Opinion Editorials, May 2009

Time to Stop US Wars in Middle East and Afghanistan

By Paul J Balles

Redress, May 21, 2009



Reuters reports "Ninety-three children and 25 adult women are among a list of 140 names of Afghans who villagers say were killed in a battle and US air strikes last week, causing a crisis between Washington and its Afghan allies."

American Colonel Greg Julian disputed the numbers, saying: "Well, I could give you 140 names too. The problem is there is no evidence of that number of graves... Are those real people? Did they ever actually exist? I can give you a list of 53 girls’ names with their ages."

The politicians argue: "The air strikes are not acceptable," Afghan Presideny Hamid Karzai said. "Terrorism is not in Afghan villages, not in Afghan homes. And you cannot defeat terrorists by air strikes."

"But White House National Security Advisor James Jones said ... that US forces need air power to protect themselves: 'We can't fight with one hand tied behind our back.'"

As Dan Spielberg points out in Lew Rockwell:

Barack Obama sold himself to the country as someone who would bring massive “change” to the policies of the US government, but of course when it comes to the favourite activity of that cancerous organism, warring against wholly innocent civilian populations in foreign countries, there will be no change.

Ron Paul makes the point: "We are inciting the very terrorism and extremism we are trying to stop." By bombing Afghans and Pakistanis, adds Paul, "We are helping the Taliban and other enemies to actually gain numbers and strength"

Meanwhile the US Congress has introduced bills to increase the aid to Pakistan from 500 million to 1.5 billion US dollars at a time when the USA is nearly bankrupt and doesn't have enough money to support Americans at home.

None of this can possibly help the USA. As Paul observes: “We are adding to the numbers of our enemies and increasing the threats to our security here at home." When will America learn that its actions are creating tomorrow's terrorists?

According to Muriel Kane, "Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal will be taking over command of US forces in Afghanistan, pending Senate approval." McChrystal headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that previously reported to Dick Cheney, with no congressional oversight.

Kane notes: "Famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh recently described the JSOC as an "executive assassination wing" controlled for many years by the office of former Vice-President Dick Cheney."

Jeremy Scahill says: "Pentagon officials are spinning another cover-up," following the bombing that killed up to 130 people in Afghanistan. He also reports: "...as many as 2,000 [Afghans] poured into the streets of the provincial capital, chanting ‘Death to America’.”

Disgustingly, the Pentagon attempted to blame the Taliban for the murders, saying that they had done the killing with grenades.

Neo-conservative commentator Mark Steyn writes in America Alone, "If you can't outbreed the enemy, cull `em." That's an attitude Americans have learned well. The US military in the Middle East practices it regularly.

Chris Hedges drew a shocking word picture of American involvement in Afghanistan:

The bodies of dozens, perhaps well over a hundred, women, children and men, their corpses blown into bits of human flesh by iron fragmentation bombs dropped by US warplanes in a village in the western province of Farah, illustrates the futility of the Afghan war.

Hedges conveys the lesson of his picture:

We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat.

It's time to stop making excuses for American military barbarism abroad. It's time to stop creating terrorists by US terrorism in the Middle East.

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.