Today, following President Obama’s welcome decision to ask the National Security Council “to collect the facts … that are known” about the Dasht-e-Leili massacre and subsequent cover-up, three major newspapers—The New York Times, The Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle—have joined Physicians for Human Rights in our call for a full federal investigation.

As the San Francisco Chronicle said:

Those alleged atrocities are an American concern.

The New York Times, which broke the story by James Risen that has catapulted the almost forgotten massacre of as many as 2000 men back into public consciousness, reflected:

There can be no justification for the horrors or for the willingness of the United States and Afghanistan to look the other way.

President Obama has told aides to study the matter, and the administration is pressing Mr. Karzai not to return General Dostum to power. Mr. Obama needs to order a full investigation into the massacre. The site must be guarded and witnesses protected….

There is more at stake than just the history books. Out of desperation or fear, many Afghans have again thrown their lot in with the Taliban. There is no chance of getting them to switch sides if they fear being massacred. If there is any hope of salvaging the war, American forces must persuade all Afghans that they and the Afghan government are truly committed to justice.

The Boston Globe elaborates:

It would be understandable if Obama were reluctant to become entangled in the sins and secrets of the Bush administration. But the decision of the CIA-funded warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum to have hundreds of enemy fighters suffocated in container trucks does lasting harm to the Karzai government, which lists him as military chief of staff, and to America’s reputation as a nation that respects the Geneva Conventions and the rule of law.

Obama says his national security team will be gathering facts on Dostum’s war crime and the Bush administration’s cover-up. The next step ought to be the sort of full-bore FBI investigation that some agents of the bureau originally wanted. Earlier refusals to investigate and punish war crimes in Afghanistan opened the way to a warlord-riddled Afghan government that is scorned and mistrusted by much of the population. Those refusals also set America on a path that led to the disasters of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the government-approved torturing of prisoners of war. Truth is the best antidote to the disfiguring disease of secrecy.

Rising to this responsibility means not just committing to an investigation but, as The Times has emphasized, committing right now to guarding the evidence at the Dasht-e-Leili site and to protecting any known witnesses.

Filed in news coverage and tagged: abdul rashid dostum , abu ghraib , boston globe , central intelligence agency , cia , geneva conventions , Guantánamo , hamid karzai , James Risen , New York Times , san francisco chronicle , Taliban

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