Surely We Have Reached Yet Another New Low

Thursday, a NATO airstrike in northern Afghanistan mistakenly killed Afghan policemen and prompted calls for an investigation. [...] The Interior Ministry said seven policemen were killed, according to the AP.

  WaPo

Ooopsie. We do seem to be having trouble with our airstrikes.

The sixth day of the military offensive in southern Afghanistan proved the deadliest so far as four NATO troops were killed in bombings and gun battles during the painstaking push to take back a Taliban stronghold.

Geez. I thought - and you know where I'm going - 12 Afghani civilians trying to stay safe in their home as instructed but blasted by Marine rocket fire would beat 4 NATO troops for a deadly record. I guess not. NATO troops must be trumps.

Taliban resistance has appeared to intensify rather than diminish as U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers have taken control of key roads, bridges and the defunct government center.

Who would have thought?

The top military commander in southern Afghanistan, British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, said that the operation had reached the "end of the beginning" but that it would take about a month to be sure "we have secured that which needs to be secured."

Nick, you may recall, is expecting Marjan civilians to come out and show him where the IEDs are buried.

But, once we do secure Marja, we have a plan for the beginning of the end.

Frank Ruggiero, a U.S. civilian representative in southern Afghanistan, said a new administrator, Haji Zahir, will be installed along with a team of U.S. mentors.

  UPI

I guess that business of bringing democracy to the Iraqis spoiled our taste for spreading it any further.

Mark Sedwill, NATO's civilian administrator in Kabul, said security was the primary objective before conventional reconstruction objectives move forward.

"You've got to try to bring the conflict to the end before you really start making progress on classic development goals," he said.

We don't hire no dummies.

And speaking of airstrikes, I was wondering why after the first airstrike that killed civilians we didn't ban airstrikes as we banned the use of rockets after that first 12-civilian accident. I've found out why.

NATO forces in Afghanistan have resumed using a type of rocket that killed 12 civilians after concluding that the missile hit its intended target and did not veer off course, a NATO commander said on Tuesday.

  Reuters

Sometimes I can scarcely believe that these things are really happening.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force originally said two rockets from a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launched at insurgents veered about 300 meters off course.

[...]

Major General Nick Carter, the British commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, said on Tuesday the rockets had not veered off course.

"We know now that the missile arrived at the target it was supposed to arrive at. It wasn't a rogue missile. There was no technical fault in it," he told reporters in London, via video link from Afghanistan.

A young U.S. Marine Corps officer in charge in the area where the rockets were fired was protecting a number of civilians behind his positions, Carter said.

Even if that were true, it would make no sense. He launches rockets on a civilian household to protect civilians near him. But what other justification could they possibly come up with for killing a house full of civilians? The truth is they just weren't willing to give up the use of those rockets. Now, every civilian casualty will result from some hero Marine just trying to protect other civilians. I wonder it took them as long as two days to come up with that. They should have had that lie ready to roll when the first casualties went down.

"We are using those missiles again, although only one of them has been used since that event. The procedures that were applied to that first missile-firing were found to be as they should be," Carter said.

"We are being very careful though with any aerial-delivered munitions," he said.

[...]

A British Ministry of Defense spokesman said the soldiers who targeted the compound did not know there were civilians there. "It is not unusual for the insurgents to operate in compounds where there are civilians sheltering," he said.

Is that why we told the civilians to stay inside their houses and keep their heads down?

What could be more disgraceful - more disgusting – than the way they are handling this? Not even the Bush administration's raw bloodlust, I think.

Chris Floyd has a remarkable Mark-Twain-like article that you should read. An excerpt:

Like the missile launcher that stole the lives of five children in Marja, the whole militarist-corporatist system is functioning properly in nailing humanity on a cross of iron, diminishing and degrading life all around the world -- for money, for power and profit, for the power and profit of a tiny sliver of privileged elites, so they can strut and preen and gorge themselves in comfort, for a brief time, before they too, like all the rest of us, go down howling into darkness.

That is what it comes to. That is what the system is for. That is what the war is about. That is why the children died. That is why more will die tomorrow.