Bin Laden may be dead, but authorities are still trying to track down Bert.
He was the Salafist Jihadist Terrorist Princess Queen of Hearts. We’ve spent almost 10 years growing up in his Bond-villain like shadow, but after nearly a decade of hiding from US intelligence they finally got round to finding the best hide and seek champion in the Islamic world -- Osama Bin Laden is dead. Watching President Obama’s address to the nation (coming a couple of days after he released a document showing he himself wasn’t a mad Islamic terrorist) he outlined the unique care and rules of war America abides in dealing with terrorists -- they found him, shot him in the head and then dumped his body in the sea, presumably whilst pished and chanting “USA, USA, USA”. Bin Laden’s death also follows the killing of Saif Al Arab Gaddaffi, one of Colonel Gaddafi’s younger sons who never made it into Italian Serie A football. It just shows you what the American’s can do when the PS3 network is down, and that America’s idea of what present you give to a newlywed Royal couple is somewhat tasteless.
But now Bin Laden is dead, Is Al Qaeda finished? is the War on Terror over? Will the occupation of Afghanistan end? The reality is that Bin Laden’s death will not significantly change the fortunes of the three. Al Qaeda as an organisation in Afghanistan was already effectively destroyed in the late Autumn of 2001 with the Western bombing and invasion of the country. It’s training facilities (which consisted of sinister looking jungle gyms) and headquarters were overrun, and organising the most wanted terrorist group in the world was a bit more tricky in a country occupied by thousands of NATO soldiers with assistance from Afghan warlords to boot.
Al Qaeda as an organisation was also an illusion -- the idea of a world wide terrorist organisation, with branches in hundreds of countries taking orders from Bin Laden was and still is a myth, as this excellent BBC series outlines. President Obama is continuing to promote that myth by declaring that Bin Laden was the “leader” of Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda as it actually exists is completely different. Al Qaeda is not an organisation but more a means of conducting terrorism and an ideology that justifies that terrorism on the basis of an apocalyptic clash between Islam and unbelievers.
Al Qaeda came out of a small hardcore of Islamist militants in the late 80’s, who were Arabs who had travelled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. After their victory against the Soviets, they intended to form a network of Islamist militants to take the fight to their own Arab regimes (who they believed were too secular) and to the corrupt and morally bankrupt Western Christian countries who backed them. They organised Al Qaeda like a franchise, allowing Islamists from anywhere in the world to blow up people in the name of a cosmic struggle between the West and Islam and to do so in the name of Al Qaeda. There’s very rarely any direct link between Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda cells, let alone direct orders.
Some attacks attributed to Al Qaeda have shown considerable deviation from the “leadership” of the Al Qaeda idea as outlined by Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al Zawahiri. The 2004 Madrid bombing for example, was conducted only a few days before the Spanish Elections, and resulted in the removal of the pro-Iraq War Popular Party government and it’s replacement with PSOE who opposed the invasion of Iraq. Bin Laden and Zawahiri would never be motivated to bomb a country on the basis of changing it’s unbeliever Government -- they see their struggle as a cosmic clash of Islam and Crusaders, in which changing one non-Muslim Government to another non-Muslim Government as having little point to their struggle. Zawahiri has also criticised the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Musab Al Zarqawi for carrying out a massive sectarian bombing campaign explicitly targeting Shia civilians. While Zawahiri agrees that Shiites are deviating from Islam he outlines in his statement how bombing civilians instead of occupying armies is bad for PR. These examples show Bin Laden simply never was the leader of a cohesive terrorist organisation. There is no equivalent of an Al Qaeda “Army Council” which directs it’s war like the Provisional IRA had.
The US wanted to indict Bin Laden for the bombing of their embassies in Africa and used Al Fadl’s testimony to create a picture of Al Qaeda as an organisation with a leadership, branches and hierarchy -- so that Bin Laden could be prosecuted for the crimes other Islamists committed because he was supposedly in the same organisation as them. Having this vision of Al Qaeda meant that the US Government could prosecute Bin Laden using the same laws that they use to arrest the heads of the Mafia and other organised crime families. In these cases it is crucial to have an organisation that someone is a member of in order to successfully obtain a prosecution -- the problem is that this simply does not exist in Al Qaeda’s case.
Even Al Qaeda’s most famous atrocity, the 9/11 attacks was not Bin Laden’s idea, but that of Khalid Sheik Mohammed (who was arrested in 2003). Khalid obtained financial support from Osama for the 9/11 attacks, but it was he who organised it. This is how the 9/11 attacks were really organised -- a network of Islamists worked together and were funded by Bin Laden’s considerable personal wealth. Bin Laden’s role in Islamist terrorism has not been primarily that of an organiser but a financier. Different terrorist cells and organisations can approach Bin Laden and request funds for operations against the West. This loose, network is what makes Al Qaeda amorphous and potentially dangerous. The death of Bin Laden will not do much to practically impede this network’s activities against the West -- Bin Laden was already isolated and could not provide much practical assistance to Al Qaeda affiliates.
Bin Laden was useful as a symbol however, a charismatic figurehead for the Al Qaeda brand’s form of extreme Islamism. Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri may become the new “face” of Al Qaeda but he does not have the same charm and charisma of Osama. The real danger from Al Qaeda’s brand of terrorism is still the same (and as overhyped) as it was before Bin Laden’s death. It’s based on angry, Muslim, predominantly middle class men operating loosely as cells without a central leadership. Bin Laden’s death may even spur some of these groups on to carry out attacks -- possibly in a half-arsed manner, like the Glasgow Airport Attacks.
Bin Laden’s death is already being celebrated across the USA, but the reality is that the so-called “War on Terror” will go on regardless -- because both the terror networks known as Al Qaeda will still exist, and because the War on Terror itself was never about fighting terrorism. It was a convenient label to cover up what wars have always been about, control of the world and it’s resources.
Bin Laden’s death may have the positive effect of putting more pressure on the USA/UK to end it’s occupation of Afghanistan, as the original reason for the NATO invasion -- hunting down Bin Laden -- has been resolved. In reality however the occupation of Afghanistan is motivated not by fighting Al Qaeda but on the control of a strategically important country in the middle of some of the largest natural gas fields in the world. The War on Terror didn’t just start using terrorism as a justification to control the world’s energy resources in Iraq -- it was a motivation from the very start in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden died a prisoner of his own security, unable to effectively organise or finance terrorism personally, due to the worldwide manhunt for him. Despite this he goes to his death with his and Al Qaeda’s ideas immensely stronger. The 9/11 attacks did not only succeed in massacring thousands of casualties and damaging the pride of the USA, it has also embroiled the West in two bloody and expensive wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. Bin Laden may not have seen the invasion of Iraq coming (although he and Al Qaeda have benefited from it enormously) but it was inevitable the USA would invade Afghanistan after 9/11.
Two days before the September 11th attacks Al Qaeda members assassinated the anti-Taliban warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud, the most credible anti-Taliban figure in Afghanistan and a natural puppet leader for the US. In killing Massoud Al Qaeda knew that if Afghanistan was invaded once again, they could make the subsequent occupation much harder for NATO by removing a unifying figure. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are repeating the strategy they used in the 80’s against the Soviets -- dragging a superpowers army into their backyard, and bleeding them. The ongoing quagmire in Afghanistan is Bin Laden’s victory in death.
Now that Osama Bin Laden has been killed it’s time for Socialists and the anti-war movement to call for a complete end to the so-called War on Terror. The very flimsy justification for this war is now gone, and the continuing war against Muslim and Arab countries -- from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya -- is the exact strategy Bin Laden has fought for all his life, a bloody clash between Muslims and Christians, a clash that will only result in increasing support for Al Qaeda type networks across the globe.
It’s also a clash which, contrary to the predictions of Al Qaeda supporters and anti-Muslim bigots is not inevitable. Al Qaeda may be stronger in some respects given the West has acted as a recruiting sergeant for fundamentalist Islam, due to it’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is also much, much weaker in another and far more important battlefield; Al Qaeda has been left behind by the pro-democracy movement in the Middle East. Across the entire Arab world a tidal wave of people power is challenging the established pro-western, corrupt dictators -- and Al Qaeda and fundamentalist Islam is nowhere to be seen.
The wave of protest is almost entirely secular in it’s makeup and demands. Al Qaeda has spent 20 years bombing civilians across the middle east and the Islamic world to try and change their societies, all without any success whatsoever, with no real threat to the regimes they oppose. In contrast a secular, working class, non sectarian movement in Egypt brought the most powerful Arab regime to it’s knees within a month. Al Qaeda know how to react to Western bombing campaigns, Arab autocracies, and Israeli atrocities -- but they have no idea how to respond to the mass movement of millions of Arabs fighting against dictatorship using their power primarily as a class of workers, and not as Muslims pitted against other religious groups.
It’s those ideas currently sweeping the Arab world that will defeat the ideas of Al Qaeda, not the abuses of Guantanamo Bay, Al Ghraib and the senseless bombing campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya today.
Edited to include some political points at the bottom
As the Lib Dems prepare for their first election – a by-election in Oldham – since they jumped in bed wi the Tories, it’s looking likely that not only will they not be able to win the seat, but they will be crushed at the polls. Even David Cameron has felt some sympathy for the poor Lib Dems and says the Tories aren’t really trying to win the by-election – a bit like when your dad gives in to your shit tackles when you’re wee to let you win.
In fact Labour will almost certainly win back this seat, and with a much increased majority. There doesn’t appear to be any dent at all in Labour’s support, despite the fact that “Red” Ed Miliband picked the racist chancer Phil Woolas to be his Shadow Immigration Minister while he was under investigation by the courts.
Even worse for the Lib Dems is that their vote in Oldham – which will collapse – will be far higher than the national average that the Lib Dems are currently polling at, a measly 7%. Since selling his soul to the Tories Nick Clegg has transformed from a messiah figure to the most hated man in Britain.
In fact the collapse in the Lib Dems vote has been so massive, even the Taliban in Afghanistan currently have more support than the Lib Dems – despite Mullah Omar’s controversial stances on gay marriage, stem cell research, international jihad and the flying of kites. Approximately 9% of the Afghan public support the Taliban taking over again – and more worryingly for Nato – 27% of Afghans support attacks on Nato soldiers occupying the country.
That’s a massive section of public support, and it’s even worse when the insurgents are fighting from impenetrable mountain territory basically doing the same thing they’ve done on and off for the past couple of hundred years – repel any and all attempts to invade and occupy them.
Both polls should be wake up calls to the people who run the UK; in Afghanistan the occupation of the country by the British and American military is actually helping build support for arguably the most mental and repressive group o folk on the planet – while at the same time the second party of Government in the UK has less support than these same crazies because of their sellouts.
"We want to look over those proposals for PR again Mr Duncan Smith"
And remember Lib Dems this is before you actually put a million folk on the dole and cut public services worse than Thatcher. Wi these kind of poll ratings though the Condem coalition is very weak and with enough resolve the anti-cuts movement can force out the Government before we see the Lib Dems vote collapse even further – which is admittedly a bit of a shame.
In the past year and a bit or so, there’s been a real momentum challenging the establishment view on drugs – that drugs are all bad and that a civilised society has to keep them prohibited. The head of the Royal College of Physicians, former Police chiefs and of course SSY favourite former ACMD chair David Nutt have all attacked this viewpoint and called for drugs to be either legalised or in some way regulated.
Your typical psychoactive/methamphetime drug user.
Recently another name can be added to this star run down – that of Bob Ainsworth, the former Defence Minister in the last Labour Government. Bob’s called for drugs to be decriminalised, with different substances being legalised and other prescribed. This is the same argument SSY has made; legalise soft drugs like cannabis which cannot be reasonably considered any worse than alcohol, but put heroin on prescription so that it can be prescribed in a controlled environment to addicts and therefore remove an addictive drug from the control of dealers.
The facts are that Britain already had a system of prescribing heroin to addicts which was known as the “British method” because unlike the USA it treated drug abuse as a medical issue. This practice was wound up in the late 60’s, and since then heroin use in the UK has skyrocketed. Instead of addicts being able to get clean drugs in a controlled environment from the state, they get it from drug dealers and fund their habit from burglary, mugging etc.
SSY welcomes Bob’s conversion, but it’s a shame he couldn’t have done anything about the UK’s unwinnable drug war when he was a Minister. Perhaps it was his experience as Minister of Defence during the ongoing war in Afghanistan that he saw how much money various warlords could make out of the heroin trade. It’s no exaggeration to say that it’s been the heroin addiction of Europe that has basically funded the entire conflict in Afghanistan, from the Soviet occupation to the NATO occupation today.
Unsurprisingly Bob has been attacked for his new stance by Ed Miliband, showing that on this issue (alongside many others) he doesn’t represent even a cosmetic change for New Labour. But the fact that ex-Ministers are now backing drug legalisation and prescription shows that our ideas can no longer be tarred as just those of loonies. Ending the drug war is an idea whose time has come.
We gotta fight, fight, fight, fight, fight the Taliban
Today is Remembrance Sunday, a day when we stop for a moment of silence, or watch veterans’ parades, or wear red poppies on our tops “to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts”.
It was originally named the Earl Haig Appeal after the man who caused tens of thousands of needless deaths in World War I. There is nothing to celebrate about the first World War. It was a completely unjustified war for colonies, wealth and markets.
Today, Remembrance Sunday is basically a state-enforced institution, where criticism and dissent of the principle of celebrating this is not on any level tolerated, and this year it has reached fever pitch. Virtually every UK citizen is subjected to a form of hysterical bullying to participate. No one is allowed to be featured on the BBC unless they are wearing a red poppy, all political leaders wear them -- even if it deeply offends the people that they are visiting -- and children are forced to buy and sell them in schools.
This year, it has arrived in a fanfare of glitz and glamour, with the commercialisation of Poppy Day more noticeable than ever before. The Saturdays opened the ‘celebrations’ in London this year, inexplicably. On The X Factor, that barometer of our society’s values, the judges wore £84.99 diamond encrusted poppies, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘conflict diamonds’. (This is of course unfair, we all know that Cheryl Cole has a deep sympathy and understanding for the sacrifices made at Ypres and the Somme, and is an avid fan of the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen). Obviously you’ve got to spend more to remember more.
At the heart of the “celebrations” this year has been the commodification of wholesale slaughter and the monetization of mass murder. The poppy has become a fashion statement, one that’s supposed to display your commitment to Britain, to ‘our heroes’ and to the continued fetishisation of the ‘glory’ of war. Wearing a poppy for many people is genuinely about remembering those who were forcefully drafted against their will into a horrific world war, but you can now buy t-shirts that proclaim ‘I *poppy* our heroes”. In today’s world, the ‘heroes’ fixation is a direct endorsement of the imperialist and unjust wars Britain is still undertaking in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Earl Haig: how can he be a hero? He doesn't even have any superpowers. Get back to us when you've been bitten by a radioactive spider.
Another reason people buy poppies and the various new related merchandise is because the poppy fund is a charity which provides for veteran soldiers. It’s an indictment of our fucked up priorities that we expend so much energy talking about how much we value the heroism of fighting for Britain in wars, yet it’s left to a charity to provide for those who have survived them. One in eleven prisoners in the UK formerly served in the armed forces. Up to a quarter of homeless people are former servicemen and women. There are countless veterans suffering from mental health issues who aren’t receiving proper support (although at least we no longer execute returned soldiers for suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder like we used to). The politicians that brandish their poppies are directly responsible for this -- they don’t actually care about veterans -- they prefer the idea of veterans to the reality of what life is like for those who have seen the horrors of war. The poppies they wear allow them to justify their inaction. It shouldn’t be left to charity donations to pay to look after veterans.
Here at SSY, we don’t agree with glorifying war and British imperialism. The actions of British troops today in Afghanistan and Iraq are far from heroic. For decades, the memory of the evils of fascism has been used to justify other imperialist conflicts which are in no way comparable, e.g. Kenya (even today, British forces based in Kenya for training continue to rape local women with impunity, which has been going on for three decades; these women are slandered by the British, and rejected by their own communities as well), Malaya, Yemen and Ireland. Remembrance Day, alongside the far more blatant Armed Forces Day, has been hijacked to promote and endorse the militarisation of British life and to encourage young people to sign up, for the “glory” of being remembered as a “hero” after you’ve been blown to bits fighting for the geopolitical and ideological aims of the elite who will never represent you.
We’re not the only ones who don’t appreciate every part of the message of the ideology of Remembrance Day. Legitimate dissent is not tolerated when it comes to Poppy Day -- just look at the recent “ban sick bastards” style headlines when the Green Brigade, a left-wing Celtic fan group had a half time banner display in protest at the club’s decision to impose a poppy on the Celtic shirt, going against the wishes of the majority of fans. In Glasgow, it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of people who don’t appreciate being forced to participate in a celebration of British troops who caused misery in the north of Ireland for so many years. Like SSY, the Green Brigade has no problem with the individual choice to wear a red poppy, but rather to the bullying nature of the political campaign which expects everyone to wear poppies and to support the cause without reservation.
On a state visit to China last week, David Cameron and pals caused offence by wearing the poppy, without thinking of the fact that in the 19th Century British forces went to war with China to force them to accept imports of our opium (which is of course derived from poppies). This is a clear example of why a little bit more historical memory about the role of British forces and the British Empire in the world is necessary. The peoples who were wronged by Britain haven’t forgotten, even if we have.
This is what our generation does to remember the war dead. Not in our name, we don't want it to happen again
An official alternative to the poppy cult is the White Poppy Campaign, advocated by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The idea is to remember the deaths of all who have died in wars, not just soldiers, and to advocate peace, not militarisation. This campaign has not been without controversy. In 1986, Maggie Thatcher (gonny just die already?) expressed her “deep distaste” for the white poppy symbol, and their spread in Canada has proved contentious to the point of being banned from being sold at markets and has drawn public criticism from the Royal Canadian Legion. You’re unlikely to see a white poppy on tv, where red poppies are ubiquitous throughout November.
The above views might seem controversial to some, but this year, veterans (and even the Queen’s composer) have spoken out against the use of the red poppy as a “political tool”. Former SAS soldier Ben Griffin rightly stated that
“Calling our soldiers heroes is an attempt to stifle criticism of the wars we are fighting in.
It leads us to that most subtle piece of propaganda: You might not support the war but you must support our heroes, ergo you support the war.”
Remembrance Day should be about honouring those who died needlessly in needless wars. The best way to honour the dead, and the point of remembering, is to ensure it never happens again. Anti-militarism and dissent against war is the way to honour those people, not diamond encrusted poppies, military parades and the stifling of dissent. As a youth organisation, we are proud of our record of opposing military recruitment and the lies spread to young working class folk to persuade them to become cannon fodder for the imperialist war machine that is the British Army.
Last word goes to the late Harry Patch, the last surviving person to have served in World War I
“Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims.”
Monday morning's headlines after SSY's legalise cannabis march
Every human society since we first evolved has experimented with drugs, pyschoactive substances, and altered states of consciousness.
Many leading psychologists and anthropologists believe that this is a normal part of human life, and experimenting with substances like cannabis or magic mushrooms has actually played a role in the evolution of modern, intelligent humans.
But in the last 200 years human society has changed dramatically. With the arrival of capitalism came the rise of modern states, with their borders, armies and police forces. As the technology to control their own people developed, states have had an ever increasing urge to monitor and discipline their populations.
One of the ways they have done this is implement a worldwide system of prohibition of drugs. While the two biggest drug killers, alcohol and tobacco, remain legal billion pound industries, relatively harmless drugs like cannabis and ecstasy remain the target of expensive police operations, and users are turned into criminals who can face imprisonment for doing nothing but experimenting with their own bodies.
The drugs laws we have in Britain and throughout the developed world have never borne any relation to real medical or scientific information, but instead have been shaped by the prejudices and scapegoats created by elites to divide and control the people. One of the main ways they have done this is to use racism, associating certain substances with foreigners or ethnic minorities.
Now, in the 21st century, many countries around the world are finally beginning to wake up to the fact that prohibition has been a costly disaster that has caused untold misery across the planet. The time has at last come to begin treating drugs as a health and social issue, not a criminal one, and base our drugs policies on real scientific evidence, not prejudice and racism.
This week Obama sacked his top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. What the affair proves is that, for US commanders, it doesn’t matter how many innocent civilians you kill, or deaths you cover up; what really matters is slagging off colleagues.
McChrystal had given exclusive access to a reporter from Rolling Stone, who went on to report some of the stuff he said about other top US officials in Afghanistan. Basically, he and his team don’t think very highly of them.
McChrystal and his aides said of Obama that he was “unprepared” and “intimidated”, and of US Vice-President Joe Biden, “Who’s that? Joe Bite Me?” They called a meeting with a French minister about war policy “fucking gay.” They say the President’s national security adviser is “a joke”. They call the President’s special adviser to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, “a wounded animal”, and react to him contacting them with “Not another fucking email from Holbrooke!”
The comments are so extraordinary they have made some people ask if McChrystal was actually trying to get fired to avoid taking the blame for failure in Afghanistan. Obama has made a promise to start pulling out troops next July, but this is of course dependent on the situation being stabilised to the US’ liking, something which looks just as unlikely as it has done for the last few years. Certainly there seems to be a recognition by pretty much everyone interviewed in the article that the US is not going to succeed in getting what it wants from Afghanistan. In a long piece, the words “win” or “victory” are not uttered by the general or his team. One commander who does say win says:
“It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win. This is going to end in an argument.”
But a perhaps more convincing explanation is that McChrystal is a product of a society that now accepts permanent war as a part of reality, and glorifies the soldier above the political “wimps” and “pen pushers” back home. The US is an incredibly militarised society, a process which has accelerated dramatically over the past decade. The idea of unending war for global dominance has become acceptable in a way that it wouldn’t have been not that long ago. McChrystal spoke out as part of a culture that loves “mavericks” who ignore what those above them think, causing maximum destruction in the process.
Movies and popular culture help create the context in which McChrystal felt he could publicly speak his mind so dramatically. His backstory reads a perfect action movie character. As a student he defied authorities and was a hard drinker, before going into the special forces to command black ops on behalf of the US government. This is the kind of character who is constantly glorified to the American public. His team of special advisers, who surely must share some of the blame for his gaffes, was composed of special forces veterans, and called themselves ‘Team America.’
The reporter for Rolling Stone himself was suckered into this atmosphere, gleefully describing how, after the “fucking gay” dinner, Team America found the “least Gucci” (unfancy) Paris bar to get “shit faced”, dance, sing incoherent songs about Afghanistan and declare how they would die for each other.
America's top people in Afghanistan
What the tales of macho heroism ignore however is the truth of what a special forces based, counter insurgency strategy actually means. Sacking McChrystal, Obama declared he was making “a change of personnel not of policy.” That is, the plan that McChrystal fought for in Afghanistan remains in place.
The plan is basically to flood Afghanistan with US troops, who will carry out special forces missions to assassinate the networks of opposition, gaining intelligence on how people organise against the US presence and eliminating them. In Iraq, McChrystal headed death squads that systematically hunted US opponents. The article refers to this operation as a “killing machine”, and McChrystal as “a terrorist hunter.”
The only problem with this plan is that it’s been shown again and again not to work. Leave aside all your preconceptions of Jack Bauer lone warrior types from movies, and examine the places were these kinds of tactics have been used before. Algeria, where the French were defeated by the national resistance and independence achieved in 1962. Or Vietnam, where year upon year of American actions failed to remove the political support for the National Liberation Front among the people.
The new US commander, veteran of death squads in Iraq General David Petraeus, wrote a manual on counter insurgency that praises Operation Phoenix in Vietnam. This programme used capture, torture, assassinations, terrorism and infiltration to disrupt the civilian population of Vietnam who supported the Communist resistance to the US. It targeted civilian members of the Communist Party, and led to untold deaths and misery. At least 26,000 people were killed. One former US serviceman called it “a sterile depersonalised murder programme.”
Insurgencies, or guerilla wars, fundamentally depend on the support of the people. Mao famously once wrote that “the guerilla must swim in the people as the fish swim in the sea.” Therefore, counter insurgency programmes inevitably end up killing a lot of civilians.
A good example of what the policy means for people in Afghanistan is a night time raid in Khataba earlier this year. US special forces attacked a home, killing a teenage girl, two pregnant women, alongside an Afghan police officer and government prosecutor who were on their fucking side.
On discovering they had made a mistake, the soldiers then carved their bullets out of the bodies with knives, and carved more out of the walls of their home. They washed blood from the scene with alcohol, and went on to tie up the corpses, claiming that was how they had found the scene. McChrystal, as overall commander, supported this cover up. It was only exposed because of journalists who were willing to dig a little deeper. However, McChrystal has suffered no reprimand as a result. If it had turned out that the men in the house had been “enemy combatants,” you can bet they wouldn’t even have bothered with the cover up.
Death covered up: Pat Tillman
McChrystal’s only other major previous brush with trouble was the affair of Pat Tillman. Tillman was a celebrity recruit for the military, a former NFL American Football player, who very publicly joined the special forces after 9/11, in what was a propaganda coup for the military and government. He was later accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan, something which McChrystal helped cover up by signing off on a falsified report aiming to make it look like he had been killed by hostile fire. But even when this was exposed he got away with it, even though this time it was an American celebrity dead rather than a (to the US public) anonymous Afghan girl.
So the conclusion to take away from all this is clear: the US government doesn’t care about civilian deaths, or even that much about the deaths of their own grunts. Deaths are what they send commanders abroad to cause. But when you start fucking with your fellow officials and commanders, well then your job really is on the line.
Hamid Karzai first came to western attention after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, where he was imposed as the President of the divided country. He’s a far cry from scary unshaven one-eyed Taliban head honcho mad bastard Mullah Omar, and other Taliban hardliners – Karzai cuts a dapper figure in sharp suits, possibly designed by Gok Wan. In a piece of largely unreported (can’t imagine why) news however the west’s favourite man in Afghanistan has been rocking the boat a bit, declaring if he gets any more flak for rigging elections he will bugger off and join the Taliban. Karzai is upset at the west for raising mild criticisms of his electoral fraud (which he blames on the US), and says if they keep pressuring him he will join the Taliban and change it into a “National Resistance Movement” – because anyone who is paying you off suddenly becomes much nicer. Unfortunately small irrelevant news like the President of Afghanistan threatening to go flakey and join the people you are currently fighting isn’t important enough for the UK media.
Oh Hamid, you are a tease!
Karzai’s threat isn’t as outlandish as it may seem – he originally joined in the Taliban’s Pashtun based rebellion, after he himself had served as a Government minister in a Jaaamat I-Islamiya (an Islamic fundamentalist group) led Afgan regime. Today Karzai is happy to sit in Government with a raft of brutal Afghan warlords who impose similar Sharia law on their population to the Taliban. Karzai doesn’t have any principles beyond manoeuvring himself into power, whether it’s with Afghan warlords, Taliban or NATO.
The fact that the President of a country, the leader of it’s fictional “Afghan National Army” openly talks about defecting to the Taliban like a career move shows there is no stable, democratic or principled Afghan Government worth defending. It’s a collection of cut-throat careerists who are in power off the back of NATO firepower, and not one more Afghan, British or American Soldier should die to prop up Karzai’s corruption any longer.
A while ago I did an article about violent videogames, where I jokingly made reference to accidentally shooting civilians in a helicopter gunship. Watching this footage thats been leaked on the internet of insurgents and civilians (including a reuters cameraman) being slaughtered makes you wonder how far war is from a videogame today. The gunship attacking the crowd doesn’t appear to be at threat, with the pilots chatting casually -- and then laughing when they make the kill.
This isn’t the first time journalists have been killed by the US Army -- the Al Jazeera offices were bombed not just in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan as well. This slaughter of journalists might have been a mistake, but the attack on Al Jazeera offices twice in two wars must be a deliberate attack on a tv station that is critical of the war on terror.
The footage of this attack must have been extremely hard to obtain, and leak without risk of discovery and or court martial from the US military -- it’s very likely there are many more cases like this across Iraq, that we will never see footage of. The mainstream media has ignored research done by institutions like ORB predicting over a million Iraqi casualties, with Iraq Body Count research showing the single largest cause of death was from US/UK forces attacking from the air.
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