Jim Reed
Subscribe to reed writes
- Get new posts with an e-mail subscription
Enter your email address: - Entries (RSS)
- Comments (RSS)
Canada, NATO, America Kill More Innocents
Kafka Lives In Afghanistan
This is what we Canadians are a part of these days.
A NATO airstrike killed 14 Afghan workers yesterday; they were part of a road-building project being paid for by the American Army Corps of Engineers.
"Fourteen of our mechanics and laborers were killed as they were asleep in their tents," said Nurullah Jalali, the executive director of the contractor.
"We just collected pieces of flesh from our tired workers and put them in 14 coffins". NYTIMES
It was all a big mistake according to Major Charles Anthony, a NATO spokesman. The major said that everyone thought it was a bunch of insurgents they were attacking and didn’t realize the target really consisted of innocent civilian workmen.
Contractor Jalali said that in the year his company had worked in the region, his workers had not come across any militants. "We have not seen any evidence of insurgency in that specific area, and we don’t know why and who attacked our laborers," he said.
So what happens now to the families…the wives and children of those men? Who is going to care for them, comfort them, explain to them that the men from the western world slaughtered their husbands and fathers?
Is this really what Canadians want our armed forces to be involved in…even indirectly?
We can say…well it wasn’t us who did the killing…so what were we doing? What ARE we doing? Does Mr. Hillier know? Does Mr. Harper or Mr. Dion or Mr. Layton know? And if they know…would they please tell the rest of us.
Do the families of those workers get an apology? Do they get compensation? Or do they just get the grief of bereavement.
And will the children of those innocent Afghan workers mistakenly killed by men from the west, grow up to love us?
I guess the bottom line question is, "Is this what we are spending a hundred million dollars a year for?
Update: Three More Canadians Were Injured on Tuesday In Afghanistan
Responses to “Canada, NATO, America Kill More Innocents”
November 30th, 2007 at 9:26 am
The problem is that nothing has changed in Washington, London or Ottawa or at NATO HQ in Brussels.
What you are suggesting would be rational and sensible. There is some good that we can accomplish in Afghanistan. But unhappily, that would require strong and committed rational and sensible leadership. That’s a quality, which we sorely lack.
It’s true that Mr. Layton takes an acceptable position. However he tends to be a bit erratic in terms of putting it out there. He needs to be hammering at it on a regular basis.
I attended a church concert recently and on the wall near the Minister’s office, there were pictures and stories of the young Canadians who have been uselessly killed in Afghanistan. When I asked the pastor why the young Quebecker, whose foot was blown off and later took his own life after returning home didn’t have his picture up…she told me hadn’t heard about it. So it’s not just the leadership that is off-base…the media aren’t doing their job either.
There’s something called denial happening and another “d”-word, “drift”.
Mr. Layton is not in complete denial, but he’s drifting…just as most Canadians are drifting. Government is floating around in some sort of vacuum.
But the fundamental problem is that most Canadians including most of our leaders are not just drifting when it comes to this conflict…they are in deep denial.
December 1st, 2007 at 10:28 am
Sad to say, Canada will be galvanised only after a massive one-hit death-toll in Afganistan like the destruction of a camp or convoy which would provoke an emergency debate and the collapse of parliament.
We are apparently uncomfortable but accept this dribble of death from the tap of tragedy.
We sweeten it up for ourselves with hokey lump-in-the-throat sentimentality about “our troops… over there”, expressed in buying war-style crap made in China delivered to us by giant American retailers.
How noble, how support-the-troops of us!
Kafka….you nailed it, Jim.
But don’t you think there is an abundance of alternative media these days, like Reedwrites?
If the Canadian media isn’t bringing us the right stuff, what about our educators? Are they telling their students they are being manipulated?
That the tribes in Afghanistan come together only to repulse invaders and they’re really good at it?
That no western/northern invasion has ever succeeded?
Or are they ordered not to discuss it, because it’s “political”?
November 29th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Unless things have changed recently in Ottawa…
Mr. Layton is on record as saying the same as you…. we haven’t a clue in this indiscriminate hunt and kill mission.
Of course Canada can do some good in Afghanistan. But first we have to admit what fools we have been, and compensate for the terrible wrongs we have done these poor souls.
That would mean withdrawing our misguided military immediately and completely, and asking the Afghan people, not the US war-machine and its puppets, how we can help.