Executing Handcuffed Afghan Kids?
Executing Handcuffed Afghan Kids?
By DAVE LINDORFF
March 18, 2010
http://eldib.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/
When Charlie Company¹s Lt. William Calley ordered and encouraged his men to
rape, maim and slaughter over 400 men, women and children in My Lai in
Vietnam back in 1968, there were at least four Americans who tried to stop
him or bring him and higher officers to justice. One was helicopter pilot
Hugh Thompson Jr., who evacuated some of the wounded victims, and who set
his chopper down between a group of Vietnamese and Calley¹s men, ordering
his door gunner to open fire on the US soldiers if they shot any more
people. One was Ron Ridenhour, a soldier who learned of the massacre, and
began a private investigation, ultimately reporting the crime to the
Pentagon and Congress. One was Michael Bernhardt, a soldier in Charlie
Company who witnessed the whole thing, and reported it all to Ridenhour.
And one was journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story in the US media.
Today¹s war in Afghanistan also has its My Lai massacres. It has them
almost weekly, as US warplanes bomb wedding parties, or homes ³suspected²
of housing terrorists that turn out to house nothing but civilians. But
these My Lais are all conveniently labeled accidents. They get filed away
and forgotten as the inevitable ³collateral damage² of war. There was,
however, a massacre recently that was not a mistakea massacre which, while
it only involved fewer than a dozen people, bears the same stench as My
Lai. It was the execution-style slaying of eight handcuffed students, aged
11-18, and a 12-year-old neighboring shepherd boy who had been visiting the
others, in Kunar Province, on Dec. 26.
Sadly, no principled soldier with a conscience like pilot Hugh Thompson
tried to save these children. No observer had the guts of a Michael
Brernhardt to report what he had seen. No Ron Ridenhour among the other
serving US troops in Afghanistan has investigated this atrocity or reported
it to Congress. And no American reporter has investigated this war crime
the way Seymour Hersh investigated My Lai.
There is a Seymour Hersh for the Kunar massacre, but he¹s a Brit. While
American reporters like the anonymous journalistic drones who wrote CNN¹s
December 29 report on the incident
(
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/29/afghanistan.deaths/index.html),
took the Pentagon¹s initial cover storythat the dead were part of a secret
bomb-squadat face value, Jerome Starkey, a reporter in Afghanistan working
for the Times of London and the Scotsman, talked to other sourcesthe dead
boys¹ headmaster, other townspeople, and Afghan government officialsand
found out the real truth about a gruesome war crimethe execution of
handcuffed children. And while a few news outlets in the US like the New
York Times did mention that there were some claims that the dead were
children, not bomb-makers, none, including CNN, which had bought and run
the Pentagon¹s lies unquestioningly, bothered to print the news update
when, on Feb. 24, the US military admitted that in fact the dead were
innocent students. Nor has any US corporate news organization mentioned that
the dead had been handcuffed when they were shot.
Starkey reported
<
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/world/8-weeks-on-Nato-admits.6102256.jp>
the US government¹s damning admission. Yet still the US media remain silent
as the grave.
Under the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to execute a captive. Yet
in Kunar on December 26, US-led forces, or perhaps US soldiers or contract
mercenaries, cold-bloodedly executed eight hand-cuffed prisoners. It is a
war crime to kill children under the age of 15, yet in this incident a boy
of 11 and a boy of 12 were handcuffed as captured combatants and executed.
Two others of the dead were 12 and a third was 15.
I called the Secretary of Defense¹s office to ask if any investigation was
underway into this crime or if one was planned, and was told I had to send
a written request, which I did. To date, I have heard nothing. The
Pentagon PR machine pretended to me on the phone that they didn¹t even know
what incident I was talking about, but without their ³help² I have learned
that what the US military has doneno surpriseis to pass the buck by
leaving any investigation to the International Security Assistance Forcea
fancy name for the US-led NATO force fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It¹s a clever ruse. The ISAF is no more a genuine coalition entity than
was George Bush¹s Iraq War Coalition of the Willing, but this dodge makes
legislative investigation of the event impossible, since Congress has no
authority to compel testimony from NATO or the ISAF as it would the
Pentagon. A source at the Senate Armed Services Committee confirms that the
ISAF is investigating, and that the committee has asked for a
³briefing²that means nothing would be under oathonce that investigation
is complete, but don¹t hold your breath or expect anything dramatic.
I also contacted the press office of the House Armed Services Committee to
see if any hearings into this crime have been planned. The answer is no,
though the press officer asked me to send her details of the incident (Not
a good sign that House members and staff are paying much attentionthe
killings led to country-wide student demonstrations in Afghanistan, to a
formal protest by the office of President Hamid Karzai, and to an
investigation by the Afghan government, which concluded that innocent
students had been handcuffed and executed, and no doubt contributed to a
call by the Afghan government for prosecution and execution of American
soldiers who kill Afghan civilians.)
There is still time for people of conscience to stand up in the midst of
this imperial adventure that may now appropriately be called Obama¹s War in
Afghanistan. Plenty of men and women in uniform in Afghanistan know that
nine Afghan children were captured and murdered at America¹s hands last
December in Kunar. There are also probably people who were involved in the
planning or carrying out of this criminal operation who are sickened by
what happened. But these people are so far holding their tongues, whether
out of fear, or out of simply not knowing where to turn (Note: If you have
information you may contact me). There are also plenty of reporters in
Afghanistan and in Washington who could be investigating this story. They
are not. Don¹t ask me why. Maybe ask their editors.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-area journalistHis work can be found at
www.thiscantbehappening.net <
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/> . He can
be reached at
dlindorff@yahoo.com. <
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/>
Written by eldib
March 18, 2010 at 2:31 pm
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