Pentagon bombs public with lies
Hires PR firm to cover up crimes and failures
By Heather Cottin
More than half a million tons of bombs have rained death and
devastation on Afghanistan since Oct. 7. That amounts to "20
kilos for every man, woman and child in the country," writes
the Economist of Britain on Nov. 2. "B-52s are flying from
their base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to lend their
terrifying loads of 1,000-lb. bombs to the U.S. onslaught."
As the Afghan people flee their cities, creating a pitiful
tide of refugees, the United States and Great Britain have
revved up their propaganda machinery to put a positive spin on
the leveling of the poorest nation in Asia.
The carpet-bombing in recent days of Taliban front lines
represents a shift in tactics, and a new urgency in the
Pentagon's military campaign against Afghanistan and its
people.
The United States claims it is bombing only military
targets. However, every bomb that pounds this impoverished
nation puts the lie to any statement about "smart bombs" or
claims of "humanitarian" concerns. The bombing of Afghanistan's
largest dam and the Kajaki hydro-electric power station in
Helmand on Nov. 1, as reported by the Times of India, "could
cause widespread flooding, putting at risk the lives of
thousands of people, while cutting electricity to the
inhabitants of the region."
Human rights organizations and a hospital in Pakistan
reported a deadly attack that took as many as 60 lives in the
small village of Chowkar-Karez, 25 miles north of the Taliban
stronghold of Kandahar, according to reports based on
eyewitness accounts.
The British newspaper the Independent published interviews
with residents on Nov. 3. "As we buried the dead, the planes
came again," said an old farmer called Mangal, who said he lost
30 relatives, including 12 women and 14 children. The Pakistani
newspaper Dawn reported that "every house had been flattened
and huge craters could be seen in the surrounding fields."
"Many bodies were blown apart and all we could do was
collect their limbs and put them together in the same grave,"
said 65-year-old Mangal as he showed a freshly dug
graveyard.
Rather than bringing the Taliban to its knees, the joint
U.S./British bombing campaign has turned the tide of public
opinion in Afghanistan in favor of the Taliban.
As opposition grows, Pentagon hires PR firm
Around the world, people are questioning the Pentagon's
attacks on one of the poorest nations on earth. In Britain and
the United States governments face increased opposition to the
bombing. Britain has noted a rapid shift away from support for
the war.
CBC News online reported a London newspaper poll in the
first week of November showing support for the war had fallen
12 percentage points, from 74 to 62 percent. It reported that
the Church of Scotland had come out against the military
campaign in Afghanistan, joining a growing anti-war chorus
across Europe.
The U.S. government's response to this has been a massive
campaign to promote the war and prevent any anti-war sentiments
from surfacing. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "We
need to do a better job to make sure that people are not
confused as to what this is about." In desperation, the U.S.
government has turned to a public relations firm to
propagandize for the war.
The Rendon Group, a PR firm with offices in Boston and
Washington, just signed a $397,000 contract to help the
Pentagon look good while bombing Afghanistan. The four-month
deal includes an option to renew through most of 2002. "At the
Rendon Group, we believe in people," says the company's mission
statement, and "helping people win in the global marketplace."
Rendon will work in 79 countries to manipulate world opinion,
reports Norman Solomon of the media watch group Alternet.
In the United States the news media have cooperated with
Washington's war aims. The New York Times on Nov. 1 reported on
the strategy of CNN and other networks. Television images of
Afghan bombing victims are fleeting, cushioned between anchors
or American officials explaining that such sights are "only one
side of the story."
In other countries, however, "images of wounded Afghan
children curled in hospital beds or women rocking in despair
over a baby's corpse" are "more frequent and lingering." The
Washington Post reported on a statement from CNN chair Walter
Isaacson, who said, "It seems perverse to focus too much on the
casualties or hardship in Afghanistan."
The 'we are winning' lie
Despite the evidence, the United States has strongly
contested reports of civilian casualties while saying its
bombing was causing crippling damage to the Taliban command,
noted the Times of India on Nov 1.
But this is another lie.
The Economist of Nov. 2 reported that "The Taliban seem to
be gearing up for more intense fighting, whether it comes from
American commandos or a resupplied Northern Alliance. Refugees
from Taliban areas have brought back consistent accounts of
Kabul, the Afghan capital, and other cities under Taliban
control being full of recently arrived Pakistani and Arab
fighters. The Taliban have insisted that few of their soldiers
have been killed or injured by the bombs."
Even the New York Times conceded Nov. 2 that "waves of
American bombs delivered plenty of flash and thunder but
appeared to have largely missed their targets." The Times
wrote, "The reports from the front were amplified today by a
senior official of the Northern Alliance, who complained that
the American bombing campaign appeared increasingly misguided
and ineffectual."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's optimism about U.S.
gains is at odds with what is actually happening in
Afghanistan. The India Times reports: "Mr. Rumsfeld, speaking
in India on Nov. 5, flatly denied that the war would last very
long. 'Do I think the operation in Afghanistan will take years?
No I don't,' he said. 'We will take the least possible
time.'"
But on Oct. 26 Rumsfeld admitted to the London Independent
that "the Taliban was a more formidable foe than the allies
expected." The report said that an Oct. 20 commando raid by
Delta Force and U.S. Rangers left the U.S. soldiers "stunned by
the resistance they met."
A report by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine Nov. 12
issue is a searing critique of this military disaster, which
involved 300 Army Rangers who came under intense attack from
Taliban fighters. One participant dismissed the planning for
the Afghanistan mission as "Special Ops 101," and said, "I
don't know where the adult supervision for these operations is.
Franks [the general commanding the operation] was
clueless."
The Guardian on Nov. 1, noting that there were actually very
few ground forces capable of invading Afghanistan, reported
that such a ground offensive couldn't happen until spring.
British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon told Sky News: "The
weather is closing in. It does limit the opportunity of certain
kinds of operations."
There seems little evidence for Rumsfeld's contention that
the Taliban are no longer functioning as a government in the
areas that they do control. In fact, they appear to be getting
stronger. The Russia Times reports from Islamabad on Nov. 5
that "thousands of pro-Taliban Pakistanis armed with rocket
launchers and swords have crossed into Afghanistan to wage
jihad, or holy war, against the United States and many more are
waiting to go."
This development is evidence of growing Pakistani opposition
to the complicity of their government with U.S. bombing policy.
Pakistanis are Pashtun people, like the majority of Afghans,
and they are increasingly angry at what they see as war on
their national group.
The New York Times on Nov. 4 admitted that the Northern
Alliance is not likely to deliver victory. "Many Afghans (and
Pakistanis) despise it, and the Taliban outnumber it by about
three to one. Alliance soldiers are poorly led, trained and
equipped. Despite recent talk about how the Northern Alliance
would capture Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul, it has launched no
major offensives. Indeed, the Alliance may be losing ground to
the Taliban, even with American air support."
The food aid lie
The greatest lie remains Washington's contention that it is
conducting a war and at the same time engaging in a massive
humanitarian effort. About one million food packages have been
dropped near the columns of refugees or on the towns where the
few remaining Afghans who have not fled the bombing still
live.
The U.S. government has boasted about this campaign in an
attempt to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan as well as
the U.S. people. Since the UN has estimated the number of
refugees so far to be over 300,000, those one million yellow
food packets have provided exactly three meals per refugee over
the past month. Moreover, the number of refugees is expected to
increase to one and a half million. This is a public relations
campaign, not a humanitarian effort.
This war has created an immense and deadly refugee crisis.
The plight of child refugees is so desperate that UNICEF has
flatly stated, "As many as 100,000 children will die this
winter inside Afghanistan if aid does not reach them in
sufficient quantity in the next few weeks."
Nigel Fisher, UNICEF's regional director, said that
"commitments have been made for cash by donor agencies but so
far it has not materialized. The starved children and women are
waiting for help as winter is approaching fast."
The Pakistani newspaper The News reported on Nov. 5 that
"UNICEF is facing difficulties in supply, distribution, safety
of staff and in reaching the people who have migrated to rural
areas due to heavy bombing in cities and crossed over to
neighboring countries."
"Either you're with us or you're against us," bullies George
Bush every time he gives a speech. As the murder of Afghanistan
continues, this is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
People everywhere oppose this war. The mighty superpower and
its compradors cannot defeat the poorest nation in Asia without
the genocide of an entire people. U.S. armed forces face
another Vietnam quagmire, and the whole operation functions by
an official policy of deceit. The war in Afghanistan is a
quagmire and the imperialists know it.
Reprinted from the Nov. 15, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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