The rest of the world grinds on, and we're still in Afghanistan, for whatever the reason might be. We're as mired there as any other foreign power through history has been mired and, like those other foreign powers, our involvement there is headed to a very dark place, at least according to Human Rights Watch. From Stars and Stripes:

Afghan strike forces, which have been accused of raiding medical facilities and killing civilians in night raids on their homes, sometimes in front of their families, are largely trained and overseen by the CIA, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday. The report follows a strike force raid last month in eastern Nangarhar province that resulted in the deaths of four brothers, prompting Afghanistan’s president to announce a rare investigation into paramilitary actions.

U.S. special operations forces lent to the CIA often accompany the paramilitaries on the raids, and the U.S. military regularly provides logistical and tactical support for the operations, including airstrikes that have “indiscriminately or disproportionately killed Afghan civilians,” the report said. “They are illustrative of a larger pattern of serious laws-of-war violations — some amounting to war crimes — that extend to all provinces in Afghanistan where these paramilitary forces operate with impunity,” Human Rights Watch said.

Anyone who lived through, say, the 1980s gets a cold chill when reading the phrase "CIA-backed paramilitaries" as visions of murdered nuns and assassinated archbishops rise again from a purgatorial history. And with an entire administration* dedicated to keeping the public as ignorant as possible about its own crimes, the rest of the world gets obscured in a collateral way. Until the nephew of someone killed by "CIA-backed paramilitaries" decides to get his own back, straps on a belt laden with C4, and hitches a ride into town.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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