The mechanization of war has resulted in treating other nations’ citizens as less than equal to citizens of the United States. U.S. military actions kill innocent civilians in a repeated and almost routine manner. However, modern communications are informing people around the world that U.S. policies value other citizens less than its own.
According to the residents of Datta Khel, a town in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, three missiles streaked out of Afghanistan’s Pakitka Province and slammed into a Madrassa, or Islamic school, this past June. When the smoke cleared, the Asia Times reported, 30 people were dead.
On March 6, 2007, the U.S. Department of State released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006. This annual report to Congress details the human rights practices of foreign governments, from restrictions on free press in Iran, to extrajudicial killings in Pakistan, to spiraling violence in the Darfur region of Sudan. The Country Reports do not, however, “purport to assess any human rights implications of actions by the United States Government or its representatives.” If they did, the reports would expose the grave consequences of U.S. policies in a world where the use and sale of inaccurate and unreliable weapons tends to trump humanitarian concerns.
On the fifth anniversary of the launch of the U.S.-led war against Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the offensive, much of the countryside is in the hands of warlords and opium magnates, U.S. casualties are mounting, and many, if not most, Afghans are actually worse off now than they were before the U.S. invasion.
On the fifth anniversary of the launch of the U.S.-led war against Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the offensive, much of the countryside is in the hands of warlords and opium magnates, U.S. casualties are mounting, and many, if not most, Afghans are actually worse off now than they were before the U.S. invasion.