13 March 2012 Massacre in Afghanistan
The
seething anger triggered by the slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians, mainly women
and children, by a U.S. soldier comes amidst outrage over other civilian
deaths. Last week violence erupted by the burning of the Koran by U.S. troops.
In January American marines were captured on video urinating on dead Taliban
militants. A US army ‘kill team’ was also caught on video cutting off dead body
parts as souvenir trophies. On February 8th, helicopter gunships slaughtered
eight shepherds on a mountainside as they were out grazing their flocks. Just
three days later in Kapisa, four civilians were killed, mistaken for
insurgents.
Daily
night raids and drone attacks continue with an alarming numbers of civilian
deaths.
President
Karzai’s demands that such attacks stop have been ignored. Whole villages have
been burned (NYT, March 13, 2012) eerily similar to the rational given in
justifying such atrocities in the Vietnam war and brings forth the ghost of
the My Lai massacre.
Meanwhile
hundreds of Afghan children are dying
daily from hunger as we continue to support our illegal occupation
robbing our treasury of $2 billion a month. Our hidden agenda appears little to
do with nation building (our large scale destruction of Iraq is hardly a good
model) but more to do with maintaining a large military presence with 450 bases
and protection of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline.
It is
time to end our occupation now. Period.
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