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Afghan Students Protest Against Civilian Casualties
KABUL - Chanting "Death to America!" and weeping as they prayed, hundreds of Kabul university students marched on Sunday in protest against U.S. air strikes last week that Afghan officials say killed more than 100 civilians.
University students shout slogans against US and foreign troops during a demonstration in Kabul. Hundreds of Kabul university students labeled the United States "the world's biggest terrorist" Sunday as they protested against US air strikes said to have killed scores of Afghan villagers.
(AFP/Massoud Hossaini) Washington has acknowledged that some civilians were killed during a battle in which its aircraft bombed Afghan villages.
U.S. forces have not said how many people they believe were killed and have blamed Taliban insurgents for firing from the rooftops of homes where civilians sheltered.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says more than 100 and perhaps as many as 130 civilians were killed in air strikes in western Farah province during the battle. Provincial officials say villagers have drawn up lists with names of 147 dead.
If confirmed, such a toll would make it the deadliest incident for civilians since U.S. forces launched their fight against the Taliban in 2001.
The incident has stoked Afghan hostility to U.S. troops even as Washington is sending 17,000 reinforcements in coming months to the country's south, heartland of the Taliban and the drug trade that produces nearly all the world's heroin.
Karzai has called for a halt to U.S. air strikes, a dramatic change in tactics which military experts say is highly unlikely.
"MASSACRE"
Students at the university issued a statement calling for troops responsible for civilian casualties to be prosecuted.
"From one side our people are fed up with the beheadings and suicide attacks by the Taliban. From other side, the massacre of people by U.S. forces is a crime they can never forget," it said.
At the demonstration, attended mainly by male students, marchers held aloft banners that read in English: "USA is biggest terrorist around the world!"
"We gathered here to share our sadness with the innocent people who were martyred. We call on the international community, Afghan government to stop the killing of innocents, stop the killing of an Afghan generation," said student Ahmad Fahim.
U.S. commanders expect heavy fighting in the coming months as the main contingent of their reinforcements deploy in the Taliban's southern heartland of Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
The additional 17,000 troops are part of a dramatic increase that will boost the U.S. presence rise from 32,000 at the beginning of this year to a projected 68,000 by year's end. Other Western countries have about 30,000 troops in Afghanistan.
U.S. and Western troops, spread thinly across a vast country where it can be difficult to bring in backup forces on the ground, rely on swift air strikes to rescue forces in danger in situations like last week's battle in Farah.
But Karzai, who visited Washington last week as reports of the incident were emerging, said they should be stopped.
"The air strikes are not acceptable," he told CNN on Friday. "Terrorism is not in Afghan villages, not in Afghan homes. And you cannot defeat terrorists by air strikes."
Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Paul Tait
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38 Comments so far
Show AllYou are correct, Afghan students.
USA is the world's dominant purveyor of violence.
The reason is that the USA is populated by 300 million shitheads.
Good one!Tony
The reason is that the USA is populated by 300 million shitheads raised on the Old Testament.
Wow, talk about a hate manual and terrorist handbook.
We need to kill The Patriarchy and move on from the Bronze Age!
Quite right Humbaba- Jehova's rules of engagement were worse than the marines at Fallujah. "destroy it utterly" he did not want anything left alive, not even the livestock.
and you echo the words of the Great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:
"I MUST , WITH GREAT SADNESS AND SHAME THAT THE GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD TODAY IS MY OWN COUNTRY AND GOVERNMENT".
regardless of the reasons -- which are clearly IMPERIAL and NOT "self-defense" - of the USA meddling in the affairs of other nations that result in such things decade upon decade (its meddling in the "afghan/pakistan" region has gone on for at least 40 years with an eye towards total control of the Pakistani province of Balochistan, a VERY , VERY important strategic point for gas, energy, and transit points in central asia for american empire) -
Barack Obama presiding on a continuation of this foreign policy is something Dr. King would be HORRIFIED by, and intone the words he once spoke:
"we are a nation of MILITARY and TECHNOLOGICAL GIANTS -- but MORAL MIDGETS".
It's not the populace; we have no more than the common amount of ignorant & brutal people among us than the rest of the world.
The government is effectively in the hands of our own 'top ten thousand', who control 'public' discourse, letting the citizenry know when it's safe to start being for or against something. The protests before the mass murder of Iraqis began were the largest before a planned war that the US had ever seen -- yet they were rendered invisible by the devout corporate heralds.
The fury against the Bush regime was tremendous -- but the bullies were given the megaphones to protect the profiteers.
Our political system was designed to dis-include the public -- the Constitution was ratified by men who feared for the fate of their proprty holdings if the revolutionary ideas given life by the revolt from English rule were to overtake them as well. People on CD appeal to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but the Bill of Rights was only a concession, and only in the middle decades of the twentieth century was it taken seriously. The rest was meant to ensure that the public would never take matters into their hands again.
You can certainly make a good case that the US is the biggest terrorist. Close to 3,000 were killed on 9/11, but how many thousands, even tens of thousands, of innocent civilians have been killed by the US war machine.
Imagine the feeling of revenge many Americans felt after 9/11. Then put the shoe on the other foot and think how Iraqis, Afghans, or Pakistanis feel when they lose their loved ones - victims of air strikes. When it happens over and over again, it's no wonder why we are hated by so many.
Hundreds of thousands. Maybe a million.
If you include the period from the end of WW2 to present, tens of millions.
the fact is - us foreign policy is IMPERIAL - it always invites blowback, sooner or later, because NO people on earth - and above all americans ought to KNOW about it , considering americans blather on and on about "protecting and safeguarding the american WAY of life" --
wish to be subjugated, be ordered as to how to behave and maintain their socities just because some Empire - such as the USA --
lectures everyone else about it,, such as in the habitual language spoken by the USA:
"so and so country MUST"...
:"so and so country SHOULD"....
:"so and so country NEEDS TO".....
who gave the authority to the USA to order the world as IT sees fit?
would americans LIKE for all those other cultures america talks about as sources of "threats to our security and world peace" --
to TELL american how to order itself and INVADE it , set up BASES around the USA? OCCUPY it?
for the 9/11 that the USA suffered, tragically, from the criminals - that is a blowback for ITS own imperial hubris and actions and policies in countries and regions it has NO BUSINESS trying to demand that those cultures behave they way america wants them to behave.
for the 9/11 that the USA suffered - IT HAS CAUSED
untold 9/11's upon OTHER cultures and countries and regions.
but americans can;'t be BOTHERED by that -- oh no -- it is onky america that REALLY suffers from "terrorist attacks"
and america really just MEANS WELL when IT bombs and invades and orders other countries and people -- or ELSE...
what HYPOCRITICAL society.
So the responsibility lies with each person that contributes to the horror
that is inflicted. War- bombs- killing are funded by the taxpayers.
Imagine if the Russians were killing Americans in our homes using drones and bombers looking for "foreign terrorists" that their Intell said were hiding out and using American homes for shields.
They try to do unto us as we do....
Deepa
Killing people in Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Indeginous peoples is NOTHING BUT HUNTING FOR THE EUROPEANS AND EUROPEAN AMERICANS. Their military personnel are trained as HUNTERS OF THE OTHER. Col. Clarke Lethin, chief of staff of the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) -- a unit based in Camp Pendleton, California, had unabashedly noted, "We identified a need to ensure our Marines were being the hunters… Hunting is more than just the shooting. It's finding your game."
Dehumanizing them has been the foreign policies of the US and European countries. That is why there is knee jerk reaction to thousands of killings in Afghanistan, Iraq.... Because the value, worth of these peoples is nothing for the (IN)HUMAN BEINGS IN THE US AND EUROPE. They do not have human value, dignity and rights because in the sight of Americans and Europeans.
Americans and Europeans can have "MEAT TO COOK AND ENJOY" only by killing the other.
Indeed!
One cannot deny the racial component to US imperialist ferocity. The US would have never committed the atrocities it does on western/northern Europeans. For example, it would have never dropped it's atomic bombs on Germany.
Ever read Slaughterhouse 5 by Vonneugut SaboCat and Deepa? Try Dresden in Germany and WWI and WWII so its been tried on Europeans also. Germany bombed the British so they too did this. So it did happen in the past. War is wrong no matter who the perpetrator is no matter who the victim is no matter what race or color they are. The Irish have been victims of colonialism by the British and they are white as are the British. The brutality was as bad as when Britain colonized India. The hatred of white people stemming from both posts is disturbing and should be called out. Hating anyone white, black, or any other caller is racism. Lets be against war...this is the higher principle and lets do it without fostering hate and racism.
The British directed, and British planes did the majority of, the bombing of Dresden, not the US.
And Irish were, until very recently, classified among the "inferior races" - they were at one time "black" too.
Racism is not to be confused with simply having racial biases. Racism is defined as the use of racial biases for the purposes of maintaining a dominant position in a social, or even world, order. An American Black man can express his hatred of whites till the cows come home, but because it does not improve his, much less maintain, a position of dominance in a society, it cannot be considered racism.
Please study some sociology. Racism is not extinguished by being in denial of it, nor is just declaring, "we need to look forward - you people we exploited for the past 500 years need to stop dwelling in the past" bring and end to racism either.
The strong racist basis of US Imperialism is so obvious that one has to be blind not to notice it.
Our Military-Industrial complex makes me ashamed to be a citizen of the US. Wish I were younger and had some money so I could leave.
My heart breaks at the dehumanizing of our young men and women in basic training so they can be hunters and killers of women and children.
Tha Afghani students are correct and I have felt that the US is the world's largest terrorist nation followed closely by Israel for a very long time.
>>U.S. forces have not said how many people they believe were killed and have blamed Taliban insurgents for firing from the rooftops of homes where civilians sheltered.
The story changes everyday. What a lot of lying and despicable cowards the US Military has become.
Notice that the US has simply adopted wholesale the denial and obfuscation routinely used by the Israeli government and military?
Denial; disinformation; prevarication; finger-pointing. Indignant refusal to cooperate with any but their OWN investigation-- an "investigation" that invariably exculpates the military and government, and rejects contradictory evidence as distorted, unreliable, or inconclusive.
Ultimately, long after the story has faded from public attention, perhaps a guarded admission that there might have been a Merry Mixup of some kind, with as perfunctory and insincere an apology as can be offered.
It's the kind of thing one would expect from rogue governments of rogue states-- you know, like the Axis of Evil. Remember them?
· Yr Obd't Servant
OBOMBA is captured and captive, as is his family. Maybe 10 per cent of us do our reading, make the connections, and struggle with what to do that is significant enough to change things; 90 per cent of us watch TV news and are not informed HONESTLY or are not informed at all about what is happening across the world or here at home and in our government. 90 per cent of us are sheeple. That is the current Reality.
So expect more of the same. Somewhere in the future ... if we make it to a future ... there is/will be a tipping point. "... The center cannot hold."
In the meantime, as a human being with a passionate heart for justice and rightousness, and compassion born into my very bones, there are not enough tears for those of you throughout this world who are suffering so terribly from the evil actions of too many cowardly, hypocritical members of this nation, and its associative nations, who have ceased to be worthy of being called human.
/cm
Actually, the historical average is around 5% of any population that reflects on the global perspective - and it is usually that 5% that initiates any changes in policy, whether foreign or domestic, that might mitigate the misery for the other 95% that are too absorbed with their daily grind to worry about those 'others' being mauled by the psychopaths...
It is no longer Bush's war it is O BOMB A'S WAR NOW and being the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, he has the blood of these innocent Afghan men, women and children civilians on his hands!
What a bitter irony that Obama ran as an "anti-war" candidate. He has nothing to offer but more of the same. As Cee points out though, this can't go on forever. The consequences will be very ugly.
I agree, except for the part about Obama running as an antiwar candidate.
I've always thought that Obama and his team successfully "marketed" a faux-populist campaign. Before the primary season, Obama indeed seemed to be a protean advocate of the Common (Wo)Man, aka We the People.
There were various memes deliberately hyped to suggest that Obama was running almost a Huey Long campaign against the corrupt status quo-- a reform campaign funded on the proverbial nickels and dimes of the average citizen. And IMO, by using generic (not to say vapid) slogans like "Yes We Can!" and "Change You Can Believe In!" he became a blank slate upon which beholders project all hopes and wishes for reform and correction.
Somewhere in there, it was natural to attribute "anti-war" to Obama although his criticisms were uniformly of the methods and excesses of the previous maladministration-- he advocated "smarter" warfare. And he was candid about escalating operations in Afghanistan.
But even after the primaries, when Obama castled behind his right rook and began forming an administration of Clintonista neoliberal hawks and Wall Street Banksters, there still remained a whiff of mercury-- an intimation that he may sensibly reverse course and abandon the bloody and expensive folly of ill-founded military operations in distant points of the globe.
Has he appeared in military garb, e.g. a flight jacket or somesuch, yet? I'm not aware that he has, but stay tuned...
· Yr Obd't Servant
The Afghan students are simply reiterating what Chomsky has been saying for ages. America is, indeed, the world's greatest terrorist.
But more importantly, the way you stop terrorism against our nation is not with better weapons, more troops, and higher walls. The way to effectively stop terrorism against America is for America to STOP being a terrorist.
"At the demonstration, attended mainly by male students, marchers held aloft banners that read in English: "USA is biggest terrorist around the world!"
Hardly new or controversial is it.
Sadly been the case for while.
Deepa
The reason why the US government, Pentagon and military has been the promoter of genocidal violence around the world is that majority of Americans support their genocidal violence. Otherwise why would they continue to kill innocent children, women and men, if there is opposition from its own citizens. Majority of Americans know that they will not get "MEAT TO EAT" if their representatives do not kill innocent people ("wild animals" in Americans' perspective) in other countries.
This is evident from the US history from its inception.
The United States' founding fathers were staunchly anti-Native American advocates. They provided for genocide against Native Americans. They valued white supremacy and promoted the extirpation of Native Americans.
In 1783, Washington's anti-Native American sentiments were apparent in his comparisons of them with wolves: "Both being beast of prey, tho' they differ in shape", he said. George Washington's policies of extermination were realized in his troops behaviors following a defeat. Troops would skin the bodies of Iroquois "from the hips downward to make boot tops or leggings". Native Americans who survived the attacks later re-named the nation's first president as "Town Destroyer".
In 1807, Thomas Jefferson instructed his War Department that, should any Indians resist against America stealing Indian lands, the Native American resistance must be met with "the hatchet". Jefferson continued, "And...if ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, " he wrote, "we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or is driven beyond the Mississippi." Jefferson, the slave owner, continued, "in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them".
In 1812, Jefferson said that American was obliged to push the backward Native Americans "with the beasts of the forests into the Stony Mountains". One year later Jefferson continued anti-Native American statements by adding that America must "pursue [the Native Americans] to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach".
Nobel peace prize recipient, Theodore Roosevelt firmly grasped the notion of Manifest Destiny saying that America's extermination of the Native Americans and thefts of their lands "was ultimately beneficial as it was inevitable".
Eugenics is a new term for an old phenomena which asserts that Native Americans should be exterminated because they are an inferior race of people. Jefferson's suggestion to pursue the Indians to extermination fits well into the eugenistic vision. In David Stannard's study "American Holocaust", he writes: "had these same words been enunciated by a German leader in 1939, and directed at European Jews, they would be engraved in modern memory. Since they were uttered by one of America's founding fathers, however...they conveniently have become lost to most historians in their insistent celebration of Jefferson's wisdom and humanity." Roosevelt feared that American upper classes were being replaced by the "unrestricted breeding" of inferior racial stocks, the "utterly shiftless", and the "worthless".
Deepa -- Much of the motivation of the USA revolution was to circumvent British prohibition on attacking Indians and stealing Indian lands
Prior to the American Revolution, the British view of the natives was not a heck of a lot different then that of the 13 Colonies which later became the United States of America.
Just as example it WAS General Amherst who distrubuted Blankets infected with small pox to the Natives during Pontiacs rebellion as a peace offering.
The natives rose up against the British because the british were brutal in their treatment of them.
The French and Indian war was called that because the bulk of the native tribes aligned with the french.
In a nutshell the French attitude towards the natives, as designed by Samuel De Champlain was leagues ahead of that of any of the other Imperialist nations.
The british adopted many of those policies after the American revolution.
As much as the natives preferred the french to the English in the French and Indian war, they preffered the british to the American colonists after that war ended and the American revolution started.
Mission accomplished.
Right now I'm reading a book by John Bellamy Foster: "Naked Imperialism - The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance". I suggest that everyone here read it! You'll learn that it isn't simply a question of bad choices made by bad presidents that has lead the US to become the largest sponsor of state terrorism in the world, but rather it is the nature of the economic system of which the US is now the hegemonic centre. This can be stopped, but it will require changing the system of private appropriation to do it.
Add up the number of innocent civilians killed, maimed, disabled, psychologically traumatized and bereaved, and you'll see that they are correct. I guess most Americans really aren't good at math.
The U.S./Israeli alliance from Hell hasn't even begun to show the world what it's capable of.
We have the distinction already of fighting more wars and killing more people than any other nation or empire on earth through history.
Oh, the good old Red, White and Blue = Blood, corpses or White Supremacy, and bruises and Bombing.
It's so amazing how the over-all mentalities ... and this is across the world ... don't seem to change. The same "lessons" keep being played over again and again and again. Is it about male dominance/ego issues and patriarchy more than anything else?
/cm
ok look- i agree global dominance. but that still does not explain the monstrosity of bombing villages and mud huts and wedding parties in Afghanistan, and it does not explain Falliujah either, or using white phosphorus. this is the most powerful armed force in the world. it can have an empire without all the criminal abuse of ordinary people, Afghans or iraqis who have no idea why they are being so brutally victimized.
this country has gone mad.
I know there are certainly reasons, but, just for a better perspective on things, or rather a perspective at all since I am rather ignorant of this: what would be the repercussions of simply removing our entire presence from Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else over there, saying we no longer wish to fight and cause needless death? What dangers are we fending off by fighting this war?
The United States said on Sunday it would not halt air strikes in Afghanistan as demanded by President Hamid Karzai after civilian deaths...It's a War ON Afghanistan now.
Either the military is forcing President Obama to approve these war crimes or he's willingly giving them the go ahead. If it's the former he must find a way to get the word out that he has no choice, whereas, If it's the latter, he's nothing but a hypocrit and a sociopath. But whether he's voluntarily or involuntarily sanctioning these terrorist attacks upon Afghan civilians, there's only one way to stop the bloodshed which is for us to rise up en masse. And yes we can.
collacteral damage
http://tinyurl.com/22asx2