Today's letter to politicians

I sent this to Obama, Burr, Hagan, and Shuler.

This week has really highlighted the very serious problems with the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US forces in Afghanistan released a statement saying that US special forces were the cause of the deaths of five civilians (three women, two of whom were very pregnant, one local police officer and a local district attorney – the last two were men and supportive of the Afghan government). Originally, the military had said that the women were bound and gagged and killed by the Taliban as an honor killing. They lied. They tried to cover this up. This week they admitted the truth – and that what the locals had said happened was actually what happened.

Link Here.

Here is another story on that incident.

This night raid was done because there was a gathering at the home, and someone had told the US forces they were Taliban. The gathering was actually a baby naming celebration. The Afghans probably started firing because they thought the people shooting at them were Taliban.

It is the Pat Tillman story all over again.

And this week there was a release of a video by WikiLeaks from a US helicopter taken in July 2007. In this video, we can see the Iraqis on the ground being shot and killed by US forces. There were two Reuters employees among the dead. There were supposedly two men carrying weapons (AK 47), but that is not clear. Most certainly none of them had an RPG or other heavy weapon.

Nearly every home in Baghdad has an AK 47 for self-defense. Few Iraqis would pick up such a weapon and go directly after US troops because that would be suicidal. If they are interested in attacking our troops, they certainly don’t do it in the open or head-on. They tend to plant IEDs. I think it is quite possible that two of the men had AK 47s, and that they have them for protection against lawless elements in their society. The US military lied about this entire episode also. Here is the link to the video.

Here is more information on the victims of this shooting. The injured children did survive, but their father (who was only trying to help an injured man) died.

First story.

Second story.

And here is a link to the full unedited gun-camera video. This shows a further attack where the US military claimed that people walked into an apartment building with weapons. I cannot tell from the video if this is true, but again, that does not mean they were fighting US troops. There were several innocent bystanders killed in this incident.

There are two things to consider about this video – one is that someone in the US military is risking his or her career to get this information out. He or she must feel it is the moral thing to do.

And the other consideration is the fact that US troops are in a country that never attacked us or threatened us. That means that the shooting incidents shown in the video are highly immoral, since we are killing people in a country that did not harm us. I feel it is wrong to blame the US military for this – it would be like blaming a teacher for teaching children. This is the job of the military – to kill our enemy and destroy their ability to hurt us.

The Iraqi people were never our enemy.

I believe the guilt for these murders lies with the politicians who started up this policy of a war of aggression against Iraq, and the politicians who voted to continue funding it. Please stop voting to fund this war, this occupation, or any war or occupation where the people are not our enemy.

The people of Afghanistan are not our enemy either. It is true that an attack on our country was partially planned on their soil (it was also planned in Germany, and they trained in Florida), but the people of Afghanistan are not responsible for that fact. To bring war to them, with the same kind of bombings as seen in the gun-camera video, with the night raids of horror, with all the other problems with war and occupation, is also very wrong.

Finally, every year on April 9th, the Iraqis hold a protest against the US occupation. That is the day that Baghdad fell. In 2004, the first time they held this protest; there were a reported 5 million Iraqis at the event in Baghdad. They burned Bush, Blair and Saddam in effigy. This year, there were probably only a couple hundred thousands at the protest in Najaf. They burned Obama, Biden, and Gates in effigy. I will be sending some of these photos to your office on a postcard.