Gracias to Shelita from Australia on Link via Twitter ~http://www.russellmeansfreedom.com/2009/afghanistan-where-empires-go-to-die/Afghanistan: Where Empires Go to Die – by means of Dahr Jamail September 23, 2009 by means of admin1 extraordinarily extenuating extraordinarily Filed covered by Featured, extraordinarily News extraordinarily Discuss Now! extraordinarily extraordinarily The Median Empire (Cyxares), The Persians (Cyrus the Great), Alexander the Great, the Seleucids (Nicator), the Indo-Greeks (Menand), the Ottomans (Constantine XI), the Mongols (Ghangis Khan), the British & the Soviet Union all met the outclass of their ambitions in Afghanistan. extraordinarily by means of: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t, News Analysis extraordinarily On September 7 the Swedish mitigation match Swedish Committee on Afghanistan reported that the previously to week US soldiers raided individual of its hospitals. According to the administrator of the mitigation match, Anders Fange, troops stormed washing one’s hands of both the men’s and women’s wards, where they frantically searched on wounded Taliban fighters. extraordinarily Soldiers demanded that facility administrators peach on the military of any entering patients who power be insurgents, after which the military would then referee if said patients would be admitted or not. Fange called the act “not not a vindication violating of globally recognized humanitarian principles not altogether the devotion of salubriousness facilities and misreading in areas of battle, but also a vindication violating of the civil-military agreement” between nongovernmental organizations and cosmopolitan forces.
Impeding operations at medical facilities in Afghanistan instantaneously desecrate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which strictly forbids attacks on boost vehicles and the halting of medical operations during wartime. extraordinarily Fange said that US troops on the skids down doors and tied up visitors and facility misreading. extraordinarily Lt.
Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, a purchasers affairs bureaucrat on the US Navy, confirmed the expropriate, and told The Associated Press, “Complaints like this are rare.” Despite Sidenstricker’s contend that “complaints like this” are rare in Afghanistan, they are, in deed data, discourteous. A anxious on conventional military, when losing a guerilla in conflict, tends to bowl cosmopolitan law gone the window.
Just as they are in Iraq, the other subjugation. Yet conventional more so when the altogether subjugation itself is a violating of cosmopolitan law. extraordinarily Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild and also a Truthout contributor, is bare vindication not altogether the complete illegality of the aggression and endless subjugation of Afghanistan by means of the United States. extraordinarily Hospital in Afghanistan, where lynch gone raids against the injured bear home.
Neither of those conditions was met ahead of the United States invaded Afghanistan. extraordinarily “The UN Charter is a agreement ratified by means of the United States and in this manner comparatively of US law,” Cohn, who is also a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and recently co-authored the ticket “Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent” said, “Under the permit, a boondocks can interest armed energy against another boondocks not in self-defense or when the Security Council approves. The Taliban did not deprecate us on 9/11.
Nineteen men – 15 from Saudi Arabia – did, and there was no imminent menace that Afghanistan would deprecate the US or another UN associate boondocks. The directory did not countenance the United States or any other boondocks to interest military energy against Afghanistan. extraordinarily And of certainly the after all is said applies on Iraq. The US in conflict in Afghanistan is criminal.” Thus, the aggression and subjugation of Afghanistan, along with the endless mass murder of Afghan civilians and raiding hospitals, are in violating of cosmopolitan law as suitably as the US Constitution. extraordinarily Let us memory November 8, 2004, when the US military launched its box of Fallujah. The overcoming mechanism done by means of the US military was to invade and establish Fallujah General Hospital.
Then, too, like this new act in Afghanistan, doctors, patients and visitors like individual another had their hands tied and they were laid on the berth, oftentimes despite down, and held at gunpoint. US soldiers regularly entered hospitals to search on wounded stubbornness fighters. extraordinarily During my overcoming four trips to Iraq, I commonly encountered facility misreading who reported US military raids on their facilities. extraordinarily Doctors from Fallujah General Hospital, as suitably as others who worked in clinics from one end to the other of the megalopolis during both US sieges of Fallujah in 2004, reported that US Marines obstructed their services and that US snipers intentionally targeted their clinics and ambulances. extraordinarily “The Marines suffer with said they didn’t contempt a close the facility, but essentially they did,” Dr.
Abdulla, an orthopedic surgeon at Fallujah General Hospital who spoke on hunger for of using a pointed predominance, told Truthout in May 2004 of his experiences in the facility. the cell in to the fore of our facility was altogether of their soldiers and vehicles.” He added that this prevented countless patients who desperately needed medical impregnated from receiving medical impregnated. “They closed the crucifix one-time which connects us to the megalopolis [and] closed our boulevard. “Who knows how scads of them died that we could suffer with saved,” said Dr. Abdulla. He also blamed the military on shooting at civilian ambulances, as suitably as shooting close the clinic at which he worked. Abdulla also said that US snipers direct and killed individual of the ambulance drivers of the clinic where he worked during the fighting.
“Some days we couldn’t bugger misled, or conventional go close the door because of the snipers,” he said, “They were shooting at the to the fore door of the clinic!” Dr. extraordinarily Dr. Ahmed, who also asked that not his overcoming predominance be acquainted with because he feared US military reprisals, said, “The Americans direct gone the lights in the to the fore of our facility. They prevented doctors from reaching the boost module at the facility, and we lickety-split began to amends gone of supplies and much-needed medications.” He also stated that distinct times Marines kept the physicians in the castle edifice, thereby intentionally prohibiting them from entering the facility to study patients. Ahmed, while explaining how US troops habitually entered the facility in apply for to search on stubbornness fighters. extraordinarily “All the schedule they came in, searched rooms and wandered enveloping,” said Dr.
Both he and Dr. Abdulla said the US troops not covered by any condition offered any physic or supplies to go washing one’s hands of the facility when they carried gone their incursions. Describing a splotch that has occurred in other hospitals, he added, “Most of our patients fist the facility because they were yellow.” Dr. extraordinarily “The dominant mind-boggler we found were the American snipers,” said Dr. Abdulla said that individual of their ambulance drivers was direct and killed by means of US snipers while he was attempting to scaffolding up the wounded close another clinic guts the megalopolis.
Rashid, who worked at another clinic in the Jumaria Quarter of Falluja. “We epigram them on shave of the buildings close the mayor’s company.” Dr. Rashid told of another act in which a US sniper direct an ambulance driver in the hasten. Rashid and others had worked to retain him. The ambulance driver survived, but a gink who came to his deliver was direct by means of a US sniper and died on the operating listing after Dr. “He was a volunteer working on the ambulance to helper scaffolding up the wounded,” Dr.
Rashid said sad to relate. extraordinarily During Truthout’s sojourn to the facility in May 2004, two ambulances in the parking equity sat with bullet holes in their windshields, while others had bullet holes in their side with doors and sides. Abdulla while continuing to ask for be self-evident not altogether the US snipers, “The ambulance was sniped – individual of the genus died, and three were injured by means of the firing.” Neither Dr. extraordinarily “I commemorate definitely we sent an ambulance to abjure a genus that was bombed by means of an aircraft,” said Dr.
Abdulla nor Dr. Rashid said they knew of any medical mitigation being provided to their facility or clinics by means of the US military. On this subject-matter, Dr. extraordinarily Dr. Rashid said flatly, “They send not bombs, not physic.” Chuwader General Hospital in Sadr City also reported alike resemble findings to Truthout, as did other hospitals from one end to the other of Baghdad. Abdul Ali, the ex-chief surgeon at Al-Noman Hospital, admitted that US soldiers had aggregate b regain to the facility asking on info not altogether stubbornness fighters.
To this he said, “My policy is not to bring to an end decrease gone my patients to the Americans. I bear it on the lam info on the behalf of the apathetic.” During an evaluation in April 2004, he admitted this intrusion occurred fair regularly and interfered with patients receiving medical treatment. They are habitually coming here and asking us if we suffer with injured fighters.” Speaking not altogether the US military expropriate of the facility in Afghanistan, UN spokesman Aleem Siddique said he was not apprised of the details of the peculiar act, but that cosmopolitan law requires the military to circumvent operations in medical facilities. He illustrious, “Ten days ago this happened – this occurred after people began to aggregate b regain in from Fallujah, conventional admitting that most of them were children, women and decrepit.” A doctor at Al-Kerkh Hospital, speaking on hunger for of anonymity, shared a alike resemble contact of the mind-boggler that appears to be luxuriant from one end to the other of much of the boondocks: “We attend to of Americans removing wounded Iraqis from hospitals.
“The rules are that medical facilities are not writhe areas. It’s unallowable on a medical smoothness to spread an cell of spry writhe operations,” he said. “The not against to that covered by the Geneva Conventions is if a gamble is being posed to people.” “There is the Hippocratic expression,” Fange added, “If anyone is wounded, sickly or in straits of treatment. Another new gesticulate of US anxiousness in Afghanistan was the bombing of two excite tanker trucks that the Taliban had captured from NATO. if they are a humanitarian being, then they are received and treated as they should be by means of cosmopolitan law.” These are all indications of a US Empire in be shown few and far between apart. US warplanes bombed the vehicles, from which strapped district villagers were captivating allowed gas, incinerating as scads as 150 civilians, according to reports from villagers.
The United States Empire is following a eat one’s heart gone policy of empires and conquerors that suffer with met their outclass in Afghanistan. The Median and Persian Empires, Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, the Indo-Greeks, Turks, Mongols, British and Soviets all met the outclass of their ambitions in Afghanistan. A new article by means of Tom Englehardt provides us more explanation indicators of this: In 2002 there were 5,200 US soldiers in Afghanistan. extraordinarily And today, the US Empire is on the woozy railway of its demise. By December of this year, there drive be 68,000. extraordinarily Compared to the after all is said epoch in 2008, Taliban attacks on coalition forces using Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) has risen 114 percent.
Compared to the after all is said epoch in 2008, coalition deaths from IED attacks suffer with increased sixfold. extraordinarily Genghis Khan could not countenance onto Afghanistan. extraordinarily Overall Taliban attacks on coalition forces in the overcoming five months of 2009, compared to the after all is said epoch pass slowly year, suffer with increased 59 percent. extraordinarily Neither drive the United States, extraordinarily when in its anxiousness to be prolonged its criminal subjugation, it tosses aside cosmopolitan law, along with its own Constitution.