America- Led NATO in Afghanistan: Crimes against Humanity Call for Accountability
- Written by Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.
“We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and it will Help Bankrupt us. One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan's modern history -- to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947…..” (Chalmers Johnson. Dismantling the Empire - America’s Last Best Hope: 8/2010).
Was George W. Bush and NATO Pathological Liars to invade Afghanistan?
After the 9/11, America led NATO’s invasion of Afghanistan was a revulsion against truth as it was in complete disconnect to the living consciousness of global community. David Corn (“Is the President a Pathological Liar? Bush’s unhealthy relationship with reality”: LAWeekly: 12/11/2003), outlines the compelling facts:
“Bush was more likely engaged in the deceit of triumphalism- ignoring facts and saying whatever sounds good to juice up the public. It was hype, extreme rhetoric, utterly divorced from events on the ground….a demonstration to Bush’s penchant to embrace and (peddle) self-serving fantasy over the obvious truth….We will not rest until we bring these committed killers to justice…We must, and we will continue to take the fight to the enemy.”
When falsehood goes unchallenged, it attracts shallow and puppets accomplices into the fold. Pakistan military ruler General Musharaf and many puppet Arab dictators were conveniently hired to promote the bogus war on terrorism, and Afghanistan was the first casualty of this wicked cruelty. What General Musharaf and Arab stooges did was shameful and disgrace to the teachings of Islam allowing CIA-FBI to move freely and detain at will innocent people to fill the Guantanamo Bay torture headquarter. From an impregnable truth to a hallow hypothesis carved out by the then US President George W. Bush the “War on Terrorism” – was in his words a “crusade” against Islam. Western war history is full of tragic tensions articulated by mentally retarded leaders like George W. Bush and Tony Blair (UK) to avoid accountability for the happening of 9/11 events in 2001. Afghanistan was a well calculated target to be invaded, bombed, terrorized, degenerated and destroyed for all futuristic times in history. To the US and NATO invaders, the war against Afghanistan had several strategic aims:
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To show the American masses that George W. Bush was taking revenge action for the 9/11 attack and killings in NY
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To make Afghanistan a scapegoat for the 19 alleged Saudi attackers on the NY Twin Towers
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To expand the American military control and to denuclearize Pakistan as a threat to futuristic American national interests
Comforting the major paradoxes of history as Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History) described warrior as dreamers devoid of moral and intellectual imagination when they come close to stagnation they jump to irrational outbursts and conclusions about the facts of life. Twenty years later America and NATO cannot claim any victory but were defeated by Taliban insurgency to hold peace talks in Doha. America under Joe Bidden presidency is moving fast to withdraw its remaining troops from Afghanistan. Taliban excelsior is on rise and nobody could predict the peaceful transition of Afghanistan under American or NATO’s occupation after 20 years of deaths and destructions. Afghan Government or Taliban or the occupying foreign forces cannot imagine the future of Pakistan or a peaceful tomorrow for the much deprived people of Afghanistan. All public institutions of peoples’ participation and political governance are fractured and masses are fearful of their future. The American aim and will to destroy Afghanistan, its people, its culture and history were all converging factors during the US–led NATO occupation of that country. They planned and organized Bagram Prison Airbase like the Al-Ghraib Prison in Iraq, and systematically tortured and hanged thousands and thousands of innocent Afghanis, Pakistanis, Arabs and people of other nations who opposed the US aggression. Dr. Afia Siddiqui (Pakistan female doctor) and Mozamm Begg (British national of Pakistani origin) were no exceptions as victims of insanity and planned cruelty against the civilians. Guantanamo Bay Prison was set-up with hurriedly bought Afghani, Pakistani and other Arab civilians and Bush administration paid between $5000.00 to $15000.00 per head to Afghan and Pakistani warlords to populate the Guantanamo Bay infamous torturing facility. If there is any legal and moral accountability still intact, Pakistani and Afghani law and justice authorities should hold all those responsible including General Musharaf for crimes against humanity.
Ironically, President Obama called the American soldiers “invincible army” who massacred civilians and cold blood murdered innocent children, women, and bombed funeral gatherings, wedding parties and Afghans sleeping in their beds. None of them ever faced any legal accountability for their crimes against the unprotected civilians of Afghanistan. American –NATO soldiers experienced trauma of inhuman battlefield and many end up committing suicide- a chronic problem in NATO’s cavalry. Cyrus Massounmi reporting in the MRConservatice: 5/23/2013), explains the saga: “22 Soldiers Commit Suicide Every Day, One Veteran Says Many Die For A Profit”… (See Mahboob A. Khawaja, “Why do Soldiers Commit Suicide and Global Warlords”: Uncommon Thought Journal: 4/14/2014).
American News Media Never Published the Photos of Massacred Afghan Children and Women
Does hypocrisy and cynicism have another name? To invest in favorite perversion, torture, corruption and massacre of the innocent people happening frequently to portray sadistic political governance, and the world can watch the bloody atrocities with deafening silence and inhuman complacency but what kind of glorification would it produce for the generations to come to understand the norms of humanity? Under Bush’s dictum, dead American troops were transported quietly back to America and buried under questionable conditions. Deliberate massacres of the innocents need no explanation or psychological clarification, massacre is massacre. Under NATO, the Western allied nations use media as a weapon to manage innovative battlefield and defeat the perceived enemies in lands far away that the US military minds could not understand - its people, their psychology or cultural identity. To put a pattern to the context, first it was the US marine’s photos of pissing on the dead Afghani corps, then the unknowing burning of the Muslim Holy Book Qur’an, and then the added new massacres of the innocent sleeping children and women. The American history narrates that President Thomas Jefferson, the architect of the American Constitution had three volumes of the Holy Al-Qur’an in his library that he used to devise the legal, moral and ethical stipulations for the American Constitution. Does it mean that the American populace is not aware of its own recent history?
The informed and conscientious global community wonders, when rationality would replace the drudgery, hypocrisy of wars and killings of the innocent people? History will judge the people and leaders by their actions, not by their claims.
America and NATO must be held Accountable for “Crimes against Humanity” in Afghanistan
We, the People cannot afford a slanted vision of today and the world of tomorrow - the superficial picture evolved by the warmongers. We, the People have lost time and opportunities for a planned change of the global systems of political governance - indeed a loss of time which can never be repaired for the good of mankind. One major factor encouraging the global superpowers to go freely and unchallenged out of their own hemisphere to farfetched lands and commit massacres and destroy human habitats, is the obvious corrupt system of global peace and security operated by the UNO. We, the People must try to invest in becoming a moral being- a morality of seamless international human bonds to ensure protection and security of all human beings on this planet as One Community of Nations.
America and its European allies have executed war plans of willful and meditated destruction of the Muslim world disguised as “war on terrorism.” America and NATO should be held accountable and not to repeat this tyranny again in human history. The International Criminal Court (The ICC at The Hague) had several experienced-based complaints to be investigated against America-NATO for “crimes against humanity” in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Obama and Trump threatened retaliatory action against the ICC if it pursued the complaints. The ICC (Rome Statute 1998) signed by 120 nations but the Statute was denied the logic of universal jurisdiction over all states. A UN Commission should be organized to investigate and hold deliberations to make America and NATO pay for the insanity and war reparations to Afghanistan and some 34,000 civilians charcoaled by US drones in tribal belts of Northern Pakistan.
We live in One World and on One Planet – Earth. The planet Earth is not a dead orbiting object but a living entity providing continuous nourishment to human life and existence and to all other living beings. Its governing laws are defined by its Creator. America as it appears is not heeding to warnings from God. When people and nations challenge the sanctity and limits of the Laws of God and violate all known norms and principles of human behavior, they could well become an object of unthinkable natural calamities and disasters. The Holy Bible and Al-Qur’an are full of such revelations and warnings as reminders to those people who are wise enough to listen and learn and care for accountability and sustainable future.
The Universe and all it encompasses are the products of God-given command; and do not operate in concert with man-made legislatures, constitutions, foreign policies, judgments, hopes and desires. It is beyond doubts that when aggressor nations challenged the sanctity of the Laws of God governing the Earth and the living Universe, and invade small and poor nations in farfetched lands, they ultimately meet their own end by natural causes such as earthquakes, flooding, tornados, exploding lavas, sound blasts, lightning, unthinkable pandemics and lot more. Are there any Thinking people in America and Europe and within the planning nerves of NATO to take heed from the prevalent facts of human history?
Long time ago, Eric Bogle synthesized the poem- The Green Fields of France and many have sung it to remind the mankind of a just cause in waiting at the global table of the contemporary war racketeers and sadistic warmongers:
Did you really believe, when they told you the cause,
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well, the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Willy McBride it all happened again -
And again, and again, and again, and again.”
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Lambert Academic Publications, Germany, 12/2019.
