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According to BBC News, an as yet unnamed soldier left his base in the early morning hours (22:30 GMT Saturday) walked to two nearby villages, Najeeban and Alkozai, entered at least two houses, and opened fire on the families inside. Early reports vary, but BBC reports at least sixteen dead and five wounded. Among the dead, of course, are women and children.
It’s being reported that the soldier had ‘suffered a breakdown’ before the murders, and turned himself in to military authorities following killings.
Also according to BBC’s Quentin Sommerville: “This kind of rogue event is almost unknown in Afghanistan”. More:
“”Eleven members of my family are dead. They are all dead,” Haji Samad, an elder from Najeeban village, told the AFP news agency.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said in a statement that US officials in Afghanistan would work with their Afghan counterparts to investigate what happened.
“This is a deeply regrettable incident and we extend our thoughts and concerns to the families involved,” Isaf added.
RAWA (Reality of Life in Afghanistan) reports that a March 10 US-led airstrike on Kapisa Province killed at least four people, and wounded two. They report that all were civilians.
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is negotiating with the US on a SOFA in anticipation of an ISAF pullout in the year 2087 /s. Plans are underway to turn over the prison system to Afghan control.
What will the riots look like this time? Coupled with the immense hatred of night raids, drone killings, with a few Koran Burnings, photos of American soldiers pissing on dead Afghans, and other monstrous acts…will there be some tipping point to any of this?
O, Kandahar, O Kandahar! How many times will we clean you up so that good governance can be achieved?
I look forward to all the empty apologies from our military, President O’Bomba and SoS Clinton.
Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) was launched on Oct. 7, 2001. Do you feel freer? Do you feel safer? Whose fucking freedom was the military talking about? Please let me know…if you know.
Will the families of the dead receive blood money from the US? How many American dollars is each life worth now? Can the families of those we’ve killed so cavalierly and needlessly ever hear the prayerful apologies we send to them?
O, You Masters of War: The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Entertainment-News-Complex. This is for you. Please remember: We will reap what you sow. We must put an end to your wars.
129 Comments
We can still manufacture dead bodies with the best of ‘em. /s Another horrible story, brought to you by the MIC. Why are we in Afghanistan, again? Rec’d, but with sadness.
Good post regarding yet another monstrous event, but you need to correct your reference to Hillary Clinton. She is the Secretary of State. Leon Panetta is the Secretary of Defense.
Recommended.
Good morning, wendy.
I just finished reading your diary on HR 347 … quite an important dairy and a superior comment section … I can’t wait for rc do do a diary about the US legal “system”, btw.
Your diary, this morning, immediately put me in mind of this:
http://www.ianwelsh.net/
I read the article of the massacre at HuffPo and chanced to read some of the comments which seemed to “excuse” or “justify” the rampage … and, as I told Jeff Kaye, yesterday evening, I suspect that karma is going to be a bitch … “the people” of America must come to fully comprehend what has been and IS being done in their name … for they are ultimately accountable, despite their enforced ignorance and their apparent desire NOT to know or to understand that truth …
Americans are horrified if they hear anyone of “Middle-Eastern” descent suggest the 911 might have been justified … yet, if the fact that the “war” in Irak, for example was, totally, unjustified and based upon blatant and debunked lies, they shrug … and have nothing to say …
My heart goes to the families whose loved ones were killed, and to the Americans who are made cannon fodder for the Masters and American Empire.
Appeals by the political class, which includes the media, to myths of “exceptionalism” and Manifest Destiny and to the fantasies of young male testosterone must be daily debunked, challenged, and opposed.
That said, we, most certainly, live in very “interesting” times.
DW
Leaving out phrases, I am, ” … debunked lies” … IS MENTIONED … “they shrug …”
DW
Death and Destruction Manufacturing Sector; arrgh; what imagery, rc. I am sick with visualizing the families…their pain, their rage, their desire for revenge.
Remember the poll done a year or two ago in Afghanistan? Almost no one knew why the hell ‘we’ were (allegedly) there. Completely baffled: Why are they ruining our country, our livings, killing us?
Thank you; I’ll claim upset, but…I also told Mr. wendydavis I’d read the post soon for edits, no one would be reading this early. ;o)
Without Freda art, I feel as though I have one hand tied behind my back posting this.
Morning, Wendy (I can’t say Good Morning; it isn’t). I woke up crying this morning over my wretched American life, devoid of mental and dental and every kind of health care, devoid of jobs enough to support a family, devoid of hope that things will get better for our children in our lifetimes or theirs. I forced myself to make coffee and read the paper in hopes that I could put things in perspective. I had been thinking of pouring my troubles into a diary entitled “99 First World Problems” which would have begun, “I hate America. I have always hated America. I wonder if people in Syria or the Congo wake up thinking, ‘I hate my country. If only I had been born somewhere else.’”
Then I read a little bit about this story in the paper and a whole lot more about it in your diary. And it shows me that I am not alone. I’m pretty sure that most people in Afghanistan these days also wake up crying and thinking, “I hate America.”
Why the scare quotes around the word rogue? Do you believe that such murders are policy? That all soldiers do such things? I’m not in any way defending the armed services because this mindless, reflexive occupation isn’t a “war” nor is it anything close to what American soldiers are trained to do. (Also, I really hate and resent having to write such a disclaimer as the previous sentence these days but some people who hang around this blog these days love to latch onto ambiguity and turn it into collusion, support, denial or whatever depending on the context.) Obviously the term rogue is apt so I don’t get the quotes.
Whoosh, DW, Ian’s piece looks like a must-read. He always tells it. Thanks for it.
It’s impossible to disagree with anything else you wrote here, and yes; we need to push back against the false narratives presented every day by pundits and politicians.
Glad you liked the HR 347 discussion; glad realitychecker was there for informed opinion, lol! And I look forward to his diary, too. ;o)
Shorter Zero the War Criminal: “no problem we will give them a generous $500 per dead body and everything will be back to status quo”. Thanks Wendy for all your work and your compassion.
I used the scare quotes because the BBC piece did in the header you clicked on to get to the story.
No, I don’t think ‘it’s policy’, but I do think that pretending these are such isolated events is the lead-in framing to pre-justification, and will mean that the truth won’t be sought, much less found.
It would have very complicated findings, anywhere from the fact that apparently lower bars of IQ and criminal behaviors (and maybe mental health scores) are held as standards for enlistment (please correct me if my memory on that is wrong), that soldiers are too often scared to seek mental health help, that ‘the enemy’ is often dehumanized to make killing easier, and that this man may have been being obedient to whatever imagined orders he may have been acting upon. The atmospherics must be hideously confusing, imo.
Rouge is unnecessary . We’re there to kill and hone our Magnificent Mindless ‘Merican Murder Machine.
One day soon these psyco killers are coming home, as damaged goods to visit upon us the horror we inflicted on others.
I’ll respond soon; gotta eat my toast now. For now: I hear your angst and pain.
Yep. Sadly the US military has a horrible track record for cover-ups and scapegoating. Remember Clayton Hartwig? That happened when I was in the Navy and though I wasn’t in the battleship community, nobody, I repeat, NO-BODY believed that absurd story. Zero, zip, nada. Unfortunately that’s the best we can expect from them in this incident as well: Some kind of lame cover-up featuring the smearing of the deceased, the soldier and other victims. And then the Pentagon will throw up their hands and clutch their pearls about those ungrateful Afghans and un-American US citizens who didn’t buy their ridiculous excuses.
They’re already here and far, FAR too many of them, (it’s too many if it’s more than zero, imo), are police officers.
It’s the American way why are you people pretending to be upset?
Mohammed Ibn Laith
With all due respect to Freda, I think your post is more effective without it.
Simple words convey the horror more powerfully. They trigger our minds to supply the rest.
I’d change the title to “Representative of Sick Rogue Nation in Sick Rogue Enterprise Does Sick New Awful Unsurprising Thing.”
Thanks for the diary wendy, rec’d.
WAR is just another word for business.
Morning, DW. Ian Welsh had every word right in that piece you linked to–the real tragedy is that any decent, thinking peron knew all of that long before the latest round of wars ever even began. That is all implicitly bound up in the very nature of what war is, and always has been. Which is why every proposed war should be strenuously opposed unless the evidence FOR it is truly overwhelming.
Ian Welsh had it right:
God help us all, but this can’t go on forever. I shudder to think what awaits us, but I revel in the thought of what’s in store for the fool “leaders” who brought us to this.
Welcome, bludog. Chebetts told a story of meeting an Iraqi woman at his German class who showed him a check she’d received from the US government as ‘payment’ for her husband and two other relatives (I’m so embarrassed I can’t remember which ones) in Iraq when they were killed when US soldiers opened fire on their car. I think the going rate there was closer to a grand. My stars.
Good morning, rc … (how may I encourage you to do that diary I mentioned? You know a fair number of my thoughts about the role of money and the issue of “standing” as regards the American legal “system”, but I sure as hell would appreciate a broader exposure to your thoughts about that “system” … and the abuses your diary would “uncover” and encourage others to share are, I suspect, critical to a broader and deeper understanding of the necessity of an actual, functioning Rule of Law.)
Yeppers, Ian is spot-on.
I look forward, btw, to this Book Salon, scheduled for March 24th:
http://fdlbooksalon.com/2012/03/24/fdl-book-salon-the-end-of-war/
I hope that you and everyone commenting on wendy’s diary, today and for as long as it is “up”, might be present for that Salon.
DW
I’m sure you would write that diary well, and we would read it with great understanding and empathy, not only for you, but all Americans who are suffering from economic policies rooted in fraud, corruption, greed and sociopathic carelessness of the fate of ordinary citizens. That so many are dying, actually dying, both here and around the planet from the same contributing factors is beyond hideous. And adding in the people, brown, and now increasingly black from AFRICOM misadventures for resource-grabs…can really get a person feeling sad, sick, and helpless.
But the place we are grieving needs to transform to anger and the will to resist, in as many effective ways as possible. Damn, I hate to say spring is coming, and General Strike Day, and Occupy DC day…but I have to.
If it helps, write the diary. I’ll rec it here, now…in advance, my friend. ;o)
They’re not pretending. Saying that the inevitable atrocities that happen with any military occupation is the “American way” paints all Americans with a broad brush, just like so many ignorant people paint all Muslims with the broad brush of fanaticism.
You’re just as guilty as the Zionists when you post something like that. In short, you’re an asshole.
Yer title’s better, Sharkbabe.
Wish I could say I remember, Margaret; there are too many for that. White-washing is too easy. I’ve never been able to get the photos of the soldiers hold aloft decapitated Afghan’s heads…it did something bad to me. Dunno what ever happened about that, either.
Shudder; yes, tjbs. And as Margaret notes, too many have joined the police forces, which are now so militarized as to be serious threats to us and our free speech and assembly rights. My god.
Just heartbreaking. I don’t even know what to say. We need to get out of these wars. I just don’t know if or when that will ever happen.
LOL Much as I love you and Wendy, I wish you would stop trying to assign me homework. I will say this, and stand behind it, without doing all the hard work of amassing and organizing specific documentation. Cops lie all the time in court, lawyers call it “testilying,” and I have seen it in virtually every case where I knew the true facts. Judges almost always pretend to believe them. Prosecutors only care about running up their conviction score, and hardly ever about their duy to see justice fairly done. Juries are poorly equipped to pass judgment on the increasingly complex expert testimony that criminological advances have moved to higher levels of import in proving and defending cases. And Legal Aid and other appointed attorneys are either overworked or underpaid to such a degree that substandard performance on their part is virtually guaranteed. These are truths, and taken together they constitute a sweeping condemnation of the entire criminal justice system. On the civil side, attorney rarely take their ethical obligations as Officers of the Court seriously, and get away with all the rule-breaking and truth-twisting they can, which is really a whole lot. And I fully agree with you that rules on standing often serve to keep important but uncomfortable issues away from actual adjudication. That will have to do, my friend.
I am sorry for you that you think we are pretending, Mohammed Ibn Laith. Can’t think of anything to say that you might be able to hear to convince you, but that burden of proof really isn’t on me. I’ve read and remember some of what you and your family have suffered from our military and sick foreign policy wars, if indeed there is anything one could call an Empire seeking complete hegemony to control and own every resource possible, while committing genocide and murder, with by products of pollution and enmity.
I am sorry we haven’t stopped them.
Actually no, Mohammed bin Laith is not what you imagine, Ohio Barbarian, in fact, he lives in Irak, is a much respected commenter here, and he has the first-hand knowledge of the horror and reality of war which I suspect, all too soon, especially if “we” pursue war with Iran, “we” may very well have … as well …
Mohammed is properly disgusted with OUR inability to find the courage to stand, successfully, against the madness of war, although he likely does not understand that, unlike his nation and society, most of our fellow citizens are “comfortable” and “removed” in a way that is spiritually a virtual universe away from his own experience and sensibilities. I hope that he may, over time, come to forgive us, at least a little, those of us who have spent many years of our lives combating the ignorance and violence endemic to OUR nation’s money-driven madness, as this insanity has wounded and ravaged our collective psyche far beyond anything he may imagine as he surveys the real and actual “price” of our hubris … for before we may lay waste the lives, societies, homes and nations of others, we have first, had to lay waste our own sanity … and those of us who understand suffer our impotence and irrelevance most grievously … were I you, OB, I should seek Mohammed’s forgiveness and encouragement rather than cursing him.
Did you read my link to Ian’s piece?
Do you understand how we must appear to others?
Let us curse the Masters and our own failings before we judge the despair and proper anger of others.
What do you say?
DW
You don’t even have the honesty to admit that your so-called “military occupation” is part of yet another failed American war of conquest and you expect me to take you seriously?
Your American soldiers have been committing one barbaric war crime after another in every single one of your country’s imperialist wars. They are your fellow Americans, born to and reared by your fellow Americans who inculcated them with American values. They went to American schools where American teachers continued the process of instilling American values into them. When they joined your American army they underwent further instruction in American values.
As I and every other Iraki has cause to know your American soldiers commit war crimes as a tactic in particular the deliberate targeting of civilians. What this child murdering American soldier did was perhaps unauthorised but no different from what he and his comrades did time and time again in Irak and Afghanistan and no different either from what the Israeli front men for your collapsing empire did repeatedly in Lebanon and are continuing to do in Palestine.
As to your insults are you really stupid enough to think that your immediate resort to obscenity does anything other than reveal the shallowness of your argument and your so-called values?
Mohammed Ibn Laith
I’d imagine which way readers learn best, Mason, given hemispheric dominances, cross-communications, etc. Freda’s sites often use the Picasso quote:
and art can often get under defenses so quickly that the truth leaks in. But here, yes; it may be that readers can read, translate…and imagine pretty thoroughly.
We are always glad to see you here, Mohammed. I think Americans have become numb. There is so much that is good and decent in our country but the face that our government presents to the world right now is appalling. The young men and women who are involved in these “wars” are being lied to and indoctrinated to believe in what they’re doing and then one day they just snap. They also are paying a terrible price but what is being done in our names makes me feel sick. I don’t know anything to do except wish you peace. Thank you for being here.
Military occupation and its consequences, alas, has become the American way. As has drawing its soldiers from a culture rife with very deliberately calculated racist Islamophobia. Incidents of this kind can be very simply and easily prevented. Stop invading and occupying sovereign countries. This tragic story is thus very much the modern American way.
The unprovoked name calling puts you, OB, squarely in the category you mistakenly ascribe to Mohammed Ibn Laith.
A superb beginning, my friend, I promise to goad you … only on occasion, but must tell you that the power and truth of that paragraph of well-honed consideration is worth its weight in gold.
The primary reason that I wish you would put into diary form, even that short and compelling “bit”, is that other attorneys and former attorneys might sign on to comment … and the relative silence of the legal “community”, given what we, all, now face with the continuing assaults on the Rule of Law, on due process, and on the Constitution, all of which this non-lawyer values and respects, owing to their value to and foundational function to civil society, need to be placed before the eyes and the attention of “the people”, that our society, our sanity, and whatever is of real and genuine value in our “traditions” might be saved and become ever more respected and cherished.
DW
That’s good enough an analysis for me, darlin’. I’ll stop giving ya homework now. Plus: you helped out a lot on that thread.
In the real world Wendy Davis failure has consequences.
Mohammed Ibn Laith.
These imperialist atrocities are as American as apple pie. Here’s a paper on it.
The war is against us and YOU.
Our country is being destroyed without bombs or bullets but our society is dying as we try to murder other societies.
The public managed to stop the war in ‘Nam – why can’t it be done again? We must at least try.
Mohammed, I have a very sincere question for you. Have you ever imagined American citizens forcing their government to stop its imperialist behavior? And if so, how do you see that happening? I am in no way suggesting that it is anyone’s responsibility but our own. In my wildest dreams, I imagine tens of millions of Americans out in the streets, demanding an end to the wars and refusing to allow our young men and women to become cannon fodder or killers for hire. But those are my wildest dreams, not reality. My fear is that too many of us still don’t care, that some other country will have to stop us. Is that what it looks like from the outside too?
It’s impossible to deny that, but I’d add that there are both immediate and long-term consequences. In this country, we’ve been societally indoctrinated to see the short term, at our peril.
In both our domestic and foreign government policies, the financial sector, corporate charters, elections, our educational system, and worst of all, imo, far too often in our families.
Collectively, too often we run interference to ward off true accountability and natural consequences. In this country, justice is determined by wealth or status, in the corporate world, justice is almost always denied those injured by corporations wealthy enough to deflect prosecution, etc. In war and Empire? It’s a nation built of the lies of ‘settling frontiers’ (pretending they were inhabited), First American genocide…and then we were off to the races. We’ve agreed to pretend that we really are exceptional and moral, and love exporting ‘democracy’. Most of us prefer not to know anything closer to the truth (it may be out there somewhere.)
But you may have just used this:
more to point out my naivete, and my response may be silly.
Wow, TasteofFreedom; looks like a powerhouse of info; thank you.
All this for a “decent interval”?
Out now!
Then the sooner your viciously corrupt and racist society dies the better for the rest of us.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
My sister in humanity, your pardon, but what stopped the war in Vietnam was the military victory of the Vietnamese forces.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
As I said above what that soldier did was a reflection of the true American values. It is not that the majority of your fellow Americans do not care it is that they at least tacitly approve.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
With the apparent determination of our government to take over everything, I think there’s a good chance that we would still be fighting even with the Vietnamese forces slaughtering us. The Department of Defense is a bad joke because it obviously is for offense. Mohammed, I hope that you understand the desperate feeling that so many of us have. And we don’t know where to begin to reach people. Right now so many in our country are frightened because they have no jobs, no homes, no money and their worlds are falling apart. I certainly realize that’s not nearly as bad as what you have gone through but it is the focus of Americans now. At some point I believe they will realize that the things they have lost as caused by the trillions we are spending on “wars.” I wish you peace. Hug the children.
Wendy, thanks very much.
Working attorneys have a huge investment in pretending that the system is in fact what it is “SUPPOSED” to be, you know, that whole Upton Sinclair thingy about where your salary comes from. They lose their personal status to the extent that the system they serve is perceived to be corrupt.
Luke 6:27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you blend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
Tragically, I think you’re right about that. I wish it wasn’t so. I wish I knew what to do about it.
As you imply, Mohammed, “we”, Americans, will NOT stop ourselves …
The people of the rest of the world, joined in whatever “concert” they may agree upon, shall have to do so …
The salient “truth” about the USA has been, is, and shall continue to be … IS that it NEVER understands when “enough” IS ENOUGH …
For the good of humanity, for the literal survival of the species … the United States of America … MUST be stopped … by whatever means shall be necessary.
I only hope that those who do the “stopping” should not repeat nor tolerate any other nation or society to do as mine … and too many others have done … I hope, however forlornly, that this nation may serve as the END of empire, of mindless and endless warfare.
You, Mohammed, are among those in whose understanding and courage I place that hope.
DW
On with ye then, rc.
You’re writing that diary right before mine eyes.
I hope that others are paying serious attention …
DW
I saw the headline you write about in this morning’s NYT and sighed. I think I am becoming hardened to such atrocities. A broken soldier, product of a broken system, shooting innocent women and children in an occupied foreign land. God help us all. Except I don’t believe in a god.
MIL, my apologies. That did not post as I hoped.
I meant to apply it to myself not to you.
WRT Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh got a lot of help from Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and some other folks.
What you say Wendy Davis amplifies my point. The so-called opposition in America is from my point of view merely a smokescreen. (The British are at least honest enough to call it the “Loyal Opposition”). I do not see America or Americans as exceptional they are nothing more and nothing less than the latest wave of European imperialists determined to subjugate and exploit all in their path and that is all they are.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
X 2
I am not a Christian if you are going to quote Scripture to a Muslim then the Holy Qur’an or the Hadiths are the only applicable texts. I have I believe proved that I take the right of Christians to worship in peace and freedom seriously, that does not mean that I consider them as an example for me to follow, they are not.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
What you say is no doubt true – but for the overwhelming majority of them they are in that situation because of they chose to do or more often not to do. If you allow yourself to be deluded by charlatans again and again and again because they offer you some short term gain then you have failed in your duty to defend yourself – and your children, from blatant predators.
I kiss the children regularly and to my great joy, they me.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
And you amplify my points, no matter if I stated them less fulsomely than I’d intended. Sundays I have many chores to accomplish, so even more than usual, I do dart on and off the laptop, and answer too quickly.
Americans are so far from Exceptional , unless ‘Exceptional’ as regards its endless warmaking for profit qualifies us to use that term.
If my anti-war/peace work is a smokescreen, then five decades of my life…you moot with a sentence. Kinda too bad, but I’ll have to live with it.
I had assumed that when you wrote:
That you were focusing first upon domestic matters and it was to that that I was responding.
As I do not know you I am unqualified to comment on your political efforts. I am interested in what people DO not in what they say or in what they believe. If you personally have done the best that you can then you deserve both honour and praise for it.
What of it?
We are discussing here macro not micro or meso – the American ruling class, found it convenient to permit opposition it suited them to be able to point to “two parties” and to victories by their opponents they coupled this with a thin veneer of easily taken away rights and political opposition deflected onto relatively marginal matters. Now that they have crushed or coopted most of their opponents they are sweeping even that. My belief and truly I grieve for those who are about to experience it, is that Americans are to experience in their homes what they have inflicted upon us for generations. In part that is deserved retribution but I who grew up under Saddam know well what it is like to live under tyranny and I cannot help but feel pity for those who are about to undergo it.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
Aaaaand…I did it again. What I wanted to convey was that because Americans have become enablers of secrets, equivocations, tacit agreements not to challenge each other facades, call each other out…whether in families or government…we are here now.
It is far more comfortable to accept the narratives that protect us from truth, which causes us to struggle toward changing; to stop enabling each others’ worst excesses, addictions or false histories.
When those sad practices reach the level of the government, aided by complicity of a profit-driven corporate media/entertainment system, Truth is too edgy to welcome in any form. The Convenient Lie serves most Americans better, as do the vast amounts of psychotropic drugs we take to…stem the tide of anxiety any Truth or Awareness might bring.
I will say again, though: some of us are trying to do it differently, in Witnessing, in Truth in Education, in our families…it’s a long history of waves of denial, and acceptance of distorted history we swim against.
I am pleased that over the last decade, black and First American writers, playwrights and film makers have become not only relevant, but quasi-mainstream. And yeppers; we sure have a lot to do to heighten people’s awareness, societally, politically, and spiritually. Luckily for us, this is the season for it, as the Democracy Movement continues to take hold, and Revolution…is in the air.
By all means accepted.
I do not argue that political work of many including that of Martin Luther King* was not a factor. I argue which I base both on history and on having myself been part of a successful armed resistance to invasion that it was the military defeat of American forces by the Vietnamese that was the prime cause of the war ending.
I am often very bored by people who quote to me (wrongly) that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This excessive literalism misses the point of that good proverb completely.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend he may well however be a very effective weapon.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
*Whose work and whose writings and speeches I admire greatly I remember very clearly the first time I read his comparison of rathionalisations and never accepting responsibility being like cataracts that blind us to our faults and our sins and that living in this way is to accept being a slave.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
Certainly. What practical measures do propose to take to undo this harm?
Mohammmed Ibn Laith.
BooRadley, I really do want to say something about this worthy comment, but I need some sleep. I’ve been up since 3:30 (my sleep patterns are odd-bodkins, to say the least), and my mind is not functioning within acceptable parameters just now. Later? After some coffee, when it seems like a whole ‘nother day to me?
wd
I do all I’m able to do within reason, and my present personal state/bio is…private to me. All I can say. You don’t know me, and you don’t know what others here have gone through fighting for what we believe in. None of it has come without cost to ourselves, employment opportunities, financial security, our children’s safety…and other hardships.
You can easily dismiss any of those ‘effects’ of the ’causes’ we have made as negligible compared to what you and your family and countrymen have suffered at the hands of our military-industrial empire…but I think you do so at your psychic peril.
Gonna try for some sleep. Peace to you.
“The victims included women, elderly men, and children, one of whom was just two years old.”
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/03/11/us-soldiers-massacre-16-afghan-civilians-in-killing-spree/
NYT says 9 were children out of the 16.
Thank you wendydavis for your post. I was prepared to comment but…..sigh…. the thread was hijacked. Please continue your efforts. I’ll save my comments for another time and place. Peace
It wasn’t a ‘rogue’ soldier…! Father at window shot in face, Afghan witness says…
…Afghan officials say Western forces shot dead 16 civilians including nine children in southern Kandahar province on Sunday in a rampage that witnesses said was carried out by American soldiers who were laughing and appeared drunk.
Only one U.S. soldier appeared to have been involved in the shootings, a U.S. official in Washington said, but that is not what witnesses were saying.
I do not consider the thread “hijacked”, billyc, and doubt that wendy does or shall consider it to have been appropriated to lesser or unimportant “ends”.
DW
Doing so much as one is able is all that God requires. As I have said to some of your compatriots here before if a task is truly beyond them then that task was never theirs to start off with. Nor do I deny that there are Americans who have suffered as a consequence their attempts to resist the shift to tyranny in America.
Comparing suffering seems to me to be a pointless exercise I repeat that God sends us tasks – including tasks of endurance that are never more than we can bear. What I am interested in is effectiveness.
I wish you refreshing and invigorating sleep, peace be to you and yours also.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
Oh, certainly DW. I was just giving voice to my own opinion and not that of anyone else. I am just not prepared to do battle with anyone, for personal reasons. Peace
TD Waterhouse: Markets > News & Commentary
They are consistent – when they were in Irak they did more evil than Saddam.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
That quotation is from the link provided by CTuttle above.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
Mohammed, I was just about to post that very quote. I don’t remember a day in my life when I wasn’t ashamed to be an American. Today is no different, except that I might be a little more ashamed than usual.
As for effectiveness in stopping the monster that is America, I haven’t a clue. This makes me want to go outside and scream and set things on fire. I don’t know how effective that would be.
I understand your frustration. I talk back to my computer and cry. I’m 78 and walk with a cane. My options are limited but I would so like to be out in the street demonstrating with a sign that says “OUT”, meaning out of all “wars” and out of my government. A fresh start would be wonderful but that’s not possible. We work with what we have and get rid of Democrats who betray us.
I understand, yet suspect that you might be more inclined to “do” peace, than battle, billyc … that being my sense of you and how you comport yourself.
Peace, always, unto you, billyc.
Namaste
DW
That is an error. Are you also ashamed of the colour of your eyes? The shame lies in what Americans do or fail to do – what Christians call sins of “commission and ommision”, not in their being American. There were and are Irakis who do shameful and evil acts. This does not make me ashamed of being Iraki it does make me determined to do what I can to prevent them repeating those acts.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
Twain, I hear you, but I fear that the oligarchs will continue their raping and pillaging no matter what we think. And if we refuse to fight, well, they have their drones. I agree with DW that the people of the rest of the world will have to be the ones to stop us.
Thanks Tuttle. I never believe stories about a lone gunman.
That is wise – do what you can and do not compromise on your standards.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
More precisely, I am ashamed of my “government” – of the government I have chosen to participate in and enable until now. I won’t be doing that any longer, but I wasted a whole lot of my 52 years on the planet allowing myself to be fooled because it was easier than facing the truth. I should have resisted much, much sooner.
That is very different. I hope your efforts at resistance bear fruit. For myself I hope that for all our sakes that a long long period of American isolationism can be brought about.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
As it almost is midnight I will wish you all well and goodnight.
Mohammed Ibn Laith
Good night, Mohammed Ibn Laith.
Thank you for joining us.
DW
Oh god oh oh god oh god, Tuttle. They burned them! And it way ‘they’, not ‘he’?
I wondered when we’d hear more quotes about the soldiers being worse than the Taliban.
Thank you for the update; I hadn’t, of course, even taken time to look for more recent accounts.
Good night, Mohammed; I’m so glad you joined our discussion; I think we may have heard each other in the end, and that makes me glad.
Mahalo, Mohammed Ibn Laith…! Always a pleasure to see you here…!
Why the f*ck they’re pushing the false meme that it’s rogue soldier is beyond me…! It’s clearly a well liquored-up squad going out on a hunting spree…! Shades of Haditha…! I’ll even betcha they’ll receive the same ‘punishment’(none whatsoever)…! *gah*
Good night, Mohammed. Thank you so very much for sharing your perspective. I join you in your hopes for a long period of American isolationism. Peace and love to you.
DW’s right; the thread went many good directions, and I’ve loved it all, with all the pain involved. A diarist has to go in knowing that a thread…goes where it goes. One of the virtues of blogging software with almost unlimited ‘Reply to’ capabilities is that it accommodates sub-threads to anyone’s heart’s content. I’ve been involved in some in the past that went on for days, seriously, as people considered other points, processed more fully, or brought in new research and updates.
I hope that in the end you enjoyed it, dear.
wd
The way this NYT story treats the reports of more than one soldier is very telling. The”official” account at the beginning is quite different from the witness statements later on – but you’d never know that from the headline.
Crane-Station, what utterly devastating news.
Of all the drone-murder stories I’ve written about, it’s the children, of course, who make the stories so hard to bear. Wish I had a better memory, but there was a small team (may still be, for that matter) whose devotion was to go into the mountains, or wherever they had to go) to witness and photograph every site of killing.
They were quoted extensively, and once you’ve read that often they only way to tell if children had been killed was…that there were often rubber zoris on the ground…among the debris of human destruction; the implication being that the wee ones’ bodies were…vaporized.
Once you know that, and the image lives in your mind: how can you not be changed forever?
My thoughts inspired by all the wisdom above me.
To me and some others there is a sickness in the world. None of us are immune to it. It invades us and what we see is a reflection of what we are, because we are not separate from what we see.
I am sick to death of the madness and killing, as man I cry, as a man I want to exact revenge on those who do these things. When I have those thoughts I know I have been taken by the disease.
The Buddhists have a name for it, Mara. They keep it at the gate with mindfulness. The Cree have a name for it, Wetiko. It comes in many guises in all cultures without fail. It can be partially explained by this quote from the gospel of Thomas:
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.(Gospel of St. Thomas)” Jesus Christ quote.
Needless to say when you project onto the world a darkness it has an effect.
It might seem like I am trivializing this tragedy, I am not, it cuts me deeply. I am wounded, and shamed
Our leaders are in its thrall, some of us are completely taken. That soldier is a butcher among many. And the karma will bite us all, as it is doing now. A nation dying.
Like most I don’t know what to do, it seems as if everyone is asleep to the horror of our reality…unaware out of a refusal to look, unaware out of a refusal to gaze inward…or?
This world has a population in which 1 percent of us are psychopaths. Isn’t it interesting that we have a movement of 99%”s versus the 1%.
I would end this madness in a second if I could. But imagine this, and imagination is endless, as is possibility. There is a weight and we add to it with our humanity, alone at the keyboard as I am, and collectively in the world as I am. The weight is increasingly stronger and pointing towards a new way, a new humanity evolved into something far better than the present wallowing in blood and greed. It is going to get ugly but we will prevail in the lightness of our humanity. This is not some airy fairy new age BS. It is truth.
I am so very sorry for all this murder, I want it to stop, I hold that thought.
Thank you for the post.
Here is a link to an interview with a man named Paul Levy..it is worth your time. It directly addresses this post.
http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2012/03/RIR-120308.php
Line 31 of Luke 6 brings the Golden Rule, and who could say anything fairer and better than that? ‘Turn the other cheek’ we may have all grown up with, and found wincingly hard; I know I did. I grew up with an abusive sister, and have never really forgiven her, not that she even acknowledges anything about our family history. My cruel grandparents I forgave in my dreams, first one…then the other, and I thank Morpheus for allowing that particular grace that I was unable to accomplish in my waking life. It really did help, oddly.
Lines 32 onward are the hardest ones, no? Can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve failed at it, but I will say that in my work (I did body work with spirit/soul work twined in), it constantly occurred to me that I was often called on to actively love, in order to help heal, people I simply didn’t like. There were very few over the years I had to back away from because they made me ill to touch. But thanks for the reminders you’ve brought, even though the Bible used as an absolute is not for me, nor you, I’d suspect. I email with a friend who teaches me about the Gnostic chapters that were left out; she’s a good ‘un, and I like her brand of theology pretty well. ;o)
Thanks for commenting, Maddy. Bearing witness and emoting over monstrous deeds doesn’t equate to ‘projecting onto the world darkness’, imo. In fact, I think it has a clarifying effect, and can focus us on how important it is to change the world, change ourselves.
I’m weary, but you might want to go back through my diaires to read in how many ways I support conscious good change through intentional awareness and effort, including supporting one another’s efforts. Some are fun as all giddy-up, or they have been for me. Lotta good folks are here, working on peace and revolution from many disciplines, beliefs, hopes, beliefs…and actions.
Peace to you, dear. Stay strong.
wd
Good night, Mohammed.
Duly noted.
probable outcome: nothing. based on recent cases such as this one:
Democracy now, february 2012:
“The U.S. Marine Corps has discharged the lone marine convicted in the 2005 massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha. Sergeant Frank Wuterich avoided charges of involuntary manslaughter and walked away with no jail time after pleading guilty to dereliction of duty last month. Wuterich allegedly led the Haditha massacre and was the last defendant to face charges. Six other marines have had their charges dropped or dismissed, while another soldier was acquitted. Wuterich has reportedly received a general discharge under honorable conditions — one level below an honorable discharge.”
Apology to Karzai. that’s about the length and breadth of the sorrow and regret that will result from this.
to be followed by more of the same.
Nobel peace prize winner.
Antiwar’s John Glaser gives a great run-down on the injustice dealt out in our failed foreign wars…! 8-(
Thanks for commenting, Maddy. Bearing witness and emoting over monstrous deeds doesn’t equate to ‘projecting onto the world darkness’, imo. In fact, I think it has a clarifying effect, and can focus us on how important it is to change the world, change ourselves.
It is clarifying
I think you misunderstood what I said. It was not you I was referring to. In a general way I was referring to our tendency to project that which we abhor onto others when in reality it is us who possess whatever quality we are abhorring because we are not separate from it.
This also has the effect of teaching us, clarifying, so that we evolve away from this tendency and are freed to be all that it is possible to be which is limitless. Please do listen to that Link I posted. You will understand what I am trying, badly, to say.
I hope this helps..I wasn’t in attack mode ha ha.
Wot?
Edit to say: I was on the phone, one free hand to type. I wasn’t meaning to disrespect your research or thinking; it was that realitychecker spent his life as an attorney, and saw the likely potentials of HR 347′s abuse of citizen rights.
Thanks to all who have commented. Human beings in the true sense of the word.
This.
And thank you.
another DISGUSTING maddening display by the US war machine,sponsored by OUR tax dollars
ONE MAN could NOT have dragged all those bodies….oh dear god stop the madness!
yeah, thanks, good review.
he forgot to mention the “honourable warriors” of the “keep shooting” helicopter machine gun massacre. I guess they are all safely back in the states somewhere.
watching people scurrying about on the ground while the “warriors” hover overhead, in no danger, raining down lead.
keep shooting.keep shooting. keep shooting.”
You really have to be abysmally stupid not to know that this is what happens in war.
‘…reason to doubt this’ is seriously low-balling it, Tuttle. Think: Lyndie England, Sgt. Charles Graner and *Formerly Brigadier General* turned Whistleblower Janis Karpinsky.
If anyone goes down…or if ‘someone must go down’ in the meme of ‘propaganda must reflect a little bit of reality’…
Exactly; unless we stop it, mafr. Or, as DW is wont to say, *they* stop us. Several possible scenarios occur to about that angle; dunno to which ones I subscribe.
A remarkable post.. and comment thread.
I was once told by an old, old woman, so much wiser than I, that a nation that “wars” does so because those who make up that nation “are at war with themselves and with each other”.
So far, nothing has proven her words to be wrong. There is no “good” that can come from these murders, but hopefully more will awaken –
Where, oh where, IS the tipping point?
Thank you for this diary, wendy, and to all the commentors. I am sorry to be late. I was not listening to any news or even aware that the time had changed, so I came in at the end of the Book Salon and commented there, not realizing it had already ended. This is a huge, huge shock – when I read your heading I had the foolish thought that it had been an incident of fratricide, and my immediate reaction was ‘Perhaps this will end it!’ because in addition to what Muhammed has pointed out, I remember that when soldiers started going crazy and killing their officers we were reaching the end of that nightmare.
It is so very horrible to see the ongoing madness that is these wars.
I have been reading this morning about the death of the soul, which is a terrible thing to contemplate, but I was thinking about it. About how we do experience that the soul is a unity, a oneness residing in our bodies, all of us, no matter what our faith or nonfaith, no matter if we are just convinced that science describes the situation sufficiently. We feel our identity, our oneness as a separate thing. It is real to us.
So, it feels real to me that these horrible acts of meaningless violence upon innocents and upon children are evidence that the perpetrators, all those responsible, are experiencing soul death. They are simply no longer in touch with humanity.
It has to be that we don’t allow this to go on.
Please don’t vote for these butchers, FOR ANY OF THEM.
I hear you loud and clear, Margaret.
Unless and until “the people” are prepared to throw themselves, bodily, in front of the wheels and into the crushing jaws of the Machine, it cannot reasonably be supposed or proposed that “we” shall stop the insanity. Simply put, “the people” of this nation have neither the understanding nor the courage such actions require. Such understanding and such courage are the essence of mind and of heart, and the vast majority of “the people”, while war weary and increasingly beset with fear and worry do not, yet, grasp that their pain is deliberately inflicted and their losses intentionally contrived. The heart of “the people” is not yet torn and bleeding … for the pain and misery inflicted upon others, all done IN the name of “the people” is kept both remote and confusing … and that will not and cannot change, in the proportions required of courage and steadfast resolve, until that pain and misery, the truth and horror of war, of bloody tyranny … is felt, is known, is experienced here.
Initially it will be inflicted upon “the people” by our home-grown tyranny, the National Security State, it will be used to repress and intimidate, to silence and to make example of …
At the same time, it will be rained down on the “everywhere battle field” from the skies, it will be drones, both “here” and abroad, and it will be bombs, in “selected” areas, “overseas” …
Those who control … firmly “believe” that they have a stranglehold on all the channels and byways of life, they imagine they can control thought AND behavior, that they can make whatever “reality” that they choose, they have NO compunctions at toying with life, at manipulating DNA, at “modifying” natural orders and systems of connection and interdependence.
Even, for example, something as reasonable and rational as ending the first “endless war”, the war on drugs, cannot be contemplated nor “allowed”, for any crack in the “structure”, the edifice of power, the Machine, would allow the whole to be “penetrated” by the discerning, to be unraveled by reason …
Such a rigid and tightly controlled entity or structure, as the Masters have constructed, even with the shields of secrecy and deceit, becomes increasingly vulnerable to oscillations of the unexpected, the unforeseen … so that the “enemies” perceived by those on the inside multiply daily and include not merely “the people” … but nature itself.
The collapse of such a thing is inevitable, however, the damage it may cause in its death throes is essentially incalculable … and timing is “key” to those of “us” on the outside, timing and preparation.
While we may not know, “when”, for certain, that the machine will begin to overtly and openly destroy itself, it is certain that wisdom suggests that preparation for that demise should, in earnest, begin now …
The question which throws that picture into a bit of a loop, is simply this, how long may the REST of the world’s human beings, “the people” of the rest of the world, tolerate or endure the death, the destruction, the appalling loses that will increasingly be inflicted upon them, in your name and my name?
I would suggest, as I intuitively “feel”, that the answer is, however such bloody insanity as shall be unleashed may be measured or borne, that from “our” perspective it will, in all of the human terms that matter, be sooner … rather than later … that it will be “too soon, too early” … even if it may seem to be … “too late”.
My sense is that “moment” is when true understanding in the “Homeland” will come “home” to “the people” with that perfect vengeance that honest karma must always deliver.
I will say, wendy, that “we” still have some choices, if we have the courage to make them … however, I also consider that “we” do NOT have all the time in the world … nor are “we” the only ones facing “choices” …
DW
DW, the insanity that was Vietnam did stop, and tragically it was such horrible episodes as this, and worse, which were as Mahommed said, signs that the US was LOSING, which led to the abrupt termination of that atrocity. And we remembered it for a while, sadly a short while – before the rahrah guys took the ascendancy.
I don’t think the media can cope with this. It will sadly take another accumulation, and possibly a longer one, of blood and carnage, but maybe we can just remember back to that other time and shorten the stupidity somehow.
I pray for that. I really really pray for that.
Bring ‘em home, bring ‘em home.
Will the tipping points be there…or here is another question. Will the coming European financial/societal meltdown boomerang back in the States and massive resistance and revolution allow *us* to end this catastrophic inhumanity?
Ah, walkinboots; wish I saw with the clear vision your friend does. I just keep feelin’ my way along, synthesizing visions with thoughts and others’ wisdoms. Such times we live in; so pregnant with massive change for the better on one side…and on the other…that which we cannot/shall not name. Perilous times can bring relief. Can I imagine it? Only when I’m in an altered state, and I cannot trust what I see, it’s that fuzzy, and mebbe too full of hope. But…I hope; it’s my curse to be both cynical and hopeful in one incoherent bundle, lol!
I love you walkinboots; your honor my threads by yhour presence and considered words; always. Sleep well tonight; we got a whole lot to accomplish in order to save the world…from US! ;o)
Unfortunately, juliania, it is no longer a single war, it is “endless war” with multiple “fronts” (on an “everywhere battlefield”) many secret, or obscured and always, there is the grim and very real possibility of a war with Iran, which will plunge the entire world into armed camps of hegemonic “interests” … even if that is, somehow, avoided there will be, as you say,”another accumulation” … empire is like cancer, it must grow or die, leaving ONLY the option of “intervention” …
As I say “we” still have choices … however, not yet sufficient determination … and a quickly shrinking opportunity of time … time which “we” must share with others, as we MUST share the planet … this paradise.
I do not say these things in a fit of despair, but because I consider that they must be said … for the saying suggests that truth may be heard … and one hopes, heeded.
Humanity is at THE crossroads, on a number of levels, and “we” are but a part of that larger humanity, despite what “we” may wish to believe is “our” place among others and in this time and place …
Frankly, it is as much a question of imagination as it is of fact … and of consequence.
I propose that we may rise to the challenge, but only if we put our hearts and minds to it …
DW
I confess you’ve lost me a bit on: ‘…the soul is a unity, a oneness residing in our bodies, all of us, no matter…’ Any more, I have to translate words into images, then re-imagine my version, translate them into words…and I can’t grasp the picture you’re drawing. Can ya help my feeble mind out a bit? It may be that your concept of feeling our identities as separate is more important to your thought? Not ‘oneness’ as in ‘conjoined, unifying, collective’, but lonely, apart, orphaned?
Death of soul…oooh; I’ve needed to read a lot about psychopathy and its development, and how it is often generational, thus hard to stop. Both it and sociopathy seem to be on the increase, which is seriously frightening; no matter whose or what beliefs seem to define it and its/their origins.
I’m sorry, Juliana; my emotions are raw, thinking about all this, and its relevance in my own adopted family just now; I can’t go on. Thank you; I love you dearly, and your wisdom as well. All I can believe is that long term, parenting and educating children to be the truest, most authentic and consciously self aware may be one of the highest callings imaginable. Without true empathy for other humans, we are…akin to monsters, imo.
wd
Bring ‘em home, bring ‘em home.
Right now…! 8-(
Whoosh; yes, sadly yes.
There is a detachment between the people and this country and their government. If you ask someone their nationality, they will quite often respond with where their family originated.
When the the obvious answer should be American if they were born here. The quest of asked to anyone from England, or France or Germany would be so obvious that asking it would seem ludicrous.
This detachment is I think one of the reasons so many people are apathetic or unconcerned. They feel no ownership of the acts committed in their name. No responsibility.
Thank you for your honesty. Too many Americans are playing sheep to the slaughter. Good Germans, all. Shame on them. I refuse to be one of them and I’m getting really sick to death of them.
Hoo, boy, DW; this is a lot to digest after a long day. Wish I were in finer mettle than I am just now. I seem to be put through my paces, and finding redefining my capabilities and…well, never mind; too much meta; sorry.
I will ask if I might read this in the mornin’, and try to grasp it more fully. Please? It will likely be a dead thread by then, but I’ll dig it out again.
In the meantime, I guess that my limited ‘seeing’ is that Americans won’t reject our endless wars per se, but what might be the spark for massive change is increased privation, and the spreading illumination that it’s avoidable and that there are actual culprits who’ve cause it…and people might just push back with massive resistance. I confess again…I have no idea what that might look like. I’ve fielded emails and phone calls from fellow bloggers discussing various scenarios…and I just can’t make any smart sort of guess beyond what I’ve said.
Shorter: overthrowing the Plutocracy/Oligarchy may be the only way to unwind the Empire/global hegemony, and it may well be hideous, and a time ripe for demagogues who profess to ‘see the best future’ of this nation.
I, too, made case after case on these boards for planning, considering, learning and making informed choices. The initial OWS spark didn’t wait for me or for you, and here we are, wondering what spring will bring. Is a second American Revolution, nonviolent, in our DNA and/or genetic memories; can alliances be formed to put aside divisive issues to act in concert to redirect the nations’s trajectory?
Please let me fail to even speculate; my eyes are burning from crying too often and to easily. Your friend wendydavis is…too much of a wuss some days, DW. Tomorrow I’ll be back (she said hopefully).
Love to you, and my abiding respect always,
wd
p.s. My thoughts run more to: if we are attacked from the *outside*, the country will go Yellow Ribbin Unified, as many predict for Iran; that even the dissidents would unite with the current government if they are attacked by er…Israel, with US in some harmony, open or not. Anyhoo.
“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. … Martin Luther King
I leave you with the words of another, that are more eloquent than anything I could put together.
The curse of being aware (awake?) is that one will be both cynical and hopeful – both despairing and optimistic – I think it comes with the territory.
Couldn’t end the day with a more magnificent and restorative quote, walkinboots. Thank you so very much. And as for your final thought: it looks like I’m doin’ it JUST RIGHT then, lol!
Hugs to you.
Dunno, C; I live in a county of ‘for-sure Amurricans’.
I duuno Wendy. I’m not so sure it’s the same thing though.
Siun has this diary up on the front page the massacre with updated
newslies/half truths/obfuscations.