"What sin did the cow commit?"
Razing villages to save them is a war crime and the Afghans are rightly "extremly angry" about this. General Petraeus excuse, "the Taliban made me do it!", is not valid. It only shows that his campaign is failing. The combatant that can make the other side do something obviously still has the initiative.
In this BBC video we find evidence for additional war crimes being committed by the Marines in Sangin, Helmand. A Marine sniper is shooting at and killing an unarmed person because that same person had earlier be seen "talking on a radio". With no phones in Sangin district, there are good reasons for civilians to use radios. Talking into a radio does not prove any intend to harm anyone. As the BBC describes the scene:
"Come on, come out come and play," said the Marine sniper.He spoke as he looked through his telescopic sight at a Taliban "spotter" who had just jumped behind a wall some 800m away. The man was not armed but was talking into a radio.
"Got P-I-D [positive identification]," said the sniper. "Cleared to engage." There was the suppressed crack of a silenced sniper round. The man fell to the ground.
"Enemy KIA (killed in action). Doin' the dead man dance."
"Good shooting, bro," came the reply.
It was the 50th kill for this sniper team.
In the video the scene is described the important detail somewhat differently:
[narrator] They are about to kill a man identified as a Taliban spotter.
...[the killing]..
[narrator] He wasn't armed. How did they know he wasn't a civilian?
[sniper:] He was talking on a radio and eh then he came back out and presented himself trying to be inconspicuous and that's when we dropped him.
As the distance to the man was some 800 meters, it is unlikely that he even knew that the snipers were there.
In the following scene at a side of a field a stash of freshly harvested corn, several feet high, is waiting to be brought in. The Marines burn it down:
They burn piles of corn, so that the Taliban can't hide weapons there. That isn't popular ...
Burning the food the people in Sangin grow to survive is a scorched earth policy. When the Nazis did this in Russia, it was a war crime. What is it when the Marines do it in Sangin?
But again and again, the Marines come across locals who say that a brother, a son or a cousin has been shot by the international forces.
"We don't want your help," said a group of elders going to pray for a relative who had been killed. They refused the offer of compensation from the platoon's lieutenant.
"We don't want your money. You shouldn't kill us. You shouldn't destroy our property. You even shot one of my cows yesterday. What sin did the cow commit?"
Posted by b on January 22, 2011 at 14:02 UTC | Permalink
Can someone explain how you can break someones nose with a stone hurled from behind that person?
Marines kill Afghan tribal leader after thrown rock breaks nose of U.S. commander Col. Paul Kennedy
WASHINGTON - An Afghan tribal elder brought a rock to a gun fight - and it cost him his life.Pashtun tribal leader Mamour Merajuddin Khan recently hurled a stone at Marine Col. Paul Kennedy in the Sangin district of the restless Helmand River Valley, a source said.
The toss brought a swift response from U.S. forces.
Kennedy’s security detail "responded immediately by firing on the individual, killing him," NATO’s International Assistance Force in Kabul said.
Kennedy, sources said, suffered a broken nose.
The Taliban said Khan approached a U.S. base on Sunday "carrying with him three rocks" primed for a low-tech attack, and asked for the senior U.S. commander.
ISAF said Kennedy was at a shura, a meeting with tribal elders, when he "was approached from behind and hit with a large rock by an Afghan local national."
Clam down everyone, I have it on good authority that things are going swimmingly: [Sen] Tester says situation improving in Afghanistan...
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 22 2011 18:05 utc | 3
-maybe he was pulling his head out of his ass to see what all the ommotion was about. @b
Posted by: b real | Jan 22 2011 19:20 utc | 4
I really like that pic with the article Uncle linked to , it shows two evil motherfuckers who are what they are. rodriguez the hollow-eyed psychopath barely containing his rage for the press before getting out there and organising the murder of more indigenous humans, and tester the forever lunching parasite who moves with his mouth, slurping up great golumps of food and booze then expectorating gobs of deceit to oblige further scarfing of humans to his slavering maw
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 22 2011 19:33 utc | 5
Re 3, don't forget that the US has to declare victory in order to be able to leave. That's what happened in Iraq, and that is what is happening here too.
I've been hearing a lot of reports telling us how well the new Petraeus strategy is going. It's intended to make the public believe the US has won.
And indeed in Iraq the strategy worked. The majority of the US population appear to believe even today that the US won. Though the entire conflict would be better described as a stand-off, with one outstanding Iraqi victory - forcing Bush to sign the SOFA in 2008.
Posted by: alexno | Jan 23 2011 14:33 utc | 6
The death of a cow is serious. A cow can sustain two people (it is said here.) I had a friend who was arrested and jailed - at the age of 15 - for stealing a cow. (!)
Anyway don’t let me get started about livestock in Afghanistan, animal husbandry, etc.
The concept of food as weapon is old as the hills. The Americans however have always been very keen on it.
The Hedges Herald, 1917:
Herbert Hoover, the food administrator, speaking on the world food situation at the war convention of the chamber of commerce of the United States, last night declared that starvation would win the war and the side best able to organize its resources for food production and conservation would come out victorious.
From Time, 1941:
Last week at his press conference, President Roosevelt announced that he was working out a program with Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard and Surgeon General Thomas Parran (just back from England), covering Britain's food needs and U. S. ability to supply them. At the Department of Agriculture, experts pointed to U. S. grain reserves (greatest in history), to stocks of fats, oils, hay, meat supplies. If food was a weapon, the U. S. was well armed. Could the U. S. use this weapon as effectively for democracy as the Nazis use hunger against it?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,765334-2,00.html
Posted by: Noirette | Jan 23 2011 16:15 utc | 7
The comments to this entry are closed.
An acquaintance of mine (here in the U.S.) told me her son had become a Marine.
I said, "I'm sorry to hear that."
Not exactly the way to win friends or influence people. I could have said, "You must be very proud." But I didn't.
I'm afraid that Kurt Vonnegut may have been right that the U.S. of A. will never become the humane, reasonable nation that his generation imagined they were fighting for.
There's a glimmer of hope, though - as KV reminded us - "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" - and the corollary is, or could be, that as power wanes there is a possibility for metanoia.
Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. | Jan 22 2011 16:33 utc | 1