Karzai asks the impossible from Obama

LA Times:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai today demanded that President-elect Barack Obama put an end to civilian casualties as villagers said U.S. warplanes bombed a wedding party, killing 37 people, including 23 children and 10 women.

The U.S. military said it was investigating the report but an American spokesman added that "if innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences."

The bombing Monday afternoon of the remote village of Wech Baghtu in the southern province of Kandahar destroyed an Afghan housing complex where women and children had gathered to celebrate. Body parts littered the wreckage and nearby farm animals lay dead.

Villager Abdul Jalil, a 37-year-old grape farmer whose niece was getting married, told an Associated Press reporter at the scene of the bombing that U.S. troops and Taliban fighters had been fighting about a half mile from his home but that the militants fled and sought shelter in his grape orchards and in or near his home.

A bombing run by fighter aircraft a short while later destroyed his compound and killed 37 people, including 23 children, 10 women and four men, Jalil said.

No Afghan officials could immediately confirm the number of casualties, which happened in a remote and dangerous part of Kandahar province. But Karzai referred to the incident at a news conference today held to congratulate Obama on his U.S. presidential election victory.

Karzai said he hopes the election will "bring peace to Afghanistan, life to Afghanistan and prosperity to the Afghan people and the rest of the world." He applauded America for its "courage" in electing Obama.

...
Obama can't make the Taliban wear uniforms as required by the Geneva Conventions. He can't make them avoid civilian human shields as required by the Geneva Conventions. If the report is accurate that a wedding party was hit, it means the enemy fed misinformation to our intelligence in a deliberate attempt to get civilians killed. Obama can't stop that either.

The Taliban game is clear. They want this type of casualty in order to get the US to stop using air attacks against the Taliban. These attacks are our great advantage over the Taliban and they are trying to discredit them to get them stopped. We would be foolish to do so.

One thing Karzai could do to make this game more difficult for the Taliban is require that all Afghans notify the government of any wedding parties.

Comments

  1. Nolanimrod7:41 PM

    Might want to wait until Obama is inaugurated. Or, maybe he's been chatting with Joe Biden, who remembered FDR going on TV to tell the people just what was happening with the stock market crash, before he was president and before there were TV networks.

    ReplyDelete

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