Posted on 12/04/2001 9:53:48 AM PST by truth4all
Very good article below by a British journalist in Afghanistan doing his job and reporting events that we never hear about in "The New York Times", "Washington Post" or CNN etc. Civilian deaths are extremely high and mounting. High tech weapons make little difference if you bomb indiscriminately. In Vietnam we destroyed the village in order to save it, here we destroy the village in the hopes of killing a few terrorists and sacrifice dozens of innocents in the process. Please visit my nonprofit website.
Exposing the Cancer Indu$try.
Please Click Here
Thank you. Gavin.
A village is destroyed. And America
says nothing happened
War on terrorism
Richard Lloyd Parry in Kama Ado, Afghanistan
04 December 2001
The village where nothing happened is reached by a steep climb at the end of a rattling three-hour drive along a stony road. Until nothing happened here, early on the morning of Saturday and again the following day, it was a large village with a small graveyard, but now that has been reversed. The cemetery on the hill contains 40 freshly dug graves, unmarked and identical. And the village of Kama Ado has ceased to exist.
Many of the homes here are just deep conical craters in the earth. The rest are cracked open, split like crushed cardboard boxes. At the moment when nothing happened, the villagers of Kama Ado were taking their early morning meal, before sunrise and the beginning of the Ramadan fast. And there in the rubble, dented and ripped, are tokens of the simple daily lives they led.
A contorted tin kettle, turned almost inside out by the blast; a collection of charred cooking pots; and the fragments of an old-fashioned pedal-operated sewing machine. A split metal chest contains scraps of children's clothes in cheap bright nylon.
In another room are the only riches that these people had, six dead cows lying higgledy-piggledy and distended by decay. And all this is very strange because, on Saturday morning – when American B-52s unloaded dozen of bombs that killed 115 men, women and children – nothing happened.
We know this because the US Department of Defence told us so. That evening, a Pentagon spokesman, questioned about reports of civilian casualties in eastern Afghanistan, explained that they were not true, because the US is meticulous in selecting only military targets associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network. Subsequent Pentagon utterances on the subject have wobbled somewhat, but there has been no retraction of that initial decisive statement: "It just didn't happen."
So God knows what kind of a magic looking-glass I stepped through yesterday, as I travelled out of the city of Jalalabad along the desert road to Kama Ado. From the moment I woke up, I was confronted with the wreckage and innocent victims of high-altitude, hi-tech, thousand-pound nothings.
The day began at the home of Haji Zaman Gamsharik, the pro-Western anti-Taliban mujahedin commander who is being discreetly supplied and funded by the US government. The previous day I had followed him around Jalalabad's mortuary, where seven mutilated corpses were being laid out – mujahedin soldiers of Commander Zaman who had been killed when US bombs hit the government office in which they were sleeping. And now, it had happened again.
There they were in the back of three pick-up trucks – seven more bloody bodies of seven more mujahedin, killed when the guesthouse in which they were sleeping in the village of Landi Khiel was hit by bombs at 6.30am yesterday morning.
Commander Zaman is a proud, haughty man who fought in the mountains for years against the Soviet Union, but I've never seen him look so vulnerable. "I sent them there myself yesterday,'' was all he could say. "I sent them for security.''
But the commander provided us with mujahedin escorts of our own, and we set off down the road to Landi Khiel. We found the ruins of the office where the first lot of soldiers had died, and the guesthouse where they perished the previous morning. And there, in the ruins of a family house, was a small fragment of nothing. It was the tail-end of a compact bomb. It bore the words "Surface Attack Guided Missile AGM 114", and a serial number: 232687. It was half-buried in the remains of the straw roof of a house where three men had died: Fazil Karim, his brother Mahmor Ghulab, and his nephew Hasiz Ullah. "They were a family, just ordinary people," said Haji Mohammed Nazir, the local elder who was accompanying us. "They were not terrorists – the terrorists are in the mountains, over there.''
So we drove on in the direction of the White Mountains, where hundreds of al-Qa'ida members, and perhaps even Osama bin Laden himself, are hiding in the Tora Bora cave complex. A B-52 was high in the sky; a billow of black smoke was visible, blooming out of the valley. Something, surely, was happening over there. And then we reached the ruins of Kama Ado. Among the pathetic remains I found only one sinister object - an old leather gun holster with an ammunition belt. It is conceivable that a handful of al-Qa'ida members had been spending the night there, and that US targeters learnt of their presence.
But after 22 years of war, almost every Afghan home contains some military relic, and the villagers swore they hadn't seen Arab or Taliban fighters for a fortnight. Certainly there could not have been enough terrorists to fill the 40 fresh graves. One person told me a few holes contained not intact people, but simply body parts.
We had been warned that white faces would meet an angry reception in the village where nothing happened, but I encountered despair and bafflement. I had only one moment of real fear, when an American B-52 flew overhead. We halted our convoy, clambered out of the cars and trotted into the fields on either side. The plane did a slow circle; I was conscious of electronic eyes looking down on us, the only traffic on the road. Then, to everyone's relief, the bomber veered away.
Before we left the city, an American colleague in Jalalabad telephoned the Pentagon and informed them of our plans to travel to the village where nothing happened. I can't help wondering, in these looking-glass times, what that B-52 would have done to our convoy if that telephone call had not been made. Perhaps nothing would have happened to me too.
Here's one for you.
Thanks, Deny.
But Mum and Dad taught me two wrongs don't make a right.
Oh.
You're Russian?
Or is it just, 'hey, lynchmob! Wait for me!'
No other nation contributed significantly to the defeat of Japan. The Soviet Union? No. The UK? They were still retreating in Burma well into 1944. The Chinese? The Japanese were still advancing wherever they pleased well into 1945.
The Dutch, the French? Hardly.
The Australians? Fought bravely in New Guinea. Zero significant impact.
The US ALONE brought down the Japanese.
You're welcome.
You want me to display leadership here? What do you mean by that? You want me to say "Now, now, Freepers. Stop all this warmongering. There is no reason to go to war. We ought to just issue the suspected terrorists arrest warrants and maybe they will turn themselves in for trial. Maybe if we are nice to them and treat them with respect, they won't hurt us anymore."
Instead, you post ugly Nazi paraphernalia and attempt to paint us with the broad brush of Nazism simply for wanting to avenge the events of 9/11. That is reprehensible and shows a lack of class and leadership on YOUR part. It is good that we did not have this attitude in WW2 or Australia WOULD be a part of the Japanese Empire today.
Yeah, war is hell. If there was a way to conduct a war in which only the enemy were killed and that innocent civilians would be unaffected, I would support it. But there is no way we can conduct a war in this fashion. And as far as nuclear weapons are concerned, we used them in Japan and it can be argued that many lives were saved by bringing an early end to the war. What is the better way. To have 100,000 people instantly killed and have a surrender? Or have over 5,000,000 killed over a long period of time in a bloody war that would have resulted in all of Japan being reduced to smoky ruins?
Keep your disgusting Nazi paraphernalia to yourself. How's that for leadership?
Oh please. That tired old cliche is so lame, especially when misapplied, as it often it. What we are doing in Afghanistan is not "wrong" so your silly equation is thrown out the window. It must be nice to sit back in Australia, thousands of miles from the action, and critique how the Americans defend themselves (and the world) from terrorist scum. I wonder how you would feel if Melbourne or Sydney came under the kind of terrorist act that New York City sustained on 9/11.
Overall I think the United States has done a tremendous job in this war. Think of the thousands upon thousands of bombs we have dropped since this thing started ON TARGET. It is inevitable that a few of these bombs would stray off course and inadvertently hit some civilian areas. That is a shame but just 20 years ago, the civilian deaths would be multiplied by a factor of at least 10. Unfortunately, enemies of the United States will use the few bombs that landed off course to paint us as war criminals. These critics must be put in their places immediately. This nation has bent over backwards to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties.
What currently matters to me are the lives and safety of my family, friends, and those who share my cultural background. Those who would dance and cheer at the deaths of my fellow Americans get no support from me.
I would not dance at their deaths, but I would not cry either
Now THAT'S comedy!
Exactly.
My sympathy is buried under a smouldering pile of rubble. No decent person enjoys the death of innocents ( if- big if ) that is what happened, but war is a bloody, awful business.
They should have thought twice before treading on us....
This is the United States of America. The same Country that saved you convict's asses in WWII. If you think war is so bad why did your Country send troops to Viet Nam?
Under George W. Bush we will no longer sit on our ass and offer lip service ("we will find the people responsible and bring them to justice.") as did "the gutless one".
War is hell and there is no such thing as a "civilian" in terms of modern warfare. There are combatants and non-combatants. Non-combatants comprise of that sector of the population that make up the logistical support in any war effort and in my view represent as legitimate a target for destruction and obliteration as is an infantry man with a rifle.
We can be magnanimous after the enemy totally and completely surrenders, until then there can be no quarter given. The enemy knows quite well what the consequences of engaging in or supporting aggression is.
I also subscribe to the idea that a population of a nation is responsible for the leaders they maintain in power and follow and are therefore responsible for said actions of that leadership. Just as the Germans were responsible for Hitler.
SamAdams76: 5
Byron the Aussie: -7
Comparing us to Nazis because we want to see terrorist networks destroyed is a very low blow. It's ironic too, because the only reason Hitler and the Nazis were able to wreak so much havoc in the world was because good people sat around and did nothing to stop him until it was too late.
The events of 9/11 have given us a golden opportunity and the moral obligation to destroy terrorism before it is able to take hold and cause even more carnage. It means that we, the United States, must conduct unrestricted warfare against these terrorist groups and the nations who harbor them. We are beyond negotiations. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of Neville Chamberlain. There will be no "peace in our time" until we eliminate this terrorist scum from the earth. We should not attempt to appease these bastards or seek some sort of co-existence with them. We need to root them out, wherever they may go. We need to go to war against the nations that harbor them and must achieve total victory. The surrender of the nations harboring these terrorists must be unconditional. As the victors, we will have a responsibility to ensure that the conquered nations are able to rule themselves, and give them some help along the way, as we did with Germany and Japan in WW2. The long term payoff will be worth it. Look at how successful Germany and Japan are today!
The United States has nothing to be ashamed about. We conducted ourselves honorably after our victory in WW2 and have nothing to apologize for. We are conducting the present war against terrorism honorably and again, we have nothing to apologize for. Is this loud enough and clear enough for you Byron_The_Aussie?
Thanks.
No, stupid.
After a Hellfire missile attack on your village there's only bits and pieces left to bury.
That's a lie.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.