Americans slaughtering humans in Afghanistan, Iraq

By Frosty Wooldridge

Let’s deal with this fact: we lost the Afghanistan war. We lost the Iraq war.  Why?  George W. Bush didn’t know or understand what he was getting into when he decided to “shock and awe” the Iraqi people.  He failed to study the fact that all empires that have marched into Afghanistan—withdrew with their tails between their legs.

Sweden gave Barack Obama the Noble Peace Prize without merit in hopes that he would get the message and withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan.  He failed to take the hint.  Three years later, we still maintain armies in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Over 100,000 civilians suffered death in both countries.  Our military proves itself an efficient killing machine with our arsenal of bombs, drones, napalm and firepower.  The U.S. Army kills people. Mechanized violence!  But recently, Afghanistan soldiers have gone on a killing spree of U.S. soldiers.

In response this past week, a PTSD afflicted, “transitory brain injury” victim and totally berserk U.S. Army sergeant on his fourth deployment blasted 16 adults and children to death in a killing spree that reminds us of Lt. William Calley at My Lai in Vietnam.

The 10 year war in Afghanistan is driving them crazy and it is driving our own troops mad.  One of our U.S. Army sergeants in Colorado Springs was killed last year while serving his 13th deployment in those war zones. He left three girls and a wife that barely knew him.  This past week in Denver, Captain Ryan Hall, 30, after 1,300 combat missions and his seventh deployment to the Middle East was buried with full honors.

Are we crazy or are Obama and Congress nuts?  These young men and women serve our country, but our country is NOT serving our military personnel.  No one should serve seven to 13 deployments.  It is inhuman.  It’s sickening, really.

Remember “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”; “Sand Creek Massacre”; “Trail of Tears”?  Circa 1820-50: American soldiers slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people on the Western plains as settlers invaded the Indians’ homelands. 

Fast forward to 2012: the doctors at the slaughtering sergeant’s home base, Joint Fort Lewis-McChord, said he was, “Fit for duty and his brain injuries are fine.”

For those who have read my past columns on Vietnam War casualties, you know that 175,000 combat troops who returned home in one piece after 1975 committed suicide. War scrambles a man’s mind.

“This latest GI mental explosion by the staff sergeant was preceded by increasing acts of American troop non-discipline – Marines pissing on Afghan bodies, the Koran-burning fiasco, units loudly cheering indiscriminate Hellfire drone attacks on a village, etc,” said Los Angeles journalist Clancy Sigal. “That an increasingly demoralized junior and midgrade officer corps has neither the ability nor will to stop. The troops are protesting “by any other means” their entrapment in a no-win landscape where Washington politicians and career-crazy senior officers keep a war going beyond the limit of sanity.”

The fact remains that we killed bin Laden, so why are we still spending $12 billion a month to keep the Military Industrial Complex and U.S. Contractors “nation building” in Afghanistan?

Are we to blame one single young man for going crazy to kill 16 people, or should we blame Bush and Obama or should we blame ourselves for being so disinterested in those wars that we are complicit in the insanity and killing?

The fact remains that Afghanistan’s Karzi continues milking the U.S taxpayer along with bogus U.S. military reports of “progress”, much like the crap fed to us by General Westmoreland during Vietnam. That resulted in 58,300 U.S. kids’ deaths and 2.1 million Vietnamese civilians.  It’s morally reprehensible that we could kill that many people without any conscience whatsoever.

Are we waiting for an engraved invitation to depart the Middle East?  How many more of our kids do we want to kill?  How many more suicides do we want to create?  How much more money do we want to waste?  How much more wasted life and loss of spirit and loss of humanity can we afford?

What are we seeing in these killings on both sides?  We’re seeing individual human beings crying out with their own personal “mutiny” to stop these wars.

##