[Peace-discuss] Undercutting the killing

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This suggests how Obama's war plans can be subverted by the denial of personnel 
and pelf. Legislators who will do that should be supported, regardless of party. 
--CGE]

	Patrick Cockburn
	These rapid apologies only emphasise waning support
	No Nato power contributing forces can keep itself
	on the margins of the escalating conflict
	Tuesday, 23 February 2010

The attention given to the killing of at least 27 Afghan civilians in a Nato 
airstrike shows a significant political and military change in the Afghan war. 
Political support for the war is so fragile in the US and other states 
contributing troops that every misdirected bombing has to be apologised for. The 
Dutch government has already fallen because of disagreement over the Dutch 
military contribution of 2,000 troops to the Nato force.

This limitation on airstrikes removes one of the Nato powers' main advantages 
against Taliban guerrillas: the ability to call in air power whenever fighters 
were located. The Nato planes fired yesterday at a convoy of three vehicles; 
among the dead were four women and a child, and 12 more were wounded. The group 
were believed to be Taliban fighters. The outcome of the bombing confirms that 
when air power is inaccurate the blame lies not with inadequate technology but 
with the failures of the intelligence on which targeting is based.

In the mountains of Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan, intelligence is 
always going to be patchy or even based on deliberate misinformation. It is 
therefore increasingly difficult for Nato to claim, as it did early last year 
and the year before, that casualties are not civilians but in fact Taliban fighters.

In Afghanistan incidents like the bombing of civilians in Uruzgan will 
inevitably be highly publicised, not least because the government of President 
Hamid Karzai is seeking to burnish its nationalist credentials by protesting 
volubly against the loss of civilian lives. This is in sharp contrast with Iraq 
where, at the height of the fighting between 2004 and 2007, the Iraqi government 
would happily confirm that civilian dead were insurgent fighters.

The fact that these airstrikes took place in Uruzgan, from which the 
2,000-strong Dutch contingent is being withdrawn, shows that no Nato power 
contributing forces can keep itself politically and militarily on the margins of 
the escalating conflict.

Meanwhile the curtailment in the use of air power by Nato will mean that more 
foreign troops will be needed to make up the loss in firepower just as support 
for the Afghan venture is waning in the countries which supply them.

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.