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Kill Teams in Afghanistan: The Truth
These disgusting photos of murdered Afghans reveal the aggression and racism underpinning the occupation of my country
The disgusting and heartbreaking photos published last week in the German media, and more recently in Rolling Stone magazine, are finally bringing the grisly truth about the war in Afghanistan to a wider public. All the PR about this war being about democracy and human rights melts into thin air with the pictures of US soldiers posing with the dead and mutilated bodies of innocent Afghan civilians.
Click to visit the Rolling Stone special report.
I must report that Afghans do not believe this to be a story of a few rogue soldiers. We believe that the brutal actions of these "kill teams" reveal the aggression and racism which is part and parcel of the entire military occupation. While these photos are new, the murder of innocents is not. Such crimes have sparked many protests in Afghanistan and have sharply raised anti-American sentiment among ordinary Afghans.
I am not surprised that the mainstream media in the US has been reluctant to publish these images of the soldiers who made sport out of murdering Afghans. General Petraeus, now in charge of the American-led occupation, is said to place great importance on the "information war" for public opinion – and there is a concerted effort to keep the reality of Afghanistan out of sight in the US.
Last week my initial application for a US entry visa was turned down, and so my book tour was delayed while supporters demanded my right to enter the country. The American government was pressed to relent and allow my visit to go ahead. Ultimately it too will be unable to block out the truth about the war in Afghanistan.
The "kill team" images will come as a shock to many outside Afghanistan but not to us. We have seen countless incidents of American and Nato forces killing innocent people like birds. For instance, they recently killed nine children in Kunar Province who were collecting firewood. In February this year they killed 65 innocent villagers, most of them women and children. In this case, as in many others, Nato claimed that they had only killed insurgents, even though local authorities acknowledged that the victims were civilians. To prevent the facts coming out they even arrested two journalists from al-Jazeera who attempted to visit and report from the site of the massacre.
Successive US officials have said that they will safeguard civilians and that they will be more careful, but in fact they are only more careful in their efforts to cover up their crimes and suppress reporting of them. The US and Nato, along with the office of the UN's assistance mission in Afghanistan, usually give statistics about civilian deaths that underestimate the numbers. The reality is that President Obama's so-called surge has only led to a surge of violence from all sides, and civilian deaths have increased.
The occupying armies have tried to buy off the families of their victims, offering $2,000 for each one killed. Afghans' lives are cheap for the US and Nato, but no matter how much they offer, we don't want their blood money.
Once you know all this, and once you have seen the "kill team" photos, you will understand more clearly why Afghans have turned against this occupation. The Karzai regime is more hated than ever: it only rules through intimidation, corruption, and with the help of the occupying armies. Afghans deserve much better than this.
However, this does not mean more Afghans are supporting the reactionary so-called resistance of the Taliban. Instead we are seeing the growth, under very difficult conditions, of another resistance led by students, women and the ordinary poor people of Afghanistan. They are taking to the streets to protest against the massacre of civilians and to demand an end to the war. Demonstrations like this were recently held in Kabul, Marzar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Farah.
This resistance is inspired by the movements in other countries like Egypt and Tunisia – we want to see "people power" in Afghanistan as well. And we need the support and solidarity of people in the Nato countries.
Many new voices are speaking up against this expensive and hypocritical war in Afghanistan, including soldiers from the Nato armies. When I last visited the UK I had the honour of meeting Joe Glenton, a conscientious objector who spent months in jail for his resistance to the war in Afghanistan. Of his time in prison, Glenton said: "In the current climate I consider it a badge of honour to have served a prison sentence."
So while the world looks in horror at the "kill team" photographs, Joe Glenton's courage and humanity is an important reminder that the war in Afghanistan need not last forever.
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31 Comments so far
Show AllFor ten years i've been voicing my abhorrence for the illegal wars and crimes against humanity and God that the US has perpetrated on the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Yemen and Pakistan! The Fascist state of the US, in cahoots with the Israeli fascists, have become the greatest terrorists on the planet today! and more and more people worldwide are recognizing this fact! How can anyone with any conscience pray for God to bless America? My prayer is for God to stop America and Israel who, evidently, have negotiated a faustian deal. Yahwey's first son, Satan, is having a hay day with these two countries and will soon collect payment in the form of His Harvest...US and Israel, your day of reckoning and Divine Judgement is near at hand....2012!!! I pity you.
Unfortunately, there's no such thing as god or satan. Or a 2012 apocalypse.
So instead of that strategy, we'll all have to work to end wars using activism, education, and organization.
who needs satan when we got the undocumented nwo pond scum obummer
if he aint satan he'll do til satan gets here
risingdawn,
I agree with almost everything you posted and the videos are really gruesome. However, when you mention "god", your god their god and whoever god damn it! It causes so much hate, pain and murders to so many everywhere. It would be delightful, if you take away the "god' this world would be a much better place to live, or more livable. Live and lets live in peace keep your religion to yourself. BTW, I would rather go to hell than to be in heaven with Obama and Dubya, if there is a heaven Thanks :-)
Professional armies such as Triple Canopy, Blackwater/Ze and the others operate in a self-perpetuating paradigm. When mandate is military, it means all else is second to it, subjugated by it, and the evolution of description of reality and discourse obscured beyond recognition. Whether 'isolated' cases or standard practice, the repercussions are the same.
Thank you Joe Glenton. The courage of soldiers to listen to conscience and speak out, remove themselves and denounce is fundamental to regaining health of human condition.
US Supreme Court JusticeHarlan Fisk Stone 1919:
http://supreme.justia.com/us/380/163/case.html
"both morals and sound policy require that the state should not violate the conscience of the individual. All our history gives confirmation to the view that liberty of conscience has a moral and social value which makes it worthy of preservation at the hands of the state. So deep in its significance and vital, indeed, is it to the integrity of man's moral and spiritual nature that nothing short of the self-preservation of the state should warrant its violation; and it may well be questioned whether the state which preserves its life by a settled policy of violation of the conscience of the individual will not in fact ultimately lose it by the process."
PTSD can only be ameliorated and prevented by the exercise of this profound call to conscience.
Malalai Joya is actually in the US right now. After initially being denied a visa, the State Department caved to public pressure (yes, non-violent activism does work) and now she's here.
Her speaking schedule is here:
http://www.afghanwomensmission.org/?p=1201
If you have never heard of her watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLC1KBrwbck
This is an incredibly brave woman who has survived 5 assassination attempts.
Just wait until some dumbass claiming she's an American puppet will come here to comment, shouldn't take long. Happens in all threads about her.
War is murder. There are no just wars. Soldiers are no different than gangsters on the street murdering innocent civilians.
Most people can't accept any of those propositions. Until we can accept them, we will have perpetual war. Don't support the troops. Speak out on their atrocities.
More importantly, stand up to your friends, relatives, and colleagues who support the war. Call them the baby killers that they are. If we cannot say these things to our own friends, relatives, and colleagues, how can we hope to change our politics.
Well and truly said.
Keep up your fight, Ms. Joya!
“I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.” ~ Barak Obama on his speech re: intervention in Libya.
Well, Mr. President, what are you going to do about the images of slaughter and mass graves that are already out in Afghanistan, huh?
Oh, never mind. My bad, I forgot that the US had apologized...again and offered to pay $3,500 for each of the victims. I'm sure that takes care of it.
What would Mr Obama say if Ghaddafi apologized and offered 3500$$ per victim?
You would never hear about it, in the Goebbels Media, so Abomination, Barry would never have to say anything!
"Dear Col. Ghaddafi:
Traditional payments to the US potentate are made in deep obeisance and control of the petroleum trade. Local muckymucks may keep their currencies, the better to keep their people in line."
Do we have a reason to believe that Mr. 0 is unhappy that Ghaddafi should kill insurgents?
It saves 0bama way more than $3,500 per victim, and reads far better at home and throughout the lands of occupations past, present, and future.
Budgeting for crimes is common practice in business, and if businesses are allowed to do that, the state certainly has that right too :-/
Afaics, responsibility and risk gets concentrated at the bottom, power and payoff at the top. I think that responsibility is how society handles feedback from reality, and if you decouple that from power, you get a positive feedback loop, which will lead to cancerous structures. I know this sounds really vague and mystical and pseudo-scientific and stupid, but I don't have better words for this.
Atomsk,
Thank you. I will contemplate your wise words. They have an elegant balance to them.
The native born restriction on the office of the presidency was put there to prevent Alexander Hamilton from becoming president. Having achieved its purpose, it's time to set it aside so that we can elect Malalai Joya to the office (that is, after Obama and everyone else in the chain of succession has been impeached, convicted, and criminally charged with the appropriate crimes).
The only drawback to my proposal (that I can see) is that I also want her for
Representative from my district, Senator from my state, majority leader of the Senate, Speaker of the House and Mayor of Miami-Dade County. Well...another drawback is that it leaves Elizabeth Warren without an elective office...but Joya can appoint her as the Supreme Court.
America has plenty of good people, you have no need to import. It's just that the system selects for and enhances sociopathic traits, so the nice (or just normal) people have a very slight chance to get power.
If this kind of thing is to change, we have to stop letting the military take teenagers and turn them into killers, and we have to stop this mindless mantra of "our brave servicemen .... protecting American democracy".
Stop glorifying the military.
This is Obama's definition of "winning the hearts and minds" of the people.
The warlords here at home learned a lot from the Viet Nam war. Journalists must be kept on a short leash, and merceneries make better killing machines than draftees.
When last I spoke with the DC offices my two senators, both women, they had never heard of Malalai Joya. I guess I shouldn't be surprised as they also were unable to give me an estimate of American service women sexually assaulted by American service men during the Iraq occupation. I sometimes wonder if there is some gender cover up going on here. I haven't seen either one;s birth certificate. Only airport security knows for sure.
Amazing that Patty and Maria haven't heard of Ms Joya since she is going to be speaking here in Washington State several times in the next ten days. I am truly looking forward to meeting this brave and eloquent young woman when she comes to speak at a nearby university on the right wing side of the state!
Patty and Maria have never seen a war they didn't like. Our state is dependent on sustained military spending, however that can be accomplished. I dont't know what it is now, but in the recent past it was estimated that 10% of the defense budget is spent here. Their bread is buttered by the MIC.
I don't recall either of them saying anything when Ms Joy's first visa was refused.
They, in fact, say little about anything.
may Malalai Joya find the peace she works for.
Why are we there again?
I grew up in a communist regime in Hungary, where young men did anything possible to avoid being called up for the obligatory 2-year military service when they turned 18. So, most of my friends either went to university, in which case they only had to serve 6 month and that was mostly in an admin role, or if a boy was lucky to have a relative or a friend who was a doctor, then he could have some kind of injury or birth defect conjured up to avoid being called up for service.
We've always thought that soldiers are killing machines and standing armies are stuffed by psychos and losers, who are really no good at anything else, who just want to have a "licence to kill". Our thinking went, that should the need arise, that our country is invaded, we'd fashion weapons from the pitchforks and would become warriors. Women included - my mother's family is French, so I might have an inbred warrior side ;-)
For me the American phenomena of young men willingly enlisting, especially for a war of invasion, not to defend their homeland... is just a terrible thing. It is probably the result of a very sophisticated propaganda industry, because really, why would a young person throw away his life, his future, his sanity and his dignity for killing children and women???
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"Death Squads" is what they used to be called. Nothing new, unfortunately.
I was drafted into the Vietnam War. I went. I was a rifleman. I used to dream of killing, killing American soldiers, mostly officers and NCO's like these psychopaths in the kill team. What you have to realize is that this country is no different than Nazi Germany, or Imperialist Japan during WWII. They are criminals sent out by a criminal government which is totally controlled by a corporate oligarchy. These punks need to spend the rest of their lives in prison along with George W Bush and Barack Obama and many, many others at the top of the Fascist US Government. Bring down the corporations anyway you can and the people that run and profit from them.
Racism clear and simple.
I forwarded this to my Dad who is under the delusion this war is about helping to free Islamic women from the oppression of their religion, while saving white people from Islam's requisite obliteration.
He does agree these desert one male god religions do have a fancy for murdering the neighboring tribe, though.
if you dont want "kill teams" then learn to govern yourselves so our idiot leaders dont find reason to send our soldiers to your countries. just as you have extremists you do not control so thus do we. my guess those "kill teams" are very likely what we call our christian taliban. you keep yours in check and we'll do the same.
signed, one of those veterans.
usn, vietnam, atheist and buddhist.
But of course there was no reason for America et co to be there whatsoever. Not in Afghanistan and definitely not in Iraq or anywhere else. Or is it your point that people all over the globe should govern themselves so that Western leaders can't find a *pretext* for attack? Or do you think that any country has a right to bomb and occupy other countries that supposedly harbor terrorists? I hope not, because I don't think bombing the entire West (the US learned everything it knows from Europe and it still can't compete in any way with our wonderful history of killing each other and whoever we come across) away would solve every issue.