Peace Pundit

On Feb 23 2010, I submitted this letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, and they printed it on Sunday Feb 28:

Editor,

Two stories in Tuesday’s SF Chronicle — one national and one international — provided a telling contrast.

In the national story [Man pleads guilty to 'martyrdom' plan], an Afghan airport shuttlebus driver is in custody, charged with planning terrorist acts in the U.S. Among the crimes he is accused of: “conspiring to commit murder in a foreign country”.

In the international story [New civilian deaths may hurt U.S. efforts], US troops fired from helicopters on Afghan civilians traveling in a bus caravan. The troops killed at least 25 non-combatants — including women and children — and injured a dozen more. Even though they failed to follow rules of engagement that prohibit them from firing on civilians, thereby committing murder in a foreign country, it is unlikely that any will face charges. The US military apologized, and that will be the end of it.

The message: Afghans planning terrorist acts against the US is a crime, but US troops raining terror down upon Afghan civilians is not.

Both are crimes.

Sincerely,

I kept the letter brief to help ensure that the Chronicle would print it, but a few other points are also worth mentioning:

• A senior US military official said that not only did the troops fire on the Afghan bus caravan without properly checking whether those in the buses were civilians or insurgents, they also fired without provocation: “There was no danger to coalition forces,” he said.
• The US changed its rules of engagement in mid-2009, when General Stanley McCrystal took over as the top American commander in Afghanistan. The new rules “came after a recognition that killing civilians inflamed the insurgency and turned villagers against NATO and Afghan troops.” Ahem… We’ve been waging war in Afghanistan for eight years — longer than WWII lasted. That realization came only last year?
• As an example of how US-caused Afghan civilian casualties radicalizes Afghans, consider what Najibullah Zazi, in pleading guilty to the charges against him, said: “I would sacrifice myself to bring attention to what the US military was doing to civilians in Afghanistan.” This is an airport shuttle driver — an Afghan who presumably came to the US for a better life, and who in fact had found a better life. Angered by reports of what US forces were doing in his home country, he went to join the Taliban and fight against the US. He probably would have died doing that, but Al Qaeda recruited him and sent him back to the US to plan a suicide car-bomb attack in NYC.
• Attorney General Eric Holder, commenting on the mayhem that Zazi’s arrest prevented, said: “This attempted attack on our homeland was real, it was in motion, and it would have been deadly.” In contrast, the helicopter strike on Afghan civilians was not an attempted attack; it was all too real, it was very much in motion, and it was deadly.

Related Previous PeacePundit Posts

• Afghan Civilian Deaths Increase 14% from 2008 to 2009
• Ten Reasons a Troop Surge in Afghanistan is a Mistake
• Afghan Civilian Deaths: Good News (maybe) and Bad News
• Update on May 4-5 Afghan Airstrike Incident
• Memo to Obama, Clinton, and Gates: Stop Digging!
• Don’t Call It “Collateral Damage”
• Child Casualties Are Not Acceptable

This entry was posted on February 23, 2010 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Civilian Casualties, Cost of War, War on Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.