April 11, 2013.
Reposted by Countercurrents April 13, 2013.
An Associated Press photograph brought the horror of little children lying dead outside of their home to an American audience. At least 10 Afghan children and some of their mothers were struck down by an airstrike on their extended family household by order of President Barack Obama. He probably decided on what his aides describe as the routine weekly “Terror Tuesday” at the White House. On that day, Mr. Obama typically receives the advice about which “militants” should live or die thousands of miles away from drones or aircraft. Even if households far from war zones are often destroyed in clear violation of the laws of war, the president is not deterred.
These Obama airstrikes are launched knowing that very often there is “collateral damage,” that is a form of “so sorry terrorism.” How can the president explain the vaporization of a dozen pre-teen Afghan boys collecting firewood for their families on a hillside? The local spotter-informants must have been disoriented by all those $100 bills in rewards. Imagine a direct strike killing and injuring scores of people in a funeral procession following a previous fatal strike that was the occasion of this processional mourning. Remember the December 2009 Obama strike on an alleged al-Qaida training camp in Yemen, using tomahawk missiles and – get this – cluster bombs, that killed 14 women and 21 children. Again and again “so sorry terrorism” ravages family households far from the battlefields.
If this is a war, why hasn’t Congress declared war under Article 1, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution? The 2001 Congressional Authorization to Use Military Force is not an open-ended authorization for the president. It was restricted to targeting only nations, organizations or persons that are determined to have been implicated in the 9/11 massacres, or harbored complicit organizations or persons.
For several years, White House officials, including ret. General James Jones, have declared that there is no real operational al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan to harbor anyone. The Pakistani Taliban is in conflict with the Pakistani government. The Afghan Taliban is in brutal conflict with the Afghanistan government and wants to expel U.S. forces as their members view occupying-invaders, just as their predecessors did when they expelled the Soviet invaders. The Taliban represent no imminent threat to the U.S.
Read the rest here.
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Comment: Muslims have a religious tradition when news about the passing of a fellow Muslim becomes known. That tradition is to recite verse 2:156 from the Qur'an which translates as follows:
When I look upon the picture of the poor innocent children murdered by Obama and his henchmen it tears at my being but I gather comfort and inspiration from these weighted words.To God do we belong and to God we return. (إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعونَ)
My confidence is renewed in an old belief that judgment favors the oppressed and that the truth is inevitable since it hovers above the realm of mortality.
I thought long and hard whether it was right to repost this AP picture on my blog. My decision is not drawn from disrespect or ignorance about what is right and wrong in Islam. I am also not consumed by vengeance and hatred for Obama and his henchmen - though I understand why some among us are.
My decision is based on the humanitarian principle of showing the truth in the struggle against injustice.
Obama and those who made him and support him cannot untangle themselves from this murder and all the other murders that have come to pass in the name of fighting terror.
Whose terror? It is too late not to ask this question no matter who you may be. The evidence is clear.
The US government is a terrorist organization because it murders innocents like the children above.
Who will speak for them if we all just turn a blind eye?
May their souls rest in peace until that final reckoning. May the balance that is life ease the pain and burden of those parents, siblings, and loved ones who must live on through this tragedy.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un (إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعونَ)Onward!
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