The Horror in Panjwai ... and the last 9 years reviewed

It all began with Bush declaring imperiously, "If you're not with us, you're with them".

And then began the sordid, shameful saga in 2003 that has yet to end. Of two more wars that should never have happened. Of a war being waged on a common noun.

It began by the US occupying high moral ground. Of 3000+ innocent victims of terror¹. But it led to documented deaths of well over 105,000+ Iraqis. Several times more people injured or violently displaced from their homes. Lancet's 2^nd peer-reviewed study of Iraqi casualties indicated 654,965 excess deaths, or 2.5% of Iraq's population. That was in 2006. In 2007, the Opinion Research Business, an independent polling agency located in London, published estimates of the total war casualties in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 200 at over 1.2 million deaths (1,220,580). Of these, 48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance. As of Jan, 2008, this estimate had been revised to 1,033,000. Of course, such findings are contested – none can ever claim accuracy. But then, you get the drift. How many Afghani and Iraqi Arabs should die for each American who died in the WTC Tower crash? All this toll in a war started on the basis of what proved to be a pack of lies told to the whole world!

A country that was ruled ruthlessly for 34 years by a dictator was thrown from that frying pan into an intense fire of an internecine escalating spiral of senseless violence. The situation today is such that now many Iraqis must yearn for the days under a tyrant called Saddam.

Since 2003 when Saddam was deposed by an intense military offensive, death has mostly rained down on Iraq from the air, where no American lives can be lost. When at last the Americans sent in their ground troops, they first created a min-America within Iraq – the heavily fortified Green Zone. And then let loose their maniacs and perverts. Like Lynndie England and Charles Graner in Abu Ghraib, a prison housing 7,500 prisoners in 2004. After their unpardonable acts of perversion, they were escorted safely to the US, where Lynndie gave safe birth to a child conceived in the midst of perversion, and then spent a leisurely 3 years in a swank military prison in the balmy climate of California spread over 19,000 sq mts and meant to house only 400 female prisoners. She served in the prison kitchen as punishment, and lived in that prison for exactly 521 days till she was paroled till her 3-year sentence was over. Now she lives in West Virginia, bringing up her child. Still not repentant for the horrors she took part in. And Graner? He was sentenced to 10 years, but was released in August, 2011 after serving only 6.5 years in a new prison building in Kansas meant for 515 prisoners in a quiet area spread over 51 acres where the bright cells have doors and windows, but no bars. Both were dishonorably discharged – forget the dishonor, discharge is what they probably wanted and got, anyway.

This is what an American soldier gets for visiting unspeakable horrors on thousands of prisoners. Definitely what the US soldier who went on a rampage yesterday in the original war-on-terror theatre, Afghanistan, must have mulled as infinitely preferable to the hell-hole that Afghanistan has become.

Let us go fast forward over the other horrors – the peeing on bodies of dead Taliban fighters; the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers and several hundred civilians through unmanned drone attacks; the random killing of defenceless civilians including a Reuters cameraman in Baghdad by shooting through Apache helicopter gun-sight; the shoot-the-messenger reaction in charging Bradley Manning for leaking this evidence to WikiLeaks; the desecration and burning of copies of the Koran; and so many others – and come straight to yesterday's horror at Panjwai in rural Afghanistan. What happened? 

An American on Afghan soil walks up in the dead of night and shoots and kills 16 Afghan civilians point-blank and coolly walks away. He is arrested – not by Afghan police, but by the NATO forces! 

Now, being a US citizen, he will be tried and brought to justice. In American. In American style. In a closed military court, like England and Graner. In camera, and not in a public trial. That too, many months or years after the public has forgotten this horror. And then, the judgment of the military court will be classified, and not released. And this soldier not hanged, but sentenced to 10-15 years in a swank, comfortable prison, if he is unlucky. And given a dishonorable discharge from the Armed Forces. And paroled after a few years. So he can go back to his family. And live happily or unhappily ever after. With only his conscience to trouble him. If he has one, that is.

Obama consoles Karzai, and not the people who are bereaved so suddenly; and senselessly. Not a month ago, he ducked out of sight and refuses to apologize for the Koran burnings. Directing the NATO commander to do that instead. The same President who did not cringe from the cameras after the killing of Osama bin Laden on foreign soil, in flagrant violation of sovereignty of a nation. Is that the face of a Nobel Peace Prize winner that we see?

What about the US Government? Thanks to its formidable spin doctors and the twin forces of powers to conceal the truth and a well-oiled propaganda machine to project a lie as the truth, and of course, a credulous population, it will still manage to hold forth and pontificate against human rights abuses elsewhere in the world. Like it managed to make their shameful retreat from a war that they lost abjectly, secretly under cover of darkness, and then look like a great achievement.

Now I think I begin to understand the depth of loathing that Arabs have for Americans. Loathing not just because of their despicable acts. But in large measure due to the Americans' deep-seated hypocrisy.

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1 Even this is being disputed by documentaries like Fahrenheit 911 by Michael Moore and Loose Change 9/11

Are Apologies Enough?

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Here's a Simple Quiz:  What do you see in common in all the following brief extracts from random news stories?
 
The US has apologized for what some of its scientists did between 1946 and 1948, which has now come out into the open. These scientists deliberately infected about 1,500 prisoners, soldiers and mentally ill asylum patients with syphilis and gonorrhea, in order to study whether penicillin can prevent infection from these scourges. At least one died; and the record is not clear on how many were cured. This unethical research was not publicly disclosed until October 1, 2010. The Surgeon General of the US at the time acknowledged, it could not have been done in the United States. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have telephoned and apologized to the Guatemalan President. The US Government has instituted a task force to investigate into the detailed facts. Apologies over and done with. Pesky problem out of the way.

The US Homeland Security has apologized for questioning Praful Patel, India's Civil Aviation Minister, in a case of what they called mistaken identity.

The US Department of State has apologized to Russia for effectively kidnapping a Russian pilot in Liberia, suspected of drug smuggling, and failing to inform Russia immediately.

The US State Department has apologized for comments made about Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. 


The US government apologized for displaying the Philippine flag upside down at an event in New York attended by US President Barack Obama.

The US apologizes for soldier using Koran in target practice. 


The United States formally apologized to American Indian tribes Wednesday for “ill-conceived policies” and acts of violence committed against them.


The US apologized to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of its staunchest allies in Europe, for an "insulting'' biography that was handed out to White House reporters at the Group of Eight meetings in Japan. 

The United States has issued a written apology to a jet-setting billionaire businessman with close ties to former President Bill Clinton whose name was added to the no-fly list in the wake of the attempted Christmas day bombing of an American passenger plane.

Nearly 60 years after the United States forced more than 2,000 Latin Americans of Japanese descent to be deported to the United States and detained in camps during World War II, the federal government apologized yesterday for their "wrongful internment" and agreed to pay each former internee $5,000.

The Pakistani Defense Ministry said the United States has apologized to Pakistan over mistreatment of a military delegation.

You guessed it. The US is apologizing! But hey, there's a lot of apologizing still remaining to be done. 

The US Government has yet to apologize for the Abu Ghraib excesses in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld "accepted full responsibility" but neither has he or the Government that he was part of, apologized for the shocking atrocities that has forever alienated every Arab from the US. President Bush once apologized for the "humiliation" some Iraqi prisoners suffered at the hands of U.S. troops but in the same sentence, he said that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is safe in his job. The US administration has consistently characterized the Abu Ghraib torture scandal as an isolated incident uncharacteristic of US actions in Iraq; this view is widely disputed, notably in Arab countries, but also by organizations such as the International Red Cross as "a pattern and a broad system". Not a dollar of compensation has been paid to anyone who suffered or died in the torture scandal. 

The US continues to kill innocent civilians in drone attacks in Afghanistan/ Pakistan, but has yet to issue an apology or halt these drone attacks. Civilian death are mere "collateral damage" while attempting to eliminate "insurgents".

The US has brought Iraq to its knees. Iraq seems in hindsight to have been well-governed, albeit undemocratically, and are now running away leaving the country in an ungovernable mess, because, while they had a plan to win the war, naively enough, they had none to win the peace. And all this, with provocations that have been shown to be lies and fabrications.

Is apologizing enough? If so, then BP should be allowed to resume their business without further costs or damages for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, as they have apologized, and even brought in a new CEO, that expresses their contrition.
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How brave American women on the battlefront are treated

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I had blogged in October, 2009 that it was shocking that American women who allege rape or harassment while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan have been denied recourse to courts. Studies that I had not been aware of when I blogged in October show the extent of this offence.  For example, this story from May, 2009 shows another form of wink-wink-nod-nod behaviour of the Government when it comes to dealing with this issue. This story on BBC's website datelined 17 April, 2009  reviews a book on the subject. Importantly, it alleges that the US Department of Defense knew about this state of affairs and chose to do nothing.
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The way Americans think

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I saw this article on how dairy farming in Vermont was suffering because of low milk prices. This, in spite of several Vermont dairy farms employing illegal labour with no papers, working 80 hours a week for low, low wages and living in constant fear of being arrested and deported -- to the extent of not mourning for, or even acknowledging, one of their own who died in a farm accident. This article looked at how dairy farmers are being forced to sell out, or sell their cows to weather the winter.

The article was put up on Jan 4, 2010 at 8:21 am. Within hours, by the time I read the article, as many as 44 reader comments had been logged on the story. While this article was eye-opening (Americans also run sweat-shops - and that too, in America!), what struck me was the content of the reader comments.  

• The first comment was that farmers should, instead of processing and selling their milk to dairies, sell raw (unprocessed, unpasteurised) milk because it was not only better for health but would also fetch the farmers higher returns. Over 30 of the comments were comments on this suggestion. 
• Three readers commented in defence of 80-hour weeks, but never addressed the glaring issue of exploitation of fellow-humans.
  
• Not a single reader commented on America's holier-than-thou attitude of lecturing countries like China, India, Brazil etc. on better conditions and pay for workers in their factories, while their own dairy farmers used illegal labourers who lived and put in hard 80-hour work weeks in constant fear (a recipe for exploitation, if ever there was one) in their own motherland.The nearest was one reader suggesting that it would be better to see how we could put more money into the hands of everyone, and how these workers should have been given citizenship much earlier.
• It struck me that milk prices could be low because of over-supply in the US domestic market. Not one reader commented on why this problem arose and how to address that problem.

What I deduced from this encounter about the mindset of the average American is two-fold: (a) He is so self-absorbed that he cannot empathise with non-American fellow-human beings. (b) The average American has strong opinions on the fads of the day while having entirely un-reasoned, stilted opinions on matters like economics and human rights.

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Shocking -- Rape Victims Denied Recourse to Court in the USA

Republicans are opposing an amendment to deny government contracts to companies that force their employees to accept binding, mandatory arbitration; i.e., forgo their right to go to court, including, inter alia, women who are alleging that they have been raped, assaulted, etc.. Why is such a salutary provision being opposed? Because the companies that would be hurt the most would be Halliburton and KBR, the contractors who have got uncounted billions worth of US taxpayers' moneys to support the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has come out that several women have alleged gang rape by male employees of these contractors, and all these cases have been hushed up by the mandatory binding arbitration. See this devastating cross-questioning of a KBR attorney by a Sen Frank Allen.


It is difficult to believe that in a country that prides itself on upholding human rights that this can be allowed to happen.


It has taken 10 years of war for this state of affairs to emerge into the public domain in any meaningful way other than armchair discussions.