There simply is no capitalist model that can be applied in a humanitarian way on a global scale. Nobody is even presenting such a sheme because it is so easy to dispell. Capitalism can NEVER rise above the us-versus-them paradigm. Barbarism and poverty are actually integral to the system, and cannot be removed. Thus, for good hearted folks, there is no choice but to make communism work. Regarding the many who want to come to the USA, that is primarily because we are so rich and perceived as glamorous because of Hollywood movies and other propaganda. There are actually many countries where you are equally or more 'free' than in the USA, either by law or de facto. I spent several months in China, and actually felt MORE free than in the USA, despite their harsh laws. The police there don't bother you unless somebody complains, and are much more approachable. I recall asking directiions once in Beijing, and being walked a half mile to my destination. Is that even imaginable in NYC or even Peoria?
Turce July 15th, 2008 10:08 am
Did you ever get an answer ton your question about the Neatherlands? I was curious about that. Had heard nothing about it.
heav y runner, Those 19 were from the House of Saud. The MUDERERS BFF, we are liars when it comes to the brutality of dropping bombs, we kill just to kill.
I know your statement was anti-Military so I did not mean this as an attack on you, I just needed to put it out there that majority of those on those planes were Saudi Nationals.
I'm a little slow on the uptake, so I'm presuming your intention was that 9/11 was an inside job, sorry.
PissantNobody July 14th, 2008 10:44 pm
1917 to present.....
Communism or Socialism wherever its been tried has produced what? Unless modified like the Chinese, Viet Namese and Cubans are doing, its produced poverty and fear.
America 1917 to present.....
Say whatever you like, its been the best for the most people and there aren't many that wouldn't trade for your citizenship.
I could make an argument for Switzerland and a few others as better, but they arte closed societies and not open to everyone, plus you better have money if you do get in.
The proof is in the pudding as they say.
Love your tenacity though!
Pissant Nobody,
Check your history a little before you swear allegiance to any institutional political force, be it socialism or capitalism, or whatever lies in between and all around.
All wars begin because of Money/Gold. The Russian Revolution was a result of the controlling Federal American bank and, primarily, the Bank of England because the Czar supported the Americans in their quest to rid themselves of the major banks and their sadistic monetary policies,and the return to Congress's Constitutional responsibility which was profitable for everybody but the major banks wanting to recreate the Federal bank. This was JP Morgan, working for the Rothschild brothers who controlled the major banks, gold and money of the major economies of Europe. If these people could not be the major bank of a country controlling it's wealth, they funded that country's rivals with built-in agreements that was based on collectible taxes.
There is no gold in Ft. Knox for this reason. And why we have "Federal Reserve Notes," President Wilson signed legislation establishing the private ownership of "The Federal Reserve," outlawed the private ownership of gold coinage by citizens, requiring the surrender of all gold coinage to the Fed. It was melted down and converted to bars. Nine train cars arrived at ft. knox carrying the gold of U.s. citizens equal to something like $3 or 4 billion dollars in 1913. It was secreted, stolen, out of the country for WWI debts, which was illegal, but no one knew it until after WWII. It went to the Bank of England it is believed.
What is going on in this country is a result of the power yielded by the IMF and 2 other "global" institutions run by banks that are very close to enslaving the entire world population.
And 19 Muslim guys from the Middle East sneaked onto some airplanes without being on the manifest lists and used box cutters to defy the laws of physics.
Let's go bomb some weddings!
Another atrocity of depraved and cowardly imperialist war should surprise nobody, and from the posts, it apparently does not. But, what are we to do? Not just to stop the violent madness in Iraq and Afghanistan, but how can we stop it at its source, so it never happens again? Elect Obama? That clearly won't do it. Maybe Nader (never happen, of course...)? Slightly better in the short term, but still missing the root, and guaranteeing that once things settle down, a new GWB's will perennially arise. What then?
In fact, there is no lasting solution possible within the anarchy of capitalist economy. Built into it is blind exploitation, massive poverty, and guaranteed war. Attempts to reforrm capitalism will only be accepted when the system is on the ropes, and even then, will be ever threatened by competitive pressures.
There is a proven solution, though. Proven in 1917, by the then-revolutionary Communist Party that built the Soviet Union. Even though that revolution eventually fell victim to Stalinist reaction, one can never deny that the Soviet Union was born out of a movement of organized labor, under the banner of a vanguard internationalist party of Leninist organization. That's a mouthful requiring a bit of research for the neophyte, but that's what it will take. Those who abhor the callous bombings of war really have only one effective option: join and build a communist party. We need to stop hedging, and get on with it.
There is no solution within a capitalist framework, folks. What will it take to convince you? To save the world, America MUST go communist.
As is my practice, I challenge all of CD-land to tender another strategy. So far, all I ever hear is pablum about self-awareness, spontaneous uprisings, returning to the slaveholders' Constitution, or electing a Democratoid. For the naive, I can already tell you that there will be no intelligent rebuttal, because it does not exist on this planet! Those who oppose communism are back-door supporters of 'patriotic' imperialism, or do-nothing 'spiritual' escapists. Build the party of global proletarian socialism, or prepare your babies for WMD war. That is the choice, brothers and sisters!
Now hold on everyone. Laura B. has pledged to help liberate these women from centuries of oppresion and marital abuse. At the moment we seem to lack any influence abroad, so as humanitarians we must kill them to save them from torturous life ahead. This is why we are there. To liberate the souls. Also in any preventitive war we are justified to take out potential terrorist. The children of these unions could be the very same who would try to sneak nuclular weapons into this pristine homeland.
It's all part of a bigger plan that they cannont tell us about because the Taliban is listening too.
The best thing that we can do is to go shopping, and buy lots of fuel. And another thing you people that can't make your home payments, hit the road. We got to pay our banks for your laziness. It' all part of a bigger plan.
U.S. military officers lie.
"we took hostile fire... we returned it"
" how many people hold a wedding party in the remote desert"
-were the coalition aircraft already flying above the ceremonies as they were being held - to be fired upon?
-if they flew in later in response to the gunfire, they could not have been fired upon
-how does a gun pose a threat to aircraft flying at 5 times the range of a gun? and from 25000 ft, can the pilots tell where the bullets are being directed?
-when the host govt reports that civilians are indeed killed, it atleast behoves the coalition to formally investigate, in association with unbiased observers - such as the red cross/ AI. how do we know that the coalition spokesman is speaking the truth, when an immediate blanket denial is issued?
- if you live in the desert in a dirt poor country, do you drive 80 miles to hold a wedding in civilization? you could be bombed or shot or robbed or kidnapped on the way. you would have to transport/ feed and house 50 guests. would the us foot the bill?
making friends and planting democracy
A military denial of air raid massacre is a standard operating procedure - propaganda. Anyone with any modicum of curiosity is able to dismiss the denials for what they are: pure lies. In past cases (as in the story outlined above) reporters and others have compiled detailed and irrefutable evidence that clearly illustrates that those murdered were not combatants and were simply going about their own business when they struck. In any case, in the eyes of the rest of the world, our integrity and credibility has sunk so low that it is our might rather than integrity that makes the remaining few pretend to support us. I would rather be respected than be mortally feared!
This article shows that the right wing's support for traditional marriage is a farce.
But it's not just wedding parties who have been slaughtered, the bombings of civvies from the air has been a constant horror of the twentieth century. It has only gotten worse as the 21st dawns, perhaps we should say that this new century has not dawned, but darkened.
Guerrilla fighters attempt to blend seamlessly into civilian populations. Generals know this.
Air power is an indiscriminate and blunt weapon of war totally unsuited to counter-insurgency.
If this administration is intent on replacing boots with bombs, the least they could do is provide Haliburton with fresh contracts to build 'nuptial bunkers' where the innocent peasants could enjoy their ceremonies without fear.
At least we don't shoot women like the Taliban. We use humane methods like bombing them and lethal injections.