Thursday, May 07, 2009

Trailer Loads Of Body Parts

'“The governor said that the villagers have brought two tractor trailers full of pieces of human bodies to his office to prove the casualties that had occurred,” Mr. Farahi said. “Everyone at the governor’s office was crying, watching that shocking scene.”

Mr. Farahi said he had talked to someone he knew personally who had counted 113 bodies being buried, including those of many women and children. Later, more bodies were pulled from the rubble and some victims who had been taken to the hospital died, he said.'

So reports an Afghan legislator in the New York Times today, May 7th, 2009. (Buy your copy now.)

Special Forces troops had gone into a village. An hour after the fighting stopped, our bombing began. Once again, we bombed houses where civilians had taken refuge.

The governor, seeing the trailer loads of body parts, then phoned the Afghan Parliament and spoke to them over their sound system, describing the carnage. Lawmakers demanded the regulation of foreign forces. The Parliament's chairman has called on President Karzai to draft an agreement within a week that would "legalize" the American presence and limit our actions. We are no longer there legally, according the the Afghan Parliament.

How did we reach this impasse?

The Times continues,
'Col. Greg Julian, a spokesman for the United States military in Kabul, confirmed that United States Special Operations forces had called in close air support in the area on Monday night, including bombs and strafing with heavy machine guns. “There is a heavy insurgent presence there,” he said.'
Insurgent? We are fighting insurgents? People who won't vote for Karzai in the summer elections, undoubtedly. We are certainly recruiting to his opposition. We've been told we were fighting the Taliban. We are fighting insurgents.

We are so heavy-handed. Perhaps the yet-untold story will be that fighting had died down because the Special Forces were pinned down. Perhaps they called for a kill zone around them so they could escape. So we killed a village to free them. Otherwise, why did we begin bombing an hour after fighting had stopped? To punish the village?

If we have no better solutions to such simple problems, we guarantee our defeat.

“People are ready to rise against the government,” said Mr. Farahi, the legislator, according to the Times.

Even as that same government now calls our presence illegal.

We Americans think we are fighting extremists in Afghanistan. But we are fighting insurgents. We are fighting those who resist us. Bullies do that. Will this war become Vietnam all over again? Will our need to fight a military air war - our kind of war - force the conflict into the failed Vietnam template?

We are fighting neighborhood organizers with an air war that kills neighborhoods.

Our loss.

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