Afghan resistance shoots down U.S. copter

Thirty members of the U.S. Special Forces were killed in Afghanistan in the deadliest day of the 10-year war for U.S. military personnel when insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter on Aug. 6. The majority of those killed were from Navy Seal Team 6, the unit that killed Osama bin Laden in a night-time raid deep in Pakistan. Eight members of the Afghan National Army were also killed when rebels destroyed the massive double-rotor transport helicopter with a rocket.

The Taliban claimed they had downed the helicopter while it was taking part in a raid on a house where insurgents were gathered in the province of Wardak. It said wreckage was strewn at the scene.

The Navy Seals had already killed eight people on the ground and were trying to take off when the helicopter was hit.

Meanwhile, NATO reported that four service members were killed on Aug. 7 in two separate insurgent attacks in southern Afghanistan and the country’s eastern region.

Also, the office of the French president said two French soldiers were killed and five wounded in a clash with insurgents in Afghanistan’s northeastern Tagab Valley.

At a time of collapsing public support for the Afghan war in the U.S., where the conflict is increasingly seen as too expensive and unwinnable, the deaths of so many soldiers are likely to increase pressure on the U.S. government to get out of Afghanistan.

Earlier the same day the helicopter was downed, Afghan police said a NATO air strike killed eight civilians in southern Helmand province. Civilian casualties caused by foreign troops hunting Taliban fighters and other insurgents have been extensively documented. The victims of the air strike in Helmand were members of a family that had fled fighting in neighboring Uruzgan province.

U.S. officials, including President Barack Obama, have mourned and lauded Navy Seal Team 6. The Seals are supposed to be the “best of the best” of U.S. Special Forces. Many in the rest of the world have a different opinion. A look at the Seals’ history shows why.

It’s true that the Seals and other Special Forces are different from the masses of working-class youth who join the military, often driven by desperate economic and social influences. The Special Forces are meticulously screened and trained, not only in military effectiveness, but in unwavering loyalty to the interests of the U.S. ruling elite.

The Central Intelligence Agency began using Seals in covert operations in early 1963. The Seals were involved in the CIA-sponsored Phoenix Program that targeted sympathizers of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front for capture and assassination. Often these were labor and community organizers, that is, civilians.

Since then Seals have carried out assassinations in Grenada, in Iraq during the first Gulf War, in Panama and Somalia, just to mention a few. What they are “best” at is acting as hired killers at the service of U.S. imperialism.

Shooting down this helicopter by the Afghan insurgents is a severe setback to U.S. war policy there.

U.S. policy planners have been counting on Special Forces like the Seals to rescue them from their increasingly precarious positions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Seals’ killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, a gross violation of international law and of Pakistan’s sovereignty, was trumpeted as a victory and harbinger of success in the so-called “war on terrorism.”

The success of the Afghan resistance in fighting back against the U.S. war and occupation of their country is not only a victory for the Afghan people, it is an inspiration for poor and working people around the world.