BURN BABY BURN
By Peter Fredson
October 22, 2005
A reporter on the Afghanistan scene last Thursday photographed and described the burning of corpses of Afghan soldiers who had died fighting invading U.S. troops.
On the rocky hilltop above Gonbaz village in southern Afghanistan U.S. soldiers burned the corpses of the two Taliban fighters. Lt. Eric Nelson, of B Company, I-508 platoon told the villagers to pick up the corpses and bury them. But the villagers refused so the Lieutenant decided to burn the corpses due to their bloated and stinking condition.
Lt. Nelson took the decision that could jeopardize his service career. "We decided to burn the bodies," one soldier recounts, "because they were bloated and they stank."
The horrible act was recorded on film by Australian photojournalist, Stephen DuPont or nobody would have been the wiser. The army propaganda machine would ignore any such incidents as deleterious to morale and to the flow of cash and votes to the Bush machine.
When the footage was shown on Australian TV it unleashed a storm of rage. A Pentagon spokesman, true to the Bush overview of much recent criticism of acts of brutality against Muslims, said the incident was "repugnant" and that the army would investigate into the alleged incident.
After a short time to develop news of some kidnapped girl or of some feast for visiting dignitaries in Crawford, Texas, the public will be distracted enough to forget the entire incident.
To make matters much worse than desecration of bodies in Muslim culture was the statement that a U.S. Psychological-Operations team came to the scene with loudspeakers blaring "Taliban, you are cowardly dogs. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady-boys we always believed you to be."
Probably Karl Rove will explain this away as tantamount to a football player dancing a little victory dance after scoring a touchdown. No big deal.
We now can expect some pious statements about a few rotten apples, and how wonderful American values really are and what a wonderful sensitive and heroic leader George Bush is and how horrified he and Laura and Condi and Donald were at such unusual behavior.
Probably a corporal will be demoted. There will surely be a dozen references to 9/11, some moralizing, and a lot of True Believer bloggers showing how those indecent infidels had it coming to them.
Some U.S. Army officers will make statements about the fact that Muslims also create atrocities, and will take considerable pains to point out several beheadings as exculpatory excuses to condone American behavior. They will show how they came to combat EVIL and are making good progress in killing 100,000 Muslims as revenge for the 3,000 deaths during the 9/11 tragedy.
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, already angered by U.S. troops alleged desecration of the Koran, and continued reports of torture and abuse by U.S. troops in Guantanamo, and fully aware of the contemptuous reply of Bush to his request that U.S. troops begin to pull out of Afghanistan, condemned the action of U.S. troops without any hope that anything significant will be done about the invading army's tactics.
Bush wants to "stay the course", whatever that might be, and any hint that he might leave is received with imperial disdain that it might give aid and comfort to the enemy.
Besides Karzai knows that Bush IS the law, and can do anything he pleases as long as word does not leak out that might cost him votes and cash.
Bush will give a speech carefully crafted by Karl Rove, in which he makes frequent reference to "democracy and freedom", to the Syrians and Iranians, to Peace and Jesus, and again to 9/11 in an attempt to salvage his plummeting ratings and save his Senate sycophants their seats.
The U.S. Military Command issued a statement: "Under no circumstances does U.S. Central Command condone the desecration, abuse or inappropriate treatment of enemy combatants." This will undoubtedly produce great laughter in the Oval Office where prayers will be said for George and Laura.
Islamic leaders warned of anti-American demonstrations but Bush policy is to ignore all such warnings as he wants to "bring `em on."
The fact that the Geneva convention says that the "dead are to be honorably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged" signifies nothing to Christian Bush supporters as any beliefs of Muslims are to be regarded as false, and their false religion, false sacred book, and false god are to be eradicated as soon as the Bush crusade towards the Rapture is accomplished.
Same old, same old.