by Chris Floyd
Let us turn once again to the other war, the "good war" in Afghanistan, where four years ago Ge orge W. Bush famously liberated the suffering Afghan people from the clutches of the militant Islamic e xtremists of the Taliban into the hands of the militant Islamic extremists of the Northern Alliance (and their U.S.-picked frontman, Hamid "Why, Yes, I Did Once Work for Oil Barons, Why Do You Ask?" Karzai).
In the Good War – long touted as a success not only by the compulsive liars of the Administration but also by the fat and sassy conventional wisdomists who gorge themselves on eager lappings of Bushist cud – the fighting is now far more brutal and intense than it was in the brief autumn campaign in 2001 that led to overwhelming "victory." In fact, more than 1,000 innocent civilians have been killed by US and NATO bombs in the last year alone, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
Afghanistan was largely abandoned to its fate after Bush launched his "war of choice" (that ringing Friedmanish phrase) in Iraq. As we now know, the Bush team didn't really want to bother with Afghanistan at all – Iraq was their target from Day One – but felt they had to go through the motions ther e because of the "hunt for Osama" thing. Of course, they didn't take that very seriously either, allowing bin Laden to escape in spectacular fashion, riding out of a supposedly iron-clad seige on horseback. Why, one would almost think that the Bush Administration was trying to make a world-shaking mythical figure out of the pretentious, third-rate crackpot. (Then again, that's what the Bush Team is good at: inflating pretentious third-rate crackpots into world figures. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice -- these goobers couldn't run a popsicle stand, much less an empire. Yet now their dull and murky mental heavings, like those of bin Laden, spew death across the globe. )
 Today,
four years after the Crawford Crackpot let his doppelganger go free,
the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies are stronger than ever, constantly
refreshed by the training, supplies and good old-fashioned R-and-R
available in their cozy enclaves in Pakistan, where Bush's staunch
Terror War ally, dictator Pervez Musharraf, has signed peace treaties
with the holy warriors. From these secure redoubts, they have escalated
their attacks in Afghanistan, forcing the overwhelmed, undermanned
Western forces there to respond in the time-honored fashion – by
bombing the hell out of everybody. Well, why not? After all, collective
punishment, constant bombardment and indiscriminate fire has worked so
well at winning hearts and minds in Iraq, hasn't it?
Air war costs NATO Afghan supporters (Christian Science Monitor)
Excerpts: At a large gathering with Afghan President Hamid
Karzai in this southern city last Tuesday, Abdul Ghafar sat among
hundreds in the audience, clutching a piece of paper. On it were the
names of 20 members of his family killed two months ago in a NATO
airstrike.
"This was my uncle's family. Eleven children,
six women, and three innocent men were killed. He lost everyone but one
small girl," he said. Mr. Ghafar was hoping to receive compensation
from the Afghan government. "We got nothing," he said.
Ghafar's extended family in the southern Panjwai district are among the
nearly 4,000 people killed since the beginning of 2006 in a Taliban
resurgence that is using civilians as human shields against escalating
NATO air attacks.
"A Taliban resurgence that is using civilians as human shields." That
is to say, Taliban fighters are not standing around in open fields
waiting for NATO to kill them but are basing themselves in settled
areas among the population. The Mafia does the same thing in, say, New
York City, but the feds have not as yet bombed whole city blocks to
root them out.
The US-based Human Rights Watch estimates that more than
1,000 of those killed were civilians. A recent spate of suicide
bombings here has stoked public anger even further….
The
increased reliance on air power has led to thousands of civilian
deaths. The devastating air offenses are undermining support for the
Afghan government, say human rights workers and Afghan officials, and
are turning public opinion in the four southern provinces of
Afghanistan against NATO forces, who took command of the south from the
US in August.
The US Air Force dropped 987 bombs between June and November and fired
some 146,000 cannon rounds as air support for NATO allies in the south.
US aircraft fired more bombs in the first six months of this year than
in the first three years of its campaign against the Taliban, according
to figures released by the Pentagon.
President Karzai's meeting last Tuesday of NATO and US generals,
ambassadors, and Afghan ministers in Kandahar - southern Afghanistan's
largest city and a former Taliban stronghold - was an attempt to
examine better methods for tackling the insurgency and curbing civilian
deaths. But even as top military officials met, NATO troops posted at a
checkpoint in Kandahar shot and killed a local tribal elder who was
driving a motorbike. The man had failed to heed warning signals as he
drove to the meeting with Karzai.
The Tuesday visit came three days after Karzai wept openly on national
television about his helplessness to protect the Afghan people from US,
NATO, and Taliban violence…
"When we see a military convoy coming we stop our car and leave it
where it is. We run and we hide," says Neamatullah, who fled his
village in the nearby Panjwai suburb after NATO airstrikes in May
killed dozens of civilians. "Both sides are fighting each other for
power," he says. "But our lives and homes are ruined."
And here we come to the eternal crux of the matter: armed goons lusting
for power and loot -- whether dressed in robes and turbans or
thousand-dollar suits -- destroying innocent lives. And always,
everywhere, forever, it is the poorest and most vulnerable who get it
in the neck. Surely, Mark Twain nailed our condition to the wall in his
blistering essay, The Damned Human Race:
...Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity
of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about
him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his
kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out, as
the Hessians did in our Revolution, and as the boyish Prince Napoleon
did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his own species
who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.
Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country,
takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him. Man
has done this in all the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the
globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been
taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and
bloodshed.
Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enÂslaves. He
has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held
other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he
is always some man’s slave for wages and does that man’s work; and this
slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his
work...
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country,
under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps
multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy exÂpense to grab
slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices
of his. And in the intervals between camÂpaigns, he washes the blood
off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his
mouth.
Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious AniÂmal. He is
the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the
only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if
his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in
trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and
heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in
Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at
it in France a couple of cenÂturies, he was at it in England in Mary’s
day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light...
And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far
ancestor (some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the
mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance) insect by insect, animal
by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirchless
innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development
(namable as the Human Being). Below us, nothing.
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