Community | July 18, 2009 | 11 comments

US Threatening to Kill Afghan Civilians - Isn't that called Genocide?

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/16/afghanistan-villages-thre_n_235717.html

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StopWarProject
Oh I forgot. We're the USA. We can never be told we commit genocide.

In the aftermath of a US soldier's abduction by Afghan Taliban forces, the US military is disbursing leaflets in two towns near particularly dangerous areas, which threaten villagers with the prospect of being "targeted" or "hunted" if they do not return the soldier safe and sound, CBS News reports. The leaflet has a picture of a languid looking US soldier hanging his head on one side, and reads "If you do not free the American soldier, then..."; when the card is flipped over, there is a picture of soldiers breaking down the door of small stone hut and a caption that reads, "...then you will be targeted."

The leaflet is one of two kinds that were scattered about the villages. The other is reported to be far less threatening and simply asks for any information anyone may have on the soldier's whereabouts, according to the CBS report.

CBS also confirmed with Capt. Elizabeth Mathias that the leaflets were indeed printed at the Bagram Air Base and distributed throughout the two villages, however she claims that the statement reads "...then you will be hunted," as if being "hunted" is somehow better than being "targeted." From CBS News:

The new leaflet represents a broader, direct warning to local people in the region where the U.S. soldier was seized. Villagers from near the Paktika-Ghazni border told CBS News the papers were found stuck in trees and littering roofs in the area.


The question is, will its stern message help win the missing soldier's freedom, or just antagonize the local people who could help, or hurt, that effort.

The CBS account is in stark contrast to the new US strategy in Afghanistan under Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, which aims to win the goodwill of Afghan villagers--not just annihilate Taliban militants--especially in rural areas more prone to attracting a Taliban presence.

See http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/07/16/world/worldwatch/entry5163670.shtml
  1. groups:
    Community,   US Politics,   Stop War,   Afghanistans,   2 more
  2. tags:
    War,  Afghanistan,  Genocide,  miliytary
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11 comments // US Threatening to Kill Afghan Civilians - Isn't that called Genocide?

  • freecrack
    • 0
      freecrack  

    • i love how a testimonial is enough to declare a fact. if the united states was systematically exterminating an entire race of people nobody would notice but this guy? the massive population of arab americans wouldnt be hearing this from thier families that they talk to on a regular basis?arab solidarity is so high that they travel from country to country to fight off invaders but none of the other arab countries have brought it up in the un or even accused us of this publicly. the same people who encite death to america chants are what afraid of saying death to america and thier genocide?not to mention we havent been able to successfully accomplish any real objective in the region. we cant instal showers for the military without them being eletricuted but some how we can instal the infrastructure needed for mass exterminations?? i like calling out america on our bullshit but this is silly

    • 2 years ago
  • StopWarProject
  • 23485768934756
  • JosephJinx
    • 0
      JosephJinx  

    • I fail to see why the citizens of an area, who are likely oppressed by the group that has done the kidnapping, should be threatened. "These people" didn't chop off heads and crash planes into buildings; the extremists that pump fear into their society did.

      I agree everything should be done that must be done, and if this is it, so be it; it doesn't seem to cause as much harm as we could be doing. I'm still a bit wary of the effectiveness of this in practice, however.

    • 2 years ago
  • lu7cky
    • 0
      lu7cky  

    • This is something called psycological warfare....bit of a stretch to genocide.
      Just like your pic that states 1,339,771 iraqui deaths due to the US invasion, this is being blown out of proportion. How many of those deaths are due to OTHER IRAQUIS? I would bet a pretty fair amount.
      As far as dropping leaflets threatening those that would harm US solidiers, so be it. I don't care what they have to do to bring this man home alive; these people chop off heads and crash planes into our buildings. I think they will get over some rudely worded fliers.

    • 2 years ago
  • StopWarProject
  • Bushido
    • 0
      Bushido  

    • That's too Goddamn bad. Give us back our soldier and avoid being hunted. Sounds like a good deal to me.

      StopWarProject? Seriously? Even I have to admit that that kind of ambitiousness at being futile is awe-inspiring. Your Iraqi civilians killed estimate has an * next to it for a reason. Your "scientific study" numbers are politically funded garbage that do not take into account the comparable stability since 2006. Also, most of those Iraqis were killed by their own in suicide bombings. Not that Saddam killed fewer Iraqis before we showed up, anyways.

      You anti-war types can't see the forest through the trees.

      Besides, dropping pamphlets beats dropping bombs, which we could be doing instead.

    • 2 years ago
  • freecrack
    • 0
      freecrack  

    • genocide is an extermination of an entire genus of people. to say that threatening an afgani village is the same a genocide serves only to trivialize what genocide actually is wich serves to make actual acts of genocide harder to see. at no point has the united states govt or the united states military said or done anything to indicate genocide.
      we invade
      we oppress
      we kill
      we bomb
      we torture
      we deny civil liberties
      we profet from thier deaths
      but the extermination of the people of afganistan is not what we are doing and saying that we are only serves to further confuse what we are actually guilty of.

    • 2 years ago
  • StopWarProject
    • 0
      StopWarProject  
    • freecrack:

      Below is the definition of genocide from the Holocaust Museum (http://www.ushmm.org/genocide/take_action/genocide). If anyone is an expert on the term, they should be.

      In light of their definition, I would consider what the U.S. has done in both iraq and Afghanistan genocide. The point you miss is that it isn't the number of people, it is a matter of killing an entire group of people as a matter of policy. The U.S. military has a racist policy of killing any "hodgie" (official military term) that is in their way. This has been cited over and over by Iraq war veterans (http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier)
      __________________________________
      From the Holocaust Museum:

      An Evolving International Framework

      Genocide is a term created during the Holocaust and declared an international crime in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

      a. Killing members of the group;
      b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
      c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
      d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
      e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

      The specific "intent to destroy" particular groups is unique to genocide. A closely related category of international law, crimes against humanity, is defined as widespread or systematic attacks against civilians.

      _________________________________________
      Note that they define genocide as ANY ONE of the items listed, not all, and no where is extermination mentioned. The key is that it is a racist/group mentality with "intent to destroy" members of a particular group.

      Yes. The U.S. is a racist genocidal nation. That may be a hard pill to swallow. It is the truth.

    • 2 years ago
  • JosephJinx
  • nik27
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