Never forget the real reasons…
Tag: afghanistan
Afghanistan: Nearly 1,600 Child Casualties in Airstrikes Over Past Five Years
Almost 1,600 children were killed or wounded in airstrikes in Afghanistan over the past five years, according to a report from Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).
The report analyses data released earlier this year by the UN and found that between 2016 and 2020, there were 3,977 civilian casualties from airstrikes in Afghanistan, 1,598 of which were children. Out of that number, 785 were killed, and 813 were wounded.
About 50 percent of the civilian casualties were caused by the US and its NATO coalition partners. The rest were at the hands of the Afghan Air Force, which is entirely propped up by the US.
From 2018 to 2019, the US dropped bombs on Afghanistan at a higher rate than it did during the height of the surge in 2011. In 2019, the US Air Force was responsible for more than two-thirds of child casualties from all airstrikes.
The Trump administration loosened the rules of engagement in Afghanistan, which led to the uptick in airstrikes. Last year, a report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project found that civilian casualties in airstrikes rose 330 percent from 2016 to 2019 due to the relaxed rules of engagement.
Since the US-Taliban peace deal was signed in February 2020, the US has reduced its airstrikes in the country, although the US has occasionally bombed the Taliban since. In March 2020, US Central Command stopped publishing reports on Afghanistan airstrikes, so there’s no way to know for sure at what rate the US bombed the country that year.
While US bombings decreased in 2020, the Afghan Air Force significantly escalated its airstrikes. The UN found that civilian casualties resulting from airstrikes by the Afghan Air Force during the first six months of 2020 had tripled, compared to the same time period in 2019.
We’ve all heard that story before…
Why The Main Argument Against Withdrawing US Troops Is Bogus
Former National Security Advisor and literal psychopath John Bolton has a new opinion piece out in Foreign Policy titled “‘Bring the Troops Home’ Is a Dream, Not a Strategy“, which should surprise no one and enrage everyone at the same time. The fact that this reptile continues to be elevated on mainstream platforms after consistently revealing himself to be a bloodthirsty liar is all the evidence you need that we are trapped inside a globe-spanning empire fueled by human corpses.
John Bolton has pushed for deranged acts of mass military slaughter at every opportunity. He not only remains one of the only people in the world to continually insist that the Iraq invasion was a great idea, but has actually argued that the destabilization and chaos caused by the invasion cannot be attributed to Bush’s war because you can’t prove that “everything that followed from the fall of Saddam Hussein followed inevitably, solely, and unalterably from the decision to overthrow him.” There are harrowing accounts of Bolton threatening, assaulting and intimidating anyone with less power than him if they got in his way; he once threatened to harm the children of former OPCW Director General Jose Bustani because Bustani was interfering in attempts to manufacture consent for the Iraq war.
All you can be…
Media Concern Trolling About Afghanistan Withdrawal Again
“Concerns mount that US withdrawal from Afghanistan could risk progress on women’s rights,” blares a new headline from CNN.
“Concerns are mounting from bipartisan US lawmakers and Afghan women’s rights activists that the hard-won gains for women and civil society in Afghanistan could be lost if the United States makes a precipitous withdrawal from the country,” CNN tells us.
What follows is yet another concern-trolling empire blog about why US troops need to stay in Afghanistan, joining recent others geared toward the same end like this CNN report about how the US military will open itself up to “costly litigation” if it withdraws now because it signed defense industry contracts into 2023, and this one by The New York Times about a US intelligence report urgently warning that a withdrawal from Afghanistan could lead to the nation being controlled by the people who live there.
US Intelligence Warns Withdrawal Could Lead To Afghanistan Being Controlled By Afghans
If the most powerful faction in Afghanistan wants power and has the ability to simply take it, they stand nothing to gain by signing a power-sharing agreement with a faction that is incapable of holding power. The New York Times and the US intelligence cartel (if one can even categorize these as separate entities at this point) are trying to spin the ongoing military presence in Afghanistan as a temporary situation awaiting conditions which will be arriving shortly, and that’s simply false. The Taliban will not voluntarily choose to make itself less powerful.
And, after the Afghanistan Papers exposed the fact that the US war machine has been lying left and right to justify the continuation of the occupation of Afghanistan, you would have to be out of your mind to believe that’s not intentional. The US military is in Afghanistan not to protect women’s rights from control by the illiberal Taliban forces, but because it’s a crucial geostrategic region that the US stands much to gain on the world stage by controlling. This is why the Afghanistan Papers were quickly memory-holed by the mass media as soon as they came out, and why now all we hear about is more made-up reasons why leaving would be disastrous.
Video evidence of ‘massacre’ by UK special forces in Afghanistan mysteriously VANISHES
Video allegedly showing a “rogue” SAS unit committing war crimes in Afghanistan has supposedly disappeared, as an investigation into the squad’s alleged “massacres” has been plagued by missing evidence and silence from witnesses.
Saifullah Yar was just 19 when his family were shot dead in an SAS raid on their Afghan village in 2011. When British military investigators flew to Kabul in 2017 to investigate the raid, he told them he was handcuffed and led away from his father, brother and two male cousins. He heard two sustained bursts of gunfire, and when the Brits departed, his relatives were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets.
Despite US ‘Giving Them Freedom’ for 20 Years, Afghanistan Bans Women from Singing
To those who have been paying attention, it is no secret that the US government has been lying to its citizens for centuries. From granting the power to coin money to the private Federal Reserve to the war on terror to the endless wars spawned by the war on terror, the United States government should change its official language from English—to lie. One of the most insidious lies ever perpetuated against US citizens was the idea that the US is spreading freedom and democracy in the Middle East when it waged war in Afghanistan.
On October 7, 2001, the United States invaded and began murdering began giving the citizens of Afghanistan “freedom.” For nearly two decades, countless bombs have fallen on the country, turning once beautiful cities into piles of rubble as “freedom” and “democracy” was delivered in the form of hellfire missiles.
Thousands of US military troops lost their lives and tens of thousand of others have been maimed and permanently disabled. Hundreds of thousands of innocent men women and children died as the US bombarded the country with this precious “freedom.”
Highlighting the superior effectiveness of the American war in the Middle East, Afghanistan’s freedom came to a pinnacle this week as this new land of promise and opportunity banned women over the age of 12 from singing.
According to DW.com, Afghanistan’s Education Ministry is barring schoolgirls older than 12 from singing at public events and prohibiting male teachers from teaching schoolgirls.
After all, nothing says “freedom” and “democracy” quite like adopting the Taliban’s policies and threatening females with imprisonment for making melodic sounds with their vocal chords.
Corruption, Murder, Pederasty: The Afghan Government Is Not Worth Fighting For
As the Biden administration debates what to do in Afghanistan, there is a great deal of talk about how the U.S. should not abandon the government there. Meanwhile, the Taliban has stuck to its pledge not to attack American troops for a year, and had promised that it would not allow terrorists a base in Afghanistan in the case of U.S. withdrawal.
Given these facts, supporters of continuing the war have come to realize that the national security case for staying is weaker than ever, and have centered their argument on moral appeals. What would happen to the Afghan government if the United States left?
But such arguments require that the Afghan government be morally superior to the Taliban and able to provide a better future for its people. In fact, there is little evidence to suggest that this is the case.
By all accounts, the Taliban is less corrupt than those the U.S. is defending. How could this be the case? The Afghan war has cost the U.S. over $2 trillion, which includes military spending on fighting the Taliban, aid to the Kabul government, and reconstruction projects. What is the Taliban spending on this war? There are no official numbers, but according to one report, they brought in $1.6 billion in the fiscal year that ended in March 2020. The Taliban can gain and hold territory in the face of overwhelming odds because they have better morale and more effective organization.
This has been admitted by officials of the Afghan government. According to Tooryalai Wesa, the former governor of Kandahar province, citizens told him that under Taliban rule “the money changers used to cover their money just under a sheet” as they went to pray because “people knew that law will be enforced.” Moreover, “when Taliban ordered to stop poppy cultivation, Mullah Omar could enforce it with his blind eye.” Under the U.S. occupation, drug production has been out of control, sometimes implicating Afghans at the top levels of government.
Taliban competence compared to government corruption is still a recurring theme of reporting on the conflict. A driver delivering a cargo of potatoes on Highway 1 recently reported that while he needed to pay the Taliban a one-time toll of the equivalent of $75, the government was worse, with 12 different checkpoints on the same road, each demanding up to $37, while providing inferior levels of security.
According to the New York Times, from the beginning of the American invasion, “the insurgents seized on the corruption and abuses of the Afghan government put in place by the United States, and cast themselves as arbiters of justice and Afghan tradition — a powerful part of their continued appeal with many rural Afghans in particular.”
While the West rightly criticizes the Taliban for its human rights abuses, the Afghan government also has blood on its hands. Secret units have carried out summary executions on flimsy grounds, including against children. And while the Taliban has been suspected of being behind an ongoing assassination campaign against civil society figures, recently credible reports have emerged that the Afghan government is secretly killing individuals advocating for reconciliation and the end of war.
The practice of bacha bazi, an Afghan custom in which a young boy dances for and is sexually abused by older men, made a comeback in Afghanistan during the war. It was the Taliban that originally made the practice illegal for being inconsistent with Sharia law. In 2015, it was apparently common practice among Afghan military and police, and American soldiers were told to ignore it. The Afghan government did not move to ban the custom until 2017. Revulsion over the practice was reported to be key to Mullah Omar’s rise to power, with locals in the south of the country objecting to warlords raping their young boys and throwing their support behind the Taliban and its effective, if harsh, form of justice.
Hellbound and Down 
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