Are Afghan Lives Worth Anything?

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Will What We Don't Know (or Care to Know) Hurt Us?
Mourning Michael Jackson, Ignoring the Afghan Dead
By Tom Engelhardt

It was a blast. I'm talking about my daughter's wedding. You don't often see a child of yours quite that happy. I'm no party animal, but I danced my 64-year-old legs off. And I can't claim that, as I walked my daughter to the ceremony, or ate, or talked with friends, or simply sat back and watched the young and energetic enjoy themselves, I thought about those Afghan wedding celebrations where the "blast" isn't metaphorical, where the bride, the groom, the partygoers in the midst of revelry die.

In the two weeks since, however, that's been on my mind -- or rather the lack of interest our world shows in dead civilians from a distant imperial war -- and all because of a passage I stumbled upon in a striking article by journalist Anand Gopal. In "Uprooting an Afghan Village" in the June issue of the Progressive magazine, he writes about Garloch, an Afghan village he visited in the eastern province of Laghman. After destructive American raids, Gopal tells us, many of its desperate inhabitants simply packed up and left for exile in Afghan or Pakistani refugee camps.

One early dawn in August 2008, writes Gopal, American helicopters first descended on Garloch for a six-hour raid:

"The Americans claim there were gunshots as they left. The villagers deny it. Regardless, American bombers swooped by the village just after the soldiers left and dropped a payload on one house. It belonged to Haiji Qadir, a pole-thin, wizened old man who was hosting more than forty relatives for a wedding party. The bomb split the house in two, killing sixteen, including twelve from Qadir's family, and wounding scores more... The malek went to the province's governor and delivered a stern warning: protect our villagers or we will turn against the Americans."
...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175092/are_afghan_lives_worth_anything_

[Oregone]

1. 50.15 Afghani lives is equal to 1 US life

So, yeah, its worth more than 0 you know.


I got that from a FOREX life calculator

[closeupready]

2. 2/3rd's of a white man.

Or so it seems to some talking heads on the Sunday shows.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

3. Colonial attitudes

seem to be in order as always.

Pretty appalling.

[blindpig]

4. And what people don't want to understand

is that the same sort of calculus used to justify such cold blooded murder is applied here as well, though much more delicately. See health care.

[Hannah Bell]

5. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, —They kill us for their sport.

[Fumesucker]

7. We are like gods, we kill them for our sport..

[Hannah Bell]

11. "gods" = ptb

[closeupready]

6. That's an excellent point.

Correct.

[maryf]

16. Yep 60 people a day die...

because of no health care coverage, negligent homicide...

[gratuitous]

8. Well if we don't blow up a few weddings every now and then

How are the Afghan people supposed to know how much to fear us?

[Flaneur]

9. About a buck fiddy.

And we think we can make them forget we killed their relatives if we throw a few dollars at them.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

10. Bump

[maryf]

12. K&R nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. They're valuable as fearsome bogeymen to the politicians and MIC.

[scarletwoman]

14. k&r -- I wish I could think of something to say, but I'm too sick at heart.

This is all such bullshit. There's absolutely NO good reason for us to be in Afghanistan.

sw

[undeterred]

15. Operation Enduring Freedom

You don't want to be cut by these 'surgeons'.

[maryf]

17. Saturday morning kick...nt

[Mari333]

18. knr

because in the USA, people are in denial about the millions of Iraqi and Afghan people we have deliberately murdered. The MSM and the WH will make sure its sanitized.

[chill_wind]

19. K & R. n/t

[tuckessee]

20. Of course they are.

Afghans lives converted into corpses means more American Heroes.