[Peace-discuss] Obama's exit strategy

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Kill enough people until they stop resisting our presence.]

	US Kills 60 More in Pakistan Air Strike
	by Pierre Tristam
	Published on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 by About.com

"Operation Enduring Freedom is ostensibly being fought to uphold the American 
Way of Life. It'll probably end up undermining it completely," the Indian writer 
Arundhati Roy wrote in 2001, in "The Algebra of Infinite Justice." Roy took a 
lot of grief for that piece from American public opinion, hijacked at the time 
by a blind desire for violent revenge (and the silencing of dissenters) that 
would prove to be far worse than 9/11's mass murders. Far worse, because we're 
living its consequences still, though far less in the West than in the Middle 
East: Iraq, Iran (yes, even Iran), Afghanistan and Pakistan as Roy's words have 
been unfortunately and terribly vindicated many times over, with no end in sight.

Yesterday there was this headline in The Times: "U.S. Tightens Airstrike Policy 
in Afghanistan," over a Dexter Filkins story quoting the new U.S. commander in 
Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, saying that "Air power contains the 
seeds of our own destruction if we do not use it responsibly," and pledging, 
"Even in the cases of active firefights with Taliban forces," in Filkins' 
paraphrase, that "airstrikes will be limited if the combat is taking place in 
populated areas - the very circumstances in which most Afghan civilian deaths 
have occurred. The restrictions will be especially tight in attacking houses and 
compounds where insurgents are believed to have taken cover."

Then this headline, barely 24 hours later: "Suspected U.S. Strike Kills at Least 
60 in Pakistan." The attack was carried out by a CIA or Pentagon drone -- 
killing people attending a funeral in South Waziristan. Dawn, the Pakistani 
newsper, puts the death toll at 50 and describes most of the victims as 
"militants." The Times is less categorical:

"Details of the attack, which occurred in Makeen, remained unclear, but the 
reported death toll was exceptionally high. If the reports are indeed accurate 
and if the attack was carried out by a drone, the strike could be the deadliest 
since the United States began using the aircraft to fire remotely guided 
missiles at members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan. 
The United States carried out 22 previous drone strikes this year, as the Obama 
administration has intensified a policy inherited from the Bush administration."

It begs the question. What's Stanley A. McChrystal doing differently? What's the 
Obama administration doing differently? McChrystal's words sounded strangely 
similar to those of Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who told a 
congressional committee in September 2008, "We can't kill our way to victory." 
Only to let the killing continue.

Sometime this summer, the United States will register its 5,000th American 
soldier killed as a result of wars in either Iraq or Afghanistan. The media, if 
there's still any interest in casualties of any sort Stateside, will write the 
mournful editorial or two, missing, as always, the larger problem: the 
day-in-and-day-out devastation visited on local populations by the very forces 
ostensibly dispatched to protect them, at a price far, far heavier than the one 
sustained by Americans.

That one strike today killed more people in Pakistan than the death toll of 
American soldiers in Iraq since March. That many, maybe most, of the victims may 
turn out to be "militants" won't diminish the ripples of the attack in Pakistan, 
precisely the kind of ripples McChrystal was claiming to want to control from 
here on.

It's no longer the American Way of Life American deployments are fighting to 
preserve. The wind went out of that shameless bit of flag-waving years ago. But 
it hasn't been clear for years, either, what the deployments are fighting for. 
Or against. Except for the one recurrent target that never fails to take a hit, 
even when all else fails: civilians.

http://middleeast.about.com/b/2009/06/24/operation-enduring-folly-us-kills-60-more-in-pakistan-air-strike.htm