US Bombs another Wedding in Afghanistan
by Charles Coughlin
What’s possibly the worst thing you can do to tick off a native population and ruin any chance of a successful occupation? Some may answer setting up secret prisons and torture facilities. But there’s something worse: Bombing a wedding party.
A BBC article reports “At least 20 people have been killed in a missile strike by coalition forces in Afghan’s eastern Nangarhar province. Local people say that the group was a wedding party and that most of the dead were women and children. But the US has denied this, saying those killed were militants involved in previous mortar attacks on a Nato base. Meanwhile Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into a missile attack by US helicopters on Friday in which 15 people died. The BBC’s Martin Patience in Kabul says the issue of civilian casualties is hugely sensitive in Afghanistan.”
If this were the only time the US bombed a wedding party, then it might be believable as an accident. Unfortunately this is at least the third time that a wedding party has reportedly been bombed. Either we’re bombing these wedding parties deliberately or our soldiers are so culturally inept that they keep making the same mistake over and over.
One possible explanation is that Afghans tend to celebrate by firing guns in the air. An especially dense US military commander may confuse celebratory gunfire with rebel activity.
In the last two months, US casualties in Afghanistan have been worse than in Iraq. It looks like we have two quagmires on our hands. Given the complete failure to apprehend Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan a few political pundits have wondered just how legitimate the war in Afghanistan was.
Many Americans are not aware that the Taliban offered to turn over al Qaeda people in Afghanistan if the US government would provide proof that al Qaeda was responsible for the 911 attack. This seems like a perfectly reasonable request, but old Bush junior just sent in the bombers to create a dramatic fireworks display to convince Mr. and Mrs. Sixpack that we were retaliating for 911.
Curiously, the Taliban had awarded a $15 billion dollar natural gas pipeline project to the Bridas oil company of Argentina. After the US occupation of Afghanistan, this highly lucrative contract was switched over to Unocal. Also, the opium fields in Afghanistan that the Taliban had banned, have been put back into operation. The CIA has been accused of trafficking drugs during the Vietnam War and again in central America. One wonders if the CIA might be playing a role in the resurgence of drug operations in Afghanistan. George H.W. Bush was an ex-CIA chief and was accused of running a drug operation in Mena, Arkansas in cooperation with Bill Clinton. The elder Bush also waged a war on the nation of Panama, supposedly to fight drug trafficking. No drugs were found in Panama as the US military took over that country. Perhaps the war on Panama was yet another war by the US to ALLOW the trafficking of drugs, not to stop it.