Thread by @caitoz

Australian War Crimes Report Means Get The Fuck Out Of Afghanistan

"There are no 'conditions' which need to be met first. You are the violent extremists in Afghanistan doing the killing and destroying. You are the terrorists. Leave."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/australian-w…

The much-anticipated report on potential war crimes by the ADF in Afghanistan has been released, recommending 19 current or former soldiers be investigated for up to 39 murders.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1329234140751912967

Not combat kills. Not accidental kills. Not non-combatants killed by disputable decisions made in the heat of battle. Not civilians killed due to recklessness or carelessness on the part of Australian forces. Murders.

The information about atrocities perpetrated by Australian forces in Afghanistan has taken many years to emerge and was fought tooth and claw with attacks on whistleblowers and journalists.

https://twitter.com/ebony_bennett/status/1329230914837045252

The report surely only touches on a tiny fraction of the war crimes which have been perpetrated and covered up, with the investigation finding that "the criminal behaviour of a few was commenced, committed, continued and concealed at the patrol commander level".

"The Brereton report also found evidence that junior soldiers were required by their patrol commanders to shoot a prisoner to achieve their first kill, in a practice known as 'blooding'."
smh.com.au/national/austr…

"two 14-year-old boys were stopped by SAS, who decided they might be Taliban sympathisers. Their throats were slit.

“The rest of the troop then had to ‘clean up the mess’ by finding others to help dispose of the bodies... the bodies were bagged and thrown in a nearby river.”

These are unforgivable atrocities which cry out to the heavens for vengeance. Nothing can undo them. Nothing can set them right. And any grown adult looking at the situation with clear eyes knows that nothing can be done to prevent them from continuing to happen going forward.

This is on top of the massive pile of corpses the US power alliance has already heaped upon Afghanistan by the Trump administration's record-shattering bombing campaigns and corresponding civilian casualties, and by nearly two full 8-year presidential administrations previous.

Afghanistan is a military occupation which we know for a fact we were deceived about from the very beginning and deceived into allowing to continue, every step of the way.
consortiumnews.com/2019/12/11/the…

Knowing that we were deceived into it and knowing what its grave consequences are, there is no excuse for it to continue.

There is no legitimacy in babbling about "power vacuums" and what political system Afghanistan will have after brutalizing like this. Such arguments are like a rapist saying he can't stop raping a woman because some other rapist might come along and rape her if he stops.

The most depraved and murderous force in the nation, which has already been killing more civilians than the Taliban and ISIS, has no business concerning itself with what might happen after it leaves.
archive.is/dRYOu

Get out of Afghanistan. Get the fuck out. Now. Not just Australia, but the entire murderous occupying coalition. It's not your country and you're making it worse. Get. The fuck. Out.

There is no more destructive force on this earth than the tight alliance of nations loosely centralized around the United States which functions as a single empire on foreign policy. The only beneficial thing such a blood-soaked empire can do for the world is cease to exist.

It is not the benevolent good guy staving off the bad guys, it is the bad guy, and its depravity must come to an end.

Let the world sort out its own affairs without the "help" of the psychopathic force which unleashes such horrors upon our species.

.

https://twitter.com/SamEdwardd/status/1240080109857619968