Morally Bankrupt: Collective Punishment of Children in Afghanistan

Remember Bradley Manning? He's the Army intelligence analyst who's been in detention since July, 2010, just now reaching the stage of his pre-trial hearing, for allegedly leaking military secrets. The most sensational of these secrets was the helicopter video known as "Collateral Murder" which recorded U.S. troops gleefully shooting down on unarmed civilians including journalists in Baghdad. At one point a van with children in it comes to the rescue of the wounded, so they shoot them, too. Ethan McCord was a soldier on the ground that day, and he radios in the information that there are children injured whom he is trying to rescue. "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle," we hear one of the morally bankrupt soldiers in the helicopter reply.

Fast forward to March 11, 2012 and the massacre of 17 civilians, including 9 children. Most accounts of the night raid in Panjwae district of southern Kandahar province identify the killer -- Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, supposedly acting alone -- but fail to identify the victims. Here, thanks to CNN reporter Sara Snider, are their names:

Mohammad Dawood Abdullah

Khudaidad Mohmmad Jama

Nazar Mohammad Taj Mohammad

Payendo

Robina

Sahtarina Sultan Mohammad

Zuhra Abdul Hameed

Nazia Doost Mohammad

Mosooma Mohammad Wazir

Farida Mohammad Wazir

Palwasha Mohammad Wazir

Nabia Mohammad Wazir

Asmatullah Mohammad Wazir

Faizullah Mohammad Wazir

Esa Mohammad Mohammad Husain

Akhtar Mohammad Murad Ali

Some of those slain, loaded into the back of a truck following their collective punishment.

Many outlets of corporate-owned media in the U.S. continue to churn out a false tale of one man run amok, but independent investigation by Afghan officials and some brave journalists have uncovered troubling reports from residents. From Mirwais Khan and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press:

Several Afghans near the villages where an American soldier is alleged to have killed 16 civilians say U.S. troops lined them up against a wall after a roadside bombing and told them that they, and even their children, would pay a price for the attack. 

Residents have given similar accounts to both The Associated Press and to Afghan government officials about an alleged bombing in the vicinity, which they said occurred March 7 or 8, and left U.S. troops injured. The residents also said they are convinced that the slayings of the 16 villagers just days later was in retaliation for that bomb.

From Bill Rigby of Reuters:

The lawyer defending the U.S. soldier accused of murdering 17 Afghan civilians claims U.S. authorities are blocking his ability to investigate the incident.

John Henry Browne, the lawyer for Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, said U.S. forces in Afghanistan have prevented his team from interviewing injured civilians at a hospital in Kandahar, and are allowing other potential witnesses to scatter, making it difficult to track them down.

Yalda Hakim of Australia’s SBS network spoke to survivors in the villages a few days after the attacks. Her video report may be seen here on CNN's website. An eight year old survivor told how her father was shot after trying to defend her mother, who was being dragged by the hair.

 

Others? From the AP report:

Naek Mohammad, who lives in Mokhoyan, told the AP that a U.S. soldier, through a translator, said: "I know you are all involved and you support the insurgents. So now, you will pay for it -- and your children will pay for this."

Here's another child who was injured but survived:

Hakim's interview of the Afghan Army general investigating the incident turned up reports that villagers heard a helicopter overhead during the shootings, and saw Americans with headlamps standing outside the houses during the shootings.

Will the truth come to light? Not if the moral bankruptcy of male bonding does its job, says blogger Kathleen Barry, author of Unmaking War, Remaking Men. She reports:

President Obama claimed "it appeared you had a lone gunman who acted on his own," not wanting it compared to the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam war.

Barry says guys stick together after a violent spree. Here's more from Obama, as reported by Reuters:

"In no way is this representative of the enormous sacrifices that our men and women have made in Afghanistan," Obama said. But he added, "It does signal the importance of us transitioning in accordance with my plans that Afghans are taking more of the initiative in security."

A widowed survivor speaking from behind her burka told Hakim she would like to take more initiative. She feels only that she wants to use her bare hands to kill those responsible  after watching her husband's murder:

And that is why the U.S. morally bankrupt in Afghanistan. We haven't protected women, children, or even U.S. interests. And that is also why collective punishment is not only wrong, it is stupid.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is the longest in our history, with no end in sight.

Beware Pressing Reset Button On Moral Authority On The Ides of March

Judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason.

Ah, hubris. The two celebrity spokesmen of the Anglo-American empire had a chummy time stroking each other's egos today. Neither the Kandahar massacre nor the Ides of March appeared to faze them a bit. As Business Week reported it:

The prime minister [Cameron] responded by all but endorsing Obama’s re-election in his own nine-minute toast. He cited the U.S.-led coalition effort in Libya, the surge in Afghanistan and the troop withdrawal from Iraq. The president “has pressed the reset button on the moral authority of the entire free world,” he said.

Fucking A. Our male heads of state are now so powerful they command the very moral universe to do their bidding. Like in a video game, all they have to do is press reset, and all the dead souls that are marked down on their side of the ledger lift them up to be exalted by us commoners.

This is an old phenomenon.

The Ides of March put me in mind of Shakespeare's opening scene for Julius Caesar, in which the 99% are standing around in their dress clothes and are scorned by a couple of patricians for waiting to cheer triumphant Caesar when "many a time and oft" they had cheered Pompey, whom Caesar has just slain.

Source: Daily Mail, UK

I imagine what the Bard might say about my friends and countrymen who still fawn over Obama and pledge their fealty, joining their fortune to his, basking in the supposed glory of raining down death all over the globe:

"You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things"

Like the poor fool who snapped during his 4th deployment and went about murdering children, tipping the longest invisible war on Afghanistan into the public arena long enough for a wave of revulsion to sweep over us.

It didn't last long. Before 48 hours had passed we were back to the gross canard of a moral reset button, and could get on with the real business of government-media-weapons production.

But the titan stumbles once again. In what Ralph Lopez blogging at WarisaCrime.org described as a

bombshell report which is to Afghanistan what the Pentagon Papers were to Vietnam, "Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort" [Lt. Col. Daniel] Davis all but calls his top commanders skilled, habitual, wouldn't-know-truth-if-it-hit-them-in-the-head bald-faced liars about the situation in Afghanistan.

See, the empire needs a permanent base in Afghanistan, and to control Pakistan, in order to capture the central, plummy prize: Iran. For what reason? Why, to make you safer.

So ours is not to reason why the Boston subway that moves the 99% to work and school is being slashed again while the CEO of Bank of America earned $6 million+ this year.

Ours is not to reason why the U.S. can have South Korea deny entry to three Vets for Peace organizers headed to defend Jeju Island from being entombed in concrete so Aegis nuclear destroyers can ply the South China Sea.

Ours is not to reason why Bradley Manning is charged with aiding Al Qaida when George W. Bush undoubtedly and Barack Obama certainly have aided all violent terrorist organizations by continually creating new militantly grieving survivors of aerial bombing and night raids and depleted uranium. And rape. Etc. (Besides which, Al Qaida? Really? We are still the laughing stock of the world for our colossal ignorance of facts on the ground.)

Ours is but to do and die in the graveyard of illusory empire.