"...the Obama Killing Machine..."

[WhiskeyGirl]

Is this the future of America?  Fundamentally changing law enforcement?  Instead of going after criminals and bad people, he protects Americans and causes more death?

One Month of the Obama Killing Machine in Afghanistan: Data and a Lesson for the UNAMA and its Groupies

Sadly, ‘groupies’ like the western media, peace groups and even the World Socialist Web Site (wsws) uncritically go about citing spurious UNAMA figures, for example endlessly mentioning that Afghan civilian deaths caused by “coalition forces” have declined

Let the numbers tell the story. The following presents a detailed summary and analysis of Afghan civilians killed directly - so-called impact deaths - by U.S/NATO forces in Afghanistan during a single month, February 2010. The Obama killing machine left 80-86 dead Afghan and Pashtun civilians. By contrast, the number in February 2009 was 50. The intent here is to set the record straight as regards Afghans killed by the U.S/NATO, and in so doing challenge the UNAMA to move beyond its “faith-based” counting. Regrettably, data put out by the UNAMA gets widely cited less for its validity (which cannot be fact-checked given the organization’s refusal to publish disaggregated data) and more because of a vague public yearning to believe (have faith in) in the U.N’s alleged impartiality and credibility. As I have repeatedly demonstrated, the UNAMA data barely captures one-half of the Afghan civilians killed by U.S/NATO direct actions and by so doing serves Obama and the Pentagon in their news management effort.(1)

In 2008, the UNAMA captured about 70% of Afghans killed by foreign forces, but in 2009 the figure was under 40%, justifiably earning UNAMA’s performance as being faith-based (or ideologically-inspired) counting. Sadly, ‘groupies’ like the western media, peace groups and even the World Socialist Web Site (wsws) uncritically go about citing spurious UNAMA figures, for example endlessly mentioning that Afghan civilian deaths caused by “coalition forces” have declined: naturally they have since the UNAMA missed only 30% of such deaths in 2008, but 60% in 2009.

As I have argued and documented, in fact a trade-off exists between protecting foreign occupation forces and Afghan civilians.( Such trade-off is best captured by the ratio of Afghan civilians killed per dead foreign occupation soldier. This ratio was 4.97 in 2007, 3.19 for 2008, 1.94 for 2009, and for Jan-Feb 2010 it was 1.48.(9) In effect, the Obama regimen involved trading off US/NATO soldier deaths for fewer Afghan civilian ones in order to placate critical NATO members.(10)

Conclusion

Air strikes still kill the majority of Afghan civilians. The absolute number of Afghan civilians killed by foreign occupation forces is not declining.(11) The mainstream western media with few exceptions and organizations like UNAMA and the AIHRC de facto serve the Obama news management effort by severely under-reporting Afghan civilians killed by foreign forces.

read more here - http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2010/03/10/one-month-of-the-obama-killing-machine-in-afghanistan-data-and-a-lesson-for-the-unama-and-its-groupies.html

I wonder why some don't see the good job Obama is doing in Afghanistan?

I wonder how this writer views the 'success' in Iraq?

Is this the American version of Darfur?  Following the example of the Chinese and how they rule/manage the country after the UN leaves?

[WhiskeyGirl]

Who is RAWA?

RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, was established in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1977 as an independent political/social organization of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan. The founders were a number of Afghan woman intellectuals under the sagacious leadership of Meena who in 1987 was assassinated in Quetta, Pakistan, by Afghan agents of the then KGB in connivance with fundamentalist band of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar . RAWA’s objective was to involve an increasing number of Afghan women in social and political activities aimed at acquiring women’s human rights and contributing to the struggle for the establishment of a government based on democratic and secular values in Afghanistan. Despite the suffocating political atmosphere, RAWA very soon became involved in widespread activities in different socio-political arenas including education, health and income generation as well as political agitation.

Before the Moscow-directed coup d’état of April 1978 in Afghanistan, RAWA’s activities were confined to agitation for women’s rights and democracy, but after the coup and particularly after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in December 1979, RAWA became directly involved in the war of resistance. In contradistinction to the absolute majority of the vaunted Islamic fundamentalist "freedom fighters" of the anti-Soviet war of resistance, RAWA from the outset advocated democracy and secularism. Despite the horrors and the political oppression, RAWA’s appeal and influence grew in the years of the Soviet occupation and a growing number of RAWA activists were sent to work among refugee women in Pakistan. For the purpose of addressing the immediate needs of refugee women and children, RAWA established schools with hostels for boys and girls, a hospital for refugee Afghan women and children in Quetta, Pakistan with mobile teams. In addition, it conducted nursing courses, literacy courses and vocational training courses for women.

http://www.rawa.org/rawa.html

[WhiskeyGirl]

Obama’s unspoken trade-off

MARC W. HEROLD

The Obama war machine has decided to accept more U.S. military casualties in order to keep NATO in America’s Afghan war.

BURIED in the public relations blather of United States Marine legions “liberating” Helmand and Afghan (sham) “elections” as democracy restored1 is an unspoken trade-off over who disproportionately dies in America’s modern wars in the Third World. Under President George W. Bush, U.S. politico-military elites chose to fight the Afghan war with minimal regard for so-called collateral casualties. But the soaring toll of killed Afghan civilians swayed world public opinion and stoked the Afghan resistance as grieved Afghan family members sought revenge.

Enter Barack Obama. Faced with the prospect of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces being withdrawn as restless NATO-country citizens mobilised against the war, the Obama war machine took the decision to trade off (mostly) lower-class U.S. “volunteer” soldiers from rural America2 for fewer rural Afghan civilians killed. The decision had nothing to do with valuing Afghan lives and everything to do with a careful political calculation. In outlying areas such as in the Pakistan borderlands or in isolated rural areas of Afghanistan, Obama’s war machine cavalierly slaughters innocent civilians with the same impunity and at the same rate as his maligned predecessor did, as drone strikes in Pakistan and U.S. air strikes in Farah and Logar have demonstrated.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2618/stories/20090911261813000.htm

No jobs, no business, no farm, no fishing, no life...

[WhiskeyGirl]

Obama More Deadly for Afghan Civilians than Bush (in Jan 2009): “Change” Afghans Should Look Upon with Skepticism

Simple arithmetic reveals that the eleven days under the Obama clock were 18-50% more deadly for Afghan civilians than the twenty days under the Bush regime – Marc W. Herold.

more here - http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/02/02/obama-more-deadly-for-afghan-civilians-than-bush-in-jan-2009.html

[WhiskeyGirl]

Rural soldiers more likely to die in Iraq, Afghanistan

AP

WICHITA, Kan. - Christopher Wasser was like a lot of soldiers from rural areas.

The Ottawa native saw the military as a way to pay for college, said his mother, Candy Wasser.

Wasser joined the Marine Corps in 2001 and was among the first to invade Iraq two years later.

On a second deployment there in April 2004, he gained another common characteristic for rural soldiers. He was killed, dying from shrapnel wounds in Anbar Province.

According to a study released last month by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, the death rate per million population aged 18 to 54 was 60 percent higher for soldiers from rural areas compared with those from urban areas or the suburbs.

In Kansas, 29 of the 42 soldiers who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan hailed from rural communities.

Researchers said the higher death rate is linked to higher enlistment because of smaller job opportunities in rural areas. That means combat deaths are felt more keenly in rural parts of the country.

"For a lot of small towns and rural communities, the war's not abstract," said Dee Davis, president of the Kentucky-based Center for Rural Strategies. "In rural America, people know who's actually fighting."

more here - http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latest-news/rural-soldiers-more-likely-to-die-in-iraq-afghanistan

[WhiskeyGirl]

"Tomgram: Where Do the American Dead Come From? "

As it happens, though, we don't have to rely on the anecdotal or the look of the names of the places from which the American dead have come. Demographer William O'Hare and journalist Bill Bishop, working with the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute, which specializes in the overlooked rural areas of our country, have actually crunched the numbers in an important study that has gotten too little attention. Matching a data set from the Department of Defense listing the dead and their hometowns against information from the White House Office of Management and Budget on which counties in this country are metropolitan, they found that the American dead of the Iraq and Afghan Wars do indeed come disproportionately from rural America. Quite startlingly so.

According to their study, the death rate "for rural soldiers (24 per million adults aged 18 to 59) is 60% higher than the death rate for those soldiers from cities and suburbs (15 deaths per million)." Of rural areas, Vermont has the highest rate of casualties, followed by Delaware, South Dakota, and Arizona. Only 8 of our states have higher urban than rural death rates.

more here - http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/160190/

No jobs for rural America, no fishing, no hunting, no stimulus...