Just keep up the mantra: 'We are the good guys; we are the good guys...'ad infinitum

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: A U.S. Army sergeant is in custody after he went on a shooting spree in southern Afghanistan, killing 16 Afghan civilians, nine of them children. The massacre took place Saturday night in Zangabad village in Kandahar province. The soldier reportedly walked more than a mile from his base, breaking into three separate houses to attack families as they slept. Villagers say he then gathered 11 bodies and set them on fire, including the bodies of four girls younger than six. A reporter for the New York Times who inspected the bodies after they were taken to a nearby U.S. military base said five of the children had a single gunshot wound to the head.
Some villagers reported that more than one U.S. soldier was involved. Neighbors and relatives of the dead say they saw a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village at about 2:00 in the morning, enter homes and open fire. But Afghan officials and NATO officials say the killer worked alone.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said, quote, "This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven." President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Karzai Sunday to apologize. As details continue to emerge, acting American ambassador to Afghanistan, James B. Cunningham, pledged that justice would be done.

JAMES B. CUNNINGHAM: Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and their entire community. U.S. forces are providing the highest level of care for those injured. We are still attempting to ascertain the facts. The incident is under investigation, and a United States servicemember has been detained. We deplore any attack by a member of the U.S. armed forces against innocent civilians and denounce all violence against civilians. We assure the people of Afghanistan that the individual or individuals responsible for this terrible act will be identified and brought to justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Authorities say the sergeant turned himself in after the shooting and is being detained in Kandahar. They have not released his name but say he is 38 years old and married with two children. He had served three tours in Iraq and was on his first deployment in Afghanistan. Officials confirm he was attached to a unit based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, where four Lewis-McChord soldiers were convicted of killing of three Afghan civilians in 2010. Those soldiers came to be known as "the kill team."
As bodies of the victims were prepared for burial, The Guardian reports about a thousand people gathered to protest outside the Zangabad military base. The unprecedented attack comes as anti-foreign sentiment is already high, after Afghans discovered U.S. troops burning copies of the Koran at a military base. Despite official disavowal of the massacre, the incident has spawned adverse reactions. This is Kandahar resident Samiullah Khan.

SAMIULLAH KHAN: [translated] This incident will have a very negative impact on the people of Afghanistan. This kind of action will give motivation to the people to stand against foreigner forces and stage protests. This is a repeated action, and no one wants this again.

AMY GOODMAN: Since the attacks, the Taliban has threatened vengeance, and U.S. personnel in Afghanistan were warned of possible reprisal attacks.
The massacre has fueled calls for a more rapid withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. It comes as the United States and Afghanistan are negotiating the Strategic Partnership Agreement, the framework for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave at the end of 2014.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Afghanistan Monday to pay a surprise visit to German troops. Germany is the third largest contributor of troops to NATO's forces there. President Obama is set to meet tomorrow with British Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss plans for Afghanistan.
Well, for more, we go to Kabul, Afghanistan, where we're joined by a peace activist who goes by the name Hakim. He's coordinator for Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. In Chicago, Illinois, we're joined by Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative [Nonviolence], a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. She has just returned from Afghanistan.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Hakim, let's begin with you. The response to the shootings by the U.S. soldier?
HAKIM: Yes. Thank you so much for speaking to us in Kabul.
I must say that, from on the ground in Kabul, we sense anger from among Afghans, but a very remarkable restraint that has been called by the Afghan Interior Ministry. I think the real regret that Afghans sense is that governments, including the U.S. government and the Afghan government, is persisting in this conflict through militarism and not through diplomacy. And the people who pay the price all just be civilians, both soldiers and civilians alike.
AMY GOODMAN: What kind of reaction has there been in Kabul, which is far from where this took place, in Panjwai?
HAKIM: We have not seen or heard any reports of significant demonstrations in Kabul. Aghans in the streets are talking about and discussing the atrocity that happened, and [inaudible] understandably so, realizing that if the fundamental military strategy in Afghanistan does not change, it may lead on to further killing sprees like this, and may even lead to other September 11ths.
AMY GOODMAN: Kathy Kelly, you have just returned from Afghanistan, a longtime peace activist twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Talk about your response and what you have heard from Afghanistan this weekend.
KATHY KELLY: I think that the United States and military officials would like to characterize the massacre as exceptional, sort of one bad apple. But I think it actually encapsulates what the United States presence in Afghanistan has been all about. Unprovoked and uncaused attacks have been waged by the United States against Afghan civilians. It isn't as though this was one deplorable act. This soldier was assigned to a Joint Special Operations Force base, and the Joint Special Operations Forces have been engaging in the night raids on an average of 10 per night, sometimes as many as 40 per night, all across Afghanistan and killing civilians steadily. And combine that with the drone surveillance and the helicoptercombat helicopter attacks that have killed civilians. Just in Kapisa three days earlier, four civilians were killed. This, of course, has fueled a long-simmering rage across Afghanistan, where 400 people are displaced every single day by the war and the fighting.
AMY GOODMAN: Hakim, talk about this attack after the burning of the Korans and the response, and what you feel needs to happen in Kabul and what the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers are calling for.
HAKIM: What we feel in Kabul and what the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers are calling for is for people in the United States and for people in Afghanistan to be calm, to be nonviolent [inaudible] and kind to one another, as we discuss with each other how to end the Afghan war. In particular, it is important to raise a crucial debate about the U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement, which you have mentioned earlier. This agreement is essentially a deal between the U.S. government and the Karzai government to maintain long-term U.S. military special operation forces in Afghanistan. And [inaudible] we know that the regional powers, Iran, the local powers, the Taliban and many political groups, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami, and other countries like Russia and China, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, already announced opposition to the signing of the Strategic Partnership Agreement. In other words, if people here and in the United States do not [no audio]
AMY GOODMAN: WeHakim, are you still there? We'll try to get him back on, speaking to us from Kabul. He is coordinator for Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. But Kathy Kelly ofwith Voices for Creative Nonviolence, speaking to us from Chicago, but just back from Afghanistan, if you couldlet's see if we have Hakim on again. Hakim?
HAKIM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Ah, OK. Continue with what you were saying.
HAKIM: I don't know where I was lost, but I wanted to say that the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers would call the ordinary people of the United States and Afghanistan to debate the U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement, which is a deal between governments to maintain U.S. military forces long term. And that will result in perpetual war, more such killing sprees, and possibly an increase in terrorism and terrorist acts like September 11th. What we need to do is to debate, in this time of economic crisis, how government can resolve this conflict in Afghanistan. And we feel that, surely, governments need to resolve this conflict through diplomacy and move away from the failed military strategy that has resulted in all that we are witnessing today.
AMY GOODMAN: Hakim, why do you choose not to use your real name?
HAKIM: I have been changedmy life has been changed in that sense by Afghans, and so my name has changed along with mya change of my life. Afghans have been demonized as violent terrorists, and this is not the case. The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, for sure, are committed to a nonviolent way. And many people in Afghanistan want to get this message out to the rest of the world, that we want peace and we are tired of war. For that reason, and for the reason that it is probably better forin terms of security to go by a name that they are familiar with, I have changed it tomy name to Hakim.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Hakim, I want to thank you for being with us. We're going to go to break, and then we're going to continue with Kathy Kelly in Chicago. We're talking about this aftermath of the killings of 16 Afghan civilians. A U.S. soldier has turned himself in for doing this. After that, we're going to be talking about the first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster. More than 20,000 people died after the tsunami. Stay with us.


AMY GOODMAN: We return to Kathy Kelly. Kathy Kelly, a leading peace activist in this country, has just returned from Afghanistan. She is the co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, speaking to us from Chicago. Kathy, what do you think, having just returned from Afghanistan, needs to happen there now?
KATHY KELLY: I think it's important that people reinterpret the understanding of security. The United States continually pours funding into the Afghan National Police force, into these Afghan National Security Forces, into forces that will secure the TAPI pipeline, for instance, and the Afghan Local Police, the Arbakai. And it's as though the only kind of security is that which comes from one group having heavier arms and more weapons and ammunition and so-called training than another. But what about health security and food security? And what about the fact that it's claimed by numerous human rights groups that children in Afghanistan are starving to death at the rate of 250 per day, according to some?
The United States has, I think, done its best to secure the potential for a roadway, the pipeline, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, 450 bases that might be maintained, huge prisons. They're still spending $100 million on construction of a new prison near the Bagram Air Force Base. And meanwhile, the conditions in Afghanistan are deplorable. People have endured a very harsh winter, as Democracy Now! has covered several times. And the rage that people understandably feel when $2 billion is being spent per week on maintaining an occupation, while people within Afghanistan are desperate just to try to find food to feed their families, it's something that all of the surveillance and the analysis that the United States studies simply won't understand.
I mean, the RAND Corporation has said that even though there are already 65,000 to 70,000 analysts poring over the surveillance supplied by drones that fly over Afghanistan, it would take 100,000 analysts to understand patterns of life in Afghanistan. Well, that must sound very absurd to people living within Afghanistan. When is the United States going to understand the rage and the antagonism felt by civilians who have borne year after year after year of attacks, unprovoked and uncaused attacks against civilians, as the United States has used its occupation to try to dictate the future of people in Afghanistan?
AMY GOODMAN: On CBS's Face the Nation Sunday, Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich responded to the shootings this weekend in Afghanistan.

NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I think you have to reassure the Afghan people that there will be transparency, that justice will be done, that we're the opposite from al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They kill civilians deliberately; we protect civilians. And when a tragedy like this occurs, we have an absolute obligation to deal with it out in the open and to do so to ensure that justice is done and that they know how serious we are about protecting the innocent of every background and every nationality.

AMY GOODMAN: CBS's Bob Schieffer pointed out Gingrich took a different view when Obama apologized over the burning of the Korans. This is how Gingrich responded.

NEWT GINGRICH: Well, look, this is a totally different situation. With the burning of the Koran, they were killing young Americans. And no American president should apologize to people who are in the process of killing young Americans. This is a different situation. We obviously want to offer condolences to the families. I think we want to offer compensation. We want to recognize this is a terrible event. And as I said, we are in the business worldwide of protecting the innocent. Our enemies, the terrorists, are in the business worldwide of killing the innocent. And we need to make very clear that moral distinction, and then we have to live up to that distinction.

AMY GOODMAN: And Bob Schieffer also asked Gingrich if he thought it was time to leave Afghanistan now.

NEWT GINGRICH: I think it is. I think that we have to reassess the entire region. I think the revelations about Pakistan having hidden bin Laden for seven years in a military city near their National Defense University, and then hunting down not the people who were protecting bin Laden, but hunting down the people who were helping America, I think the Muslim Brotherhood in EgyptI mean, you look around the region, this is going to get much worse. That's why I've called for an American energy policy. We need to decide that we're going to produce our own oil, and we're going to, frankly, be capable of surviving without having to define or dominate the region, because I don't think we have the willpower or the capacity to do the things you have to do to fundamentally change the region.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Newt Gingrich on Sunday. Kathy Kelly, your response?
KATHY KELLY: Well, I think as long as the United States military and foreign policy elites can present the war in Afghanistan as basically a humanitarian war, what they get in return is vast indifference on the part of the United States public. I think that many people in the United States public are weary of the war, but they don't want to abandon people in Afghanistan, because they've been told again and again that we're protecting innocent civilians. It's not true. February 8th, helicopter gunships slaughtered eight shepherds on a mountainside as they were out grazing their flocks. Just three days ago in Kapisa, four civilians were killed, mistaken for insurgents. This goes on month after month after month. President Karzai has begged that the killing of civilians must stop. And there's always some sort of an apology given, and yet these killings continue.
And why is the United States in Afghanistan? I believe that the United States knows that it can't go after China or Russia, but they want to be able to continue a cold war and have a leg up on China by being able to control the pricing and the flow of resources that would course through Afghanistan. And for this reason, the United States wants to secure its bases, its forward operating bases, its prisons, and what will become an even larger embassy than the one that was built in Baghdad. And meanwhile, the United States public is poorly informed. The media very rarely gives adequate coverage to the effect of the warfare on the ordinary people in Afghanistan.
And what's more, the Strategic Partnership Agreement has never even been brought before the Afghan parliament. The United States wants to ram that agreement through before the NATO summit that is planned for Chicago. They want to be able to say it's a done deal, that they can keep their troops in Afghanistan until 2024 and beyond, and NATO troops, as well. And when would the ordinary people in Afghanistan ever get a chance to be involved in some kind of a referendum or some kind of representation in these kinds of decisions?
AMY GOODMAN: Kathy, you have returned home, where you had to go a week or two ago to Syracuse, New York, to stand trial for a drone protest you were involved with. Explain that protest and what happened.
KATHY KELLY: Well, in the Hancock Field in Syracuse, workers go in, and their job involves flying weaponized drones over Afghanistan. And if they're given the order to fire Hellfire missiles or drop a 500-pound bomb, then that's part of the daily work. And so, wanting to call attention to the increased reliance on drone warfare and a new kind of robotization of the United States military, which ought to be discussed here in the United States by the U.S. public and the Congress and the Senate, we staged a die-in. We laid down in front of the base. We didn't cause any obstruction to entrance to the base, because the police themselves had blocked off the roads.
Anyway, the judge in our case listened to 41 hours of testimony, including testimony from former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. He nevertheless found all of the defendants guilty. He did not give credence to what we believe was our duty under international law to stand up to the United States government and call attention to these violations of international law that the drone warfare represent. The judge had imposed penalties, including jail time, on previous defendants, but most recently he didn't do that. He imposed financial penalties, fines. And we won't pay those fines. We don't believe that we were guilty of a crime. And, in fact, a good number of those who went before the judge told the judge, "We'll send that money to young people in Afghanistan working for peaceful causes."
AMY GOODMAN: You've just heard about the drone attacks in Yemen, as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan. Are you calling for the U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan now? And what do you think would happen if they were gone?
KATHY KELLY: Yes, I think that the United States should withdraw the troops from Afghanistan. But I believe the United States should pay reparations, along with other countries that have invaded and occupied and wrecked and created carnage in Afghanistan. And so I'm thinking of Russia, I'm thinking of Pakistan. All of these countries should be responsible to pay reparations for the suffering caused. And that money should be entrusted to people in Afghanistan who have had a track record of being able to sustain humanitarian work, and possibly to other NGOs, but not to the United States, not given the abysmal track record of the United States in the expenditures of billions and billions of dollars that have helped to fuel corruption. So, yes, I believe the United States troops should leave, and the United States should try to understand security for Afghans, not only in terms of militarism, but food security, health security, availability of clean water, availability of electricity. I was just recently in Afghanistan. People, including ourselves, in the place where I stayed with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, were melting snow in order to have access to water.
AMY GOODMAN: Kathy Kelly, I want to thank you very much for being with us, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare.