Then there is the attempt to deny that the photos mean anything. Panetta, the top US commander in Afghanistan General John Allen, the White House, and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen all have issued statements that are variations on the same theme, insisting that the photographs "are not us" and in no way represent "the standards of the US military," the "core values of the United States" or the "principles and values that are the basis of our mission in Afghanistan."
This is all bunk; the pictures do not lie. One sees in these photos the staggering levels of brutality that characterize the Afghanistan war and the demoralization of the troops who are sent to wage it. These sorts of atrocities are historically associated with a breakdown in military command and discipline that are the inevitable product of colonial wars waged to subdue entire populations.
The photographs reveal not only the nature of the war, but more essentially, that of the society that produced it. This undoubtedly is a matter of deep concern within the American ruling elite, as the seemingly unending exposures of massacres, torture and crimes carried out by the American military abroad provoke growing alienation from the social and political order at home.
Who is responsible? Defiling human remains is a violation of the Geneva Conventions -- a war crime. But it, like countless other atrocities, is the product of a war of plunder and geo-political interests.
At the Nuremberg Tribunal following the Second World War, it was argued, by American prosecutors, that all of the crimes of the Nazis flowed from the Hitler regime's use of aggressive war as a means of achieving its political and strategic aims, precisely what the United States has done in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Up to this point, however, not one high-level American official has been held responsible for any of this.
These crimes have been carried out in the name of the American people, though the great mass of working people in the United States are outraged by and ashamed of these atrocities. It is high time for the revival of the struggle against war. This must be based upon a mass, independent movement of the working class against militarism's source, the capitalist profit system. This movement must include in its demands that those responsible for the crime of aggressive war -- in the Bush and Obama administrations -- be held accountable, both politically and legally.
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