Barack Obama's Bush-like "surge" in Afghanistan has not even reached its full strength yet, but it is already driving tens of thousands of Afghan civilians from their homes, as they flee an upcoming massive attack in Helmand province.

The attack -- which the Americans have been trumpeting far in advance -- is designed, we're told, to "protect" the people of the key town of Marjah from the twin scourges of Taliban nogoodniks and drug traffickers. Yet the primary effect of the much-publicized preparations has been to send the residents of the town running for their lives to escape becoming part of the "collateral damage" that always attends these protective, humanitarian endeavors.

Indeed, the real aim of the advance publicity for the attack seems to be forcing mass numbers of  civilians to hit the road -- which will then allow the American and British attackers to claim that anyone left behind is an enemy. This in turn will free up the attackers to use heavy weaponry in a "free-fire" zone to clear out the "diehards."

This is, of course, the same strategy used in the savage destruction of Fallujah in Iraq. The city was marked for death after an angry mob mutilated four American mercenaries -- following a series of civilian killings by occupation forces in the preceding weeks: provocations that have been conveniently airbrushed from history (just like the U.S. massacre of Somalis that preceded the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident).  An initial attack on Fallujah failed in the spring of 2004, largely due to political heat from the vast civilian suffering that was being reported from the city, chiefly from its medical centers.

But in the following months, the noose was tightened around Fallujah's neck. Tens of thousands fled the city to escape the coming second attack, which was well-publicized in advance. Story after story -- or rather, puff piece after puff piece -- about the preparations streamed from the embedded mainstream media reporters. The ostensible aim of the attack was to "eliminate" groups of "diehard terrorists" using Fallujah as a base. But of course, the months of PR about the looming operation meant that the putative targets had plenty of time to slip away. And they did.

Even so, as soon as George W. Bush's re-election was in the bag, the attack was launched. This time, the US brass were careful to eliminate the main source of bad press in the first attack: hospitals were a prime target. As I noted at the time:

One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.

So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.

And now Marjah is being readied for the Fallujah option.  (For as we all know, your real tough hombres never take any option off the table.) As the Guardian reports:

Ten of thousands of Afghan civilians are abandoning an area of central Helmland where UK and US forces are set to launch one of the biggest operations of the year. The evacuation of most civilians from the town of Marjah and surrounding areas will give commanders greater leeway to use mortars-and-air-to ground missiles which have enraged Afghans in the past when responsible for civilian deaths. ...

US generals have unusually made no secret of their plan for a major onslaught against the town close to Helmand's besieged provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force which will spearhead the fight, has said he is "not looking for a fair fight." ...

A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, as the Nato troops are known, said that the main reason for publicity for the operation was to encourage insurgents to leave, but if civilians were also encouraged to evacuate that would be "helpful".

Yes, it's always helpful to do some pre-winnowing of a densely populated area before you destroy it with mortars and air-to-ground missiles. But of course, while thousands of civilians flee, thousands more have "remained because they could not afford to leave," the Guardian reports. How many of these will be re-classifed as "enemy fighters" when their corpses are found in the ruins?

The Afghans themselves know the score:

A Marjah resident, an elder reached by phone, who was not prepared to give his name, said he had evacuated his family a week ago because he feared "the worst attack ever".

"Always when they storm a village the foreign troops never care about civilian casualties at all. And at the end of the day they report the deaths of women and children as the deaths of Taliban," he said.

Slaughter, ruin, fear and exile: yeah, it's the Good War, all right! "The war we should be fighting," as our tough-guy libs kept telling us when putting their always serious, always "nuanced" objections to the Iraq "fiasco" in proper context. Well, they have it now, the war they always wanted. And who knows? Maybe soon they can have their own Fallujah! Won't that be a great apotheosis of Progressivism?

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scott douglas said:

Gossip of the 'Times 02/04/2010! Oh, Chris, you missed the early take on this juicy tidbit! That intheswim' gadabout, 'Lizzie Bumiller let us know on the fourth that she's been quietly instructed that the Afghan Pashtun town of Marja is to be laid waste on an imminent but, deliciously, unknowable - stay tuned - timetable! Seems we've thoughtfully leafleted the town, warning the 85,000 inhabitants to go to bed by 9pm - and stay clear of their windows! - should the offensive commence during their unfortunate and unrecommended residency there! Hey! Don't they know there's a war on?! Looking back -- and, Lord knows, the admission of having engaged in that silly cognitive action guts the import of anything yours, truly might think about it! But bear with, as they say! -- I believe there were about 50,000 women, children, non-combatant old men, the sick and the poor who just couldn't manage to clear out of Fallujah in time. Now, I don't know if they all got letters. I know Kofi Annan sent one. But anyway, you know they DID get the message in the end! Talk about up in lights! These 50,000 residual residents - mere numbers, mind you; not persons in the current American vernacular sense of the word - out of the usual population of 300,000, away back in the late fall of '04, (God! I'm dating myself! Don't listen!) faced the benevolent wrath of our glorious liberation forces with much the same result that one must presume the heathen of Marja soon will! "According to Mike Marqusee of Iraq Occupation Focus writing in the Guardian, 'Fallujah's compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city's 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines'. Reconstruction mainly consists of clearing rubble [and bodies, 'natch!] from heavily-damaged areas and reestablishing basic utility services." I get excited. I get ahead of myself. Did I skip the part about the indiscriminate WWI-style artillery barrages and the 2000lb. bombs and the white phosphorous munitions? No, Chris has all that covered! Whew! Did I slide past the bit where anyone in the city could be -- and regrettably perhaps, was -- shot on sight? Regardless of circumstance? Even if they had taken the precaution of bundling the kiddies away with them to bed by 9pm, on the dot, no less?! No, It's true! I've seen the pictures! Well, shit happens. This is war! I mean, that was war! I mean, it's war! I mean, well. It's about to keep happening again...some more. Or maybe not! There doesn't have to be a blood bath! - I mean, inadvertent collateral damages. Maybe those Taliban will read their thoughtfully prepared warning notices and just keep going away! And with them all their wives and sisters and parents and kids and donkeys and poppies and Al Qa'ida - Pakistan's not THAT far away, is it?! And then we can bring peace and security and development to Marja without a big hassle!!

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February 06, 2010
Votes: +8

john kelley said:

	stay clear of the windows "We are going to alter the ecosystem here considerably." (Colonel George "Slam" Amland, the deputy commander of the marine task force at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand) . . . . . . What anticipation!?!...... a phosphorous lit sky over Marjah and the Super Bowl kickoff in Miami. Enjoy the game folks.
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February 06, 2010
Votes: +3

nina said:

	someday a library Health reform wasn't ballsy enough for a legacy. Too quaint. Now this, this is interesting, empty entire regions of the planet of lifeforms and wipe out all of history. In the NWO, there is no past.
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February 07, 2010
Votes: +6

Debbie(aussie) said:

Hell!!!!! F*cking Hell! Sometimes(more often now than not) I feel really sick and embaressed to be a part of the human race. If (when) thay get away with this is should be the end for US empire, but it won't be. Andwhat is with " spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, as the Nato troops are known, said that the main reason for publicity for the operation was to encourage insurgents to leave, but if civilians were also encouraged to evacuate that would be "helpful"." they want the 'insurgents' to leave, that makes no sense. But then neither does the whole mess. What was I thinking.

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February 07, 2010
Votes: +3

scott douglas said:

... Sorry, I couldn't resist being flip. But in all seriousness, the Imperial forces don't seem to be making any real effort to invest Marja. I don't think they want a fight. I think they just want to move in and end up patrolling a ghost town, which is all that is happening throughout other NATO controlled portions of Helmand, to date. But this is not a one-street village, and the Taliban know that they can inflict embarrassing and attention drawing levels of casualties before giving up the city. So, I fear the worst...

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February 07, 2010
Votes: +3

gordon burns said:

	... Sick, sick, sick bastards. And they are open enough to state that they don't want a fair fight. Scott says: 'and the Taliban know that they can inflict embarrassing and attention drawing levels of casualties before giving up the city. So, I fear the worst...'. I hope they manage to kill hundreds of the bastards.
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February 07, 2010
Votes: +5

Art James, bebop-o, GoodCelery! said:

	It's the only war they (brass) got. Behind closed doors they say` But this is the only war we got. Brass is the career goon gang.
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February 07, 2010
Votes: +2

Grandma Jefferson said:

Fair Warning.... ...Now we live in an age where intended massacres are advertised in advance, just to give the animals back home that little frisson of anticipation, and proclaim our purity over the corpses we create, "We told them we were coming, it's their fault they're dead." Contemplating this sickens me to the soul, and I feel ashamed to even mention that, in the face of the horrific suffering about to be unleashed. Thank you, Chris, for always laying out the truth of what this abomi-Nation really is.

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February 07, 2010
Votes: +9

Grandma Jefferson said:

	Of Course... ...what it really reduces me to is the compulsion to just start screaming. But what good is that?
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February 07, 2010
Votes: +6

Sheila Waller said:

Meanwhile... ...the suprabowl has opened with a stirring display of Military might, men from all the services carrying the National Colors, Queen Latifah singing "America the beautiful" calling the blessings of gawd on this great nation, a huge stars & stripes spread on the field, live feeds showing troops at attention from bases in Afghanistan & Virginia, red fireworks bursting in air during the national anthem, and a benevolent, blood-stirring fly-over of Four F-15 Eagle fighter jets, not bombing anything, as a reminder of how great we is. Everybody had their hands over their hearts during this epoch display of patriotic fervor. I was amazed they weren't weeping.Perhaps some were. Is Marjah still standing?

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February 07, 2010
Votes: +7

Michael B said:

Homeland spectacle Perhaps during the Homeland Spectacle the patrons of the coliseum would've been given a more accurate portrayal of the American Military character if the halftime show included a little waterboarding event. It could've been run like Shirley Jackson's, "The Lottery", with each attendee given a "free" raffle ticket and the "winner" getting the honor of being waterboarded in front of the tens of thousands of cheering Homelanders. A US military man has been accused of waterboarding his 4 year old daughter cause she couldn't quite get her ABC's down pat. Think what they're doing to the natives. ___________ US soldier gives four-year-old daughter 'waterboarding' over alphabet A soldier subjected his four-year-old daughter to waterboard-style torture when she failed to recite her alphabet, it has been claimed. Published: 9:50AM GMT 08 Feb 2010 Joshua Tabor allegedly told police he had used the technique because he was angry and knew his daughter was scared of water. The 27-year-old, who had recently gained custody of the young girl, said she "squirmed" as he pushed her under the water three or four times, it was claimed. ... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7187010/US-soldier-gives-four-year-old-daughter-waterboarding-over-alphabet.html

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February 08, 2010
Votes: +3

Grandma Jefferson said:

Do You Think... ...the patriotic soldier will retain custody of his 4 year old? After all, it isn't like he tortured the child or anything, just because she's afraid of water & resisted pretend drowing. It's obviously her fault for not knowing her alphabet at 4. From the article: "Mr Tabor's daughter was found hiding in a cupboard with bruises on her back and throat. When asked how she got her injuries, she replied: "Daddy did it." That broke my heart to read. My daughter was 4 once, and I see her. THIS is what we're unleashing on the population, when Johnny comes marching home". I sometimes wonder how the world keeps spinning, with all the horror on it.

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February 08, 2010
Votes: +3

Phylter said:

Michael... This was disgusting to learn of, as a parent of three children and a grandparent of two. Hopefully, the full penalty of the law is brought down upon his head and custody of the child is revoked. Also, I would hope that he has psychiatric help as he clearly is insane, no doubt by being indoctrinated into "doing whatever it takes". This all sounds lame. What I would REALLY like is to learn that he'd been taken out the back and.... fill in the blank...

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February 08, 2010
Votes: +1

Michael Hureaux Perez said:

... No surprises whatsoever. These creeps are so used to butchery they think it's civil discourse. In this context, it's amusing to watch them worry their pointy little heads over the possiblity of a Palin presidency two years from now. I have friends who are already stressing about it, and getting quite upset with me when I say I don't care one way or the other anymore. In fact, I'd prefer having the Palin troglodites in, because at least then the so-called "progressives" don't sleep as deeply as they do when one of their charismatic shit heads is in office.

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February 09, 2010
Votes: +0