Pentagon Blows Up Thousands Of Homes In Afghanistan:
Repeating The Horrors Of The Vietnam War
20 November 2010By Brian Becker
Borrowing a page from its infamous "pacification"
effort in South Vietnam, where peasant villages were
napalmed and burned to the ground to "save them from
the communists," the Obama-ordered surge in
Afghanistan has been secretly blowing up thousands of
homes and leveling portions of the Afghan countryside.
As tens of thousands of U.S. troops have surged into
southern Afghanistan, villagers have fled. Then the
Petraeus-led occupation forces have determined which
homes will be destroyed.
"In Arghandab District, for instance, every one of the
40 homes in the village of Khosrow was flattened by a
salvo of 25 missiles, according to the district
governor, Shah Muhammed Ahmadi, who estimated that 120
to 130 houses had been demolished in his district,"
reported the New York Times, Nov. 16, 2010.
The Pentagon asserts that they must destroy the homes
because some of them may have explosive devices
inside.
The Pentagon's murderous rampage and terror campaign
40 years ago against South Vietnamese villages, in
areas that were considered sympathetic to the
resistance forces, used much of the same kind of
explanation. In fact, the New York Times in a throw
back to Vietnam quotes the Arghandab District
Governor, who is working with the occupation forces:
"We had to destroy them to make them safe."
That this tactic is part of a high-tech terror
campaign against Afghan villages and the people who
inhabit them is evident even by the descriptions and
accounts of western media outlets that are supporting
the war.
Again, from the New York Times, Nov. 16, 2010, which
describes weapons as tools:
"American troops are using an impressive array of
tools not only to demolish homes, but also to
eliminate tree lines where insurgents could hide, blow
up outbuildings, flatten agricultural walls, and carve
new "military roads," because existing ones are so
heavily mined, according to journalists embedded in
the area recently.
"One of the most fearsome tools is the Miclic, the M58
Mine-Clearing Line Charge, a chain of explosives tied
to a rocket, which upon impact destroys everything in
a swath 30 feet wide and 325 feet long. The Himars
missile system, a pod of 13-foot rockets carrying
200-pound warheads, has also been used frequently for
demolition work.
"Often, new military roads go right through farms and
compounds, cutting a route that will keep soldiers
safe from roadside bombs. In Zhare District alone, the
101st Airborne's Second Brigade has lost 30 soldiers
since last June, mostly to such bombs."
Activists at the organization Afghanistan Rights
Monitor described the destroyed homes. "These are all
mud houses, quite humble houses."
When Gen. David Petraeus describes his
counter-insurgency strategy, he always puts in a few
diplomatic words about the need of surging troops to
win the "hearts and minds" of the people in
Afghanistan's poverty stricken villages. That is
purely for public consumption—a message echoed
endlessly by the complicit corporate-owned media and
the politicians of both parties that serves as a mask
for the Pentagon's campaign of systematic terror
employed to subdue an occupied people.
On Dec. 16, 2010, anti-war veterans and people of
conscience will stand up in a dramatic action in
opposition to the terror campaign waged from the White
House and Pentagon. Join us in Washington, D.C. on
Dec. 16 and be part of history.
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