The U.S. has proved, once again, that if it can't win hearts and minds, at least it can scatter them over the fields. They just killed 18 villagers, including 4 children, with a missile attack on a Pakistani village. They targetted Al-Qaeda leader Al-Zahawiri, based on reports that there were 'foreigners' in the village - reports apparently transmitted by a pilotless drone that had been sweeping the area. A villager responds:

'This is a big lie... Only our family members died in the attack,' said Shah Zaman, a jeweller who lost two sons and a daughter in the attack. 'They dropped bombs from planes and we were in no position to stop them... or to tell them we are innocent. I don't know [al-Zawahiri]. He was not at my home. No foreigner was at my home when the planes came and dropped bombs.'

Pakistanis demonstrate after the bombings

There are all sorts of questions whether the U.S. launched missiles from the drone itself, or used ground teams to call in an airstrike - even more of a scandal since Pakistan forbade U.S. operations within its borders. This is fine if you want to play the game of security politics, but a few things stand out for me:

1) Pakistani officials justify the attack by blaming Al-Zahawiri for being late for dinner: "Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader was invited to dinner marking an Islamic holiday at the Pakistani border village struck by a purported CIA airstrike, but he did not show up, intelligence officials said Sunday." They speculate on how hard it is to find someone the large, rugged border area of Pakistan. So, essentially, had Al-Zahawiri turned up to be killed as scheduled, none of this would have happened.

Stand still, damn it! - or we'll have to kill a few thousand civilians - Ayman al-Zawahiri, no doubt smiling over his solid, second-place standing in the 'bodycount' event

This has to be lamest excuse for cold-blooded murder I've ever heard. How can you dodge the murders of 18 people? Cos this is what the army does, folks, it murders civilians. 'Peace-keeping', 'rooting out terrorists', handing candy out to the kiddies, yeah yeah yeah - if you have a military invading a foreign land, it's going to end the lives of non-combatants, with the ample means of brutal violence at its disposal.

Every time that harsh reality comes to light, the military squirms and says, "Now see, if things went according to plan, none of this would have happened." Bullshit. Civilian casualties are part of the plan. They're supposed to terrorize the rest of the population into acqueisence. By blaming the targets for not standing still in the right place, the U.S. military isn't just refusing responsibility for the murders. It's saying it doesn't care.

2) Reverse the situation. I've suggested this before, and I'll refer back to it the next time the 'terrorists' strike. Imagine an Al-Qaeda drone targeted George W. Bush on a visit to his Crawford ranch. Bush was warned about the threat, and stayed at the Marriot instead. Missiles killed 18 stable-hands, maids and cooks.

It would make every American shiver in their beds, knowing that pilotless drones could buzz above their homes at will and rain death upon them. Worse, no one would be safe, because Al-Qaeda obviously couldn't target its enemies properly. It's absolutely ridiculous, isn't it? The U.S. would never allow it. It'd call into question the very fundamentals of existence: the ability to go about your daily routine peacefully. Yet that's what happened in Pakistan, and I'll bet a lot of Pakistanis feel that way now.

Imagine one of these above the 7-11 - armed Predator drone

3) Consider the response of bombed America. There'd be a national day of mourning, right? There'd certainly be calls for revenge. Liberals would be accused of being soft on terrorism. A few thousand villagers 'somewhere else' would die. Civil liberties would be further restricted.

This isn't fantasy, as we all know. And it's why I don't believe the U.S. is trying to destroy terrorists. For all their claims of wanting to build democracy, the bellicose military planners know that airstrikes will only contribute to the radical forces they purport to destroy. The murder of civilians will terrorize the majority of the population, and harden a minority. That minority will fight on, in the ever-more hawkish environment. Real democratic, popular movements will weaken:

As the Canadian-Pakistani writer Tarek Fateh notes, "What was once contained to a mere 100 square miles in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan" has "mushroomed to a 100,000 square miles in Iraq, thanks to the US invasion. Both Bush and Bin Laden have fed off each other, providing sustenance to one another in implementing their agendas."

"To fight malaria, one does not shoot down mosquitoes; one drains the swamps. Sadly, the Anglo-American 'War on Terrorism' has done just the opposite."

The swamp is now the world, and everyone is fair game. [From Pardon, didn't mean to kill you...]

I want all the hawks to remember this, the next time American casaulties give rise to frothing denunciations of freedom-haters and violence. If the imperialists, from reluctant liberals to gungho conservatives, actually believed the rhetoric they spout, then the deaths of 18 villagers would be occasion for soul-searching, reparations and not least, an end to military adventures abroad. The fact that those deaths can be dismissed with the flimsiest of excuses, not even an apology, speaks to their real motives. It's not democracy; it's conquest, justified by the same racism that's undergirded all modern conquests. And only when the imperialists are defeated will it stop. Defeated, not reasoned with, cajoled, vigiled out of existence. Mass movements to bring the troops home, combined with popular resistance abroad, is the only moral response to the blood-drenched imperialist campaigns.

*Just so the NSA doesn't think I'm about to pick up a gun, and my comrades know my democratic atheist principles are still intact... no, I'm not endorsing random military violence, and I have no desire to enlist in a terrorist training camp (I already have a gym membership.) I am, however, endorsing resistance, of a particular kind. These are pictures of Iraqi resistance fighters, who have been targetting Al-Qaeda in recent days - fine by me. Any group that targets religious minorities deserves to get pushed out. Of course, as I've written before, there's much sinister goings-on regarding the 'El Salvador' option: U.S. & British special forces fomenting massacres to incite ethnic tension in Iraq - I don't buy that all the tragic massacres of late are perpetrated by fundamentalists.

Which brings me to my second point: the Iraqi rebels have also waged a successful campaign against the U.S. military. Given the choice between an armed, popular resistance movement and an invading, occupying U.S. military, a pacifist position is worse than neutral: it implicitly supports the stronger force i.e. the imperialist invaders. I absolutely don't support the deaths of U.S. troops, and the best way to stop those deaths is to withdraw the troops immediately.

From a Marxist pov, this is also not an endorsement of substitutionism - other social elements replacing the working class in the struggle against imperialism:

Substitutionism is when the vanguard engages in military action against the bourgeoisie without the support of the non-party masses. Substitutionism manifests itself in putschism, terrorism/guerrillaism, dual unionism or minority attempts at general strike action

However, the Iraqi Resistance has the support of most of the Iraqi population - ergo most of the working class. I agree with James Petras when he says that imperialism will start to crumble when the people of the imperialist countries start sympathizing with the people resisting their own armies abroad. And, mainly, I'm just pissed off at all the right-wing jingoists.

Ha ha - I mean, Ho Ho, Ho Chi Minh