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.

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."

STOP U.S. BOMBING OF AFGHAN VILLAGES

Now the U.S. army in Afghanistan is admitting that its reckless air strike last month killed 30 innocent Afghani civilians. Remember that the military's first response was that no civilians were killed. Townspeople say that the air strike killed over 70.

The BBC reports:

"A US military inquiry has found that an air strike on militants in western Afghanistan on 22 August killed many more civilians than first acknowledged.

"US Central Command said 33 civilians, not seven, had died in the village of Azizabad in Herat province.

"While voicing regret, it said US forces had followed rules of engagement. "

So the U.S. Central Command voices regrets but says U.S. forces are in the clear because they "had followed rules of engagement." Oh yeah!

If "rules of engagement" allow the U.S. forces to drop napalm, cluster and other deadly explosives on some poor, rural Afghan town, knowing full well that they will incinerate houses and civilians, then we should get rid of these "rules of engagement."

The first thing that must be done: ground all U.S. war planes in Afghanistan. Cease and desist any more bombing runs, any more attacks from the air. Pull all U.S. war planes and helicopters out of Afghanistan.

Otherwise this reckless and inhumane and entirely counter-productive killing of innocent Afghan civilians will continue unabated.

STOP ALL U.S. AIR STRIKES AGAINST AFGHANI CIVILIANS

The BBC Radio today reports on a story from Afghanistan that government ministers have condemned the killing by U.S. air strikes of more than 90 civilians of a small town in Herat Province in the western part of the country. Many of the 90 killed were children.

I have been saying this for a long time that the U.S. should pull all fighter aircraft out of Afghanistan and stop all air strikes. This is not the first time that U.S. air planes have killed Afghani civilians, and if the U.S. persists in this fooling military action, many more civilians will die.

For each civilian death caused by bombs dropped from airplanes screaming over head in the middle of the night, imagine how many enemies of America are created. Perhaps ten for one, no, even one hundred to one.

Airplanes should be for peaceful purposes only, not to shoot missiles or to drop bombs on a helpless population.

Stop the wanton and indiscriminate killing of Afghani civilians, ground all U.S. military aircraft that carry guns, missiles or bombs.