NP? standing tall, proud to support America

[Doug Millison]

"[...] The bogus reasons for the "war on terrorism" are unravelling by the
day, as is Blair's complicity with its crimes of violence in Afghanistan
and denial of rights. The original purpose of Camp X-Ray was as a piece of
grotesque theatre for the ever-manipulated American public.

In releasing deliberately provocative photographs of cowed men in chains,
the Bush regime believed it could distract public opinion from the debacle
of its "war" in Afghanistan, in which its war machine failed to capture or
kill Osama bin Laden or a single senior member of al-Qaeda.

Even the Taliban leader Mullah Omar got away. All they got was the
Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, a relatively minor functionary.

The price of this American disaster for the people of Afghanistan was,
according to a recent study at the University of New Hampshire, at least
5,000 civilian lives.

For all the posed photographs of American troops against desert landscapes,
hardly any of them have seen combat. Instead, impoverished people in dusty
villages are killed from the sky.

Not even the cost of an American B52 bomber has reached the Afghan people
in aid - in spite of "pledges" by America and Europe and the
"we-shall-never-desert-Afghanistan-again" windbaggery of Blair.

In spite of a public relations drive to prove that the American-installed
regime in Kabul is radically different from that of the Taliban, the main
changes are a return to a bloody civil war and feudalism and the renewal of
the heroin trade.

As for the human rights of the long-suffering population, the new
government will, like the Taliban, impose sharia Islamic law on its people.
Judge Ahamat Ullha Zarif says that public executions and amputations will
continue, but there will be one variation: "For example, the Taliban used
to hang the victim's body in public for four days. We will only hang the
body for a short time, say 15 minutes."

Judge Zarif made clear that the ultimate penalty would remain in force for
adulterers, both male and female. They would still be stoned to death, "but
we will use only small stones".

This is the regime whose leaders have a bodyguard of British soldiers. And
still the Americans bomb - while famine sweeps the north and west of
Afghanistan in the wake of the American attacks.

On February 12, a World Vision Health and Nutrition Team reported from the
North West that "numerous groups of women and children are scavenging the
valley fields for weeds, roots and grass to eat".

The French aid agency Medecins sans Frontieres says that more and more
people are becoming malnourished. "The food system is not working," said a
nurse, Jenny Andersson. "Although the World Food Programme has been
providing food for more than 300,000 people, it simply isn't reaching the
people that need it."

NONE of these horrors has been addressed by the American or British
governments, the principal partners in the Washington-bribed "coalition"
claiming responsibility for the Afghanistan disaster, which Jack Straw
calls "our vindication".

It is not surprising that, even as ex-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic
stands trial in The Hague, the Americans are pressing for an end to war
crimes trials altogether. This means that the Bush administration is afraid
that the process might slip out of its control and become a permanent
fixture, encouraging the setting up of an International Criminal Court,
which Washington opposes.

It fears that such a body might act truly judicially and order the arrest
of "our" war criminals - that is, American and British politicians and
officials who have ordered, or aided and abetted the bombing to death of
thousands of innocent men, women and children and have run or collaborated
in the running of a concentration camp like that in which emaciated men who
are held and interrogated in breach of international law.

In his play Ashes To Ashes, Harold Pinter uses the images of Nazism and the
Holocaust, while interpreting them as a warning that the totalitarian
actions of western politicians seeking dominance over other human beings
are no different, in principle and effect, from those of fascists - and
terrorists.

The reality behind the Prime Minister's pretensions as a "war leader"
become clearer every day.

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-03/03pilger.cfm