Killing Pakistani Civilians
the US paid the first instalment of its earthquake reconstruction aid to Pakistan on Saturday [yesterday], a move considered central to reversing the anti-US sentiments that are spreading in the country.
This little "bribe" doesn't seem to be successful. Five thousand angry Pakistanis shouted anti-US slogans today as rallies in the country entered their second week. Pakistanis are very offended by the January 13th US attack on the village of Damadola that killed 13-18 civilians.
The attack is illegal according to the international law. The CIA doesn't have the right to go around the world and bomb houses of suspects. If the US government thinks there are some criminals having dinner somewhere, there are many legal and ethical ways to bring them to justice.
It's true that the concept of "bring criminals to justice" was over-written by the bush idea of "bring justice to criminals" as in "bomb the hell out of them", but this doesn't make it legal or ethical to kill criminals without trial, never mind the fact that they were on the territory of other sovereign states.
Most of the Arab and Muslim news sources that I read confirmed that "many of" the civilians were women and children, and some sources even claimed "most of them" were women and children. Meanwhile, the bush administration spent the last week making up lies about the illegal attack, and many western news parrots recycled the lies (what a surprise!).
It seems that Pakistan's prime minister came across the bush version of what happened today...
Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday ridiculed as "bizarre" a U.S. report that senior al Qaeda leaders were killed in a CIA attack on a home along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
"There is no evidence, as of half an hour ago, that there were any other people there," Aziz said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
"The area does see movement of people from across the border. But we have not found one body or one shred of evidence that these people were there."
I won't call that bizarre!
It's just some normal bush-arre.
If you realize this attack against the Pakistani civilians was wrong and against the interest of both Americans and Pakistanis, you should ask the US administration to apologize to Pakistan and never attack them again. Pakistan's ruling party demanded an apology, and the Pakistani President asked the US not to repeat the airstrike incident .
As I said earlier this week, the war administration should start admitting its mistakes. Whether you were a US citizen or not, you can either urge your government’s representatives to contact the White House, and/or email your message directly to them yourself.
This is the email address of the White House:
comments@whitehouse.gov
This is a sample email that I may suggest if you were emailing the White House directly:
I am writing you in regards to the 13th of January bombing of civilians in Pakistan, for which the White House has expressed neither explicit regret nor an apology. The administration should not be carrying out operations that harm innocent civilians, but when such regrettable actions occur, it should be quick to apologize for its mistakes. Otherwise, the credibility and relationships that the U.S. is attempting to build globally will be greatly harmed, overshadowing its present and future accomplishments. I strongly urge the Bush administration to offer an explicit apology to the sovereign state of Pakistan and its citizens.
This little "bribe" doesn't seem to be successful. Five thousand angry Pakistanis shouted anti-US slogans today as rallies in the country entered their second week. Pakistanis are very offended by the January 13th US attack on the village of Damadola that killed 13-18 civilians.
The attack is illegal according to the international law. The CIA doesn't have the right to go around the world and bomb houses of suspects. If the US government thinks there are some criminals having dinner somewhere, there are many legal and ethical ways to bring them to justice.
It's true that the concept of "bring criminals to justice" was over-written by the bush idea of "bring justice to criminals" as in "bomb the hell out of them", but this doesn't make it legal or ethical to kill criminals without trial, never mind the fact that they were on the territory of other sovereign states.
Most of the Arab and Muslim news sources that I read confirmed that "many of" the civilians were women and children, and some sources even claimed "most of them" were women and children. Meanwhile, the bush administration spent the last week making up lies about the illegal attack, and many western news parrots recycled the lies (what a surprise!).
It seems that Pakistan's prime minister came across the bush version of what happened today...
Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday ridiculed as "bizarre" a U.S. report that senior al Qaeda leaders were killed in a CIA attack on a home along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
"There is no evidence, as of half an hour ago, that there were any other people there," Aziz said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
"The area does see movement of people from across the border. But we have not found one body or one shred of evidence that these people were there."
I won't call that bizarre!
It's just some normal bush-arre.
If you realize this attack against the Pakistani civilians was wrong and against the interest of both Americans and Pakistanis, you should ask the US administration to apologize to Pakistan and never attack them again. Pakistan's ruling party demanded an apology, and the Pakistani President asked the US not to repeat the airstrike incident .
As I said earlier this week, the war administration should start admitting its mistakes. Whether you were a US citizen or not, you can either urge your government’s representatives to contact the White House, and/or email your message directly to them yourself.
This is the email address of the White House:
comments@whitehouse.gov
This is a sample email that I may suggest if you were emailing the White House directly:
I am writing you in regards to the 13th of January bombing of civilians in Pakistan, for which the White House has expressed neither explicit regret nor an apology. The administration should not be carrying out operations that harm innocent civilians, but when such regrettable actions occur, it should be quick to apologize for its mistakes. Otherwise, the credibility and relationships that the U.S. is attempting to build globally will be greatly harmed, overshadowing its present and future accomplishments. I strongly urge the Bush administration to offer an explicit apology to the sovereign state of Pakistan and its citizens.
