Obama Orders More Mass Murder in Afghanistan

Three days after Barack Obama became Commander-in-Chief…

U.S. Special Forces raided a village in Afghanistan’s Tagab Valley, 30 miles north of Kabul. The U.S. says they killed 19 insurgents, but Afghan news reports say 25 civilians were killed, and local residents say U.S. troops bombed the village from the sky, that U.S. troops blew up five homes at 2 am, and that there were no Taliban fighters in the area. Five of the dead were women (the Taliban and their allies, reactionary Islamic fundamentalists, do not have women fighters). Last year, the UN reported 2,100 civilians were killed by U.S./NATO forces in Afghanistan.
On the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, American missiles killed 18 people in two villages in Pakistan. Unmanned American drones like the ones called Predators, regularly strike in the middle of the night in the border regions. In this case, reports of casualties ranged from a dozen to more than 20 dead and wounded, including three dead children. Pakistan’s government says that dozens of U.S. strikes in 2008 killed 301 civilians (and 28 Taliban-aligned fighters).

Afghanistan is not “the right war,” it was never mainly a response to 9/11, and it is NOT about “protecting Americans.” It is a war of mass civilian death in the service of U.S. empire. When Barack Obama orders missile strikes on Pakistan, and 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan, that’s what that is about.

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