The number of green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan is increasing amid widespread rioting over the American film “The Innocence of Muslims” as the US attempts to make a saving-face drawdown of troops from the country. Cooperation between “coalition” troops and the Afghans is being cut back as the attacks continue, yet the US is still trying to paint a different picture of their failure in Afghanistan.
The Western media report that this year alone there have been 37 attacks on the US, and its NATO and want-to-be NATO allies, all part of George Bush’s coalition of the willing engaged in their endless world war on terror.
Just like at the beginning of the invasion when the US and the Western media reacted with horror and indignation anytime the Afghans fought back, branding them enemy combatants, then terrorists and hauling them off to their illegal torture prison, outside of the jurisdiction of international law, in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, the media in the West still don’t seem to get it. They continue to react with shock and indignation whenever their Afghan “allies,” yes that is the term they use now for the countrymen of the country they invaded, attack “coalition” forces.
Let’s stop for a minute here and put things into the proper perspective. Unlike the Soviet Union, whose intervention was officially requested by the Afghan government, the United States and NATO were never asked to enter the country. That’s one. Two: the invasion of Afghanistan, and that is what it was no matter how the West hates to admit it, was never sanctioned internationally or even within the US, and Afghanistan never threatened the US, never committed an act of aggression against the US warranting invasion, and last and most importantly was never involved in the questionable events of 9-11.
The Western media says that the attacks by Afghan “allies” have killed 51 “international service members” this year with 12 attacks in August leaving 15 dead. Yet nowhere can you find an accurate body count of the innocent Afghan people, including women and children, who have died at the hands of the coalition. This is simple to explain and is part of the US propaganda war; the people back in Kansas don’t want to hear about it, the Afghan people are an abstraction, less than human, their lives do not count as much as those of the “coalition” forces. If the American people were to find out what the US is really doing in Afghanistan, they might become upset and call for an end to the military adventure.
The US’ vested interest in hiding the truth, including about Afghanistan, is obvious by the US reaction to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, yours truly, and anyone else who gets too close to the truth. The war should be over soon, you may think, at least that is what they want you to believe. Not hardly, despite the fact that the US is to announce that 33,000 troops who were part of the “surge” three years ago have left the country, this actually means nothing. The number of troops will remain at close to invasion level with 68,000 US troops still in-country. That is the great pull-out?
The Western media doesn’t mention this very real and provable fact; they continue to complain about Afghan “attacks.” Either they just doesn’t get it or they actually believe what they are writing when it comes to Afghanistan.
This is completely understandable as no one in the US wants to hear that they illegally invaded and decimated a country for no real reason, or at least not for the reasons they were lied to about and led to believe. No one wants to hear that their presence is not wanted and that they are aggressors and invaders: invaders who attacked one of the poorest and most defenseless countries in the world illegally and on false pretexts and then stayed there for more than a decade killing the population without being able to claim any kind of victory.
The media in the West complains that the spike in “insider” attacks is somehow souring relations between the US and its Afghan allies who are fighting side by side. Against whom? Against other Afghan people. The once-CIA-backed Taliban? The reality is that the US invaded their country, and is killing their people, so how is it that an Afghan could, in his right mind, fight alongside the invaders? Well apparently many are now taking the first chance they have to fight back. Not against their Afghan brothers and sisters but against the invaders.
This is something the US just doesn’t seem to understand. Even if there weren’t thousands of cases of innocent civilians being killed and the constant “scandals” that go unpunished, incidents of urinating on corpses, collecting body parts as trophies and the like, the US would never be welcomed in the country. They are invaders.
In the latest in a spate of what are now called “green-on-blue” attacks, an Afghan soldier in Helmand province opened fire on a vehicle he believed was driven by NATO soldiers, slightly wounding a foreign staff member. Also on Sunday, an Afghan police officer shot and killed four American troops in Zabul and on Saturday a member of a government-backed militia killed two British troops, also in Helmand.
Of course the escalation in violence and attacks against the Americans is being painted in a different light by officials and the press, and instead of admitting that they are completely losing control of the country and that the situation for them is growing worse by the day, people like U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are attempting to paint the increase in attacks as a sign of the decrease in power by the attackers. Panetta said while visiting Japan that the “insider attacks are the last gasp of a Taliban insurgency that has not been able to regain lost ground.” So the fact that they are attacking more means that they are in fact weaker? Ahem. Okay, but sorry if you call a black kettle white – it is still black.
Further underlining the US military adventure’s failure in Afghanistan and in their meddling in the Muslim world in general, on Tuesday September 18th a woman wearing a suicide vest blew herself up on a minibus in Kabul, killing 12 people including 7 foreigners. According to reports, the dead were mostly Russian and South African nationals. Apparently the attack was in protest of the infamous film “The Innocence of Muslims”.
In Kabul thousands of protestors clashed with police over the same film, in violence that was even worse that the outbreak that occurred at the beginning of the year over the burning of Korans by US troops.
On Monday NATO reported that it has cut the number of joint operations with Afghan soldiers and policemen in order to lessen the chance of insider attacks. This is the second such order given recently which further flies in the face of the claim that they are fighting “shoulder to shoulder” with the Afghans.
The Pentagon, for its part, has “suspended most joint field operations with Afghan forces because so many Americans are being killed by the men they are training” according to a CBS News report. This comes on the heels of a decision to end all joint patrols and operations without first obtaining approval from the command structure.
If they call that winning, I would hate to see what they call losing.
