Portion below; whole article here: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/gaza-meet-afghanistan/
What does the new U.S. strategy imply? It means, of course, being militarily agile, matching the insurgents’ hit and run tactics, and killing their leaders, when and where possible. But it also means the deliberate use of disproportionate force, even at the cost of massive civilian casualties.
The key idea is to make life so intolerably dangerous and harsh that the local population will desert the insurgents, and that both will lose the will to fight. That is the theory behind the strategy.
Israel adopted a similar counter-insurgency strategy in its war against Hamas in Gaza last December/January. It did not, however, have the desired effect since Hamas remains very much in control of Gaza, and may even have increased its legitimacy. The UN and several human rights organisations criticised Israel for the large-scale killing of civilians and the massive destruction of homes, mosques, schools, factories and agricultural land. But the use of heavy weapons against civilian targets was no accident. It was a deliberate strategy, although never officially acknowledged. The resort to disproportionate force to overwhelm the enemy, and make him despair of ever winning, is an essential aspect of counter-insurgency strategy.
What America and the Pakistan Army are doing is not unlike what Israel attempted at Gaza. America’’s use of a Hellfire missile strikes by pilotless drones is a typical counter-insurgency technique. President Karzai has pleaded with the U.S. to stop the strikes because of the cost in civilian lives. ‘How can you expect a people who keep losing their children to remain friendly?’ he asked in a taped interview with American television. But General Jones objected: ‘We can’t fight with one hand tied behind our back… We have to have a full complement of our offensive military power when we need it.’ What he did not – and could not – say was that terrorizing and killing of civilians is part of the counter-insurgency strategy.
Afghan sources said 147 civilians were killed by U.S. airstrikes last week in the western province of Farah, and that many more suffered severe burns, as if from phosphorus bombs – another resemblance with Israel’s war in Gaza. The U.S. claimed the figure was exaggerated.
Under American pressure, the Pakistan Army has also deliberately resorted to the disproportionate use of force, launching this month a sudden and massive assault on the Swat valley, which is said to have so far killed 700 militants. It has also forced hundreds of thousands of destitute civilians to run for their lives, thereby creating a vast and virtually unmanageable refugee problem.
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