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Mounting Civilian Casualties "Silently
The latest bombing in Afghanistan killed at least nine Afghan civilians, including six children. Here are a few excerpts from the report:
"Nine civilians including six children were killed in a NATO air strike targeting a Taliban position in restive southern Afghanistan, the provincial governor's office said on Thursday."Six children and three women were killed and another three civilian men were wounded," he said."
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"Ehsanullah, an elder from Khoshal village, where the strike took place, earlier told AFP that Haji Kot Aka's house was hit late Wednesday."They had four guests at home when the bombing took place. The bomb killed Aka, his wife, four children and three of the guests. One of the guests was wounded," he said.
Civilian casualties are a sensitive issue in Afghanistan, creating a rift between President Hamid Karzai's government and international forces as well as resentment on the ground against foreign troops." Here is a section from my op-ed piece last May on Mr. Obama's presidency and the mounting casualties in Afghanistan:
reporton May 15, 2009:
"The number of civilians killed by the American air strikes in Farah Province last week may never be fully known. But villagers, including two girls recovering from burn wounds, described devastation that officials and human rights workers are calling the worst episode of civilian casualties in eight years of war in Afghanistan."
The report also includes the disagreement over the exact number of "Civilian Casualties' in Afghanistan by our military airstrike:
"Government officials have accepted handwritten lists compiled by the villagers of 147 dead civilians. An independent Afghan human rights group said it had accounts from interviews of 117 dead. American officials say that even 100 is an exaggeration but have yet to issue their own count."
Does it really matter - the difference between 147 and 117 or just 100 when it comes to children, grandmothers"innocent lives lost in a war with no well-defined objectives or plans? If for some it indeed does matter, then here is a more specific and detailed report:
"A copy of the government's list of the names, ages and father's names of each of the 140 dead was obtained by Reuters earlier this week. It shows that 93 of those killed were children -- the youngest eight days old -- and only 22 were adult males."
Maybe releasing the photographs of the nameless unrepresented victims of these airstrikes should be as important as those of torture. Because, from what I see, they and their loss of lives have been reduced to some petty number to fight about.
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Now I am going to ask the same question: Where are these photographs in the no-coverage coverage of Afghan casualties by our simply despicable mainstream media? Why don't they show us the real ugly face of our aimless, objective-less, but nonetheless vicious assault tagged as a War on Terror in Afghanistan?
Remember this picture from the Vietnam War?
See the image here
The picture above, and many similar pictures and war footage, helped shape our public opinion in regard to another senseless war and vicious assaults on civilians. It helped open our people's eyes to the real horrors of war. It led to mounting pressure from our people demanding an end to these atrocities.
Well, after searching and searching, and searching more I found only a couple of pictures depicting the real face of our war in Afghanistan. For reasons I am sure you all are aware of our corporate media-Government Joint Venture, and in fact many pseudo alternative ones, don't want our public to see these pictures, since they would speak more than a thousand words and help shape opinions again.
Here is one of the "real faces' of our war in Afghanistan:
See the image here
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