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We Are Still Killing Kids in Afghanistan
by James Glaser
It has been reported that Afghan President Hamid Karzai wept last year, as he pleaded with American troops to take more care to avoid killing civilians. We have been killing children in both Afghanistan and Iraq for years now. Today's deaths come from Afghanistan, and the report in The Independent says, "Nine civilians, including four children, were killed in Afghanistan when US planes dropped two 2,000 bombs on their mud home. Their deaths came after at least eight civilians were killed by Marines a day earlier. Two 2,000 pound bombs on one mud house seems to be a bit of over-kill to me, and with the foul-ups we have had in intelligence throughout this war, we should never be dropping any bomb on any civilian's home. Somebody fired a rocket at a NATO base in Afghanistan. Then somebody else saw two guys with AK-47s run into this house, so we dropped to of the "big ones" on that house, and we ended up killing a bunch of women and children. Tell me, who are the terrorists? A United Nations spokeswoman said 52 people died there. "There," was the Afghan village of Niazi Qala, 50 miles south of Kabul. American AC-130 gunships, which employ machine guns and heavy cannons, strafed four villages. They attacked quite a big area, four villages, and you cannot just assume that everyone there is the enemy. A few days ago it was reported that American forces apologized for killing nine children in the Ghazni Province of Afghanistan. Today the US Military reports killing six children in the neighboring Province of Paktia. US officials said they would not be deterred by civilian casualties. "The U.S. Military violated international law in Afghanistan by indiscriminately dropping cluster bombs on populated areas" said Human Rights Watch in the report released yesterday. Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, denied that the United States indiscriminately uses cluster bombs and faulted the Taliban and al Qaeda for conducting military operations in populated areas. So there you have it folks, it wasn't our fault we killed those children, it was those bad guys hiding in with the kids, so you can see we just had to kill those kids to kill the adults. There, doesn't that make you feel a lot better? An American Missile, identified from the remains of its serial number, was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a Baghdad market on Friday night that killed at least 62 Iraqis. The codes on the foot long shrapnel shard, seen by Independent correspondent Robert Fisk at the scene of the bombing in the Shu'ale district, came from a weapon manufactured in Texas by the world's biggest producer of "Smart" armaments. All of these examples are from columns I have written over the years, and it gets pretty sickening to have to write about the children our military kills year after year. I am a dad, and I can tell you if you kill my child, I will hate you till the day I die. More than that, I'll come after you any way I can. Well I think that goes for all the "dads" in this world. The United States has been killing thousands and thousands of children for the last 50 years. And some people wonder why "they" hate us! |
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