Targeted assassinations, death squads, tanks demolishing homes and entire neighborhoods, burning up fields or other wise destroying them – just some tactics in the BOMBS AWAY GAME now going on in Afghanistan.
The New York Times reports that the US military are blowing up empty homes and farm buildings in Afghanistan. They are claiming that these buildings are booby-trapped. No reports of civilian casualties.
In recent weeks, using armored bulldozers, high explosives, missiles and even airstrikes, American troops have taken to destroying hundreds of them, by a conservative estimate, with some estimates running into the thousands. “We don’t know the accurate number of homes destroyed, but it’s huge,” said Zalmai Ayubi, the spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor, Tooryalai Wesa, and who with the governor visited on Oct. 21.
In some areas, the American forces have routinely destroyed almost every unoccupied home. As an Afghan district governor said “We had to destroy them to make them safe.” That sounds just like the Vietnam era slogan of “We had to destroy the village in order to save it” except that was said by someone in the US military.
One of the most fearsome tools is the Miclic, the M58 Mine-Clearing Line Charge, a chain of explosives tied to a rocket, which upon impact destroys everything in a swath 30 feet wide and 325 feet long. The Himars missile system, a pod of 13-foot rockets carrying 200-pound warheads, has also been used frequently for demolition work. Often, new military roads go right through farms and compounds, cutting a route that will keep soldiers safe from roadside bombs.
So, the locals are getting compensation for their humble mud houses, and some of them also get an exciting (and free!) vacation at a refugee camp with no water, sanitation, food, safety, etc. Here is what one local tribal elder had to say about the destruction:
Abdul Rahim Khan, 50, a tribal elder from Spirwan in Panjwai District, claimed that in many cases the American troops had been destroying empty homes, even when there were not any explosives inside. However, military officers pointed out, searching empty homes was often too dangerous. “People are not happy with the compensation,” said a tribal elder in Zhare, who said he was afraid to give his name for publication. “Compensation is just kicking dirt in our eyes.”
I guess he is not too impressed with the BOMBS AWAY GAME now going on in his family’s hometown. I guess he would rather have his simple mud home and safety for his family. I guess he is not into the BOMBS AWAY GAME, even though the US military and the Obama administration sure are into it.
The New York Times title for the article is pretty straight forward – NATO Destroys Booby-Trapped Homes in Afghanistan. However, several other newspaper printed the article with a new title: “To Save Lives, NATO Is Razing Booby-Trapped Homes.” This is, of course, total bullshit. We are not bombing homes and villages and killing people “To Save Lives.” That is not the point of the BOMBS AWAY GAME at all! As the NYT article shows, sometimes they bomb the homes because it is safer for US TROOPS to not have to search them. In one village, they destroyed all 40 homes in a village, and this happened in other villages also. It’s all part of the BOMBS AWAY GAME and this game is certainly not done to benefit the locals. It is done to destroy them.
Violence is on the rise in Afghanistan, and the Taliban seem to be mostly in control.
Violence in Afghanistan has reached an all-time high, with clashes up fourfold since 2007, the Pentagon has said.
The next article to document the bombings and destruction of Afghanistan comes from the Washington Post. In this article, the author clearly and calmly lays out the facts of what is happening there, and what the US military is doing. He clearly and calmly shows the world that what the US military is doing is massively and vastly evil.
The U.S. military is sending a contingent of heavily armored battle tanks to Afghanistan for the first time in the nine-year war, defense officials said, a shift that signals a further escalation in the aggressive tactics that have been employed by American forces this fall to attack the Taliban.
Yeah, that is something the Bush administration never tried – TANKS!
The 68-ton tanks are propelled by a jet engine and equipped with a 120mm main gun that can destroy a house more than a mile away.
And in this version of the BOMBS AWAY GAME, we have US tanks killing off civilians, and maybe some combatants, from a mile away. There is no way a human eye can tell if the humans inside those homes a mile off are civilians or not, but they don’t give a shit anyway. The article goes on to describe night raids, but I am not coving that here, since it is a different evil than the BOMBS AWAY GAME.
Oddly though, the Taliban are winning and have been for quite a while. But under Obama we don’t get “shock and awe” instead we get this:
"The tanks bring awe, shock and firepower," the officer said. "It's pretty significant."
Oddly though, the Taliban don’t seem to be awed, shocked or anything except violent and determined, just like the Iraqi insurgents and the various Iraqi fractions that melted down into a civil war. I am sure that is the plan in Afghanistan too – get them to kill one another, along with the US and NATO doing some killing.
Oh, the games people play! They are so evil. One cannot say that they are non-productive though – these BOMBS AWAY GAMES are making some people a shitload of money. And these folks don’t give a shit how much blood is on their money.
And it is clear that “winning hearts and minds” would not include tank or air bombings. But the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before him, does not give a shit about that stuff.
Although Petraeus is widely regarded as the father of the military's modern counterinsurgency doctrine, which emphasizes the role of governance, development and other forms of soft power in stabilization missions, he also believes in the use of intense force, at times, to wipe out opponents and create conditions for population-centric operations. A less-recognized aspect of the troop surge he commanded in Iraq in 2007 involved a significant increase in raids and airstrikes. "Petraeus believes counterinsurgency does not mean just handing out sacks of wheat seed," said a senior officer in Afghanistan. Counterinsurgency "doesn't mean you don't blow up stuff or kill people who need to be killed."
So, counterinsurgency means killing people and blowing up their shit. Actually, that is exactly what our military is for – killing our enemy and blowing up their shit. They are not nation-builders, humanitarian workers, or international developers. They are killers and destroyers (which would be a handy thing if some government was attacking our country, or invading our country – but that is not what is happening today).
And about half of the people the US military kills will be children! Tough shit for them in the BOMBS AWAY GAME! And despite Karzai’s criticism of their tactics, the senior officer in Afghanistan (not clear who that is, since the name is not mentioned) believes the locals are supporting the destruction of homes and fields in the tenth year of this war. However, when a journalist actually TALKS to the locals, they don’t make that claim at all.
Here is what one local farmer said:
"Why do you have to blow up so many of our fields and homes?" a farmer from the Arghandab district asked a top NATO general at a recent community meeting.
And while our military officials are apologetic in public, they go right ahead and do it again and again and again. There seems to be no stopping the evil BOMBS AWAY GAME. And to show that it is deeply, deeply evil, the anonymous senior official had this to say:
By making people travel to the district governor's office to submit a claim for damaged property, "in effect, you're connecting the government to the people," the senior officer said.
What a piece of human garbage! I sure hope when he comes back to the USA, he gets lots of opportunity to connect with his government by being homeless, a drug addict, and sick as a dog, for all the days of his life. I hope he has seventy eight visits to the VA just to get an aspirin. I hope he spends time in prison, and REALLY connects with his government.
Of course, just the fact that he would say this shows the overall evilness of the BOMBS AWAY GAME that Obama is playing.
For those who have escaped Afghanistan’s worst violence, some things are hard to forget: the sight of a woman's hair entangled in the mulberry branches, her legs strewn far away in the dirt. Or the sounds they heard as they hid in an underground hole, counting the bombs to pass the time, praying the American troops would leave.
Some of those Afghans have tiptoed in the footsteps of neighbors to avoid the mines. They've been hit with shrapnel and tied with flex cuffs, threatened by the Taliban and frightened by the coalition, seen relatives shot and homes destroyed. And so they left Helmand province and made their way to this dirt lot on the outskirts of Kabul, where month by month the settlement expands with those who have come to wait out the war.
Yes, they are suffering horrible and will carry the scars for the rest of their lives (if they even survive). And they are not grateful for being “connected to their government” at all. They just want the Americans to leave and to have their lives back.
And recent news has shown that the US does not even know who they are talking to in Afghanistan, and it is also clear that they don’t know what they are doing – or, if they do know, just don’t care. The question boils down to – are they stupid or sociopaths or both?
But that question is not asked in the BOMBS AWAY GAME!
On Dec. 16, 2010, Veterans for Peace, IVAW, and other anti-war groups will hold an action at the White House against these wars, occupations and BOMBS AWAY GAMES. This will be a civil disobedience action, and will show us the few Americans who have morals and are willing to stand against this evil. Join them if you care.
A report on the Afghanistan WikiLeaks documents:
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