

WikiLeaks plans to post video showing US massacre of Afghani civilians - ulvund
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0412/wikileaks-plans-post-video-showing-massacre-afghani-civilians/

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dkimball
The use of the word "massacre" implies something like My Lai or the Katyn
Forest, a deliberate killing of large numbers of noncombatants, especially by
infantry.

Attacks by aircraft, like those in this video (as indicated in the article)
and the previous one, should be described as something else -- although it
remains the case that Apaches, F/A-18s, and B-1s (the US counterpart to the
Backfire) do not have the large role in COIN that the Pentagon has assigned
them, and their employment in Iraq and Afghanistan reveals a poisonously
cavalier attitude towards non-American lives.

The right way to fight COIN campaigns is known (see David Galula,
_Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice_ (1967)); it is not the same
as the Pentagon's -- although in fairness, the US military has been trending
in the right direction since the happy day when Rumsfeld was given the boot.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_The use of the word "massacre" implies ... a deliberate killing of large
numbers of noncombatants_

I expect that the most famous "massacre" in history, at least to Americans,
was the Boston Massacre in 1770. In that incident, 5 people were killed.

~~~
dkimball
Just because the Boston "Massacre" is called that doesn't mean that it _was_ a
massacre. Revere and Sam Adams picked a fight, and then pretended that the
violence they began had been perpetrated by evil, aggressive foreigners
against their pure and noble citizens -- the same contemptible monkey-trick
that Putin used in Georgia. The South Ossetians began the Russian-Georgian
War, by firing artillery at Georgian villages; the Boston rioters began the
"Massacre," and the British fired in response to one of their soldiers being
knocked down -- not by a thrown rock, but by someone hitting him with a club.
That's self-defense, not My Lai or the Katyn Forest; and the verdicts from
their trials support that statement.

The US has a nasty history of describing anything it doesn't like as a
massacre; this is particularly visible in the Indian Wars, in which every
incident in which the US wipes out an American Indian village is a "battle,"
and every incident in which an Indian tribe wipes out a US village is a
"massacre." I'm not saying that the US was always in the wrong or that it was
always in the right -- "American Indian tribes" is a pretty broad brush to be
painting with, and some tribes (the Cherokee, most prominently) were more
civilized than the US while others (the Sioux, for ex.) were honestly pretty
barbarous -- but I am saying that traditional US historiography is
propagandistic.

However, this is changing (although sometimes only by becoming propagandistic
in the other direction); and the connotations of the word "massacre" remain
the same regardless of how the word's been abused.

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dkimball
This is a very minor point, but could someone edit the title? "Afghani" means
the currency; "Afghan" means the people of Afghanistan (Afghan-i Stan, "Land
of the Afghans [originally another name for the Pashtuns]", in Persian).

This is a pretty common mistake, for what it's worth; demonymns in the eastern
Middle East are kind of unpredictable.

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dpritchett
How should I feel about the possible reaction in Afghanistan given that we
still have US citizens in the country? My father is due to make a two week
tour of Afghanistan next week and this makes me worry for him.

I realize that exposing the realities of war is the best way to end a war but
I can't help but worry for the people on the ground.

~~~
vaksel
nothing should change...the people in Afghanistan already know all about all
this stuff.

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pbhjpbhj
Wikileaks were exceedingly disingenuous with their presentation of the
material in the former video - in which 2 helicopters killed a group carrying
loaded RPG and assault rifles that were an imminent threat to a passing ground
patrol that was already taking fire.

I hope that they'll let the material stand for itself rather than lying like
politicians trying to score points.

The way they handled the last one was like some sort of Microsoft marketing
exercise.

~~~
BudVVeezer
Did we watch the same video? The RPG and assault rifles were professional
cameras in mine...

~~~
Frazzydee
Depends, did you watch the full video or the cut one? AFAIK, there are no
weapons in the cut one but there were people in the group walking around with
weapons before.[1,2]

Wikileaks's goal is not neutral publishing of leaks- it's maximum political
impact.[3]

As long as they continue to release the full video, I still think they do far
more good than harm. The editorialization forces it into the public eye.
Although I do think they were misleading, they're no worse than the MSM, and
the full release allows it to be analyzed more objectively later.

"US covers up a video that should've been made public" is not as sexy as
"Collateral Damage: US covers up the murder of two reporters." And when you're
dealing with a public that seems more interested in Tiger's romantic
escapades, perhaps that's what is necessary to seize their attention.

\-----

[1] "there do appear to be two other—two people in that crowd having weapons"
-Julian
Assange[[http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/massacre_caught_on_tape...](http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/6/massacre_caught_on_tape_us_military)]

[2] "The [army's] report claims that at least two members of the group which
were first fired on were
armed"[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike#Release_of_Army_report)]

[3] Assange's interview with Colbert. [http://gawker.com/5515720/stephen-
colbert-grills-wikileaks-f...](http://gawker.com/5515720/stephen-colbert-
grills-wikileaks-founder-on-helicopter-video)

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amichail
What's wrong with using non-lethal weapons when one side has an overwhelming
advantage?

~~~
koepked
I think it's possible that the widespread use of non-lethal weapons could
result in greater attrocities than the use of lethal weapons on the macro-
level. It may not always be aparent, but in general, there is human restraint
against killing other humans. A group of people would have to do, or at least
be pegged with doing, something fairly high on the "bad scale" to justify use
of lethal force. I suspect the threshold for beating them into submission with
shotgun fired beanbags, high-pressured water, etc. would be much lower. At the
level of an individual life, non-lethal would obviously be better. But at the
level of one group of people trying to exert their will over another, I think
non-lethal weapons would lead to more of that exertion, because it would be
less difficult to justify.

~~~
nfnaaron
Tasers.

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Subgun
If it's anything like that pathetic excuse for an exclusive video from last
week it won't be worth watching.

Report the news . Don't make it, fabricate it or skew it.

The days of yellow journalism are still alive and well.

~~~
barnaby
>>>The days of yellow journalism are still alive and well.

Ahem, Fox?

