"Afghan leader again demands NATO end airstrikes; Karzai reacts after 9 civilians killed Saturday" by Joshua Partlow and Javed Hamdard, Washington Post / June 1, 2011
KABUL — President Hamid Karzai yesterday issued an ultimatum to NATO forces to stop airstrikes on Afghan homes and warned that if they don’t, the Afghan people would drive them out as they have occupying armies in the past....
The immediate provocation was a coalition airstrike Saturday in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province that killed nine civilians, including children.
Death toll going down?
Then we ought to be winning any day now.
But Karzai’s statement also was the culmination of years of complaints about civilian casualties and aggressive NATO military operations.
“From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed,’’ Karzai said at a news conference....
We'll see.
Karzai added that “history is a witness how Afghanistan deals with occupiers,’’ and declared that if NATO airstrikes continue Afghanistan will take “unilateral action.’’ He did not specify the action but said he will explain that to NATO commanders during a meeting scheduled for Sunday.
Yes, WE ARE!
Although Karzai has a history of provocative statements, his words yesterday raised the confrontation between his government and the US-led coalition to a new level. Karzai has regularly called for an end to civilian casualties, night raids by US Special Operations forces, and all unilateral NATO operations in Afghanistan.
But he has rarely spoken so directly about NATO forces being a potential enemy of the Afghan people....
While US and NATO forces have made reducing collateral damage on civilians a top priority, military officials say it is almost impossible to eliminate them entirely, particularly as insurgents fight in and among the population. The deaths last week in Helmand Province were such an example.
Are YOU as tired of the S*** EXCUSES as I AM?
On Saturday, a US Marine patrol was attacked by five insurgents in the Now Zad district, killing one Marine, according to military officials. The insurgents then went into a walled house and continued to fight until the Marines called in a Harrier fighter jet for an airstrike.
“Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians,’’ Marine Major General John Toolan, the NATO commander in Afghanistan’s southwest, said....
Is YOUR HOME a COMPOUND, American?
--more--"
Related: NATO: Hits on Afghan houses to continue
Also see:
Petraeus validates Karzai outrage over civilian deaths
Connecticut soldier killed in Afghanistan
"4 NATO troops killed in bombing
KABUL — A roadside bomb killed four NATO service members yesterday in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said. Elsewhere in the east, a female suicide bomber detonated her explosives near a coalition convoy, wounding three Afghan guards. More than 200 NATO troops have died this year in Afghanistan, and yesterday’s bombing marked the deadliest day for NATO service members since May 26, when a total of nine US troops were killed (AP)."
"Gates surprises troops with a visit
KABUL — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan yesterday, using his arrival to argue that the mission to beat back a tenacious insurgency should not be put at risk by budget concerns in Washington. Gates, making his 12th and final visit to Afghanistan as defense secretary, said that once the United States committed to guaranteeing that Afghanistan would never again be a haven for those planning attacks on the United States, then “success of the mission should override everything else.’’ Fiscal constraints in Washington are expected to reduce Pentagon spending in coming years (New York Times)."
"Memo to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates: How can you begin to talk about it being "premature" to change strategy in the Afghan war?
Forgive me, sir, but if we haven't "won" this war in the last 10 years, how the devil to you expect it to be won by 2014?!?
This war could never be won militarily; ask veterans of the old Soviet Union's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which had a higher rate of combat troops on the ground than the US does now (approximately 118,000)
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/murtha-well-have-more-troops-in-afghanistan-than-soviet-russia-did.php
Does the US and NATO actually have a "strategy" in Afghanistan?!? And isn't strategy a collection of tactics which actually work to achieve the geopolitical objective?!?
The only thing the US and NATO seem to have been doing recently has been house raids, leaving non-combatants, including many children, dead, and pushing those left standing into the waiting embrace of the Taliban.
The only folks "winning" in the last decade of this war in Afghanistan are the drug lords and defense corporations, supplying mercenaries and supplies.
Had Gates been honest, he would have stated that the only reason for the US and NATO are staying in Afghanistan until 2014 is because that is when the Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/Pakistan/India pipeline is due to be finished with construction.
Funded by the Asian Development Bank,
http://www.economonitor.com/blog/2011/01/turkmenistan-afghanistan-pakistan-india-gas-pipeline-gets-official-four-way-go-ahead/
This 1,050 mile pipeline would link these 4 countries.
If successful, the Asian Development Bank will make money; Turkmenistan will make money; the consortiums which design and build it it will make money; and the business units administering it will make money.
What Gates and his accomplices in this horrific war should be saying, right now, to the faces of families and friends of those in the US military, who will be fighting, getting maimed for life, and dying here until 2014, is that the real reason for their presence is to provide some assurance of turning a profit for these private corporate entities invested in this pipeline.
Of course, that is not going to happen." -- Wake the Flock Up
More: Time of the Turkmen
