Deadly errors come costly for US troops in Afghanistan
Published: 22 June, 2009, 12:07
TAGS: Military, Scandal, Middle East, Politics, USA
U.S. forces have admitted 'errors' during air strikes in Afghanistan last month may have killed dozens of civilians.
A new U.S. military report has admitted killing 26 people after crucial mistakes in the bombings in western Farah province, while the Afghan government says that up to 140 innocent people died.
According to the US military, it was really a failure on the part of the US forces that do not comply with certain rules and regulations resulting in deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of civilian casualties.
Three air strikes by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are in question. The report says two of them should not have been ordered in the first place, because the information about Taliban ground forces was not clear and operators did not know for sure whether there were civilians in the assaulted buildings or not. Still, the US Army claims, 78 Taliban insurgents were killed in these air strikes.
The US military says that certain tactics in Afghanistan need to be looked over. However, as far as the prosecution of any US military personnel is concerned – it is not likely to happen.
Either way, these incidents have really fuelled anger and outrage towards American troops and the whole NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.
The president of Afghanistan, Khamid Karzai, demanded a hold on air strikes by the coalition, but there will be none. The US military will continue using UAVs.
The other thing to consider is that incidents of this kind are really helping the Taliban to recruit more followers. The very trust in the foreign troops is being undermined by this.
The US is starting slowly to lose the PR campaign that is so important for any country conducting a war, especially a war so overwhelmingly unpopular in the rest of the world.
The report says that the first thing the US must do is everything possible to ensure that the civilian casualties are minimized, which looks like a difficult thing to do.
The question of whether it is just rhetoric, or if there is going to be some action is on everybody’s mind. Will the US military dramatically change how it conducts itself?
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The forces of US Imperialism are in Afghanistan for one reason only - to protect Amerca's best [business] interests. That's why they were in Vietnam and Korea - was it not? That's why they have aided and abetted every reactionary regime around the Globe for the last 70 years - is it not? To the oligarchs amongst US Imperialism human rights of other citizens as defined in the UN Charter mean nothing. Look what they did to striking stellworkers via the Pinkertons - they had thousands massacred as they slept with their families in Tent City. Look what they have done to the indigenous peoples around the World that stood in their path to exorbitant riches not least those within their own country. Look what they did to the innocent workers and their families in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the Japanese military had conceded defeat to the Red Army. Look what they did to Vietnamese workers and their families in Da Nang and Hue provinces in the 3 month period before leaving Vietnam under peace treaty conditions when they dropped a greater tonnage of bombs than were dropped in the whole Second Word War II. You - me could go on for ever undoubtedly. What's different now? "What's To Be Done"? ///snowyone.
Hey isn't it just a few hundreds of thousands civilians they are killing, surely we can use the usual wetern bias and focus on a few killed in Iran or China in protests. For the Counterfeit News Network, these few deaths and protests are front page, for the hundreds of thousands of civilians the US and NATO are killing, Well that's just incidental news. Protest in Georgia - silence is deafening, protest in Iran - front page. All good fun, and the best part, the enlightened western people are waking up to it all, all due to the power of the internet, ironically initiated by the US defence industry.
The question is how long the ISAF alliance contries will stand the US-NATO war policy to act on civilians. In USA and in NATO countries it is about forbidden to talk about the issue, but in ISAF countiries not yet, even if in those countiries the US-NATO censorship is tighten its grip on media.