By Brian Becker, ANSWER Coalition National Coordinator
Borrowing a page from its infamous “pacification” effort in South
Vietnam, where peasant villages were napalmed and burned to the ground
to “save them from the communists,” the Obama-ordered surge in
Afghanistan has been secretly blowing up thousands of homes and leveling
portions of the Afghan countryside.
As tens of thousands of U.S. troops have surged into southern
Afghanistan, villagers have fled. Then the Petraeus-led occupation
forces have determined which homes will be destroyed.
“In Arghandab District, for instance, every one of the 40 homes in
the village of Khosrow was flattened by a salvo of 25 missiles,
according to the district governor, Shah Muhammed Ahmadi, who estimated
that 120 to 130 houses had been demolished in his district,” reported
the New York Times, Nov. 16, 2010.
The Pentagon asserts that they must destroy the homes because some of them may have explosive devices inside.
The Pentagon’s murderous rampage and terror campaign 40 years ago
against South Vietnamese villages, in areas that were considered
sympathetic to the resistance forces, used much of the same kind of
explanation. In fact, the New York Times in a throw back to Vietnam
quotes the Arghandab District Governor, who is working with the
occupation forces: “We had to destroy them to make them safe.”
That this tactic is part of a high-tech terror campaign against
Afghan villages and the people who inhabit them is evident even by the
descriptions and accounts of western media outlets that are supporting
the war.
Again, from the New York Times, Nov. 16, 2010, which describes weapons as tools:
“American troops are using an impressive array of tools not only to
demolish homes, but also to eliminate tree lines where insurgents could
hide, blow up outbuildings, flatten agricultural walls, and carve new
“military roads,” because existing ones are so heavily mined, according
to journalists embedded in the area recently.
“One of the most fearsome tools is the Miclic, the M58 Mine-Clearing
Line Charge, a chain of explosives tied to a rocket, which upon impact
destroys everything in a swath 30 feet wide and 325 feet long. The
Himars missile system, a pod of 13-foot rockets carrying 200-pound
warheads, has also been used frequently for demolition work.
“Often, new military roads go right through farms and compounds,
cutting a route that will keep soldiers safe from roadside bombs. In
Zhare District alone, the 101st Airborne’s Second Brigade has lost 30
soldiers since last June, mostly to such bombs.”
Activists at the organization Afghanistan Rights Monitor described
the destroyed homes. “These are all mud houses, quite humble houses.”
When Gen. David Petraeus describes his counter-insurgency strategy,
he always puts in a few diplomatic words about the need of surging
troops to win the “hearts and minds” of the people in Afghanistan’s
poverty stricken villages. That is purely for public consumption—a
message echoed endlessly by the complicit corporate-owned media and the
politicians of both parties that serves as a mask for the Pentagon’s
campaign of systematic terror employed to subdue an occupied people.
On Dec. 16, 2010, anti-war veterans and people of conscience will
stand up in a dramatic action in opposition to the terror campaign
waged from the White House and Pentagon. Join us in Washington, D.C. on
Dec. 16 and be part of history.
Join the U.S. veteran-led civil resistance to the wars
Take a Stand for Peace
December 16 ● Washington, D.C. ● The White House
Gather at Lafayette Park at 10am
In
1932, during the depths of the Depression, WWI veterans descended on
Washington, D.C., to demand their promised bonuses. General Douglas
MacArthur and his sidekick Dwight Eisenhower burned their encampment
down and drove the vets out of town at bayonet point.
We are
today’s bonus marchers, and we’ve come to claim our bonus—PEACE. Join
activist veterans marching in solidarity to the White House, refusing to
move, demanding an end to U.S. wars, whether waged by occupation
troops, drones, or proxy in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, or
Palestine.
Not Another Day! Not Another Dollar! Not Another Life!
Mr. Obama: End These Wars!
Not tomorrow. Not next year. Now!
Endorsed
by: Veterans For Peace, ANSWER Coalition, CODEPINK, Fellowship of
Reconciliation, March Forward!, Peace of the Action, United National
Antiwar Committee, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, War Resisters
League, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, World Can’t
Wait