[Peace-discuss] What they do in our name

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Is the American military to be permitted to go anywhere the politicians 
wish and expect the people of the invaded countries meekly to accept 
their fate and pledge allegiance to the United States? Would we receive 
an invader that way?  The U.S. government and its well-paid military 
contractors have an agenda in the Middle East and South Central Asia 
that has nothing to do with the welfare or safety of average Americans. 
On the contrary, it is bankrupting them and has made them targets of 
revenge. There's a simple way to keep American military personnel safe: 
bring them home.

Obama has shown himself to be worse than his predecessor and the 
neoconservative empire enthusiasts. His promises to leave Iraq and 
Afghanistan are hedged so thick that we can expect the occupations to 
continue for many years ... all in our name. Despite Obama's words, the 
death and destruction at America's hands are not nearing an end.

*What They Do in Our Name*
by Sheldon Richman <http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/bios/sxr.asp>, August 10, 
2010

Thanks to Wikileaks and heroic leakers inside the military, we now know 
the U.S. government has killed many more innocent Afghan civilians than 
we were aware of heretofore. We also know that American military and 
intelligence personnel roam Afghanistan assassinating /suspected/ bad 
guys. Sometimes they kill people they later acknowledge weren't bad guys 
at all. "Bad guys," like "Taliban," is implicitly defined as anyone who 
resists the U.S. occupation force and the corrupt puppet government it 
keeps in power.

What other atrocities are our misleaders and misrepresentatives 
committing in our name?

Let's get something straight: to be an enemy of American occupation, 
bombing, and "nation building" is not the same thing as being an enemy 
of America or its people. It's time Americans understood that. When you 
invade another country and people there object, even forcibly, they are 
not aggressors. You are. To understand this, imagine our being invaded 
by a foreign military force. Would resistance be aggression?

The U.S. government goes to appalling lengths to deny this truth. It is 
about to try before a military commission a young Canadian, Omar Ahmed 
Khadr, who was taken into custody in Afghanistan eight years ago when he 
was 15 years old. The charge? War crimes, among them "murder in 
violation of the rules of war," which lawyer Chase Madar calls "a newly 
minted war crime novel to the history of armed conflict."

Khadr was captured after a four-hour firefight between American forces 
and so-called militants in the village of Ayub Kheyl near Kabul, during 
which the Afghans' homes were flattened by 500-pound bombs. One American 
died later from wounds inflicted by a grenade. Reports conflict, but 
Khadr was shot several times in the chest and back, then later was found 
under the rubble, unconscious and seriously wounded --- he lost an eye 
from shrapnel.

Taken to Bagram Airbase, where the U.S. government maintains a prison, 
Khadr received some medical treatment and was interrogated about his 
role that day. He was thought to have information about al-Qaeda, since 
his father was a jihadist and knew Osama bin Laden. Khadr says he was 
denied pain killers, subjected to what can only be called torture, and 
forced to do hard work, aggravating his wounds. It was only after this 
torture that he said he had helped the militants because America was at 
war with Islam. Despite Canada's request, Khadr was transferred to the 
prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was again tortured and kept in 
solitary confinement for long spells. He claims that because of the 
torture he gave false confessions, including that he threw a grenade. 
Later he said he had no recollection of throwing a grenade and was in 
fact rendered unconscious by an American-caused explosion.

Unfortunately, the presiding judge has refused to exclude Khadr's 
statements made under torture and other cruel treatment, such as threats 
of gang rape. Militarily commissions are as much the travesty of justice 
that candidate Obama said they were in 2008. But now he's in charge.

Even if Khadr threw the grenade and killed an American, how can that be 
a war crime? At worst his actions look like self-defense but at any 
rate, fighters in combat aren't typically charged with murder.

Is the American military to be permitted to go anywhere the politicians 
wish and expect the people of the invaded countries meekly to accept 
their fate and pledge allegiance to the United States? Would we receive 
an invader that way?

The U.S. government and its well-paid military contractors have an 
agenda in the Middle East and South Central Asia that has nothing to do 
with the welfare or safety of average Americans. On the contrary, it is 
bankrupting them and has made them targets of revenge. There's a simple 
way to keep American military personnel safe: bring them home.

Obama has shown himself to be worse than his predecessor and the 
neoconservative empire enthusiasts. His promises to leave Iraq and 
Afghanistan are hedged so thick that we can expect the occupations to 
continue for many years ... all in our name. Despite Obama's words, the 
death and destruction at America's hands are not nearing an end.

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