Kid Killers are Barbarians
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY | Counterpunch, Oct 22, 2008
There is yet more news from Afghanistan about the killing of civilians by foreign forces’ air attacks. The BBC reported that “Angry villagers took 18 bodies – including badly mangled bodies of women and children – to the governor’s house in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, Haji Adnan Khan, a tribal leader in the city who had seen the bodies, was reported as saying. He said there might be more bodies trapped under the rubble. A BBC reporter in Lashkar Gah said he saw the bodies – three women and the rest children ranging in age from six months to 15. The families brought the bodies from their village in the Nad Ali district.” Ho hum; just another day in the war for freedom.
And then there was the killing of kids next door, as it were, for it was reported from Pakistan only a few days before the Lashkar Gah atrocity that “Eleven people were killed in Upper Dir district . . . when a roadside bomb exploded near a police van [and] four schoolchildren in a passing bus were among the dead.”
The criminal fanatics who planned and directed the Dir atrocity would claim, just like American official mouthpieces after the blitzing of tribal wedding parties or memorial services, that innocent people are simply unfortunate to be in the way when they tried to hit the main target. These barbarians attempt to convince us that in some way women and children are themselves at fault when they are killed by lunatic bombers or almost equally deranged controllers of aerial slaughter-machines. Another line is that it is the responsibility of those whom they target because they permit civilians to be close by. These claims are not persuasive enough to let us ignore the innocent children and their weeping families. In fact they are evidence of hand-washing arrogance.
People who kill kids, for whatever reason and no matter in what manner, are disgusting, murderous, cowardly barbarians.
Suicide bombing is not the way to achieve paradise, but alas there appears to be nobody influential enough to make this clear to the world at large. The problem is that rabble-rousing, brutal, religious bigots use their position to persuade poorly-educated (and some not-so-poorly-educated), easily-influenced people that those who die for their Faith, even if that involves murdering children, are assured of heaven.
It is tragic that the real meaning of the Koran, as well as civilised common sense, decency, and respect for human lives, are thrust aside by such as the rabidly fanatical Egyptian cleric Dr Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who claims that Islam justifies suicide bombings.
In a BBC interview Al-Qaradawi said that “I consider this type of martyrdom operation [by suicide bombing] as an indication of the justice of Allah Almighty. Allah is just – through his infinite wisdom he has given the weak what the strong do not possess and that is the ability to turn their bodies into bombs like the Palestinians do. Islamic theologians and jurisprudents have debated this issue, referring to it as a form of Jihad under the title of ‘jeopardising the life of the mujaheed.’ It is allowed to jeopardise your soul and cross the path of the enemy and be killed if this act of jeopardy affects the enemy, even if it only generates fear in their hearts, shaking their morale, making them fear Muslims.”
A tortuous argument, to put it mildly ; and just as poorly constructed and badly delivered as the justification for the US slaughter of innocent men, women and children attending a night-time memorial service in the Afghan village of Azizabad on August 22. In that case it was at first (and as usual) flatly denied that there had been any civilian deaths. As the New York Times recorded : “The US hotly disputed the toll [of 90], claiming initially that no civilians were killed, then later revising the number up to 5-7 civilians. They also accused Afghan civilians who claimed a higher toll of spreading “outrageous Taliba n propaganda.” They were forced to re-examine their findings, however, when video evidence of the toll went public.”
United Nations officials conducted an inquiry immediately and found that 90 civilians had been killed, of whom 60 were children, but the US ignored the report, and when the Afghan government confirmed that there were scores of dead a US spokesman called the statement “outrageous.”
It was unfortunate – at least for the liars who deliberated concocted falsehoods about the massacre – that “Cellphone images that a villager said he took, and seen by this reporter [Carlotta Gall, a marvellous and courageous journalist], showed two lines of about 20 bodies each laid out in the mosque, with the sounds of loud sobbing and villagers’ cries in the background. An Afghan doctor who runs a clinic in a nearby village said he counted 50 to 60 bodies of civilians, most of them women and children and some of them his own patients, laid out in the village mosque on the day of the strike . . . In a series of statements about the operation, the US military has said that extremists who entered the village after the bombardment encouraged villagers to change their story and inflate the number of dead.”
If there had been no independent reporting of the atrocity it would, like so many others, have been forgotten about. (Nobody would have known about the atrocities at Abu Ghraib if photographs hadn’t appeared.) But Washington was forced to order an inquiry. Not that there is any intention to take disciplinary action against those responsible for any aspect of the horrible affair, even when it was eventually admitted there were “more than 30” civilians killed, because, with indifferent callousness, the spin-masters pronounced that the strike was against “a legitimate target.”
The pattern is clear : first lie your head off after a war crime has been committed; then try to play down the gravity of the slaughter and while you’re at it, vilify anyone courageous enough to have held an independent inquiry that discovered the truth. After it is obvious that a major atrocity did actually take place, all must wring hands and announce that an inquiry is to be held. (If anxious to appear serious it is better to state that it will be a “full” inquiry. But on no account must there be representation at the inquiry by officials, or, indeed, attendance by any citizens of the country in which the attack has taken.) Last, when irrefutable evidence has to be grudgingly admitted, say that there has been a mistake but that the people who identified the target, fired the missiles or lied in their teeth about the squalid affair are not going to receive even a wrist-slap in punishment. Then the whole affair will be forgotten except by the few hundred more Afghans, Iraqis or Pakistanis who have been persuaded that US “freedom” is meaningless and queue up to join the ranks of anti-western fanatics and suicide bombers.
There is a chilling parallel between the types of child killers. On the one hand, a formal military organisation is adamant that “legitimate targets” must be blasted even if the deaths of children are inevitable. On the other, the psychotic savages who plan and carry out suicide bombings that slaughter innocent youngsters are convinced their atrocities are justified by a warped interpretation of their Faith.
The potential victims of attacks – the ordinary innocent citizens of Pakistan and Afghanistan – should be protected; but this is impossible, given the zeal of both types of attackers. There can be no excuses for killing children, but violence feeds violence, courtesy of trigger-happy moronic foreigners and home-grown fiendish monsters. The terrible thing is that they have so much in common : mainly barbarity.
Brian Cloughley’s new book, War, Coups and Terror, about the Pakistan army, has just been published by Pen & Sword Books (UK) and will be published in the US by Skyhorse Publishing (New York). He lives in France.
Peace and Justice Post 
Obama’s Victory – Fear and Hope
November 15, 2008Immanuel Wallesrstein, Commentary No. 245, Nov. 15, 2008
The whole of the United States and indeed the whole world was watching, and almost all of it was cheering, the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Although, during the electoral campaign, everyone tried to play down the centrality of the racial issue, on Nov. 4 it seemed that no one could talk of anything else. There are three central questions about what most commentators are calling this “historic event”: How important is it? What explains the victory? What is likely to happen now?
On the evening of November 4, an immense crowd assembled in Grant Park, Chicago, to hear Obama’s acceptance speech. All those who were watching U.S. television saw the camera zoom in on Jesse Jackson, who was in tears. Those tears reflect the virtually unanimous view of all African-Americans, who regard Obama’s election as the moment of their definitive integration into the U.S. electoral process. They do not believe that racism has disappeared. But a symbolic barrier has been crossed, first of all for them, and then for all the rest of us.
Their sentiment is quite parallel to the feelings of Africans in South Africa on April 27, 1994 when they voted to elect Nelson Mandela president of their country. It has not mattered that Mandela, as president, did not fulfill the whole promise of his party. It will not matter if Obama does not fulfill the whole promise of his campaign. In the United States, as in South Africa, a new day has dawned. Even if it is an imperfect day, it is a better day than before. The African-Americans, but also the Hispanics and the young people in general, voted for Obama out of hope – a diffuse hope, but a real one.
How did Obama win? He won the way anyone wins in a large, complex political situation. He put together a large coalition of many different political forces. In this case, the gamut ran from fairly far left to right of center. He would not have won without that enormous range of support. And, of course, now that he has won, all the different groups want him to govern as each prefers, which is of course not possible.
Who are these different elements, and why did they support him? On the left, even the far left, they voted for Obama because of deep anger about the damage the Bush regime inflicted on the United States and the world, and the genuine fear that McCain would have been no better, perhaps worse. On the center-right, independents and many Republicans voted for him most of all because they had become aghast at the ever-increasing dominance of the Christian right in Republican party politics, a sentiment that was underlined by the choice of Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential candidate. These people voted for Obama because they were afraid of McCain/Palin and because Obama convinced them that he was a solid and sensible pragmatist.
And in-between these two groups were the so-called Reagan Democrats, largely industrial workers, often Catholics, often racist, who had tended to desert their Democratic party roots in recent elections because they viewed the party as having moved too far left and disapproved of its positions on social questions. These voters moved back to the Democratic party not because their outlook had changed, but because of fear. They were deeply afraid of the economic depression into which the United States has moved, and thought that their only hope was in a new New Deal. They voted for the Democrats despite the fact that Obama was an African-American. Fear conquered racism.
And what will Obama do now? What can Obama do now? It is still too early to be sure. It seems clear that he will move quickly to take advantage of a crisis situation, as his new Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, put it. I suspect we shall see a dramatic set of initiatives in the traditional first 100 days. And some of what Obama does may be surprising.
Still, there are two situations, the two biggest, that are largely beyond his control – the transformed geopolitics of the world-system, and the catastrophic world economic situation. Yes, the world received Obama’s victory with joy, but also with prudence. It is notable that two major centers of power issued statements on the geopolitical scene that were quite forthright. Both the European Union in a unanimous statement and President Lula of Brazil said they looked forward to renewing collaboration with the United States, but this time as equals, not as junior partners.
Obama will pull out of Iraq more or less as promised, if for no other reason than the fact that the Iraqi government will insist upon it. He will try to find a graceful exit from Afghanistan, which will not be too easy. But whether he will do something significant in relation to the Israel/Palestine deadlock and whether he can look forward to a more stable Pakistan is very unsure. And he will have less to say about it than he may think. Can Obama accept the fact that the United States is no longer the world’s leader, merely a partner with other power centers? And, even if he can, can he somehow get the American people to accept this new reality?
As for the depression, it will no doubt have to play out its course. Obama, like all the other major leaders in the world, is a captain on a very stormy sea, and can do relatively little more than try to keep his ship from sinking altogether.
Where Obama has some leeway is in the internal U.S. situation. There are three things where he is expected to act and can act, if he is ready to be bold. One is job creation. This can only be done effectively in the short run through government action. And it would be best done by investing in reconstructing the degraded infrastructure of the United States, and in measures to reverse environmental decline.
The second is the establishment, at last, of a decent health care structure in the United States, in which everyone, without exception, will be covered, and in which there will be considerable emphasis on preventive medicine.
And the third area is in undoing all the damage that has been done to basic civil liberties in the United States by the Bush administration, but also by prior administrations. This requires an overhauling both of the Department of Justice and the legal and paralegal apparatus that has been constructed in the last eight, but also the last thirty, years.
If Obama acts decisively in these three arenas, then we might say that this was a truly historic election, one in which the change that occurred was more than symbolic. But if he fails here, the letdown will be momentous.
Many are trying to divert his attention into the arenas in which he cannot do much, and in which his best position would be that of a lower profile, the acceptance of new world reality. There is much about Obama’s future actions to fear, and much that offers hope.
Share this:
Tags:Afghanistan, Barack Obama, election victory, Iraq, McCain/Palin, United States
Posted in Commentary, USA | Leave a Comment »