About Lehlohonolo Phadima
Lehlohonolo Joe Phadima is a Coordinator for Social Planning at the Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. He is a former student leader having served in different capacities at provincial level for SASCO KZN. He is also a Ward 36 member of both the ANC and the ANCYL, currently residing in Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg – He writes in his personal capacity
Apparently a week ago or there about, US troops based in Afghanistan/CIA agents (depending on which report you read) in cohorts with their Afghan counterparts, attacked and killed execution style, eleven school children including an 11 year old boy, in a raid for Al Qaeda. I don’t want to torture you with the horrid details of how they went about doing this, See here and here. A couple of days later, a Taliban suicide bomber who was used as a double-agent detonated himself in a group meeting of his CIA handlers. Amongst the deceased, was a female soldier who was a mother to three children, this last bit of emotional report comes from a US media reports.
The curious thing about these two stories is the manner in which they have received coverage, particularly in the US. In fact the first hyperlinked article above, decries exactly this. The first school children massacre received no reports in America, despite the “independence” of the media. The remarkable reticence of the American media was rather befuddling given the fact that such inhuman acts sparked fierce protests in Kabul. US reports on Kabul only started receiving prominent coverage after the second incident where American lives were involved. Attention was to be drawn to the fact that one deceased soldier had three kids, as if the lives of the 11 children were of no consequence to their families, even as they were innocent children.
Which begs the question, what makes this woman’s life more precious than those of the innocent 11 school children executed? Does this mean that a life of an Afghan kid or even an Iraq kid, if we consider the undue Iraq invasion where men, women, and children alike lost their lives over the apparent nuclear weapons that were never found? How long should innocent people die because of the US’s continued deployments in foreign countries? Worst of all, such atrocities receive scant or biased reports from the US media. Could it be that they themselves believe in the superiority of their lives over those of other nationals?
But then again, this sort of bias reporting is, in all fairness, quiet well established in that part of the world. Even when we’re told the US is the epitome of democracy, where free speech reigns supreme, and so on. Reminds me of what Jeremy Clarkson says about his “misapprehension” of Britain being a democratic country (anyway, he was talking about cars). So this is how the objective reporting goes; Today, Americans will kill 11 school children, in pursuit of Al Qaeda, just like they invaded Iraq with the lies about weapons of mass distraction. They will destroy infrastructure, kill and reduce the entire country to rubble (and later give their companies obscene amount of money to rebuild), with the complicit media running reports corroborating idiotic stories about reliable sources on hidden nuclear plants; how these are to be visited upon the innocent man and women in streets of America. When they get it all wrong, they’ll just say sorry, we erred – vote in the new President who will preach the new era and so on while approving yet another posting of human killers.