“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”

Forward loading bay of a C-5B at “Camp Marmalade” in Mazar-i Sharif

The city of Mazar-i Sharif was created because a local mullah dreamed that the first Shia Imam was buried there, and after another weird quirk of fate, more than 5000 NATO soldiers are now stationed at nearby Camp Marmalade.

Aircraft based at Camp Marmalade provide close air support for NATO operations all over northern Afghanistan, like the airstrike which killed ten people in Takhar Province on September 2, 2010.

President Hamid Karzai said the victims were campaign workers seeking votes in this month’s parliamentary elections.

Earlier, Takhar Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said the car in which candidate Abdul Wahid Khorasani had been riding was fired on by helicopters following an initial pass by fighter jets. He called the incident an obvious mistake, saying there were no Uzbek militants, foreigners or members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the convoy.

“There aren’t even any Taliban in this area,” Taqwa said. “They were all working on Mr. Khorasani’s campaign.”

NATO predictably denied all charges even from its own allies in Takhar Province.

After careful planning to ensure no civilians were present, coalition aircraft conducted a precision airstrike on one sedan and later followed with direct fire from an aerial platform. The vehicle was traveling as part of a six-car convoy, but no other vehicles were hit in the strike,” the military said.

But instead of issuing yet another absurd contradiction of all local authorities every time we kill another crowd of civilians, wouldn’t it be better if the United States simply proclaimed the fundamental principle of the American occupation of Afghanistan once and for all?

“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”