My Name is Dana Rohrabacher, and I Approve this Massacre
If you're looking for above average craven stupidity, the editorial page of the Washington Times is a good place to start. Its latest offense? A letter by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) excusing a 2001 massacre by the troops of Afghan powerbroker and semi-retired militia commander Abdul Rashid Dostum.
See, Rohrabacher is Dostum's friend, and wants the world to know his buddy is innocent of those awful things human rights organizations have been maliciously accusing him of --namely, stuffing Taliban prisoners of war in shipping containers, suffocating as many as 1,500 of them, and then dumping their bodies in a mass grave in the desert.
"D would never have his men to do such a thing -- I mean, not intentionally!" protests Rohrabacher. "My bro loves freedom and hates terrorism, and what happens in Shebargan stays in Shebarghan!"
Or, something like that.
Here's what he actually wrote; it is just as crazy:
The Associated Press story "Warlords are back in power" (World, Nov. 19), regarding the resurgence of the Afghan warlords, repeated a half-truth that has become a big lie.
A half truth becomes a big lie the more your repeat it? How...wait, what?
Nevermind, spare yourself the blood clot. Moving on.
I am referring to the often-repeated story that Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum intentionally suffocated a large number of captured Taliban prisoners during the chaos that reigned as the Taliban were pushed out of Afghanistan. The article tells only half the story, thus creating a false impression. Gen. Dostum is one of the unsung heroes in our fight against the Taliban after Sept. 11, 2001. Gen. Dostum was on the ground, leading the offensive against the Taliban at a time when we had just 200 troops in Afghanistan. They were support troops, not combat troops.
The massacre in question is not just an "often-repeated story" it's a very well-documented crime. But a crime isn't a crime if you commit it against bad people, according to Rohrabacher.
In this case, the Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in question led a bloody uprising. This uprising resulted in the deaths of dozens of Gen. Dostum's Northern Alliance tribesmen as well as an American CIA agent. Before this uprising, the captured men were treated with respect under the Afghan tradition, and Gen. Dostum had no intention of harming those prisoners of war.
When those Taliban POWs were killed, they weren't fighting, their guns had been taken away, many of them were injured, and they were crammed in trucks, begging for water. Here's one of photojournalist James Hill's photos of the doomed men.
And here's what Hill wrote afterward:
In the middle of the desert, eight hundred Taleban, mostly Pakistani, were tied up in trucks parked along the side of the road. A yellow dust coated their sad faces, and they seemed bewildered, having surrendered, to find themselves standing like sardines in their own shit and urine. They'd known there was no way to leave the city of Kunduz and rejoin the Taleban forces far to the south. Naively, they had assumed they would be taken care of by the United Nations or the Red Cross. Instead they had thrown themselves on the mercy of Rashid Dostum. They stood tied together in the desert awaiting their uncertain fate.
A fate a Physicians for Human Rights forensic team investigated under the auspices of the United Nations and described in this video:
On Rohrabacher's planet, none of that matters because, because...TALIBAN!
Responsibility for any suffering that took place after the surrender lies not in the hands of Gen. Dostum but in the hands of those hostile prisoners who mounted the uprising. To blame Gen. Dostum for their deaths, which has been done many times, is to do the bidding of the Taliban and ignore the efforts of a man who took such great measures to side with the United States at a crucial moment. He had no choice but to transport those prisoners via container to a more secure area. To blame him for that decision is wrong.
Um, no. Sorry. To blame him for that decision is to apply international humanitarian law as it's supposed to be applied: equally to all parties in a conflict, not just the ones on your side.
On the other hand, making excuses for Dostum and bashing human rights groups that seek an end to impunity actually emboldens the Taliban, who, in their propaganda, use the Dasht-e-Leili massacre, and the Bush Administration cover-up of it, as examples of US hypocrisy and malfeasance in Afghanistan.
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