In the Metro newspaper today, on the same page are two stories. At the top of the page is the headline, Seven killed in Taliban attack on US consulate. Below that story the headline, Ten dead in NATO attack.
Seems that when it comes to killing civilians, we are just a bit better at it than the Taliban.
Of course, the argument goes that the Taliban deliberately target civilians while our killings are horrible mistakes although that theory flies out the window with the video being played on Sky News that shows Americans in an Apache helicopter opening fire on a group of innocent Iraqi civilians, killing 12.
I'm not sure how seeing this would make an Iraqi feel but i'm not an Iraqi and i get angry as i watch it i wish there was somebody there with a RPG to take out the damned helicopter and stop the madmen with their machine guns.
The problem has been from the very start of both Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the invaders (us and America) just don't seem to have any regard for the people we went there to protect, bring democracy or whatever the reasons we were told we went there for.
We bomb from so far up, or away in the case of the drones, that it is inevitable we will kill many civilians and we have read countless reports on us killing civilians at wedding parties or firing upon houses because we assume some Taliban leader is holed up there only to later find he had nicked off earlier and the only people we killed were innocent bystanders.
I don't know the numbers but i would guess that we have killed just as many civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan as Al Qeauda and the Taliban in there respective countries since the whole mess began.
This is why both these tragic and misguided wars are unwinnable, because how can you get people to support you when you keep killing them?
Not only should we not be there, we are doing even more damage by sticking around.
7 comments:
When even the Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan says something like this...
"to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it. . . . We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force"
...then it's time for the 'saloon bar generals' (including many in the media who know this is happening and yet don't report it) to listen.
That is an amazing quote.
It just makes me so angry to see things like this so heaven knows what the Iraqis must think of it. This is 12 more families that al queada have recruited through our diabolical actions and things ike this has been going on since we got there.
I've never understood the invade, overthrow, and occupy school of warfare. Doesn't driving them underground make them orders of magnitude harder to find and kill? Maybe it has some advantages that I haven't heard about.
Obviously we Americans have every reason to want to kill Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and their closest friends. And I think that it is not unreasonable for us to expect some assistance from our allies in getting that job done. But I don't understand why it is so expensive and time consuming to kill a couple of dozen men, especially when it seems as though we know who has them (the Pakistani ISI). Surely, there's got to be a better way of getting these folks.
Again, I know so little about the practical aspects of warfare, but I'm pretty sure that warfare is about killing and destroying. Armies don't seem to be very useful when you're trying to produce voluntary political and diplomatic outcomes.
-Nog
"That is an amazing quote."
Isn't it just? Seems funny that it was studiously ignored by our 'liberal media'(teehee).
Nog's dead right about the limits of warfare in achieving political ends. All too often it merely buries problems, only for them to resurface years later, even worse than before.
'Don't disguise - neutralise!'
hans,
i don't like it when we kill non-combatants. i won't try to justify it. i also won't side with the "enemy" against our military because that helicoptor you want shot down could have one of my nephews in it. YOUR'RE STATEMENT PISSES ME OFF. the troops volunteered knowing the might be asked to kill and knowing that they might accidently kill someone innocent, but beyond that they are following orders trusting that they are getting good intelligence and that the national leaders are doing what is best for the nation. from what my nephews have told me, there was probably somebody very close observing the scene telling them it was a bad guy... it might even have been a native of the town... it might even have been someone playing both ends against the middle... regardless, the people in the helicoptor didn't pick the target...
q
If it was the other way around, and that was your nephew on the ground being shot at and killed accidently, would you still be happy to put it down to bad intelligence or would you be angry that the helicopter crew did not satisfy themselves 100% they were not innocent citizens before opening fire?
Oh, i'd be angry, but i wouldn't call for them to be shot down and killed unless i considered them the enemy.
Also, you weren't them and you called for the helicopter to be shot down...
I understand that the enemy considers us the bag guys. I understand innocents being angry. I don't understand you advocating the death of our guys...
q
ps - way to get controversial!! lucy should be proud. she chose well!
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