The milestones of failure and carnage continue to pile up in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, occupation forces have surpassed the Taliban in terms of the death toll inflicted on the population.
Occupiers have killed more civilians this year than the ‘Taliban’. That doesn’t include the civilians they killed in Pakistan. But it does include this latest massacre. Now, as usual, the occupiers say that it was the ‘Taliban’ what made them do it. When shall we hear solemn press-releases, solemnly recounted by newspapers, in which the ‘Taliban’ explain that they meant to hit only occupying troops with their latest suicide attack, but that the occupiers forced them to strike in civilian areas by hiding in humvees and helicopters and Bradley tanks, driving through densely populated areas and thus using the surrounding people as human shields like the cowards they are?
Meanwhile in Iraq, the destruction being perpetrated in the name of freedom and democracy defies description.
‘ We are enveloping the enemy into a kill sack,’ said Command Sergeant Major Jeff Huggins from the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade, according to Reuters (23rd June.) A ‘kill sack’? Good luck America, when these sickos return home. Shutter the windows, bar the doors – and above all, lock up your daughters. Remember little Abeer al-Janabi, multiply raped in nearby in Mahmoudiya, her family shot and she and all burned to cover the evidence? Remember Abu Ghraib? And where else? Think rape, rape, rape, sodomy, sodomy, sodomy – think the furthest other reaches of the most bestial inhumanity to man, women and yes, children. Think of America’s finest selling the pictures of the dead, dying, defiled on the internet, in exchange for porn. Think also of chains of command. Where does the cover up start and how high does it go?
‘We are not carpet bombing these things.* People know if we get resistance from a house, we’ll take out that house and the people in it, but not the entire street.’ How thoughtful. Any one reflected that most on earth would ‘resist’ their home being trashed by strangers, their children and women terrified (or worse) at 3 a.m. (or any time) risking also any belongings of value and money stolen? Residents have no right to refuse and can be shot (no questions asked later) for just that. *Iraqis, please note, it seems, are now ‘things’.
Meanwhile, on the face of all this, the 24 per-centers have adopted an abysmal fall back position – the possibility that some day in the future, the disaster that we are witnessing today may unfold into a positive outcome.
To blithely wave away the current horror on the ground and say that the death and destruction in Iraq will someday be seen as “worth it” and rest easy believing that future generations will thank us for our generous decision to invade their country and unleash hell is morally repugnant. I would say it is far more likely that they will never forgive us.
Perhaps these wingnuts really do have a soul and are using this device to come to terms with what they have unleashed on humanity. More likely however, it is just a desperate means to avoid having to admit how wrong they are.