Afghan workers at the US-NATO military base in Bagram, Afghanistan came across US military personnel incinerating the Koran & other religious objects in a trash dump. In a fury, they recovered the charred books & carried them out waving them in the air, & setting off protests. An estimated three thousand Afghan young people, including the base workers, threw rocks & petrol bombs at the base & chanted “long live Islam” and “death to America”. The Obama administration, Defense Secretary Leon Pinocchio, the Pentagon, & the top US commander in Afghanistan fell over themselves expressing profuse contrition, claiming the incineration was accidental & they promise all occupying soldiers in Afghanistan will undergo sensitivity training now. A flunky speaking for the Pentagon said, “These actions do not represent the views of the United States military,” but he was just making a mockery of Afghan intelligence. Does the Pentagon really think Afghans believe US-NATO forces bomb their fields, hospitals, schools, mosques, send out “kill teams”, incarcerate them, murder men, women, & children, make millions homeless, urinate on their corpses, but did not willfully burn their holy book’? The Afghan fury today was not just over burning the Koran. It was about the violent occupation of their country & tyrannizing them like they were beasts. The results of this incident will not be greater sensitivity but greater repression by US-NATO forces. Here young men duck from US soldiers shooting them with rubber bullets. Is that the kind of sensitivity the Obama administration is talking about? (Photo by Shah Marai/AFP)
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