U.S. Keeps Bombing Weddings

Apparently, the Bush administration is also against straight marriage — if you live in the desert under U.S. military occupation. Tom Engelhardt details seven years of wedding crashing in Afganistan and Iraq, and the notable lack of remorse on the part of the Pentagon.

TomDispatch.com:

All these “incidents” have some obvious features in common: the almost immediate claims by the U.S. military, for instance, that those who have been hit were adversaries, not wedding parties; the ultimate dismissal of the killings as the usual “collateral damage” in wartime; and, above all, the striking fact that, for none of these slaughters of celebrating locals, did the U.S. ever offer a genuine apology.

The mainstream media tends to pick up such stories as he said/she said affairs. Of course, “she” never actually “says” anything, being dead. But you get the idea. As with the most recent Afghan wedding-party slaughter, such pieces — generally wire service stories — are to be found deep inside American newspapers where only the news jockeys are reading. In fact, your basic wedding party wipe-out report is almost certain to share at least some space in the story with a mini-round-up of other kinds of recent death and mayhem in the region in question. The language in which such stories are written is generally humdrum and, in the military mode, death is sanitized

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