12, April 2016 Drones strikes fueling more rage
Yet another drone carnage occurred just over a week ago.
Afghan officials say at least 17 civilians were killed by U.S. drone strikes in
Afghanistan. The first strike hit the truck of a local elder killing the elder
and 11 others. The second drone struck killed two people who were collecting
their bodies. A third drone strike killed three more villagers who had rushed
to see what had happened. Predictably, the Pentagon claimed there were no
civilian casualties. This latest tragedy comes on the heels of a U.S. oversight
office report which issued a damning indictment of Pentagon wastage. The report
indicates that since 2002 $113 billion to reconstruct Afghanistan has largely
been wasted. The report provides details of shoddily built structures, unsafe
roads and hundreds of empty schools. U.S. Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko, who was responsible for the report,
said, "Fifteen years into an unfinished work of funding and fighting, we
must indeed ask, 'What went wrong?'" The $113 billion exceeds more than
the total the U.S. spent on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War
II.
It is time to call a halt to our Afghanistan misadventure
which has costs precious Afghan and American lives, and squandered billions. We
are paying a heavy price for giving a blank check to the Pentagon in the
mistaken belief that they are keeping us safe and winning the nebulous ‘war on
terror’. Civilian deaths are fueling much of the insurgency.
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