U.S. Troops Fire on Afghan Bus, Killing Civilians

[Ichingcarpenter]

Source: NY Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near Kandahar city on Monday morning, killing at least five civilians and wounding 18, Afghan authorities and survivors said. The attack infuriated Kandahar leaders and could harm public opinion on the eve of the most important offensive of the war, which is intended to take control of the Kandahar region from the Taliban this summer.

Hundreds of demonstrators poured into the area around a bus station on the western outskirts of Kandahar city, shouting anti-American chants and blocking the road for one hour, according to people in the area.

The bus driver and one of the passengers said that an American convoy 60 to 70 yards ahead of the bus opened fire as the bus began to pull to the side of the road to allow another military convoy traveling behind to pass. the two convoys and the bus were on the main highway in Sanzari, about 15 miles, or 24 kilometers, west of Kandahar city. All of the windows on one side of the bus were shot out.

Troops opened fire on the bus just after daybreak as it was taking scores of passengers to Nimroz province, said Zalmy Ayoubi, a spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/world/asia/13afghan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[unhappycamper]

1. Looks like that hearts and minds thingie isn't going very well.

Killing civilians is not the way to 'Victory'.

[No Elephants]

4. We don't do hearts and minds very well.

We do:

"Get 'em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow."

Only problem: It's not true.

[ShortnFiery]

5. You got that right!

But hey, we haven't made that many mistakes in the past, right? ... so on with the "collateral damage" of the USA Military Operations which has killed MORE CIVILIANS in modern history than all the "evil work" of the small scale terrorist cells combined. :wow:

But we didn't mean to kill them, i.e., collateral damage. That comfort makes the civilian casualties "less dead" and eases the grieving of their friends and family?


http://yorick.infinitejest.org:81/1/img/card-tall_farmer.jpg http://yorick.infinitejest.org:81/1/img/card-iraqi-disarmament.jpg
http://yorick.infinitejest.org:81/1/img/card-al-jazeera-hq.jpg http://yorick.infinitejest.org:81/1/img/card-iraq-mosul-massacre.jpg

Pogue Colonel: Son, all I've ever asked of my marines is that they obey my orders as they would the word of God. We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out. It's a hardball world, son. We've gotta keep our heads until this peace craze blows over. ... Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket"

[pinboy3niner]

8. Great minds . . . nt

[Mark D.]

31. Good Points

I'm waiting for an explanation from them on why they did that. Shooting up a harmless bus. What? It 'looked threatening'. Yeah, you know, those buses! It was pulling over, OMG, anything was possible then! This plays into the whole 'just nuke em all' 'strategy' many on the ignorant portion of the right (mislead, by the GOP leadership) think we should employ.

This will get shuffled to the bottom of the mainstream media pile while they try to see if the affairs and obscene text messages were why Tiger didn't win The Masters this year. If one foreign fighter's bullet even just grazed the flesh of one US citizen in America, the outrage would be deafening. But the US has become complacent at such a number of deaths.

Sure it will maybe hurt out standing before our 'offensive' (which will no doubt take the lives of more innocent civilians). It's more than that, these are innocent people on a bus! It's as if they WANT the citizens mad at the US, to drum up resistance, for just MORE WAR. They can't let the Military Industrial Complex have a recession now, can they? Disgusting.

[pinboy3niner]

7. You got THAT right

McChrystal was charged SPECIFICALLY with reducing civilian casualties, and--especially after the revelations of last week--you'd think they would be taking EXTRA special care now. This is insane. It looks like they are turning it into another Vietnam. As John Fogerty sang about the Iraq war, it's like "Deja Vu All Over Again." WTF?????:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[Xenotime]

27. The hearts and minds thingie means that is where you target them.

And, to the right, that is how you win.

[Rapier09]

2. A long bitter fight

9 years of this shit.

9 years,I don't even remember how life was before this became our reality.

[boppers]

3. Hiroshima and Nagasaki was faster. eom

[ShortnFiery]

6. I lived in Japan for three years. Although the Japanese are gracious and ...

ultra forgiving and humble, let's just say that they didn't appreciate all the carnage.

Further, there is still dispute whether or not we needed to nuke those two cities in order to secure Japan's unconditional surrender.

At worst, ONE NUKE probably would have been more than sufficient. But we're the USA and we never KILL CIVILIANS in a half-assed way.

Gee, it's about time to permit our buddies in Israel to also go NUKE-LEAR?

[boppers]

10. I suggest you investigate the Potsdam declarations.

They had a chance to avoid it,

They refused.

[No Elephants]

20. Damn those stubborn WWII Japanese school kids!

[Vattel]

25. We didn't need the unconditional surrender of Japan

anymore than we needed to be in Vietnam. The Japanese were not stupid. They knew that their military situation was hopeless. What sort of peace might have been reached through negotiations? We will never know because Truman wasn't interested in negotiations or conditional surrender. He preferred to pursue undonditional surrender at the expense of destroying every major city in Japan and thereby killing hundreds of thousands of civilians including thousands of little children.

[ixion]

9. Ah, congratulations to the lucky Afghan civilians... they have now been officiallly liberated

courtesy of the US military, and you and me.

We paid to have these people whacked. Aren't we great!

:sarcasm:

[boppers]

11. Don't worry, the Taliban will "liberate" them again, soon!

Such a brutal place, with so many victims, of well meaning peoples.

[pinboy3niner]

12. Great post, Boppers!

The Afghanis are the only ones who have not controlled their own destiny for generations. Maybe "Afghanistanization," in a real sense, should be the objective. It won't be, of course, because of so many geopolitical interests involved. But one can hope . . .

[boppers]

14. Maybe some day?

They've been brutalized by so many political empires, so many systems, when the average family just wants to tend their sheep, take care of their children, and make it through the winter....

Maybe we should airlift some "American Idol" DVD's to them. That should fix it. (Is the sarcasm tag really needed here?)

Ugh.

OTOH, there was this:
http://www.abc2news.com/news/national/story/US-Forces-Avert-Suicide-Bombing-With-Sheep/XJf5zri11UOSZRbGu33dug.cspx

The US is learning.

[pinboy3niner]

16. Seemst o me like the same thing we want . . . or people anywhere nt

[No Elephants]

21. You mean, like "Vietnamization?"

http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/vietnam/timeline.htm

[pinboy3niner]

No. not in the sense of what US policy meant for Vietnam

Rather, in the real sense of sovereignty and self-determination for the Afghan people.

[Cleobulus]

33. That cannot be a possible goal, not the United States....

isn't interested in Afghanistan controlling its own "destiny", least of all through democracy, because it may diverge from United States interests in the region.

[ixion]

24. The primary difference there being:

I wouldn't be paying for that particular liberation.

A distinctive and poignant difference, to be sure.

But how very quaint of you to be an apologist for a neocon-launched hostile occupation.

[dipsydoodle]

13. Presumably they had sound reason to suspect

there was a Muslim on board.:sarcasm:

[protocol rv]

18. It's a serious case of

traveling by bus while Muslim

[No Elephants]

22. Yeah. They should have taken a plane!

[rug]

15. They thought the bus was a suicide attack?

The military spokeswoman confirmed that a convoy traveling west, in front of the bus, had opened fire, but said the second convoy was traveling eastbound toward the bus.

She also said that immediately before the shooting the troops fired three flares toward the bus to warn the driver he was following too closely, and that one soldier raised his fist in the air as another warning. She also said the driver of the bus was killed.

However, the man who identified himself as the driver said the bus did not violate any signal from the troops.

“I was going to take the bus off the road,” said the man, Mohammed Nabi. Then the convoy ahead opened fire from a distance of 60 to 70 yards.

“It is a huge bus full of passengers, and if they think we were a suicide bomber, we are sad that the Americans have killed innocent people,” he said. “We don’t feel safe while traveling on the main highways anymore because of NATO convoys.”

[protocol rv]

19. They are scared, that is all

US soldiers in Afghanistan are scared all the time. It's very stressful when they are surrounded by a hostile population, and are constantly attacked and have rocks thrown at by children, and so on. The Soviet soldiers experienced the same problem. There is very little difference between the two groups.

[Robb]

17. Ugh.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit I've been expecting a lot more of this than we're getting, considering the increase in troop levels.

I'm amazed it took as long as it did for a story this screwed up. Lots of jumpy kids with guns. And US flag patches on their arms, if I'm being unclear.

[Soylent Brice]

23. K&R

[paparush]

26. Perpetual War -

Doesn't seem to matter who's in charge any longer. Dem or Repub, we're killing around the globe.

[Vattel]

28. If the facts are as they appear to be, this was cowardly.

In the stress of war, some act courageously and others act cowardly. This appears to be a case of the latter.

[Bragi]

29. So tired of "Living with War"

Neil Young nailed the desperation that peace-minded, ordinary people feel when forced to "live with war".

Give it a listen. It's a sad but beautiful song.

- B

LIVING WITH WAR/ Neil Young

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjkPracnH1o&feature=fvst

Lyrics

I'm living with war everyday
I'm living with war in my heart every day
I'm living with war right now

And when the dawn breaks I see my fellow man
And on the flat-screen we kill and we're killed again
And when the night falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace (visualize)

I join the multitudes
I raise my hand in peace
I never bow to the laws of the thought police
I take a holy vow
To never kill again
To never kill again

I'm living with war in my heart
I'm living with war in my heart in my mind
I'm living with war right now

Don't take no tidal wave
Don't take no mass grave
Don't take no smokin' gun
To show how the west was won
But when the curtain falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace (visualize)

In the crowded streets
In the big hotels
In the mosques and the doors of the old museum
I take a holy vow
To never kill again
Try to remember peace

The rocket's red glare
Bombs bursting in air
Give proof through the night,
That our flag is still there

I'm living with war everyday
I'm living with war in my heart every day
I'm living with war right now

[ixion]

30. yep, me too

thanks for posting the lyrics.

[ArcticFox]

32. U.S. soldiers didn't know it was A BUS!!!

"The American-led military command in Kabul called the killings a 'tragic loss of life' and said troops fired not knowing the vehicle was a bus . . . ."

How do you not recognize that a bus is a bus? What the hell did they think it was, a tank?

[boppers]

34. Troop carrier vehicle?

Truck bomb?

I dunno how they would make that mistake, but apparently our military is so jumpy and wired that cameras look like rifles and grenade launchers, minivans look like militia support vehicles, and buses look like, well, whatever the hell they thought it was.

No wonder McCrystal keeps ratcheting up the "DO NOT SHOOT CIVILIANS" mantra, the troops seem to have a hard time keeping their fingers away from their triggers.

Well, that, or the media has gotten better about reporting the kind of horrific slaughter that happens to innocents in a war.