{"id":2166,"date":"2007-07-10T05:07:35","date_gmt":"2007-07-10T10:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2166"},"modified":"2007-07-10T05:09:29","modified_gmt":"2007-07-10T10:09:29","slug":"the-eternal-struggle-between-the-good-guys-and-the-bad-guys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=2166","title":{"rendered":"The eternal struggle between the good guys and the bad guys"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Blum, Anti-Empire Report, 9 July 2007<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The United States and its wholly owned subsidiary, NATO, regularly drop bombs on Afghanistan which kill varying amounts of terrorists (or “terrorists”, also known as civilians, also known as women and children). They do this rather often, against people utterly defenseless against aerial attack. In the first half of this year, US\/NATO forces killed more people than the Taliban and others opposed to the Western occupation did.[6] This was immediately followed by a reported 133 additional bombing victims in the first week of July.[7]<\/p>\n

US\/NATO spokespersons tell us that these unfortunate accidents happen because the enemy is deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way to provoke a backlash against the foreign forces. We are told at times that the enemy had located themselves in the same building as the victims, using them as “human shields”.[8] Therefore, it would seem, the enemy somehow knows in advance that a particular building is about to be bombed and they rush a bunch of civilians to the spot before the bombs begin to fall. Or it’s a place where civilians normally live and, finding out that the building is about to be bombed, the enemy rushes a group of their own people to the place so they can die with the civilians. Or, what appears to be much more likely, the enemy doesn’t know of the bombing in advance, but then the civilians would have to always be there; i.e., they live <\/em>there; they may even be the wives and children of the enemy. Is there no limit to the evil cleverness and the clever evilness of this foe?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Western officials also tell us that the enemy deliberately attacks from civilian areas, even hoping to draw fire to drive a wedge between average Afghans and international troops.[9] Presumably the insurgents are attacking nearby Western military installations or troop concentrations. This raises the question: Why are the Western forces building installations and\/or concentrating troops near civilian areas, deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way?<\/p>\n

US\/NATO military leaders argue that any comparison of casualties caused by Western forces and by the Taliban is fundamentally unfair because there is a clear moral distinction to be made between accidental deaths resulting from combat operations and deliberate killings of innocents by militants. “No [Western] soldier ever wakes up in the morning with the intention of harming any Afghan citizen,” said Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “If that does inadvertently happen, it is deeply, deeply regretted.”[10]<\/p>\n

Is that not comforting language? Can any right-thinking, sensitive person fail to see who the good guys are?<\/p>\n

During its many bombings from Vietnam to Iraq, Washington has repeatedly told the world that the resulting civilian deaths were accidental and very much “regretted”. But if you go out and drop powerful bombs over a populated area, and then learn that there have been a number of “unintended” casualties, and then the next day drop more bombs and learn again that there were “unintended” casualties, and then the next day you bomb again … at what point do you lose the right to say that the deaths were “unintended”?<\/p>\n

During the US\/NATO 78-day bombing of Serbia in 1999, which killed many civilians, a Belgrade office building — which housed political parties, TV and radio stations, 100 private companies, and more — was bombed. But before the missiles were fired into this building, NATO planners spelled out the risks: “Casualty Estimate 50-100 Government\/Party employees. Unintended Civ Casualty Est: 250 — Apts in expected blast radius.”[11] The planners were saying that about 250 civilians living in nearby apartment buildings might be killed in the bombing, in addition to 50 to 100 government and political party employees, likewise innocent of any crime calling for execution. So what do we have here? We have grown men telling each other: We’ll do A, and we think that B may well be the result. But even if B does in fact result, we’re saying beforehand — as we’ll insist afterward — that it was unintended<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was actually worse than this. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the main purpose of the Serbian bombings — admitted to by NATO officials — was to make life so difficult for the public that support of the government of Slobodan Milosevic would be undermined.[12] This, in fact, is the classic definition of “terrorism”, as used by the FBI and the United Nations: The use or threat of violence against a civilian population to induce the government to change certain policies.<\/p>\n

Another example of how “the enemy” can’t be trusted to act as nice as god-fearing regular Americans … “Defense officials said they believe at least 22 — and possibly as many as 50 — former Guant?namo detainees have returned to the battlefield to fight against the United States and its allies.”[13] The Defense Department has at times used the possibility of this happening as an argument against releasing detainees or closing Guant?namo.<\/p>\n

But is it imaginable, not to mention likely, that after three, four or five years in the hell on earth known as Guant?namo, even detainees not disposed to terrorist violence — and many of them were picked up for reasons having nothing to do with terrorist violence — left with a deep-seated hatred of their jailors and a desire for revenge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Blum, Anti-Empire Report, 9 July 2007 The United States and its wholly owned subsidiary, NATO, regularly drop bombs on Afghanistan which kill varying amounts of terrorists (or “terrorists”, also known as civilians, also known as women and children). They … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-yW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}