{"id":196086,"date":"2021-10-04T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=196086"},"modified":"2021-09-29T06:01:49","modified_gmt":"2021-09-29T05:01:49","slug":"u-s-litany-of-lethal-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/10\/u-s-litany-of-lethal-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Litany of Lethal Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The latest US drone strike that obliterated a family in Afghanistan was no \u2018mistake\u2019. It was a heinous crime.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Aimal Ahmadi, stands next to the wreckage of the car of his brother, Zemari, who was killed, along with two adults and seven children, by a US drone strike in the Kwaja Burga neighbourhood of Kabul on September 18, 2021.
[AFP\/Hoshang Hashimi]<\/p><\/div>\n

27 Sep 2021 – <\/em>By now, they have been forgotten by everyone but the people who admired, cared for and loved them.<\/p>\n

Zemari Ahmadi \u2013 a father, brother and son \u2013 was running his usual errands on August 29. For years, the veteran aid worker had spent much of his time and energy delivering food and canisters of water to make the grinding hardship so many Afghans endure less taxing.<\/p>\n

That morning, like most days, Ahmadi, an electrical engineer by training, left the compound near Kabul airport where he lived with his four children, two brothers and a slew of nieces and nephews. Ahmadi carpooled. So, driving a white Toyota Corolla, he picked up a few colleagues on route to the headquarters of Nutrition and Education International \u2013 the California-based humanitarian group \u2013 where they unloaded some bags and containers. At noon, he made a brief visit to a police station. Later that day, Ahmadi used a hose to fill several jugs with water to ferry home. He arrived a few minutes before 5pm.<\/p>\n

Then, in a happy family ritual, Ahmadi let one of his children hop into the driver\u2019s seat to finish parking in the gated courtyard. A gaggle of excited children rushed to greet him and pack into the car. Meanwhile, a cousin helped unload the jugs of water.<\/p>\n

Within moments, a \u201cHellfire\u201d missile fired from a \u201cReaper\u201d drone obliterated<\/a> the Corolla and anyone nearby. The 10 dead included Ahmadi and three of his children, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 13, as well as his cousin, Ahmad 30, and three of Ahmadi\u2019s nephews, Arwin, seven, Benyamin, six, and Hayat, two and two three-year-old girls, Malika and Somaya.<\/p>\n

At first, the US military insisted, with typical bravado, that its carefully planned attack \u2013 triggered by unimpeachable \u201cintelligence\u201d that warned of impending mayhem \u2013 was \u201ca righteous\u201d reply that rid the world of a terrorist implicated in the murderous assault days earlier on Afghans and American soldiers milling outside Kabul\u2019s airport, waiting for flight out and far from the Taliban\u2019s tentacles.<\/p>\n

It was the first of a litany of lies.<\/p>\n

The US had not avenged the barbarity committed by terrorists. It had, once again, massacred innocents.<\/p>\n

Of course, after its lie had been exposed by the grieving family, other witnesses and sceptical reporters, a US soldier was compelled to apologise for America\u2019s \u201chorrible mistake\u201d. And the cable TV personalities and their stable of serious-sounding pundits who had instantly applauded their country\u2019s \u201crighteous\u201d retaliation, were now quick to agree that an \u201cerrant missile\u201d launched by the US military had dismembered and incinerated 10 Afghan girls, boys and men in a tragic error.<\/p>\n

That was a lie, too.<\/p>\n

The slaughter of Ahmadi and the other Afghans in that tiny courtyard was not a \u201cmistake\u201d. Misspelling the word \u201cmistake\u201d is a mistake. What US soldiers and spies conspired to do to Ahmadi and his extended family was a heinous crime. It was a crime that the US military has \u2013 the incriminating record shows \u2013 committed often in Afghanistan and beyond. Only this time, America was forced, grudgingly, to acknowledge its guilt.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly, our intelligence was wrong on this particular white Toyota Corolla,\u201d a US General said. \u201cWe thought this was a good lead. We were wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

But US soldiers and spies know that being \u201cwrong\u201d rarely results in being arrested. Just like all the other soldiers and spies who have made lethal \u201cmistake\u201d after lethal \u201cmistake\u201d in Afghanistan and beyond, none of the architects and perpetrators of this latest US-engineered bloodbath will be held to account in or out of court.<\/p>\n

Instead, America may offer the surviving family members a wad of cash as a fleeting and meaningless act of penance to absolve itself of the responsibility for the horror it unleashed via an \u201cerrant\u201d missile on still more Afghans trying to survive, as best they can, the deprivations, struggles and indignities of war.<\/p>\n

On predictable cue, Congress, the military and the \u201cintelligence community\u201d have promised to launch investigations and so-called \u201clessons learned\u201d inquiries to try to find out what went wrong and prevent the carnage from happening again. Sure, they will.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to understand exactly what went wrong and what that means in terms of the limits of what we are able to do,\u201d a US congressman said.<\/p>\n

This is yet another feeble lie.<\/p>\n

US politicians, soldiers and spies have not \u201clearned\u201d and will never learn. America\u2019s sordid, relentless history of killing civilians \u2013 many of them children \u2013 while waging its imperial wars is proof of that. Otherwise, America would have stopped making its calamitous catalogue of \u201chorrible mistakes\u201d long before another \u201cHellfire\u201d missile destroyed another Afghan family in late August.<\/p>\n

Here is the truth: the sprawling espionage-industrial complex that set its technological cross-hairs on Ahmadi \u2013 and tracked his movements before deciding that he was a \u201cterrorist\u201d who had to be summarily executed \u2013 is populated, for the most part, by plodding, pedestrian bureaucrats. The spies also know they enjoy immunity from the inhumane consequences of their manifest archive of negligence and ineptness.<\/p>\n

The overarching conclusion I arrived at after devoting years studying and reporting on the secret, subterranean world of spies is that the popular impression of intelligence agencies as housing dogged people with impressive credentials, dedicated \u2013 with missionary zeal \u2013 to protecting America from \u201cbad actors\u201d is largely a myth.<\/p>\n

It is, however, a stubborn, reassuring myth promoted by the television-savvy former spies and their close friends in academia and a bevvy of \u201cthink-tanks\u201d hired as \u201cconsultants\u201d by agreeable US news networks who invariably defend the interests and reputations of the powerful institutions they have faithfully worked for and with in a variety of lucrative capacities.<\/p>\n

What the herd of cable-news-anointed \u201cexperts\u201d are loath to share with their amenable hosts, let alone the networks\u2019 fast-evaporating audiences, is that, like any bureaucracy, the vast, cob-web-like army of America\u2019s spies is infected by myopia, boredom, laziness, careerism, petty, corrosive jealousies and an engrained inertia that have resulted in intelligence \u201cdebacle\u201d after intelligence \u201cdebacle\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rather than finally address and confront this awkward, but demonstrable fact, the ubiquitous \u201cexperts\u201d traffic in the easy, palpable lie that the killing of Zemari Ahmadi and seven children was an understandable, albeit sad, \u201cmistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

When America\u2019s soldiers and spies commit their next atrocity, the \u201cexperts\u201d will offer up the same flippant excuses and the television hosts will nod in studied solemnity before moving on to the latest manufactured outrage like flitting butterflies.<\/p>\n

The rest of us would do well to remember how and why Zamir, Faisal, Farzad, Ahmad, Arwin, Benyamin, Hayat, Malika, Somaya and Zemari were annihilated and the American soldiers and spies who, as always, got away with it.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"Andrew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Andrew Mitrovica is an <\/em>Al Jazeera columnist based in Toronto.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Sep 2021 – The latest US drone strike that obliterated a family in Afghanistan was a heinous crime. A \u201cHellfire\u201d missile fired from a \u201cReaper\u201d drone obliterated the Corolla and the 10 dead included Ahmadi and three of his children, Zamir, 20, Faisal, 16, and Farzad, 13, as well as his cousin, Ahmad 30, and three of Ahmadi\u2019s nephews, Arwin, seven, Benyamin, six, and Hayat, two and two three-year-old girls, Malika and Somaya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":196087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[93,94,133,1106,267,1126,487,1050,504,91,86,112,880,484,639,95,70,126,492,481],"class_list":["post-196086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-afghanistan","tag-central-asia","tag-cia","tag-drones","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-human-rights","tag-imperialism","tag-international-relations","tag-nato","tag-occupation","tag-pentagon","tag-state-terrorism","tag-taliban","tag-uk","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war-on-terror","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}