Posted by CODEPINK Staff
Since the invasion of Iraq, the United States military has been notoriously known for not counting the number of innocent civilians killed in American-driven combat.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the United States military has argued against the number of civilians killed in a recent air strike, estimating that roughly 20 or 30 civilians were killed instead of the 140 calculated by the current Afghan government. But harkening back to the United States role in Iraq, the U.S. military refused to count the number of civilian deaths with only independent human rights organizations able to give the true count.
Earlier this week, Admiral Mullen's stated in the New York Times, “We cannot succeed in Afghanistan or anywhere else, but let’s talk specifically about Afghanistan, by killing Afghan civilians, we can’t keep going through incidents like this and expect the strategy to work.”
Although military personnel in Afghanistan are speaking out against civilian deaths, unlike the personnel in Iraq, killing innocent Afghans is still officially listed as collateral damage -- dead Afghans are inhuman, unworthy of mention except as biproduct of war, just rubbish. Whether the U.S. military is in action to stabilize a region or defeat the opposition, the innocent, most likely women and children, will see face the outcome and gain no reparations. The military presence in Afghanistan will only create further tensions if they do not change their approach towards the innocent and ending occupation.
