Murder Is Not an Anomaly in War

• To decry the butchery of this case and to defend the wars of occupation we wage is to know nothing about combat. We kill children nearly every day in Afghanistan.
• Libya: NATO accused of failing to investigate civilian deaths from airstrikes - new report
• A crime against humanity
• "We dropped a few civilians", said Sgt Eric Schrumpf of the US Marines

Chris Hedges, truthdig
 
Jeanette Eastman, Associate Editor, Evergreene Digest

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of readers like you. Thank you!

The war in Afghanistan—where the enemy is elusive and rarely seen, where the cultural and linguistic disconnect makes every trip outside the wire a visit to hostile territory, where it is clear that you are losing despite the vast industrial killing machine at your disposal—feeds the culture of atrocity. The fear and stress, the anger and hatred, reduce all Afghans to the enemy, and this includes women, children and the elderly. Civilians and combatants merge into one detested nameless, faceless mass. The psychological leap to murder is short. And murder happens every day in Afghanistan. It happens in drone strikes, artillery bombardments, airstrikes, missile attacks and the withering suppressing fire unleashed in villages from belt-fed machine guns.
 
Military attacks like these in civilian areas make discussions of human rights an absurdity. Robert Bales, a U.S. Army staff sergeant who allegedly killed 16 civilians in two Afghan villages, including nine children, is not an anomaly. To decry the butchery of this case and to defend the wars of occupation we wage is to know nothing about combat. We kill children nearly every day in Afghanistan. We do not usually kill them outside the structure of a military unit. If an American soldier had killed or wounded scores of civilians after the ignition of an improvised explosive device against his convoy, it would not have made the news. Units do not stick around to count their “collateral damage.” But the Afghans know. They hate us for the murderous rampages. They hate us for our hypocrisy.
 
More...
 
Related:
 
Libya: NATO accused of failing to investigate civilian deaths from airstrikes - new report, Amnesty International
Jeanette Eastman, Associate Editor, Evergreene Digest
NATO has failed to investigate the killing of scores of civilians in its airstrikes in Libya, Amnesty International said today (19 March), in a new released a year after the first strike sorties took place.

A crime against humanity, John Pilger, johnpilger.com
Jeanette Eastman, Associate Editor, Evergreene Digest
They have blown off the limbs of women and the scalps of children. Their victims overwhelm the morgues and flood into hospitals that lack even aspirin.

 
"We dropped a few civilians", said Sgt Eric Schrumpf of the US Marines, John Pilger, johnpilger.com
Jeanette Eastman, Associate Editor, Evergreene Digest
"We had a great day," said Sgt Eric Schrumpf of the US Marines last Saturday. "We killed a lot of people." He added: "We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do?" He said there were women standing near an Iraqi soldier, and one of them fell when he and other Marines opened fire. "I'm sorry," said Sgt Schrumpf, "but the chick was in the way".