If you put a lit kitchen match to an insect it will kill it. Within moments it will be consumed by the flame, it’s body parts melted, charred and reduced to cinders, and the creature itself will be destroyed. Your actions would be the cause of a horrible death for the insect, death ushered in with terror and agony beyond imagination—death in a fiery hell of your making. But, if you’re like most, you likely wouldn’t feel much remorse. After all, you would reason, it’s only an insect.
Yesterday in Afghanistan 42 people, all civilians, were traveling in 3 minibuses along a major road near Uruzgan’s border with Day Kundi province when U.S. and NATO military forces lit the match. Missiles fired from NATO planes tore through the three vehicles creating a fiery hell, dismembering and incinerating 27 innocents, including women and children. 12 others were wounded, and 2 people were missing, presumably blown to smithereens by the blasts.
The news of that horror was reported in the United States by the Associated Press. Most Americans didn’t notice, and almost no one felt remorse. The dead were thousands of miles away, and they were, after all, only Afghans.
General McChrystal, the man in charge of the NATO led mayhem in Afghanistan, issued a statement. He said that “we are extremely saddened by the tragic loss of innocent lives.” Saddened, perhaps… but not saddened or sorry enough to stop this slaughter. We all know it will happen again next week, and we all know that no one here will notice so much as long as it happens thousands of miles away and it’s only Afghans who die.
I can think of no good reason to put a lit kitchen match to an insect. I can think of nothing to justify such an act of cruelty. I can think of no good reason for NATO war planes to be operating in Afghanistan.
Certainly, the torching of 42 innocent civilians as they traveled peacefully along a public roadway was a mistake. “Geez, we didn’t mean to do it,” the military will lament, and they will mean it… well, they’ll mean it a little bit. The continuation of the occupation of Afghanistan is, however, deliberate. Our military forces are there on purpose, for no good purpose.
You and me. We paid for the missiles that ripped through those minibuses. We paid for the planes from which they were fired. We are paying, and paying dearly in lives as well as money, for the entire apparatus of occupation which continues in Afghanistan long after all legitimate American interests in that place disappeared.
We, you and me, are responsible for the hellish deaths of 27 civilians. Their families are grieving and missing them tonight, experiencing the agonies of loss that only the death of a loved one can set upon the heart. Remorse would not be inappropriate.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
The military always has am excuse for this sort of thing and I am sure that the excuse is valid. They can’t tell the difference between the people they want to kill and the people who are just innocent bystanders. The point though is that there is no reason for conducting the way in the first place. If we would bring the troops home these senseless deaths of civilians would stop. I cannot imagine what we hope to accomplish by continuing our military presence in Afghanistan.