Droning On

In a previous post I mentioned…

Obama continues to use drone attacks against people on the Pakistan border and though the news media has now seen fit to remain silent on just who is being killed I believe it goes without saying that many of the murdered are civilians.

The reason I mentioned that the news media is silent on who exactly is being killed in Afghanistan was due to the fact that in the first drone attack ordered by Obama the news media, or some of the news media, didn’t seem shy about mentioning that civilians were being killed. True, the various reports didn’t agree as to the exact numbers but they all agreed that civilians were paying the ultimate price while in the more recent bombings the news now seemed to assert that only “terrorists” were being killed yet this seemed out of character for what typically happens in bombings.

Chris Floyd who works much harder at writing about this than anyone else writes about civilian deaths in Afghanistan taking the news media to task which they certainly should be.

Link

We reported here last week about another in the barrage of stories detailing civilian deaths at the hands of American-led forces in the "good war" in Afghanistan, now being escalated by Barack Obama. (And not only in Afghanistan; Obama is also rapidly expanding American attacks inside Pakistan to include forces there with little or no involvement with the war in Afghanistan -- along with the usual blood-fruit harvest of civilians, of course.)

In last week's post, we took note of Washington's claim that U.S. missiles had killed "15 militants" in a raid that Afghan officials said actually killed 13 civilians, including six women and two children. Today, the New York Times reports that Pentagon has now admitted that they did indeed kill 13 civilians in the raid, and only 3 militants -- precisely as the Afghan authorities had claimed.

Not that this will give our cool, adorable, Buddha-like president a moment's pause, but the incident and its reportage gives us yet another timely reminder that the claims by Afghan authorities about civilian casualties are almost always highly accurate, while the first instinct of the Pentagon is to lie, deceive and spin -- with the sure knowledge that its initial claims will always be greeted as authoritative by the Homeland press, while the inevitable climbdowns and qualifications that come later will pass largely unnoticed.

Also, it should be stressed that the reports of civilian deaths at Western hands in Afghanistan that do make it into the mainstream press are almost always based on investigations by Afghan authorities -- that is to say, by officials who are part of the American-backed Afghan government. There is is a great myth among many backers of the "good war" in Afghanistan that accounts of horrendous "collateral damage" caused by American bombs, missiles, ground raids and covert operations are simply propaganda spooned out to the "liberal media" by the Taliban. This is itself another self-serving lie of the American war machine and its many sycophants.

Now I know that many people don’t agree with me when I call Obama a moron and perhaps you believe I am being unfair. After all, Dear Leader wrote a book! But let me clarify if I may. And no I don’t expect people to agree, I don’t even care all that much if you do or not.

Anyone who runs for the office of the presidency of the United States is already completely indoctrinated in the American myth of American superiority to all other nations past, present, and no doubt future. People who are thusly indoctrinated are not exactly what you would call thinking people. In fact I posit that the indoctrinated have long since ceased to think. Though Obama supporters touted Obama as the “peace” candidate Obama continues to destroy human life but because he is indoctrinated it hardly bothers him at all nor does it bother his supporters who for sure don’t think I am being fair to the big O. Consider that during his campaign he promised to escalate the Afghan war with more troops and he has honored that promise (his peace candidate supporters ignore this or justify it with nonsensical arguments) yet he made this promise without a plan or a goal in mind! All Obama knew was that he wanted to escalate the war yet there was no thought behind his desire to pursue the escalation. This can hardly be described as thinking and as far as I am concerned people who don’t think are morons.

Of course I am lying and making all of this up because I am ever so evil since I am not goo-goo-gah-gah for Obama yet consider the following link from a previous post.

Link

The president was concerned by a lack of strategy at his first meeting with Gates and the US joint chiefs of staff last month in “the tank”, the secure conference room in the Pentagon. He asked: “What’s the endgame?” and did not receive a convincing answer.

Larry Korb, a defence expert at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, said: “Obama is exactly right. Before he agrees to send 30,000 troops, he wants to know what the mission and the endgame is.”

This is really quite clear. If Obama had to ask what the endgame was that can only mean one thing. He wanted to send additional troops as he said during his campaign but he had no idea why he wanted to send more troops.

In my book this makes Obama a moron. Only a non-thinking fool would endanger the lives of more people be they military or civilian without any real plan or goal. And naturally people will say “Oh Obama had to say that to be elected” yet if that were the case he could have chosen not to send more troops yet he recently gave the order for an additional 17,000 troops to be sent to Afghanistan. Or perhaps Obama believed that throwing more troops into the fray is all that was needed to …what? Win what? What is there to win? A democracy in Afghanistan? Does anyone in their right mind really care if Afghanistan has a democracy? Why? Are you addled? Is your brain-pan leaking grey matter? Are you qualified to tell the Afghans how to lead their lives? If you believe you are qualified then you are just as indoctrinated as Obama. And just as thoughtless. Think about it.