Saturday night, NATO attack helicopters killed 14 Afghan civilians, including 12 children in the Helmand Province. The deaths sparked angry protests in the city of Lashkar Gah, and also an angry rebuke from President Hamid Karzai, who said it was NATO’s “last warning.”
Such rebukes are pretty common: indeed it seems like most of President Karzai’s public speeches are criticisms of NATO forces killing civilians. This weekend, however, things seem to be working out a little different.
That’s because in the wake of the warning, NATO warplanes struck again on the opposite side of the country, in Nuristan Province. In this case, the apparently US planes attacked what they thought were insurgents, killing 18 innocent civilians and 20 members of the provincial police.
Though the Karzai government has long been contented to deal in official condemnations while NATO offers go-nowhere investigations, the massive toll of the two weekend strikes combined with the second one coming after the “last warning” puts the president’s credibility, such as it is, in serious peril. Civilian deaths in US and NATO strikes have long strained Karzai’s ties with his western occupiers/patrons, but will this finally be one air strike too far? It remains to be seen.
Nato killed 12 children and two women??? This isn't collateral damage! This is genocide. The people who are responsible for this killing should be punished.
I've also heard that the number of civilians killed in this airstrike is 53. If nytimes says there are 14, then it is deliberately hiding the real number.
here are the sources that tell the real number: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/nato-airstrike-… http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/29/nato-air-strikes-k… http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2011… http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/20…
Eagle http://eseaf.com
Of course the US media is going to lie they are the 3RD branch of the government.T.V is there way to control the civilised in the worlds population by using mind controll through subliminal messages.How else would the people around the world ever think they are doing something good by killing millions of civilians now in 4 countrys Afganistan,Iraq,Pakistan,Lybia and soon some other country in eather the mid east or Africa.Never seen bigger cowards ever killing people with drones with no chance to give up and maybe have a day in court.Thats after being water borded and tortured in probably other ways are media the 3RD branch of the government help hide the evil from the American and other civilians in the western world but now we have the internet for real facts that you would never hear or read anywere else.Please people that can afford it help keep Antiwar up and running. Its alot of peoples way to hear the truth not lies from a government that controls the media and takes freedom from it's citizens more and more soon there will be none unless we do somthing.
If we know there were 12 children and 2 women killed, and we know where and when, we know the unit(s) operating in those areas and the pilots and troops assigned to those missions. There may even be gun camera footage which, as before, will show exactly who did the shooting. Why, then, has nothing been done about these clearly illegal killings? Official pronouncements aside, what actions- if any- have been taken against the troops responsible?
Or will these incidents be forever 'under investigation' until they're conveniently forgotten about?
Being a veteran myself, I very well understand "the fog of war" but if one actually reads what's happening in Afghanistan and elsewhere wherever NATO (read: the US) is involved one might have the impression that we fight only on mist-covered swampland, both literally and figuratively.
I also know that mistakes are made during wartime- even a cursory look at the civilian casualty lists is proof enough of that- but when 'mistakes' are taken as a given and chalked up to 'just another day on the job' we have crossed a line that should have never been approached in the first place. Every time an innocent dies in wartime, we lose a little more of our humanity.
The moral of the story is this: if you can't positively identify your target, how about keeping your weapons locked and your fingers off the trigger? If there's no fire coming from the house- or the playground- you're observing, maybe that should tell you something.
I don't know what Karzai's so upset about. This IS American democracy. Cops here raid houses and kill innocents all the time, so of course we're not going to treat Afghans any better than we do our people at home on average of 150 times a day: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/25/jose-gue…
The monsters and morons that run this country don't give a damn about killing innocent people. We've been doing it for a long time; it's profitable and it makes everyone out there really hate us (so we have an excuse to do more of it) and scares the crap out of them ( so we can feel tough and self righteous)
We like war- especially when we can manage only kill only a small percentage of our own mindless troops, but can expend a whole lot of expensive ordinance killing anyone in sight.
People need to wake up to the fact that America IS the Bad Guy.
Will Massive Civilian Toll Finally Break US-Afghan Ties?
Of course not. The US will murder Karzai and replace him with another puppet and happily continue the murdering of women and children in the name of freedom, liberty and Jesus Christ.