Afghans begin questioning American role

Following our recent attack on that Afghan wedding (btw, what's up with us attacking sooo many weddings?!), come two AP articles basically warning the US to...umm...stop killing innocent civilians. In one report, Amir Shah quotes Jan Mohammed Khan, governor of the Afghan provine of Uruzgan: "If Americans don't stop killing civilians, there will be jihad (holy war) against them in my province." In a different story, Dusan Stojanovic hits the streets and finds these comments:

"We consider the Americans our liberators, but after this, they may soon become occupiers,'' a grocer named Jabbar said in his small store on the busy Qalai-e-Fatulluh Khan street. "They should be here for peace, not death.''...

"Americans made so many mistakes here, and we cannot accept that hitting a wedding party was just another one,'' said Raz Mohammed, 40, a customer in Jabbar's store...

"They should set their aiming devices right, or just pack up and go,'' Mohammed said. "We fought the Russians in 1980s, we'll fight Americans if need be.''...

"We support coalition measures against the Taliban regime and al-Qaida, but we cannot tolerate more innocent victims in our country and American bombardment of civilian targets,'' said Theyba, one of the protest organizers, reading to the crowd from a petition outside the United Nations headquarters in Kabul...

Throughout the war, the US government - with the media's complicity - has basically ignored the civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Obfuscating casualty figures or covering up "bad PR" is fine for propaganda purposes at home, but our inability to address this topic will only hurt us in the end.

There's nothing wrong with admitting mistakes; even though I find the Afghan campaign imprudent (and that's putting it mildly), I wouldn't be nearly as critical of the war if the Defense Department admitted errors, especially when they became entirely transparent. Waging a war on a country in violation of international law is one thing, but doing so with such blatant stealth, trickery, and deceit is something that suggests to me that the campaign is a) not going well and b) not on solid moral ground, as we're constantly told.

The fact that all the lefties may whine is irrelevant. If our leadership has as much confidence in this campaign as they say they do, and their confidence is warranted, then they shouldn't have to manage information and keep details as close to the vest as they have been doing. When spin becomes so paramount, that ultimately fosters distrust and undermines the credibility of our efforts.

Also: if Afghans are happy that we've invaded and purged them of the Taliban, that is great. While that doesn't affect the way I feel about the war, I'd much rather see and hear about approval for our mission in that country - especially when the prospect to halt the campaign or change its current course of action is slim at this point - rather than massive protest against it. Still, I worry that this portrayal of a "joyous" Afghan population is just a front; another part of our propaganda campaign. But from here that's difficult to discern with much confidence or accuracy.