[Peace-discuss] Responses from people Obama wants us to kill

[C. G. Estabrook]

THE OCCUPATION of Afghanistan is entering its eighth year, and yet the situation 
for the U.S. is getting worse, not better. American casualties are rising. The 
Taliban is resurgent and newly confident about challenging both U.S. troops and 
government forces under the command of U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

At the same time, segments of the Afghan population that once expressed 
gratitude toward the U.S. for removing the Taliban from power and took a 
wait-and-see attitude toward the ongoing U.S. presence are growing increasingly 
angry.

The reasons are many. First and foremost, the U.S. has increasingly relied on 
air strikes to suppress the growing influence of the Taliban--to a jaw-dropping 
extent. U.S. fighters flew only 86 bombing raids in all of 2004; in 2007, the 
number of air strikes grew to nearly 3,000. The bombing continued to rise in 
2008, with 600,000 pounds of bombs dropped on Afghanistan in June and July 
alone, almost equal to the amount dropped in all of 2006.

While the Taliban has carefully avoided causing harm to civilians in areas under 
its control and thus succeeded in winning some new bases of support, the U.S. 
has used its air superiority with a recklessness that undermined what little 
reserve of good will remained among the Afghan population.

In early November, U.S. air strikes killed 65 civilians in a wedding party--a 
horrific toll but not unprecedented, as such parties, with their large 
concentrations of people, have been targets of air strikes in the past.

"The Americans are hitting civilian houses all the time," exclaimed Mohammad 
Tawakil Khan, a provincial council member in Baghdis, whose two sons and a 
grandson were killed along with four others in a U.S. air strike the same week 
as the wedding party massacre.

"They don't care, they just say it was a mistake...Afghan officials are only 
offering their condolences. After some 100 times that they have killed 
civilians, we have to take revenge, and afterward say our condolences to them."

Beyond the carnage caused by bombs dropped by their supposed liberators, Afghans 
also seethe at the U.S. partnership with the warlords, militias and gangsters 
who make up the Northern Alliance.

Noting that Obama recently told a reporter that he felt no reason to apologize 
to the Afghan people, Eman, a member of the Revolutionary Association of the 
Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), expressed disbelief, bitterness and anger.

"Didn't he feel the need to apologize for the occupation of our country under 
the banner of democracy, the so-called 'war on terror,' and women's rights, but 
then compromise with terrorists like the Northern Alliance, who cannot be 
distinguished from the Taliban in the history of their criminal acts?" Eman said 
on KPFK's Uprising Radio, hosted by U.S.-based Afghan rights activist Sonali 
Kolhatkar.

"In fact, these murderers were the first to destroy our nation. And even after 
seven years of a very long and very costly 'war on terror,' terrorism has not 
been uprooted in Afghanistan, but has become stronger, and the Taliban are 
becoming more powerful. From his statements during his election campaign, we 
don't think that Obama's position is different from the Bush administration; it 
is the continuation of Bush's foreign policy...

"RAWA strongly believes that whatever happens, a withdrawal of foreign troops 
should be the first step, because today, with the presence of thousands of 
troops in Afghanistan, with the presence of many foreign countries in our 
nation, for the majority of our people, particularly poor people in the other 
provinces of Afghanistan outside Kabul, the situation is so bad that it cannot 
get any worse."

--http://socialistworker.org/2008/12/04/challenging-myths-good-war