I was talking to Post reporter Brian Hutchinson yesterday about Afghanistan; one of the things that he told me is that realistically, you can't operate in Kandahar (and environs) without some sort of embedding. Unless your Pashto is perfect and you know the land inside and out, the risk of capture or death is too high. The north and west is a different story; there, it's possible to report without constantly relying on embedding or escorts.
Your insinuation, though, that Canadian journos are a bunch of wet noodles that will meekly censor anything the brass desire and cover up for the military is as offensive as hell -- and considering that the press has exposed failures and f-ups, not well founded.
BTW, how about a little contempt for the enemy (and yes, the Taliban ARE the enemy) hiding behind the locals, exposing them to additional risk while taking advantage of the fact that our forces have a much higher aversion to attacking civilians?
Ian--
Fair enough re: the 'need' for embedding (although I do not agree with you about the highly restrictive 'ground rules' etc.).
Furthermore, you're free to slag my 'insinuations' all you want.
After all, opinions are meant to be challenged.
And you have a point re: the good reporting on the foul-ups etc.
But here's the thing.
When I read about how a battle 'ended' after the call for American air attack lead to the dropping of bombs and firing of missiles on a village after I've just been told that villagers have 'fled on foot' or 'hunkered down', I want to know what happened to them - specifically.
Why?
Well, I think you know that.
And I also want to know where the information is coming from.
That's why I want to every single embedded story to be labelled as such.
OK?
.
Heart of Darkness
Princess Patricia and the Taliban
By ERIC WALBERG
News from Afghanistan makes no sense. On the one hand there are up-beat stories like the recent Canadian Operation Rolling Thunder in Pashmul, Kandahar. “I started the operation on a hospital operating table and I’m ending it with everybody coming back safely. I couldn’t be happier,” beamed Major Grubb, leading the 2nd Battalion of the bizarrely named Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry Company.
The few locals still living in Pashmul, the scene of this “liberation” campaign by the kuffar Canadians, either fled by foot or cowered in their dugouts before the fighting started. Most are poor farmers. Scores of locals, the “enemy”, were killed by the brave Canucks, who, just to clinch their “success”, called on US military air support to drop several bombs, including Hellfire missiles. Several dozen “enemy” were destroyed. Only one Afghan government soldier was hurt when he accidentally shot himself in the foot. No Canadians were even injured. Major Grubb acknowledged the operation isn’t a “permanent result” because the Taliban seem to have an unlimited supply of fighters willing to battle for Pashmul.
Western readers have become numbed into accepting the code words “enemy” and “insurgents”, ignoring the underlying fact that the Taliban are still the legitimate government, that these so-called insurgents are in fact widely seen as freedom fighters battling the non-Muslim foreign occupiers — the real “enemy” — who invaded the country illegally and have killed hundreds of thousands of resistance fighters and innocent civilians illegally. Rather than “killed”, the word “murdered” might be more appropriate. For locals, the dead are “martyred”, as in Iraq and Palestine.
In a recent report which notably reflects the implicit horror of what the occupiers are doing, the Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders describes a scene in Naray, on the northeast border with Pakistan, where 200 trigger-happy US Army soldiers huddle in tents, sheltering themselves from regular rocket attacks. He was greeted by a certain Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Kolenda, a clean-cut, steel-eyed officer in the 173rd Airborne, who introduced him to one of the key battlefield tactics of the new American military — the two-hour PowerPoint presentation. “The heart of the matter here, as we see it, is a socio-economic dislocation,” Kolenda told him, before quoting from Sir George Scott Robertson’s 1900 manual Kaffirs of the Hindu Kush and explaining in detail the anthropology and tribal politics of this region, including some new research he had commissioned from American Human Terrain Specialists.
“There’s been an atomisation of society here — the elders lost control over their people, and a new elite of fighters came in to fill the vacuum, so what we need to do out here is to re-empower the traditional leadership structures. As you approach the possibility of self-sufficient development, then you reach what
Hey Ross,
Sorry to respond while you're away from the net (though doubtless well deserved and all). Been double-shifting it myself this week with the travesty that is the human rights case against Maclean's, along with real life.
'S'no doubt that reporting on the aftermath of every battle and its effects of civilians is not given top priority. Some of the results are obvious: innocent civilians whose only crime was to be used as human shields are killed and maimed. If their area isn't secured, they get no aid because it can't be delivered, and the perception on the ground shifts accordingly. But that happens embeds and censors or not.
But what's the alternative to our Imperialist War Machine(tm)? If the so-called peace movement had their way, Afghanistan would collapse into another civil war. Tens of thousands more would be killed, millions displaced, and no chance at all of finding out what happened until later, when all advances made towards a civil society had been forfeited and they're back to starting from December 2001 all over again.
And, well, Mary Ann has reposted some drivel from a raging antisemite whose employers read like a who's who of the worst anti-democrats and fascists that just happen to op[pose America. That's the stuff that really needs to be slugged with a mental health warning label. The ravings of an ideologue that sucked up to the Soviet Union, Islam Karimov (google him) of Uzbekistan, works with the Adelaide Institute (google it) and raves about the alliance between the Canadian "Peace" Alliance and the Cairo conference attendees is something that has to be marked as lies, distortions, and mental poison. Instead it's taken as gospel by the degenerate left.
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