The worst of it was that it was neither Talibans nor commanders of anything that were killed. The WSJ said it was the wedding of the daughter of a “suspected Taliban commander”. 18 people were killed but it doesn’t matter because the coalition forces didn’t consider them human.

Posted by: www | Jun 7 2012 12:02 utc | 4

What if Pakistan bombed the wedding of the daughter of a suspected US military commander, in case he might show up at the party? It would be legitimate to blast the family of a suspected US organized killer, right?

Posted by: Alexander | Jun 7 2012 12:20 utc | 6

About bombing of wedding parties – one person I knew, “remembered” – well, actually before she was born, but the story got told to her- a WW I attack by Hungarian soldiers on a wedding party – killed the bride & groom, & others. She hated Hungarians for that reason – for the rest of her life. It was irrational, but it persisted. If Hungarians got massacred during the uprising against the Soviets, having been tricked by the US into doing so, well, OKAY by her. I wonder if the USians realize how much hate they are accumulating. Or – do the 1% not care?

Posted by: Northern Night Owl | Jun 7 2012 13:12 utc | 8

And the beat goes on b. Kinda begs the question, how long before the “insurgents” acquire drone technology, and “what goes around, comes around”?

Posted by: ben | Jun 7 2012 14:08 utc | 10

Watson, good point, well made.

Posted by: Alexander | Jun 7 2012 14:23 utc | 12

And…where in the Western MCM (Mainstream Corporate Media) are the reports from the people on the ground who can tell the world their version of what happened? Which are repeated over and over?
Ah, yes. Only those whose story deviates from the West’s Narrative are ignored.
If their stories work to move the West’s Narrative forward to the West’s goals, then their remarks, videos and photos, faked or real, are accepted without question, and the MCMers merely state that no reporters on the ground could corroborate these stories, videos, photos, etc. Later facts or stories from on the ground which discredit the initial reports which support the West’s Narrative are assiduously ignored.
Such propaganda works: People on the left who carefully studied and wrote about what Obama said and how that departed from truth and known facts while he campaigned and then worked for his pathetic health insurance profit protection plan, along with things he never even tried to do to help those damaged by the Big Money interests, have now swallowed completely the Big Lies about Libya and now Syria.
Why are the US and its allies’s repeated killings of innocent civilians never referred to as massacres?

Posted by: jawbone | Jun 7 2012 15:01 utc | 14

I’m not sure we should be using the word wedding to describe the gatherings that these horrors are visited upon. In fact the more I think about it, the more I think perhaps someone should send a note to Alex Cockburn voting ‘wedding’ for the tumbril.
Think about it – the world’s mind slips quickly over wedding nowadays, particularly when it is mentioned in conjunction with an amerikan funded and instigated explosion. It has become a cliche and no one really stops to consider exactly what has happened.
Bang big pink mist -there goes a baby’s arm “I wonder which side the baby was from?” thinks an old woman as she looks down to see everything below her knees has been shorn off by the brass tray that a second before had been resting on the table across the way.
There is a bunch of reasons amerikan psychos pick weddings to blow up when they want to inflict damage on Afghans and Pakistanis – not much of it has to do with the guest list. Oh they can be sure that someone will turn up who has some connection however vague with the local anti-imperial freedom fighters, but that isn’y why weddings are selected .
They pick weddings because those festivals over several days are the peak, the epitome of celebration held in any agrarian society. Weddings are where two families unite – often between villages whose bonds may need strengthening – are full of emotions of success – two families have succeded in nuturing and educating two young people who are about to repeat the cycle. Weddings are above all a celebration of hopes fulfilled.
I have no doubt some really fucked up and bitter amerikan educated anthropologist has come up with the hypothesis that by bombing these ancient festivities, amerika can destroy the cultural fabric of the Pashtu.
A really fucked up psy war and when other humans think about what has gone on here don’t consider this as being the local equivalent of western weddings – those homage’s to consumerism where all participants compete against each other to ‘prove’ they have had the greatest material success. That isn’t what these ceremonies are doing they are a celebration of life pure and simple.
Pashtu weddings could end up as ugly and horrific as many western weddings if the imperial forces were to win, but I’m fairly confident the locals will withstand this twisted take on war as they have withstood everything else the sick fucks who have been wreaking havoc on them since 2002, have pulled. That won’t stop the pain these villages feel from what they will perceive as the most evil thing any bunch of demons have ever done to them.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 7 2012 22:16 utc | 16

DM @3 plus DiD @16 – two good reasons for all these wedding massacres;
Dm @3 also fits with that other horrible tactic when using drones, of bombing again sites about 30-40 minutes after the first bombing, imagining that friends of the “suspect” are among the rescuers
the same horrible people raise the flag of “responsibility to protect”, “human rights”, etc

Posted by: claudio | Jun 7 2012 23:26 utc | 18

Why are the US and its allies’s repeated killings of innocent civilians never referred to as massacres?
Posted by: jawbone | Jun 7, 2012 11:01:28 AM | 14
same reason the US and its allies and their servile MSM call target goverments ‘regimes’ and their heads of state ‘dictators’

Posted by: brian | Jun 8 2012 3:47 utc | 20