(January 2010)
It’s a classic case of double standards – or hypocrisy if you like – when those in power throw up their hands in horror at some act of violence, and yet conveniently forget that they, themselves, are guilty of far worse crimes.
Over the past 18 months in Afghanistan, many hundreds of civilians have been killed by NATO and US forces in their attempts to stop the insurgency of Taliban militia into the country, and those innocent people have been killed because of the sledgehammer approach of the allied forces.
The deaths of civilians in war zones are clinically called "collateral damage" - a cold and heartless phrase which attempts to minimise the often unnecessary slaughter of innocent people who get caught up in the fighting. Some of the more recent "collateral damage" incidents include:
* US planes bomb two hijacked fuel tankers near Kunduz – up to 142 people believed killed or injured (Sep 2009)
* A US plane drops a 2,000-pound bomb on a building in Farah Province – 140 villagers killed (May 2009)
* A US airstrike in the remote village of Wech Baghlu destroys a housing complex, where villagers had gathered to celebrate a wedding – 37 civilians were killed (Nov 2008)
* US airstrikes hit a village in Azizabd – 90 civilians killed (Aug 2008)
* Fighter aircraft accidentally kill 47 Afghans walking to a wedding ceremony in Eastern Nangarhar Province (July 2008)
The actual list is far longer, and the most recent addition was just a couple of days ago, when at least 27 civilians died as a result of NATO aircraft bombing a group of vehicles in the south of the country, mistakenly believing them to be a convoy of Taliban militia.
The figures for the dead and injured in these incidents are, naturally, disputed by the US, NATO and the Afghan authorities, but what ISN'T in dispute is the fact that far too many innocent civilians are being killed because of either poor intelligence or poor tactics, and one apology after another from the allied forces means absolutely nothing to the bereaved.
And then something comes along that's the antithesis of collateral damage ...
On January 20th 2010 reports surface about the killing of Hamas leader, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai, by 11 allegedly Mossad agents.
We then have to listen to the holier-than-thou protests of the western governments trying to disavow themselves from such outrages. False passports, false identities, clandestine operations, assassination hit squads … the response from the West was almost laughable. "You mean there are secret agents about who do that sort of thing? … tut-tut, that’s terrible! – WE would never be involved with things like that."
The 11 assassins, who apparently comprised 6 British, 3 Irish, 1 French and 1 German, clinically targeted one man – Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh – who was allegedly on a mission to Dubai to purchase arms from Iran in order for Hamas to use them against Israel. The surprising thing was that two Palestinians were also arrested by Dubai police, which raises all sorts of questions about possible internal conflict within Hamas – but that’s another story.
The point I'm making is this: the agents killed nobody else. They were in and out of the country within a day. Nobody else was injured or even 'inconvenienced' and, if you want to be technically correct about it, there wasn’t even any bloodshed, because the victim was smothered and strangled.
I don’t, for one moment, condone the actions of the agents who carried out the murder, whether they were Mossad agents or not, but at the very moment that this clinical assassination (or murder to be precise) was going on, NATO forces in Afghanistan were in the process of killing those 27 innocent civilians, simply because they got their intelligence wrong, and got their tactics wrong, and used a sledgehammer to achieve their objective instead of using a scalpel.
The killing in Dubai, as cold-blooded as it was, and as indefensible as it was, is actually a lesson for the US and NATO in how to successfully hit a target without unnecessarily killing and injuring innocent people.
A scalpel rather than a sledgehammer.
** The full story of the murder of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in his Dubai hotel room can be seen HERE
