Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Kunduz: Portrait of an American War Crime

In the blood spattered pantheon of American intervention episodes of tragic and often gruesome error are sadly common place. Wedding parties get pulverized by airstrikes, drones cut down innocent children only to later proclaim them enemy combatants and elderly peasants get crushed beneath the gears of colossal armored vehicles. Yes, in modern day war zones accidents do happen, all just part of the daily grind when you live in hell. But last weeks bombing of a Doctors Without Borders operated hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz was no fucking accident. It was a callously calculated crime against humanity, a war crime and it needs to be addressed.

The "official" story fed to us by the Pentagon and repeated verbatim by there loyal echo chamber in the mass media has changed repeatedly. First the Afghans called in the attack, then it was the US Army. First it was a logistical mistake, now its collateral damage in an assault against the resurgent Taliban, firing on soldiers from the compound. All of this, of coarse, is total bullshit, all of it.

The US military was well aware of the hospitals location. Doctors Without Borders had provided them with precise and accurate GPS coordinates on multiple occasions, the latest had been provided in late September. Not that they were even necessary. The complex was a massive, well established landmark, the largest building for miles around with a distinctive T shape clearly visible to satellites, let alone aircraft. It was the only free trauma hospital in Northern Afghanistan, adorned with a massive nine foot flag upon its roof identifying it as such. None of this stopped a low flying AC-130 gunship from unleashing hell upon an internationally revered institution protected by the Geneva Convention.

What ensued was a brutal, merciless onslaught of searing hot steel launched from a vehicle that's only express purpose is to murder as many human beings in as short a period of time as possible. The first rampage raged through the hospital for fifteen minutes straight. Drilling massive holes through unsuspecting staff like Swiss cheese, killing some where they stand and leaving others to drown in there own blood. Helpless, incapacitated patients were lit up like Christmas trees, burned alive in there beds leaving little but smoldering bones where they once rived. Once the initial assault finally ceased, the surviving staff immediately called local American forces to inform them that they had just attacked a hospital with zero signs of a Taliban presence in the area. This message, which the Pentagon has recently confirmed was received, did nothing to deter the Military from launching four more identical fifteen minute barrages in just over an hour. By the time the smoke had finally cleared twenty-two lay dead including twelve DWB staff members and three children. Another thirty-seven were left badly maimed. The deed was done. There was nothing left to do but offer hollow apologies and destroy the evidence.

Obomba called up the DWB to offer his sincerest condolences for butchering there comrades but the DWB was in no mood. They didn't want a fucking apology. They wanted answers. Why? Why launch a brutal, kill em all style massacre on a known hospital? Why kill a building load of injured civilians and the tireless servants who failed, honorably, to save them? Why lie about it four times in four days? No, the DWB didn't want a fucking apology. They wanted an independent investigation into the bloodbath by the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission but Obomba, in his infinite wisdom, refused to even consider the totally reasonable inquiry, offering instead to conduct his own investigation into his own war crime.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, twelve days after the attacks, the US Army drove right through the wreckage with a goddamn tank, all but obliterating what little evidence remained at the scene of the crime. US forces made the asinine claim that the armored assault vehicle was carrying investigators but somehow didn't see fit to call the DWB first for permission. They didn't even bother fucking knocking first to see if anyone was home. There's no evidence that they even bothered stepping out of the goddamn vehicle. They just rammed right through like a rampaging elephant in heat, leaving all of us, once again, to ask collectively why? What are they so desperate to cover up.

A possible answer came from the usually pro-military Associated Press who, upon further examination, learned from American soldiers in the area that not only did they call in the airstrike on what they admittedly knew was a hospital but  that the Pentagon had assigned them to do surveillance on the building in order to ascertain whether or not a mysterious Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence spy was among the patients healing inside. These soldiers, for still unknown reasons, came to the conclusion that the hospital was indeed the unwitting host of there query and called in the attack, claiming this unnamed agent to be among the twenty-two dead.

Doctors Without Borders have declared these allegations to be bullshit, professing that there were zero people of Pakistani descent present at the hospital that day. Could this be true? Was the Kunduz airstrike a calculated hit gone wrong? Or did they successfully slay there target along with twenty-one civilians. Either way this qualifies as a war crime worthy of the Hague. Who was/is this Pakistani mystery man? Why were the military willing to slaughter a building full of innocents and risk an international incident just to kill him? What did/does he know and why couldn't/can't he be aloud to survive? Let us not forget that Pakistan is allegedly our allie and the ISI is the same intelligence force fingered by Seymour Hersh for secretly imprisoning Bin Laden then helping us to execute the beast in cold blood. Could this somehow be connected or have I just seen to many Oliver Stone flicks?

Perhaps an even more important question to ask is what the hell are we even still doing in that god forsaken country, propping up an obviously failed state? Its been four goddamn years since we whacked Bin Laden, allegedly our whole reason for being in Afghanistan, in a carefully choreographed hit that took place in fucking Pakistan. Its been fourteen years since we started our longest war which seems to grow longer by the second with the withdrawal date always just out of reach. In that time we've lost 2,350 US soldiers, over a trillion US dollars and murdered an undetermined number of Afghani civilians that reaches deep into the thousands even by the most conservative estimates. In that time we have solved absolutely nothing. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are more powerful, popular and dangerous then ever. The people are still impoverished. Most girls are still born into what essentially amounts to lifelong sexual slavery. The opium trade is fucking booming and what passes for a central government in Kabul gives corruption a bad name.

Why the fuck did we even invade this hellhole in the first place, The Taliban weren't any worse then those baby raping pigs in the Northern Alliance. We know for a fact that they were apposed to al-Qaeda's 911 plot from the beginning and they were growing increasingly tired of dealing with Bin Laden's bullshit. We could have and should have made them a fucking deal that would have aloud the Taliban government to hand over al-Qaeda and still save face among the faithful. Every one of those sheep shagging jihadi pricks would be rotting in Florence Super-max right now, Bin Laden included, and over two thousand American families wouldn't be facing the ugly prospect of another lonely holiday season without there husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.

And why in the name of Christ, Marx and Mohammed couldn't we just leave the 1978 revolution of the Peoples Democratic Party be? They came closer to fixing Afghanistan's colossal shit-load of problems then anyone else has. But we had to fucking blow it up and for what?! Just to hasten the Soviet Unions already inevitable economic demise? Was it really fucking worth it!?! Was any of this shit?!!! Why do our leaders continue to insist on proving the terrorists right by behaving just like them? Giving them a dozen new recruits with every bomb they drop. Why can't we just mind our own fucking business?

If your among the handful of dearest motherfuckers bored enough to tune into my rants then I'm sure you've already figured out that these questions are rhetorical and the answer to most of them is an ugly six letter word called E-M-P-I-R-E and there's no easy cure for this national affliction. Our country has become hopelessly addicted to war and Afghanistan is the speedball of imperialism. Every super power that's tried this fix has died an ugly death but there's always another in line that thinks there the one that can handle the high. Kunduz is sadly just the latest in an endless procession of bloody binges and unless the people of this country call a fucking intervention it won't be the last.

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