Team America Kills Five Kids in Marja
Submitted by anonymous on February 15, 2010 - 3:57pm
"Civilian casualties are inevitable," said U.S. officials before launching their weekend military assault on Marja in southern Afghanistan, and in this case, they were telling the truth. Yesterday, the New York Times reports, a U.S. rocket strike "hit a compound crowded with Afghan civilians... killing at least 10 people, including 5 children."
What justification has been provided by the government of the United States for its decision to kill these five children?
It will be argued that the government of the United States did not decide to kill these five children specifically, and that's absolutely true. The U.S. government did not decide to kill these particular children; it only decided to kill some Afghan civilians, chosen randomly from Marja's civilian population, when it decided to launch its military assault. These five children simply had the misfortune of holding losing tickets in a lottery in which they did not choose to participate.
Recall the U.S. government's instructions to Marja's residents before the assault:
Afghan villagers should stay inside and "keep their heads down" when thousands of U.S. Marines launch a massive assault on a densely-populated district in coming days, NATO's civilian representative to Afghanistan said Tuesday.
[...]
NATO forces have decided to advise civilians in Marjah not to leave their homes, although they say they do not know whether the assault will lead to heavy fighting.
These five kids were staying inside, as instructed. It didn't save them from U.S. rockets. Perhaps they weren't keeping their heads down.
Having advised civilians to stay - helping ensure the area remained heavily populated during the offensive - U.S. forces bore an extra responsibility to control their fire and avoid tactics that endanger civilians, Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch told Reuters:
"I suspect that they believe they have the ability to generally distinguish between combatants and civilians. I would call that into question, given their long history of mistakes, particularly when using air power," Adams said.
"Whatever they do, they have an obligation to protect civilians and make adequate provision to alleviate any crisis that arises," he said. "It is very much their responsibility.... They are going to be carrying the can if this goes badly."
"Avoiding such civilian deaths...has been a cornerstone of the war strategy" by General McChrystal, the Times informs us. If that's literally true, then McChrystal's strategy has failed spectacularly. But perhaps we're not meant to understand this statement literally. Perhaps what this statement means is that McChystal's strategy is to undertake the same military actions as before, and even to escalate them, but to change the rhetoric about them, in an effort to tamp down the outrage that might result from U.S. actions.
It's not too late for the United States to change course. These five children are gone forever, but other children in Marja can still be spared. Tell President Obama and Congress to protect civilians in Marja, as the United States is required to do by the laws of war.
If the United States cannot protect civilians from its military operations - as it is apparently either unable or unwilling to do - then the war should end. According to the repeated statements of senior U.S. officials, the way that the war is going to end is through negotiations with the Afghan Taliban, so those negotiations should commence immediately.
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy
Dollars for Death, Pennies for Life
by Norman Solomon
When the U.S. military began a major offensive in southern Afghanistan over the weekend, the killing of children and other civilians was predictable. Lofty rhetoric aside, such deaths come with the territory of war and occupation.
A month ago, President Obama pledged $100 million in U.S. government aid to earthquake-devastated Haiti. Compare that to the $100 billion price tag to keep 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan for a year.
While commanders in Afghanistan were launching what the New York Times called "the largest offensive military operation since the American-led coalition invaded the country in 2001," the situation in Haiti was clearly dire.
With more than a million Haitians still homeless, vast numbers -- the latest estimates are around 75 percent -- don't have tents or tarps. The rainy season is fast approaching, with serious dangers of typhoid and dysentery.
No shortage of bombs in Afghanistan; a lethal shortage of tents in Haiti. Such priorities -- actual, not rhetorical -- are routine.
Last summer, I saw hundreds of children and other civilians at the Helmand Refugee Camp District 5, a miserable makeshift encampment in Kabul. The U.S. government had ample resources for bombing their neighborhoods in the Helmand Valley -- but was doing nothing to help the desperate refugees to survive after they fled to Afghanistan's capital city.
Such priorities have parallels at home. The military hawks and deficit hawks are now swooping along Pennsylvania Avenue in tight formation. There's plenty of money in the U.S. Treasury for war in Afghanistan. But domestic spending to meet human needs -- job creation, for instance -- is another matter.
Joblessness is now crushing many low-income Americans. Among those with annual household incomes of less than $12,500, the unemployment rate during the fourth quarter of last year "was a staggering 30.8 percent," Bob Herbert noted in a February 9 column. "That's more than five points higher than the overall jobless rate at the height of the Depression."
Herbert added: "The next lowest group, with incomes of $12,500 to $20,000, had an unemployment rate of 19.1 percent. These are the kinds of jobless rates that push families already struggling on meager incomes into destitution."
The current situation is akin to the one that Martin Luther King Jr. confronted in 1967 when he challenged Congress for showing "hostility to the poor" -- appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity" but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."
Such priorities are taking lives every day, near and far.
Early this month, the National Council of Churches sent out an article by theologians George Hunsinger and Michael Kinnamon, who wrote: "What the Haitians obviously need most is massive humanitarian relief. They need food, water, medical supplies. They need shelter and physical reconstruction. . . . Over half of Haiti's population are children, 15 years old or younger. Many were already hungry and homeless before the earthquake hit."
But the warfare state, with vast budgets for military purposes, has scant funds for sustaining life.
These priorities kill.
Norman Solomon is national co-chair of the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com
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