The stated goal of the US military in Afghganistan is to "win hearts and minds." But yet they are killing many more civilians than supposed bad guys. This creates a complete contradiction. It's impossible to win hearts and minds if you are constantly killing civilians.
NATO forces in southern Afghanistan bombed a civilian convoy, killing 27 people including women and children and injuring many more, Afghan officials said.
The airstrike in a remote part of Oruzgan province yesterday capped a bloody week for Afghan civilians that has seen some 60 innocent people killed by NATO weapons.
Afghanistan's cabinet called the attack "unjustifiable" and condemned the raid "in the strongest terms possible".
This should be enough to stop the war right there. The US is not winning. It is defeating itself because it can't pursue the Taliban without killing large numbers of civilians. Then after each attack General McChrystal has to get up and abjectly apologize to the Afghani people about American "mistakes." Oh we just knocked off another dozen women and children. So Solly! It's ridiculous. The Americans are losing the war not because of superior Taliban military tactics but because of inept and stupid US military tactics resulting in killing the wrong people. Winning hearts and minds would be building roads and dams; not winning hearts and minds is killing civilians. Oh, by the way that's what China is doing - building roads and cutting business deals while the US is killing civilians. Who do you think is really winning the hearts and minds?
And the US is spending billions upon billions of dollars to kill civilians in Afghanistan. That's money that can't be used to build roads and bridges in the US. That's money that's not being spent to protect US borders. That's money not being spent to create jobs in the US. How does killing civilians abroad and letting infrastructure crumble at home while going deeper into debt make the US more secure or more "free" or a better place? It's just so obvious that for a fraction of the cost the US could actually be winning hearts and minds around the world by sending in the Peace Corps instead of the Marines.
The US spends a pittance on Homeland Security and a paltry sum on US infrastructure while it devotes the major part of its resources to military adventurism. The US is spending $1 billion per year for every soldier in Afghanistan! Shouldn't that give us pause? Shouldn't we reevaluate our priorities? Then we have a huge recent victory in the Senate to pass a $15 billion jobs bill? That's just 15 soldiers worth a year in Afghanistan! It's nothing. And while the US military destroys Afghanistan and kills civilians, one guy is going around and building schools. In "Three Cups of Tea" Greg Mortenson tells about his experiences in Afghanistan that led him to go back there and build schools - one at a time. If one guy can do this kind of good, how much good could the US government with all its might and resources do if it chose to, instead of choosing to kill civilians in a quest for the fool's gold of eliminating Taliban leadership?
And the thing is no matter how many Taliban you kill, there will always be others to spring up elsewhere and everywhere around the world because the root cause is poverty and ignorance. The root cause is that earth is a Planet of Slums. One billion of earth's people live in abject poverty, living on less than a dollar a day, drinking filthy water, eating filthy food, ill housed, ill clothed. For a paltry sum, the majority of the world's people could be given a decent life, and this would do more for world peace and for the security of the US than all the civilian killing now in progress in Afghanistan ever will. Because you can't win hearts and minds by killing the hearts and minds you're trying to win. Winning and killing don't go together when the people you're trying to win are the people you're killing. Oh, I know it was just an accident - killing all those civilians - another accident, an ongoing accident. We're so solly. There's really no excuse especially when it happens over and over and over.
When McChrystal took over last year as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, he promised to reduce the number of civilian casualties after a series of similar errant bombings. A total of 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed last year, the highest number in any year of the war, according to a U.N. report.
Further complicating the U.S. effort, the deadly airstrike Sunday took place in an area under Dutch military control.
A day earlier, the Dutch government collapsed over an effort to extend the mandate of 2,000 Dutch troops in Afghanistan. The 2,000 troops from the Netherlands may leave by the summer. The Australian and Canadian governments are also under public pressure to pull out.
And while the U.S. military and its allies continue to push forward, they wait for Afghan troops to catch up.
Several media reports from the field have cited the high illiteracy rate within the Afghan National Army, and an inability of some of its troops to read maps.
A report in The New York Times cited an American Marine unit whose members said they led every one of its engagements against the Taliban, organizing the Afghan forces, transporting them in American vehicles, and supplying them with weaponry and ammunition.
The Afghans' lack of preparedness raises questions about President Obama's declaration that American forces will hand over more responsibility to Afghan security forces as they work toward a target date to begin withdrawing in July 2011.
2,412 Afghani civilians killed in 2009 - that's 2,412 hearts and minds that won't be won over to the American cause. Multiply that by 100 to include all the victims' relatives and townspeople and there's a whole lot more that won't be won over. How many bad guys were killed compared to the number of civilians? A handful, probably. And for all the bad guys killed there is a new generation of young men ready to pick up their banner and become freedom fighters because far from winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan what the US is really doing is creating enemies. They are losing hearts and minds and for this reason alone they are losing the war. They're creating a people who will hate America if for no other reason then that America has killed a relative, a friend, someone they knew.
The US spends more on its war machine than all the other countries of the world combined while spending a pittance on its own Homeland Security and being the world's largest debtor. US values are so out of whack that it's totally pathetic. And it has a political structure that, despite the noble efforts of a few, seems bound and determined to keep on conducting business as usual until there is a complete collapse. The level of political ignorance that is actively inculcated in the American people is alarming. The amount of money corrupting the political system is frightening. President Obama, who is to the right of Dwight Eisenhauer and Dick Nixon, is painted as a socialist! It's laughable. America is becoming a joke in the eyes of the rest of the world. It would be laughable if it wasn't also so pathetic because the US owns a nuclear arsenal that can pulverize the rest of the world. It owns military assets that can utterly destroy the rest of the world. When the likes of Dick Cheney take power again, they will be all too prepared to use it.
Right now there are over 700 US military bases in Afghanistan. There are that many or more in other countries throughout the world. The planet is literally being militarily dominated by a financially bankrupt nation whose only real asset is its military arsenal and its millitary-industrial complex. And this is the way America intends to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the world? Instead it is losing hearts and minds, day by day, civilian death after civilian death.
