WHEN BART SIMPSON GOEST TO WAR, TAKE COVER
The US airforce followed the classic military strategy of sending a B-52 to
kill 40 people at a wedding
By Mark Steel
04 July 2002
The American military must take tips from Bart Simpson. As survivors gaze in
bewilderment at the four bombarded Afghan villages and 40 people at a
wedding killed by American missiles fired from American planes, the Pentagon
thinks for a moment and says: "I didn't do it.''
What else can have caused this then? Maybe it's the local custom. In some
cultures, wedding guests throw confetti, in others they throw rice, in this
bit of Afghanistan they throw cluster bombs. Or maybe it was just the usual
wedding scrap between different halves of the family, to do with a feud
going back to the 1950s about who owns the deeds to a yak. Or maybe one
uncle ate all the samosas, that's usually what sets these things off.
Of course the Americans did it. Which is why they have to change their
response several times, which again they do with the thought process of a
little boy caught by a smashed window with a catapult. After denying it,
they announced an investigation, then claimed they were fired on. In other
words: "Er, I don't know, maybe it was, hang on a minute, I'll ask at school
if anyone knows who did it." In a couple of days Donald Rumsfeld will appear
and say "Terry made me do it''.
At one point Lieutenant Colonel Roger King, the spokesman for the American
forces, admitted that they'd dropped bombs "near'' the village at which the
wedding took place. So how did 40 people get killed in the village, I
wonder. Perhaps they moved the village at the last minute.
Another suggestion was that the bombs were fired at "pre-planned targets
which had proven in the past to house hostile operatives''. Who specifically
have these hostile operatives been in the past? The wedding photographer? I
suppose that it would be a good cover; he could say that he had to go and
change the film to do the groom and the bride's sister, then nip round the
back and fire off a round of anti-aircraft missiles. Or the disco unit?
Perhaps they turn "The Birdie Song" up to top volume so that no one could
hear them send off a rocket launcher.
Over the course of the day they changed the story again to claim they were
fired on by enemy anti-aircraft guns. So what else could they do in response
but follow the classic military strategy of summoning a B-52 to kill 40
people at a wedding. I think it was Alexander the Great who first perfected
this technique. "The minute the Egyptians attack,'' he said, "we'll take out
their nearest wedding. Once you've got the cake and the table plan, the rest
of the city will crumble."
There has been a suggestion that the confusion was caused by the Afghan
practice of firing rifles into the air at weddings. And I can see how, when
you're flying at 20,000 feet, a bloke on the ground with a 50-year-old rifle
could make you jumpy. These things have a range of over 80 yards so with a
ricochet-or-two they could have your eye out.
The amazing side to this episode is that the victims were in an area that is
already under the control of the government put in place by America. So the
Afghan Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said: "This situation must come
to an end'' – which seems reasonable enough. However, the Americans are
treating his complaints with contempt, the way that a bullying bloke would
speak to his wife, a sort of "all right, I'm entitled to bomb the odd
village, aren't I? Listen, you were nothing before you met me, nothing. Now
stop giving me earache.''
The one consistent side to the United States response has been a refusal to
apologise. Perhaps they've been advised they can still claim it was 50-50
when it comes to settling the insurance. So their investigations are under
way. Maybe they'll try a similar technique to the one they used when an
American pilot dropped two bombs on a Yugoslav railway bridge, causing the
deaths of dozens of passengers on a train that hurtled down the hole a few
seconds later.
A film was shown proving the train was travelling so fast the pilot couldn't
have known it was there. Until a few months later when it was revealed Nato
had deliberately doubled the speed of the film. So they might say the
wedding happened so fast their pilots couldn't see it and then show us
speeded-up film of the bride and the groom sprinting up the aisle and
hurtling to the reception.
They might as well, because the truth is that, apart from propaganda
considerations, they don't really care. On Tuesday Rumsfeld appeared at the
press conference with his usual smirk, which he would do as he's a US
Defence Secretary who feels that he has a mandate to do whatever he likes.
He might as well have pointed to a screen and said, "This is what happened,"
then turned over to Richard and Judy and said: "See, there's just a
middle-aged couple talking about how to cure athlete's foot.'' Instead he
said: "These incidents, when they occur, they take time to sort out."
There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see,
yet small enough to solve. -Mike- Levitt-
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