After the killing of many innocent civilians by NATO forces, the people of Afghanistan have had enough. I do not blame them. The U.S. and NATO are responsible for the deaths of too many innocent people, including over 100,000 (officially) in Iraq alone. Even the invasion in Libya has produced deaths that are written off as ‘collateral damage’. How many innocent lives are justifiable in the proposed objections of the missions, whatever they may be? If, indeed, the lives of innocent people are required to achieve whatever goals proponents of these imperialist wars, how many is enough? I stand firm in proclaiming one is too many. If innocent lives/collateral damage is the cost of freedom/security (those of course not being the objectives, but amplified to the world), whose lives? Many may argue that the innocent bystanders who have died, were the cost of freedom, but why is it not that the ones who believe that actually lay their lives on the line? Why is it not that ones who perpetuate these aggressions, wars, and acts lay their lives down? If those who have are paraded as ‘the cost of freedom’ did not authorize their own deaths, how can anyone justify or support their killing? If men suspected of murder entered your home, would you authorize your own death to ‘neutralize’ the suspected murderer? Your answer that question should be the answer the question of ‘How many innocent lives are justifiable?’.
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Karzai orders NATO to stop airstrikes in Afghanistan
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KABUL–President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday issued an ultimatum to NATO forces to stop airstrikes on Afghan homes and warned that if they don’t, the Afghan people would drive them out as they have occupying armies in the past.
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The demand was the most serious warning to the coalition that Karzai has issued to date. The immediate provocation was a coalition airstrike on Saturday in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province that killed nine civilians, including children. But Karzai’s statement also was the culmination of years of complaints about civilian casualties and aggressive NATO military operations.
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“Afghanistan is an ally, not an occupied country. And our treatment with NATO is from the point of view of an ally. If it turns to the other, to the behavior of an occupation, then of course the Afghan people know how to deal with that,” he said.
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Karzai added that “history is a witness how Afghanistan deals with occupiers,” and declared that if NATO airstrikes continue Afghanistan will take “unilateral action.” He did not specify the action but said he will explain that to NATO commanders during a meeting scheduled for Sunday.
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According to a NATO statement, a military patrol was attacked by five insurgents in the Now Zad district, killing one Marine. The insurgents went into a walled house and continued to fight, the statement said, until NATO called in an airstrike. “Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians,” said U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, the NATO commander in Afghanistan’s southwest.
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“We will continue to work closely with our Afghan partners to reduce civilian casualties as every loss of innocent life is a tragedy. The insurgents are the enemy of the Afghan people, and they are showing complete disregard for the safety of innocent Afghans,” she said.
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Karzai’s call for the end of such airstrikes, a key weapon for NATO forces in Afghanistan, is a test for his authority over foreign troops operating on Afghan soil. His other demands in the past, such as ending Special Operations night raids, have not been heeded entirely but reforms have been made to include Afghans more fully in the process as well as guidance for troops to show more restraint.
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“If this is repeated, Afghanistan has a lot of ways of stopping it, but we don’t want to go there. We want NATO to stop the raids on its own, without a declaration of an end by the Afghan government, because we want to continue to cooperate,” he said. “They must treat Afghanistan as a sovereign nation.”
Read more at www.washingtonpost.com
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