By John Robles
Another case of US Forces desecrating remains ends with a slap on the wrist for some of the perpetrators while others received no disciplinary action and on the same day the burning of Korans was also brushed off with those guilty also escaping serious punishment. Against the backdrop of increased Afghan on NATO violence and the beheading of 17 partygoers by Islamists, the question as to who really are the "savages" in Afghanistan begs to be asked.
Once again, as with almost every case involving egregious misconduct by US troops who have committed what can only be characterized as war crimes, those involved have received nothing more than the proverbial slap on the wrist, and the cases are in the hundreds if not thousands. We do not know the accurate figures because most such events are hidden and not reported.
This time the events in question could be called benign by US standards. For some reason, probably to minimize the backlash, both judgments came at the same time, namely rulings on cases of soldiers urinating on Taliban corpses and the burning of Korans.
In the case of the urinating Marines some of them received unspecified administrative “discipline,” it was reported on Monday, despite the US claiming that it was a “huge” embarrassment and caused a Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation, as well as condemnation and an apology from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and even US Secretary of State Clinton, who vowed that the culprits would be found and punished.
An image from a video posted on the Internet shows Marines standing around corpses in Afghanistan. The video shows them urinating on the bodies. (Photo: Associated Press/January 12, 2012)
The other judgment also released on Monday, involved the burning of Korans by US troops, an event which caused widespread riots, multiple deaths and calls from the Taliban and Islamists to kill foreign troops in Afghanistan and Americans in order to defend Islam’s Holy book.
Despite the outrage and deaths caused by their actions nothing “criminal” really occurred, according to the US.
Like I said these were benign events by US standards, after Abu Ghraib and similar events in Iraq, the mass murders of almost 20 civilians while they slept in their homes earlier this year by a “deranged” sergeant, cases of cutting off body parts as trophies (including the cutting off of fingers, noses, ears and even the peeling off of faces), families being set on fire, denial of medical care to mass numbers of civilians leading to their deaths, snipers posing with Nazi symbols, multiple cases of rape, sodomy and massacre after massacre after massacre, sure Marines simply urinating on corpses seems almost comic.
The Taliban are almost no better, however they trail far behind compared to the overall creativity and level of atrocity of NATO’s finest. Their savagery is just as brutal as that committed by some of the NATO forces but less widespread and frequent. The latest event attributed to the Taliban but denied by them and quite possibly carried out by “insurgents,” was the beheading of 15 men and 2 women for having a party with dancing and music, something they view as immoral and un-Islamic.
The Afghan authorities has launched an investigation with President Hamid Karzai saying,”…the attack shows that there are irresponsible members among the Taliban."
The beheading of the partygoers occurred in an area of Musa Qala district which is almost totally under Taliban control. Governor of Musa Qala, Nematullah Khan said, "They were having a music party and the Taliban came and killed them and cut off their heads."
On the same day to the south 10 Afghan soldiers were killed at a checkpoint and 2 NATO soldiers were killed by an Afghan soldier while they were on joint patrol bringing the number of victims of Afghan soldier on NATO soldier violence to 42 this year alone. Now called “green-on-blue-killings” a further sign of the utter failure of almost 12 years of “coalition” occupation.
These are facts the west would rather we did not know because in Afghanistan as in Iraq every move against the citizenry and every bomb dropped has been done illegally. Both of these countries were attacked in illegal acts of military aggression for involvement in events they had nothing to do with, namely the events of 9-11, both of the countries never threatened or even posed a threat to the US, yet they have paid the price and have been illegally occupied so it is not surprising that the people are fighting back.
Going back to the subject of slaps on the wrists for those committing atrocities, for me, the reason they never pay the price for their illegal behavior has been clear for a long time. How on earth could the US judicial system or the US military deem anything their own killing machines do to be illegal if the whole war and occupation of Afghanistan is in and of itself illegal to begin with?
The truth is an extremely dangerous thing especially when it is something that might end plans for world domination, and that is what it is all about, but it looks like they may be failing.
In Afghanistan, a country decimated by close to 12 years of war the truths are hidden on a daily basis and as sites such as Wikileaks have found out (the hard way), reporting on the facts is something the US Empire will not allow.
The destruction and atrocities that the US has unleashed on the Afghan people continue on a daily basis and have been something the US has attempted time and time again to hide. As they continue so will the response from the Afghan side.
In Afghanistan the US obfuscates, hides and doctors the facts at every turn so that even finding an accurate count of the number of civilian deaths in the country is almost an impossibility with numbers ranging from the 10s of thousands to the millions. Yet one thing is crystal clear the US has failed in Afghanistan and there is little likelihood that there is a way out.
One question that I feel truly begs to be answered is quite a simple one: who in fact are the real “savages” in Afghanistan?