U.S. UNDER OBAMA ALLOWS DRONE MISSILE STRIKES AGAINST RURAL VILLAGERS IN PAKISTAN

I call upon Pres. Barack Obama to halt all drone missile attacks against Pakistani villagers. Today, BBC reports that the U.S. fired another missile killing nine people.

Reports the BBC:

"At least nine people have been killed in an airstrike on suspected militant targets in Pakistan's tribal region of South Waziristan, local officials say.

"Pilotless US drone aircraft are thought to have carried out the attack in which missiles were fired at a house near the town of Wana on the Afghan border."

Obama is wrong if he thinks that firing missiles at Pakistani insurgents or at Taliban members is going to "win hearts and minds" of ordinary Paksitanis.

If I was a Pakistani, I would be outraged at the intrusion of foreign drones from the United States attacking villages in my sovereign Pakistan. I don't care how pure the American motives against "terrorists," I would totally resist the violation of my country's national territory.

Obama and Gates say that they will attack Al Qaeda whereever it exists. This too is foolhardy and unworthy of Barack Obama. Al Qaeda is not some living monster. It consists of farmers, teenagers, villagers, who are consumed with religious fundamentalism that thinks it is doing God's will to attack the West. There is no way that Obama's missiles are going to defeat unsophisticated and poorly educated religious fundamentalists.

I say, stop this killing of ordinary rural Pakistanis from the sky by the Americans.

NPR'S MORNING EDITION QUOTES AFGHAN POLICE CHIEF DEFENDING BOMBING OF CIVILIANS

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports on the U.S. bombing raid of a small Afghani village that left 140 people dead, many of them children.

Writes Sarhaddi Nelson:

"Abdul Ghafar Watandar, the provincial police chief, said foreign militants and Afghan Taliban are flowing into districts surrounding Farah city from their hideouts across the southern border with Pakistan. Their commanders — including a cleric who was the governor of neighboring Nimrooz province when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan — recently formed a "shadow" government in Farah.

"Watandar said these new Taliban officials are handing out money and weapons to the impoverished and illiterate majority with the aim of further destabilizing the province.

"Unlike previous Taliban cells, this new army of militants seems eager to take on not only the local police, but also the far better trained and equipped Afghan and NATO troops. And Watandar said there aren't enough of those in Farah province, making air support a crucial part of major fights.

""If the American airstrikes hadn't happened that day, there might have been a lot more deaths," Watandar said. "The Taliban had secured themselves good positions on the rooftops and streets of the village, and they wouldn't have left.""

But this argument that the U.S. airstrikes probably saved many more deaths is just pure speculation and self-serving. Whoever ordered the airstrike needs to be recalled. Killing over 140 civilians is unacceptable. Killing even one civilian or one child is also unacceptable.

Is this what the war means in Afghanistan? U.S. war planes dropping bombs on civilians in the American quest to eliminate the Taliban? If the answer is yes, then I don't want any part of that dirty war.

Bring all American soldiers out of Afghanistan. There has to be a better way of dealing with fundamental Islamists. Killing civilians is not the answer.

STOP USE OF WAR PLANES IN AFGHANISTAN

To prevent civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan, I want to see the U.S. military ground all war planes permanently. Dropping bombs from F-16s will kill innocent civilians, no matter what precision guidance system the military says it is using.

Airplanes should be restricted to transportation and other peaceful purposes. They should not be used to fire at people on the ground or to drop high explosives on rural agrarian Afghani villages.

STOP U.S. AIR ATTACKS IN AFGHANISTAN

Taimoor Shah and Carlotta Gall report in today's The New York Times that U.S. bombing has killed up to 100 villagers in western Afghanistan, many of them women and children. Apparently Afghan forces attacked a suspected Taliban house and then called in U.S. war planes. The result is all too predictable.

Write Shah and Gall:

"Dozens of civilians, including women and children, have been killed during bombing raids by United States forces in western Afghanistan as Afghan troops battled Taliban fighters in heavy fighting, the Red Cross said Wednesday, confirming earlier accounts by Afghan officials.

"Enraged villagers brought between 20 and 25 bodies from their district to the capital of Farah Province to show them to officials, the officials said Tuesday. Villagers’ accounts put the death toll at 70 to 100, they said."

I have been long arguing for a complete cessation of U.S. air attacks. There is no way that such attacks are not going to inflict unacceptable civilian casualties. Perhaps the U.S. government still permits these attacks, misunderstanding who the "enemy" is. Members of the Taliban are just ordinary Afghanis, undereducated, simple farmers living with their families in agrarian villages. The Taliban thus represent a true insurgency against U.S. occupying and invading military. If the U.S. and Obama are going to "defeat" the Taliban, it cannot be by force of guns or war planes dropping bombs.

Consider the following from the Shah and Gall report:

"Villagers told Afghan officials that they had put children, women, and elderly men in several housing compounds away from the fighting to keep them safe. But the villagers said fighter aircraft later attacked those compounds in the village of Gerani, killing a majority of those inside, The A.P. reported.

"Mohammad Nieem Qadderdan, the former top official in the district of Bala Baluk, said he had seen dozens of bodies when he visited the village of Gerani.

"“These houses that were full of children and women and elders were bombed by planes. It is very difficult to say how many were killed because nobody can count the number, it is too early,” Mr. Qadderdan, who no longer holds a government position, told The A.P. by telephone. “People are digging through rubble with shovels and hands.”"

UN REPORTS CIVILIAN DEATHS IN AFGHANISTAN

Obama has decided to send 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. This is a catastrophe to Afghan civilians. Last year, according to a BBC report on figures released by the United Nations, the number of Afghani civilian casualties rose almost 40%.

The BBC reports:

"The UN report into civilian deaths said the death toll in 2008 civilian was "the highest of any year" since the Taleban were ousted in 2001.

"The majority of the victims were killed in the south of the country - where international and Afghan forces are fighting a fierce counter-insurgency campaign.

"In one of the most-publicised incidents, US troops fighting off a Taleban ambush last November bombed a wedding party in the Shah Wali Kot area in southern Afghanistan, killing about 40 civilians - mainly women and children.

"The issue of civilian deaths at the hands of foreign troops is a hugely sensitive issue, says the BBC's Martin Patience, in Kabul, and is something that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has raised repeatedly."

NO LEGAL JUSTIFICATION IN U.S. FIRING MISSILES INTO PAKISTAN VILLAGES

Candace Rondeaux reports today on The Washington Post website that the U.S. has killed five more people in the eastern tribal areas of Pakistan by means of missiles fired from unmanned drones.

One of them appears to be an Al Qaeda type wanted in a conspiracy to blow up a British jetliner. But the identity of the others is uncertain. The question is, what if they were civilians, women, children, ordinary villagers? Would this U.S. incursion into Pakistan and the killings be justified under international or even American law?

My argument is that when any other civilians are killed, there is no proportionality. This means that I believe the attacks are unjustified. I don't care that the U.S. argues that its strike killed a dangerous Al Qaeda member. Such air strikes are bound to kill innocent people who just happen to be in the vicinity. I mean the wife and kids of the terrorist as well as neighbors. Whoever in the CIA pulled the trigger had to know that the missiles would annihilate standers by and innocent others. Given such knowledge, the attack cannot be justified.

I call upon president elect Obama to put an end to any strikes from the air, whether manned or unmanned. The act of firing a missile or dropping a bomb is reprehensible and inhumane because it does irreversible damage to the non-fighters.

Imagine what a fertile source of future insurgents from those who survive the attack and see the injustice perpetrated by the U.S. government in killing their friends and neighbors. This is why Pakistani authorities have strenuously complained to American authorities that these attacks should come to an end.

Writes Rondeaux:

"The recent series of cross border drone attacks have also drawn criticism from Pakistan's top military officer, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani. Earlier this week, Kayani, who formerly headed the ISI, urged NATO officials to halt the missile strikes during a two-day visit to the military organization's headquarters in Brussels. Kayani and other top Pakistani officials have said that collateral damage and civilian deaths from the missile strikes could stir rising anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led war against Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan."

U.S. AIRSTRIKE KILLS 40 AFGHANIS ATTENDING WEDDING

Once again there are reports of U.S. air strikes killing innocent civilians and townspeople in Afghanistan.

Abdul Waheed Wafa and Mark McDonald report on today's web page of The New York Times the latest attack in which the victims were members of a wedding party.

"An airstrike by United States-led forces killed 40 civilians and wounded 28 others at a wedding party in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Wednesday. The casualties included women and children, the officials said.

"The United States military and Afghan authorities were investigating the reports about the latest attack, the American military said in a statement, but it gave no confirmation of the strikes or any death toll.

"The reports of the strike, in a region that has become a renewed front line in the battle against the Taliban, showed the raw tensions between the United States and Afghanistan over the toll suffered by civilians in the war, and came just hours after the election of Barack Obama as the next American president."

I have longed call for an immediate halt to U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan. Dropping a bomb on a target inherently involves too much risk of killing people who are innocent civilians.

Furthermore, besides the loss of life, the U.S. demonizes itself in the eyes of all Afghanis every time it drops a bomb and kills innocents including women and children. If the U.S. has any goal of establishing Afghanistan as an ally against fundamentalist jihadism, it must stop this practice of using air power to achieve its political aims.