Every week or two there has been an atrocity story in the media from Afghanistan. A pattern has developed of the U.S. military passing the buck to NATO, NATO denying everything, NATO revising its lies as new evidence emerges, and NATO finally admitting the crime, with the blame going to a few rogue "bad apples." But you cannot have a war without atrocities, and the atrocities are the least of it. The urination on corpses is not as serious a crime as the creation of the corpses in the first place.
Myths about how a recent escalation in Iraq had turned a bad war into a good and successful war were applied by Obama to the completely different context of Afghanistan, in combination with familiar rhetoric about supporting troops, as if the war were for their benefit, and as if they had volunteered to be in it, even though they were being endlessly redeployed to a war that had nothing to do with the responsibilities they had signed up for and sworn an oath to, and even though their top cause of death was suicide. Sending more troops into war so that previous troops should not have killed themselves in vain is a hopeless endeavor. Escalating hopeless wars, supposedly in order to end them, actually serves only two purposes: it allows a president to appear more militaristic, and it enriches war profiteers.
"We did not choose this war," said Obama on May 1st, as if the crime of 9-11 had been continually compelling him to fight a war in Afghanistan year after year. But the war was not defensive. Afghanistan was not attacking the United States. The war was not authorized by the United Nations. And it was not declared by Congress, as no war has been since 1941. When Russia began talking about a preemptive strike against U.S. missile bases on Russia's western border this month, there was nothing the United States could say against the justifiability of such an act. Not after Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and the threats being made toward Iran.
The tissue of lies surrounding the war on Afghanistan is typical. Last year's bombing of Libya (also led, accompanied, and followed by lies) was intense and sustained, but U.S. drones are also being used to kill in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. They are used to kill individuals, including U.S. citizens, including children, including both identified individuals and people targeted because of a pattern of behavior that is deemed suspicious, and of course including many people who simply happen to be too close to an intended or accidental target. If drone strikes are law enforcement, the president or his designate is judge, jury, and executioner. The U.S. Congress and public are left in the dark. The nation where the strike is made is violated. If drone strikes are war, they are war with one army safely ensconced thousands of miles from the battlefield, and the other army blindfolded and handcuffed on the battlefield with their wives and children and grandparents along.
Rightwing columnist Charles Krauthammer opposes the use of drones within the United States, saying, "I don't want regulations, I don't want restrictions, I want a ban on this. Drones are instruments of war. The Founders had a great aversion to any instruments of war, the use of the military inside even the United States. It didn't like standing armies, it has all kinds of statutes of using the army in the country. A drone is a high-tech version of an old army and a musket. It ought to be used in Somalia to hunt bad guys but not in America. I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home."
Because of course there are no homes in Somalia. There are no anybodies in Somalia. There are only things you hunt in Somalia. Only 5% of humanity is humanity, and instruments of war are perfectly fine as a way to handle the other 95%.
War is not politics by other means. War is racism by other means.
We learned last week some details of another U.S. military official teaching the genocide of Muslims at an institution of supposedly higher learning in Virginia. In this case Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley had been teaching his students at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk to use the lessons of Hiroshima to wipe out whole cities at once in an effort to eliminate Muslims. These scandals are too common to be dismissed. Our public discourse is full of words like Muslim extremists, Islamofascists, terrorists -- words that demonize, dehumanize, and disguise. Illegal Alien. Underclass. Stakeholders. Defense Department. Humanitarian Intervention. Homeland. Targeted Strike. Collateral Damage. Evildoers. Status of Forces Agreement. Iranian Threat. We've now put people in prison in some cases (such as Tarek Mehanna), and murdered them in others (such as Tariq Ali ), for less that what Dooley has done, but those people were Muslim. Official policy is not unconnected from common prejudice.
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