We Burn Corpses, Don't We?

Shocking images from Afghanistan have again exposed the racist barbarism of the U.S. "war on terror."

Last week, U.S. soldiers were caught on videotape burning the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters--something forbidden under Islamic law--in Gonbaz, a village in southern Afghanistan.

After the bodies had been defiled, U.S. psychological operations specialists used loudspeakers to taunt local villagers, in an attempt to draw out other Taliban supporters. "Attention, Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs," blared the loudspeakers, after calling out several religious leaders by name.

"You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be...You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs, but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are."

The taunts--according to Stephen Dupont, the Australian freelance journalist embedded with the soldiers, who captured the incident on video--were designed to infuriate. "They used that as psychological warfare, I guess you'd call it," said Dupont of the October 1 incident. "They deliberately wanted to incite that much anger from the Taliban so the Taliban could attack them...That's the only way they can find them."

The images provoked outrage in Afghanistan and throughout the Muslim world. "The burning of these bodies is an offense to Muslims everywhere," said cleric Said Mohammed Omar. "It makes no difference that they were Taliban." Abdul Qayum, a senior cleric in Kandahar, said, "During the past quarter-century of war, I have never heard of anyone burning dead bodies. The Americans claim to be here to bring peace, but what are we supposed to think about this?"

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai tried to help his Pentagon puppet masters contain the damage by dismissing the incident, saying that sometimes "soldiers make mistakes." But this latest revelation shows that the atrocities committed by the U.S. military--from the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to the murderous siege of the Iraqi city of Falluja--aren't "mistakes." They're policy.