It’s not just the United States that wantonly bombs innocent people.

Our allies can’t seem to aim their ‘smart bombs’ either.

Per The Guardian:

Four Afghan civilians were mistakenly killed and two others injured in an attack by a remotely controlled RAF “drone” targeting insurgent leaders in Helmand province, the Guardian has learned.

The airstrike marks the first confirmed operation in which one of the UK’s Reaper aircraft has been responsible for the deaths of civilians, and comes amid growing concern on both sides of the Atlantic about increased use of drones in combat zones.

The revelation may also complicate the task of British commanders in the province as they try to secure the trust of local people ahead of “transition” – the symbolic moment later this month when Afghan forces take the lead for security in areas currently under UK control.

Another day, more civilian deaths. Does anyone really think the parents, friends, and families of these people are going to feel any better knowing that these deaths were a “weapons malfunction”. (Though at this point, civilian strikes happen far too frequently for me to buy any cover story given by NATO or the DoD.)

A Tumblr friend of mine said the other day that it’s painful to see people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.  My reply to this was: “True.  I find it particularly odd that it’s now cool to oppose illegal warfare with a black man at the helm”.  As I’m sure my friends can recall, it was considered blasphemous and borderline treasonous to point out George Bush’s legitimate ethical failings and manufactured lies with which he gained support for his wars.

I’m starting to think that, in ending a war, the ends may justify the means.

Per Al Jazeera English:

NATO has acknowledged responsibility for an air strike that killed a number of civilians in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

A statement from the alliance said that a military missile site was the intended target of a raid on Sunday morning but one of the weapons did not strike it and may have caused civilian casualties.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Oana Lungescu, a NATO spokesperson, said NATO’s killing of civilians was a “sad incident that we deeply regret”.

“We had targeted a missile system to the north of Tripoli and it appears that one of our weapons malfunctioned and caused these civilian casualties on the ground,” Lungescu said.

Libyan officials said that nine civilians, including two children, were killed in the strike.

So… we’re basically going to bring freedom, democracy, war, and mayhem to Afghanistan whether their president likes it or not.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware of Hamid Karzai’s scumbaggery, but he’s president of a country that opposes US military activities to the tune of eighty percent.

Seriously.  Eighty fucking percent. Let that sink in, and ask yourself why we’re spending more than a billion dollars a day to bomb the houses of civilians, and further isolate ourselves from the rest of the world?

Per the LA Times:

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan—

Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded Tuesday that NATO refrain from airstrikes on residential compounds, marking a sharp escalation in his long-running feud with Western commanders over the issue of civilian casualties.

The intensifying dispute came as Western military officials announced the death of a service member in a roadside bombing in eastern Afghanistan. Before the latest death, the independent website icasualties.org had counted the deaths of 54 NATO troops in May, making it the deadliest month yet this year.

Karzai’s demand followed a weekend airstrike in Helmand province that Afghan officials said killed 14 civilians, 11 of them children. The U.S. Marines’ commander in the province, Maj. Gen. John A. Toolan Jr., apologized for what the military said were nine civilian deaths in the bombardment, which was aimed at insurgents who had attacked an American patrol and killed a Marine.

They are preaching to the choir, here.  Our countrymen simply do not care about kids living in some far-away country that they can’t locate on a map, and they’re too stupid to understand the cumulative sociological effect of thousands of bombings over the decade we’ve occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.

Glenn’s right, these people hate us because they have to fear for their lives every time a shadow passes overhead.

Per Salon.com:

The New York Times reports today:

For the second time in three days, a night raid in eastern Afghanistan by NATO forces resulted in the death of a child, setting off protests on Saturday that turned violent and ended in the death of a second boy… .

“American forces did an operation and mistakenly killed a fourth-grade student; he had gone to sleep in his field and had a shotgun next to him,” [the district’s governor, Abdul Khalid]. said. “People keep shotguns with them for hunting, not for any other purposes,” Mr. Khalid said.

The boy, [15], was the son of an Afghan National Army soldier . . . When morning came, an angry crowd gathered in Narra, the boy’s village, and more than 200 people marched with his body to the district center. Some of the men were armed and confronted the police, shouting anti-American slogans …

The police opened fire in an effort to push back the crowd to stop its advance to the district center. A 14-year-old boy was killed, and at least one other person was wounded, Mr. Khalid said… .

On Thursday, a night raid by international forces in Nangahar Province resulted in the death of a 12-year-old girl and her uncle, who was a member of the Afghan National Police.

Glenn goes on to state:

There’s nothing much new to say here, but every now and then, it’s worth highlighting not only what we’re doing, but what the results are.  Just imagine the accumulated hatred from having things like this happen day after day, week after week, year after year, for a full decade now, with no end in sight — broadcast all over the region.  It’s literally impossible to convey in words the level of bloodthirsty fury and demands for vengeance that would arise if a foreign army were inside the U.S. killing innocent American children even a handful of times, let alone continuously for a full decade.