It’s difficult to win hearts and minds when people are terrified by those who would liberate them. Incidents like this will continue to occur as long as we maintain the fiction that we know who the "enemy" is.
When the U.S. recently strafed and shelled a wedding party, it was a "mistake".
A few days ago 4 civilians were killed at a checkpoint. They were caught in the middle of a firefight.
Every month a few more civilians lose their lives either as a result of mistakes of some kind, or because they get caught in a crossfire.
Every time the western forces make these kinds of mistakes – either in self-defence or because of inadequate intelligence – and civilians are killed – the "enemy", whoever they really are – gain a few more recruits.
The United States and NATO countries have now been in Afghanistan since 2001. Many civilians were killed in the early bombing and over the past 6-plus years many more have lost their lives. We have no accurate body count of Afghan civilian casualties, because – apparently – they are considered less important than casualties amongst the NATO and American forces.
Recently I had the chance to have a long discussion with one of our dedicated soldiers. He told me about a situation where an Afghan under his supervision was friendly and quiet and reliable as a worker. Later on that same individual was identified as an insurgent.
The difficulty, he told me, was that it’s very often impossible to tell "the bad guys" from "the good guys".
I think that means that as long as we are part of a military occupation, there will be accidents, mistakes…call them what you will…and innocents will die. The more innocents who die, the more recruits the insurgency will be able to muster. It’s a circular process and the longer we stay there and pursue the present strategy, the smaller that circle will get, until we are trapped at the centre of it with no way out.
Remember the choppers taking off from the American embassy roof in Saigon.
Not a pretty sight.
Update:
The American military admitted Sunday night that a platoon of soldiers raked a
car of innocent Iraqi civilians with hundreds of rounds of gunfire and that the
military then issued a news release larded with misstatements, asserting that
the victims were criminals who had fired on the troops.
Lies on top of mistakes don’t win friends.
No doubt that Afghani civilian would say the same thing about all these uniforms murdering his family and neighbours: which ones are the good guys?
No doubt that Afghani civilian wouldn’t know one uniform from the other.
No doubt that Afghani civilian would be right in saying they’re all the same, including Canadians, whatever Canadians are. They all go around killing us without a thought.
They cause us nothing but grief and make us very, very angry.
They shoot first even if we are unarmed and don’t answer questions afterwards.
They don’t have to, we’re just Afghanis.
And my visit to the dictionary-shelf tells me an insurgent is “one who rises up in opposition to established authority”.
A US puppet “government” doesn’t constitute established authority.
The Afghani civilian described by your military friend isn’t an insurgent. He’s a civilian who is prepared to do what it takes to deliver this message:
GET OUT OF MY COUNTRY
YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS HERE
YOU WILL PAY DEARLY FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE
Clearly, from today’s horrible news, your friend and his buddies in uniform haven’t a clue when it comes to distinguishing between insurgents and civilians.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
Suport our troops?
Think again.
Yeah…maybe you’re right….i’m cryin’
I have great respect for both of your opinions and know that I share your beliefs in this whole U.S. mistake from the beginning. That is what caused my freindship with Jim in the first place. However, I do not think either the Liberals or the Conservatives will change the alliance of corruption and evil we have forged with the U.S. by entering into this situation under this guise which no one seems to understand or is able to distinquish one terrorist group from another. I am sure the PNAC was planning this whole thing long before 9/11 happened and certainly capitalized on an overkill basis to secure their agenda in Iraq, and Afghanistan. It’s a given. NATO and the UN is irrelevant as they are both influenced by the U.S. and we already know this. I do not beleive we should be a part of NATO anymore and the U.N. lost it’s relevancy ages ago. That is only my opinion. Our apathy will just cause many more tears on our keyboards Jim, and you and I have shared many over the last few years. This country needs a drastic change in direction and therefore I will be voting accordingly and not for either the Liberals or the Conservatives who got us into this. There is no justification for this role Canada is playing and the ramifications of fear and hate from those countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Iran, etc, will come back to haunt our Grandchildren and their children. We have to protest this combat role we are in relentlessly.
I am continually astounded by Canadians who proudly display the ribbon (‘Support Our Troops’) and then display their utter ignorance of history — both ancient and recent. They see this sort of thing as ‘collateral damage’(meaning, I suppose, the price of bringing ‘democracy’ to a country that by and large believes that Mohammad invented the wheel to make the shipments of opium easier on the pocketbook.)
We’ll be out for good in 2011, with neither country the better for our involvement. And many of our troops fucked up for life.
not sure i would go quite so far as to link Mohammed to opium any more than i would link Jesus to the mafia…but i can tell you this. As I chatted with that young soldier – in his very early 20-’s, and heard his rtationale for supporting this “mission”, I think I was able to see very clearly the monstrous lies that our government has told our CAF…either deliberate lies or ignorant ones.
And I thought to myself…here is a bright, intelligent, good looking young man, who has been taught to say certain things in public, but in private he’s as confused as the rest of us.