Moloch in Helmand

The grand attack on Marja was scarcely out of the starting blocks before it claimed its first child sacrifices: five children blown to pieces in a rocket strike on "a compound crowded with Afghan civilians," the New York Times reports.

Up to 12 civilians in total were killed in the strike, which occurred, we're told, when American artillery landed "a few hundred yards away" from another "mud-walled compound" from which U.S. Marines were reportedly taking fire.

In keeping with the way of the modern warrior, the computer-guided rockets were launched from a base more than 10 miles away: "Don't fire until the GPS tracker sends back remote data indicating the whites of their eyes are within 500 yards, boys!" Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former black ops honcho now heading the entire "humanitarian" military mission in Afghanistan, immediately apologized for "this tragic loss of life," and even went so far as to pull the particular remote-control death device from the order of battle, for the moment. Well, Stanley, live by PR, die by PR -- and as we noted here yesterday, the entire operation reeks of "Hamburger Hill"-style futility: sending in a great wad of cannon fodder to foster the illusion of momentum and success in an endless, pointless war of corporate profiteering and imperial chest-beating.