GR-related

[Doug Millison]

http://www.counterpunch.org/rfisk2.html
November 29, 2001
We Are the War Criminals Now
'Everything we have believed in since the Second World War goes by the
board as we pursue our own exclusive war'
By Robert Fisk
The Independent

We are becoming war criminals in Afghanistan. The US Air Force bombs
Mazar-i-Sharif for the Northern Alliance, and our heroic Afghan allies--who
slaughtered 50,000 people in Kabul between 1992 and 1996--move into the
city and execute up to 300 Taliban fighters. The report is a footnote on
the television satellite channels, a "nib" in journalistic parlance.
Perfectly normal, it seems. The Afghans have a "tradition" of revenge. So,
with the strategic assistance of the USAF, a war crime is committed.

Now we have the Mazar-i-Sharif prison "revolt", in which Taliban inmates
opened fire on their Alliance jailers. US Special Forces--and, it has
emerged, British troops--helped the Alliance to overcome the uprising and,
sure enough, CNN tells us some prisoners were "executed" trying to escape.
It is an atrocity. British troops are now stained with war crimes. Within
days, The Independent's Justin Huggler has found more executed Taliban
members in Kunduz.

The Americans have even less excuse for this massacre. For the US Secretary
of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, stated quite specifically during the siege of
the city that US air raids on the Taliban defenders would stop "if the
Northern Alliance requested it". Leaving aside the revelation that the
thugs and murderers of the Northern Alliance were now acting as air
controllers to the USAF in its battle with the thugs and murderers of the
Taliban, Mr Rumsfeld's incriminating remark places Washington in the
witness box of any war-crimes trial over Kunduz. The US were acting in full
military co-operation with the Northern Alliance militia.

[...] It's quite clear what has happened. When people with yellow or black
or brownish skin, with Communist or Islamic or Nationalist credentials,
murder their prisoners or carpet bomb villages to kill their enemies or set
up death squad courts, they must be condemned by the United States,
theEuropean Union, the United Nations and the "civilised" world. We are the
masters of human rights, the Liberals, the great and good who can preach to
the impoverished masses. But when our people are murdered--when our
glittering buildings are destroyed - then we tear up every piece of human
rights legislation, send off the B-52s in the direction of the impoverished
masses and set out to murder our enemies.
[...]
No one should be surprised that Mr Bush--a small-time Texas
Governor-Executioner--should fail to understand the morality of a statesman
in the Whitehouse. What is so shocking is that the Blairs, Schröders,
Chiracs and all the television boys should have remained so gutlessly
silent in the face of the Afghan executions and East European-style
legislation sanctified since 11 September.

There are ghostly shadows around to remind us of the consequences of state
murder. In France, a general goes on trial after admitting to torture and
murder in the 1954-62 Algerian war, because he referred to his deeds as
"justifiable acts of duty performed without pleasure or remorse". And in
Brussels, a judge will decide if the Israeli Prime Minister, Arial Sharon,
can be prosecuted for his "personal responsibility" for the 1982 massacre
in Sabra and Chatila.

Yes, I know the Taliban were a cruel bunch of bastards. They committed most
of their massacres outside Mazar-i-Sharif in the late 1990s. They executed
women in the Kabul football stadium. And yes, lets remember that 11
September was a crime against humanity.

But I have a problem with all this. George Bush says that "you are either
for us or against us" in the war for civilisation against evil. Well, I'm
sure not for bin Laden. But I'm not for Bush. I'm actively against the
brutal, cynical, lying "war of civilisation" that he has begun so
mendaciously in our name and which has now cost as many lives as the World
Trade Centre mass murder. [...]