Executing Handcuffed Afghan Kids?

By DAVE  LINDORFF

March 18, 2010
http://eldib.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/

When Charlie Company¹s Lt.  William Calley ordered and encouraged his men to
rape, maim and  slaughter over 400 men, women and children in My Lai in

Vietnam back in  1968, there were at least four Americans who tried to stop
him or bring  him and higher officers to justice. One was helicopter pilot
Hugh  Thompson Jr., who evacuated some of the wounded victims, and who set
his  chopper down between a group of Vietnamese and Calley¹s men, ordering
his door gunner to open fire on the US soldiers if they shot any more
people. One was Ron Ridenhour, a soldier who learned of the massacre,  and
began a private investigation, ultimately reporting the crime to the
Pentagon and Congress. One was Michael Bernhardt, a soldier in Charlie
Company who witnessed the whole thing, and reported it all to Ridenhour.
And one was journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story in the US  media.

Today¹s war in Afghanistan also has its My Lai  massacres. It has them
almost weekly, as US warplanes bomb wedding  parties, or homes ³suspected²
of housing terrorists that turn out to  house nothing but civilians. But
these My Lais are all conveniently  labeled accidents. They get filed away
and forgotten as the inevitable  ³collateral damage² of war. There was,
however, a massacre recently that  was not a mistake­a massacre which, while
it only involved fewer than a  dozen people, bears the same stench as My
Lai. It was the  execution-style slaying of eight handcuffed students, aged
11-18, and a  12-year-old neighboring shepherd boy who had been visiting the
others,  in Kunar Province, on Dec. 26.

Sadly, no principled soldier with a conscience like  pilot Hugh Thompson
tried to save these children.  No observer had the  guts of a Michael
Brernhardt to report what he had seen. No Ron  Ridenhour among the other
serving US troops in Afghanistan has  investigated this atrocity or reported
it to Congress. And no American  reporter has investigated this war crime
the way Seymour Hersh investigated My Lai.

There is a Seymour Hersh for the Kunar massacre,  but he¹s a Brit. While
American reporters like the anonymous  journalistic drones who wrote CNN¹s
December 29 report on the incident
(http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/29/afghanistan.deaths/index.html),
took the Pentagon¹s initial cover story­that the dead were part of a  secret
bomb-squad­at face value, Jerome Starkey, a reporter in  Afghanistan working
for the Times of London and the Scotsman, talked to  other sources­the dead
boys¹ headmaster, other townspeople, and Afghan  government officials­and
found out the real truth about a gruesome war  crime­the execution of
handcuffed children.  And while a few news  outlets in the US like the New
York Times did mention that there were  some claims that the dead were
children, not bomb-makers, none,  including CNN, which had bought and run
the Pentagon¹s lies  unquestioningly, bothered to print the news update
when, on Feb. 24, the US military admitted that in fact the dead were
innocent students. Nor has any US corporate news organization mentioned that
the dead had been  handcuffed when they were shot.

Starkey reported 
<http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/world/8-weeks-on-Nato-admits.6102256.jp>
the US government¹s damning admission. Yet still the US media  remain silent
as the grave.

Under the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to  execute a captive. Yet
in Kunar on December 26, US-led forces, or  perhaps US soldiers or contract
mercenaries, cold-bloodedly executed  eight hand-cuffed prisoners.  It is a
war crime to kill children under  the age of 15, yet in this incident a boy
of 11 and a boy of 12 were  handcuffed as captured combatants and executed.
Two others of the dead  were 12 and a third was 15.

I called the Secretary of Defense¹s office to ask  if any investigation was
underway into this crime or if one was planned,  and was told I had to send
a written request, which I did. To date, I  have heard nothing.  The
Pentagon PR machine pretended to me on the  phone that they didn¹t even know
what incident I was talking about, but  without their ³help² I have learned
that what the US military has  done­no surprise­is to pass the buck by
leaving any investigation to  the International Security Assistance Force­a
fancy name for the US-led  NATO force fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It¹s a clever ruse. The  ISAF is no more a genuine coalition entity than
was  George Bush¹s Iraq  War Coalition of the Willing, but this dodge makes
legislative  investigation of the event impossible, since Congress has no
authority  to compel testimony from NATO or the ISAF as it would the
Pentagon. A  source at the Senate Armed Services Committee confirms that the
ISAF is  investigating, and that the committee has asked for a
³briefing²­that  means nothing would be under oath­once that investigation
is complete,  but don¹t hold your breath or expect anything dramatic.

I also contacted the press office of the House  Armed Services Committee to
see if any hearings into this crime have  been planned. The answer is no,
though the press officer asked me to  send her details of the incident (Not
a good sign that House members and  staff are paying much attention­the
killings led to country-wide  student demonstrations in Afghanistan, to a
formal protest by the office of President Hamid Karzai, and to an
investigation by the Afghan  government, which concluded that innocent
students had been handcuffed  and executed, and no doubt contributed to a
call by the Afghan  government for prosecution and execution of American
soldiers who kill  Afghan civilians.)

There is still time for people of conscience to  stand up in the midst of
this imperial adventure that may now  appropriately be called Obama¹s War in
Afghanistan.  Plenty of men and  women in uniform in Afghanistan know that
nine Afghan children were  captured and murdered at America¹s hands last
December in Kunar. There  are also probably people who were involved in the
planning or carrying  out of this criminal operation who are sickened by
what happened. But  these people are so far holding their tongues, whether
out of fear, or  out of simply not knowing where to turn (Note: If you have
information  you may contact me). There are also plenty of reporters in
Afghanistan  and in Washington who could be investigating this story. They
are not.  Don¹t ask me why. Maybe ask their editors.

Dave Lindorff is a  Philadelphia-area journalistHis work can be found at
www.thiscantbehappening.net <http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/> . He can
be reached at dlindorff@yahoo.com.  <http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/>



Written by eldib


March 18, 2010 at 2:31 pm