The Kill Team

One of the objections I've voiced, regarding the use of private mercenaries rather than our military is that when US soldiers commit such gruesome offenses, pictures of which Rolling Stone and Der Spiegel have just published, there are sometimes consequences. When mercenaries do, as Blackwater did in Iraq, there seldom are and we tend not to hear about them.

The photos taken in Afghanistan, where we're engaged once again in winning the "hearts and minds" of the population by slaughtering their children and playing like ghouls with their mutilated bodies, are horrifying and it's small consolation that at least some of the drug crazed bastards who did it will face serious but barely adequate punishment -- but at least it's punishment.

Perhaps you've never seen what someone looks like after being hit by a rocket fired from above. It's pretty hard to tell whether the grizzly pile of bones and guts was an innocent bystander or a "terrorist" but the sight is far more terrifying when we see American soldiers wetting their knives in the blood, cutting fingers from dead kids' hands for trophies, displaying severed heads of "savages" and planting guns on innocent bodies to justify their having been slaughtered and mutilated and displayed on the side of the road -- to win hearts and minds, of course.

The men of Bravo company, we're told, had been considering "bagging Haji's" for a while it seems and eventually the bloodlust won out. Stupidly, they took photos and kept souveniers. I've decided not to show the photos. If you choose to click on the Rolling Stone link, please be sure you aren't the sensitive type, but you can avoid projectile vomiting and read about it on Raw Story.

There's no happy ending and the occupation of Afghanistan and the constant civilian casualties continue, but as a small degree of justice, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock who is seen posing with a dead boy, deliberately murdered for sport, has been sentenced to 24 years. Calvin Gibbs, a squad leader in the same Platoon , along with five other soldiers, pleaded guilty last week to lesser crimes in exchange for their testimony.

Who will pass judgment on us? Who will forgive us?

The Odd Couple

No, not Felix and Oscar, but Joe and John: Lieberman and McCain. Putative Democrat and the Republican quondam candidate. Often appearing to be on the same side, their opinions drive us to confusion and not to any conclusion.

The right wing outrage machine has been like a chorus of vuvuzelas, blaring accusations that the classified rules of engagement instituted by General McChrystal on his own initiative were in fact forced on him by president Obama and his opposition, despite his sworn public testimony to the contrary, was the reason he was relieved of command. I suspect Joe Lieberman agrees, although I know he knows better.

The policy of trying to reduce the heavy civilian casualties so as to give the US less of the appearance of an invading horde bent on its own objectives and with no concern for innocent life or limb, is misguided says Lieberman; as though to say we shouldn't be concerned to appear as liberators with the best interests of Afghanistan at heart. We shouldn't care that people whose children we've cavalierly blown to hell aren't going to try to make our efforts any easier and so he's advising General Petraeus to shoot first and ask questions later. It's hurting our morale, says he as though 9 years of getting nowhere can be blamed on being the kind of nation we're supposed to be and more importantly as though it were president Obama's fault for worrying too much about worthless Muslim lives.

Perhaps John McCain's statement that even another ten years of war may not be too much to ask of our country, fits with Lieberman's disinterest in having the country we tell ourselves we're helping on our side. Ten more years of shooting up innocent families at weddings, on the streets, in their cars and in their homes will likely draw us into many more decades of war, and that McCain thinks this war is self justifying if not actually morally or functionally satisfying is not beyond conjecture. Another ten years, another 3, 4, 5 trillion dollars and who knows how many more dead: economic and moral collapse -- that should make the country crazy and enough to elect another Republican.

Pretty clever, and to think I thought McCain was an idiot.

Tough guys don't talk

Prisoner exchanges have occurred throughout history during wars hot and cold and although I may be wrong, talk about humanitarian gestures "emboldening the enemy" don't seem to have prevented them. Such talk has certainly been the backbone of George Bush's policies toward anyone with whom we happen to be engaged militarily however and indeed even the niceties of the Geneva Accords or the demands of basic human decency have been scoffed at because they would "embolden the enemy." Of course an enemy who is quite willing to blow himself to bits to kill you is hard to depict as lacking anything in the boldness department, but we're talking about a George Bush policy. Brain sold separately.

When the Taliban offered the release of the female Korean prisoners, their families dared to hope that Karzai and Bush would be able to negotiate the release of the women in exchange for the release of imprisoned Afghani women held by the US. It appears their hopes have been dashed. I have no idea whether Karzai could have been persuaded to make a deal, but he'd never be able to persuade Bush who is determined not to "embolden the enemy" no matter how many women have to die. Tough guys don't talk - at least not in the world of George Bush and cowboy movies.

As I said, they've got a vast reservoir of bold to draw from and every chance we pass up to appear to be less of the amoral monster the world see us as will help them spread it around and around the world. While George W. Bush is allowed to continue to make us as popular as Satan himself, the Taliban and al Qaeda and their allies don't need to spend a dime on recruiting.

I'm not of course apologising for the pigs who take women as hostages. Whether or not these poor women survive, I hope their captors find the 72 virgins who await them in heaven and may each virgin be a sadist named Hassan.

The eve of destruction

"We are truly sorry for the innocent lives lost in this attack."

How many times have we heard this phrase and how many times has it referred to events in the middle east and Afghanistan and Viet Nam? "Coalition" spokesman Major Chris Belcher expressed his apologies for the deaths yesterday of seven schoolchildren who were in what they called an Al Qaeda safe house. They had no information that they were there, he said.

"This is another example of Al-Qaeda using the protective status of a mosque, as well as innocent civilians, to shield themselves."

We've heard that one too in the context of the undying war between Israel and its neighbors and it's undoubtedly accurate, although whether the Western public accepts blaming various Islamic insurgencies, their attackers or both has much to do with whose side they already are on in the various conflicts. The lesson we do not seem to be learning however is that we are not fighting the kind of war our weapons and tactics were designed for and thus civilian casualties - many civilian casualties are inevitable. There are no lines, no massed troops, no trenches, no territory to be taken and yet the fatuous language about "hearts and minds" we have had to listen to for half a century continues, despite the fact that killing children, destroying houses and laying waste to the infrastructure of a country does nothing but harden the hatred and arouse the resolve to throw us out or to die trying.

Still countries like Israel and the US have not begun to see beyond their need for immediate security and beyond traditional views of victory or surrender and they continue to put their faith in weapons designed to fight armies and navies and nations. The weaponry backing up our claim to be the most powerful nation on Earth was designed to destroy civilizations, to annihilate nations and by intimidation, prevent it being done to us. They are useless against a diverse and widespread culture. You cannot nuke peoples hearts and minds or blow away their hatred of western political and commercial culture; its heresy and its history and its avarice for their resources. If you are indeed come to save the world and you kill my children, I will hate you. None of us are different.

No matter how much of the hatred toward the Western world has much or nothing to do with our religions, our secular governments, our attitudes toward women and sexuality, we were not attacked by suicide pilots because of what we do at home, but because of what is seen as imperialism; as interference; as aggression. By doing what we are doing we have converted the few who sympathized with us to radicalism and hatred toward us. There can be no other outcome but tragedy now. We cannot pacify Afghanistan of Iraq with violence, we cannot withdraw without loosing the monster we have created on the people of those countries and perhaps on our own. We cannot kill them all and I fear that George the Bastard has set us all on a course for destruction from which we can no longer deviate.