Who's mourning the dead in Afghanistan?
| By Mike Collins - Jul 9th, 2009 at 4:15 pm EDT |
| Also listed in: Veterans for Progress |
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Categories: Peace & Social Justice, Foreign Policy & Security, Effective & Ethical Government, Religion
Categories: Peace & Social Justice, Foreign Policy & Security, Effective & Ethical Government, Religion
I changed the title of this article. MC
"Back in the Vietnam era, Gen. William Westmoreland, interviewed by movie director Peter Davis for his Oscar-winning film "Hearts and Minds," famously said: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.""
Who's mourning the dead in Afghanistan? Our hearts should go out to the innocent victims of our wars
By Thomas M. Engelhardt
Jul. 08, 2009 |
It was a blast. I'm talking about my daughter's wedding. You don't often see a child of yours quite that happy. I'm no party animal, but I danced my 64-year-old legs off. And I can't claim that, as I walked my daughter to the ceremony, or ate, or talked with friends, or simply sat back and watched the young and energetic enjoy themselves, I thought about those Afghan wedding celebrations where the "blast" isn't metaphorical, where the bride, the groom, the partygoers in the midst of revelry die.
In the two weeks since, however, that's been on my mind -- or rather the lack of interest our world shows in dead civilians from a distant imperial war -- and all because of a passage I stumbled upon in a striking article by journalist Anand Gopal. In "Uprooting an Afghan Village" in the June issue of the Progressive magazine, he writes about Garloch, an Afghan village he visited in the eastern province of Laghman. After destructive American raids, Gopal tells us, many of its desperate inhabitants simply packed up and left for exile in Afghan or Pakistani refugee camps.
One early dawn in August 2008, writes Gopal, American helicopters first descended on Garloch for a six-hour raid:
The Americans claim there were gunshots as they left. The villagers deny it. Regardless, American bombers swooped by the village just after the soldiers left and dropped a payload on one house. It belonged to Haiji Qadir, a pole-thin, wizened old man who was hosting more than forty relatives for a wedding party. The bomb split the house in two, killing sixteen, including twelve from Qadir's family, and wounding scores more ... The malek [chief] went to the province's governor and delivered a stern warning: protect our villagers or we will turn against the Americans.
Continued at Salon.Com
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/07/08/afghan_weddings/
"Back in the Vietnam era, Gen. William Westmoreland, interviewed by movie director Peter Davis for his Oscar-winning film "Hearts and Minds," famously said: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.""
Who's mourning the dead in Afghanistan? Our hearts should go out to the innocent victims of our wars
By Thomas M. Engelhardt
Jul. 08, 2009 |
It was a blast. I'm talking about my daughter's wedding. You don't often see a child of yours quite that happy. I'm no party animal, but I danced my 64-year-old legs off. And I can't claim that, as I walked my daughter to the ceremony, or ate, or talked with friends, or simply sat back and watched the young and energetic enjoy themselves, I thought about those Afghan wedding celebrations where the "blast" isn't metaphorical, where the bride, the groom, the partygoers in the midst of revelry die.
In the two weeks since, however, that's been on my mind -- or rather the lack of interest our world shows in dead civilians from a distant imperial war -- and all because of a passage I stumbled upon in a striking article by journalist Anand Gopal. In "Uprooting an Afghan Village" in the June issue of the Progressive magazine, he writes about Garloch, an Afghan village he visited in the eastern province of Laghman. After destructive American raids, Gopal tells us, many of its desperate inhabitants simply packed up and left for exile in Afghan or Pakistani refugee camps.
One early dawn in August 2008, writes Gopal, American helicopters first descended on Garloch for a six-hour raid:
The Americans claim there were gunshots as they left. The villagers deny it. Regardless, American bombers swooped by the village just after the soldiers left and dropped a payload on one house. It belonged to Haiji Qadir, a pole-thin, wizened old man who was hosting more than forty relatives for a wedding party. The bomb split the house in two, killing sixteen, including twelve from Qadir's family, and wounding scores more ... The malek [chief] went to the province's governor and delivered a stern warning: protect our villagers or we will turn against the Americans.
Continued at Salon.Com
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/07/08/afghan_weddings/
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