US air strikes kill Afghan civilians (including a four year old girl)

[Karmadillo]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/afpa-j18.shtml

Attacks by US warplanes this week killed up to six Afghan civilians, including a four-year-old girl, and left another 16 wounded. The incidents in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province have again underscored the grim human cost of the military escalation ordered by the Obama administration.

At least nine of the wounded reached the Kandahar City hospital. Photographs and television footage from the facility showed badly wounded women and children wrapped in bandages.

The Wednesday night attacks were prompted after a US foot patrol, apparently by special forces troops, drew fire from insurgents. The ground troops called for close air support, bringing in attack helicopters and other warplanes.

“I was at home last night when our house was bombed,” a resident of the Kandahar village of Tawalla in the Shah Wali Kot district, one of two hit by air strikes, told Reuters television. Two of his family members—including the four-year-old girl, were killed, he said, while 12 others were wounded.

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As the Times acknowledged: “Over the past few years, NATO and United States operations have killed and wounded thousands of Afghans. This has contributed to growing opposition among Afghans to foreign forces in Afghanistan and to the government of President Hamid Karzai.”

It is noteworthy that even the Times, which has supported the Afghan war and Obama’s “surge,” is forced to admit that US-led occupation forces are widely hated for the violence they have unleashed on the population of Afghanistan over the last eight years.

more...

[theoldman]

1. Any war where the ratio of civilians killed is greater than military killed

creates a problem. This situation is worse in Iraq than any of our previous wars. It is now becoming worse in Afghanistan.

[kiva]

2. This is why, despite the hopes of many, we are not the ones

to help the Afghan people It's a noble goal, but as long as our bombs kill them they will not respond to our cries of outrage over laws and customs that treat women like chattel. We need to leave, then try (with others in the world community) to effect change in that country.

[CrispyQ]

3. Change you can believe in.

snip...

The attack comes barely two weeks after the newly installed senior US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, issued a directive to American forces demanding that unit commanders “scrutinize” and “limit” air strikes against Afghans’ homes that inevitably result in civilian casualties.

The order came in response to the air strikes in western Farah province that massacred an estimated 140 civilians, resulting in mass riots and protests.

Yet the attack Wednesday evening follows by barely a week an earlier air strike in southeastern Ghazani province that killed eight civilians, including two women and two children.

It is clear that McChrystal’s directive was for propaganda purposes and has had no more effect than a similar order issued to US forces by his ousted predecessor General David McKiernan last September. The dependence of American forces on air strikes is a measure of their status as an occupying force operating amid a hostile population from which the insurgents are drawn.

more...

Meanwhile, across the border in Pakistan the US drone war continues. On Friday, a missile fired from a US drone struck a village in North Waziristan, a tribal area, killing at least five people. This brings to 48 the number of drone attacks launched by the US since last September. According to figures recorded by the Pakistani government, approximately 470 Pakistanis have been killed in these attacks, the majority of them civilians.
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Iraq will always be Bush's war. But Af-Pac is now Obama's war.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. The politicians, the generals, and the apologists will teill us it was for their own good.

Along with the usual programmed "regrets" and excuses.

[timeforpeace]

5. Bush's fault.

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. Roh Roh USA numba one . .

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