Manning: Before Wikileaks, Leaked Docs Offered to NYT, WaPo February 28, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Civil Liberties, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Iraq and Afghanistan, Media, War.Tags: Afghanistan War, bradley manning, davide coombs, denise lind, foreign policy, Iraq war, journalism, Media, military commission, roger hollander, war, whistle blower, whistleblower, wikileaks
add a comment
Roger’s note: it is impossible not to compare Bradley Manning’s heroic act with that of Daniel Ellsberg’s Vietnam era release of the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg was acquitted of the charges the government laid against him, and was vindicated both morally and legally. Unfortunately, we live in and era that is even more repressive than it was in the 1960s, and era where torture and extra-judicial murder are normalized (or should I say sanctified?). Bradley Manning has already and will continue to suffer for his brave and patriotic action. Big Brother wants us all to know that he is watching and will show no mercy.
Published on Thursday, February 28, 2013 by Common Dreams
Whistleblower reads prepared statement: Wanted documents to reveal “true costs of war”
(Credit: Reuters)In what The Guardian‘s correspondent Ed Pilkington describes as a “bombshell” revelation, Bradley Manning on Thursday revealed that prior to reaching out to Wikileaks with a trove of government and military documents, the whistleblower first contacted more established media outlets, including the New York Times and Washington Post, but was brushed off by editors.
As Pilkington, present in the courtroom for the reading of Manning’s statement, reports:
While he was on leave from Iraq and staying in the Washington area in January 2010 he contacted the Washington Post and asked would it be interested in receiving information that he said would be “enormously important to the American people”. He spoke to a woman who said she was a reporter but “she didn’t seem to take me seriously”.
The woman said, according to Manning’s account, that the paper would only be interested subject to vetting by senior editors.
Despairing of that route, Manning turned to the New York Times. He called the public editor of the paper but only got voicemail.
He then tried other numbers on the paper but also got put through to voicemail, and though he left a message with his Skype contact details, nobody called him back. Manning added he had also contemplated going to the website Politico, but harsh weather prevented him.
Such testimony belies the US government’s ongoing insinuation that Wikileaks—which specifically describes itself as a “not-for-profit media organization”—somehow played a role in compelling Manning to leak the documents. It further provides evidence that Manning was acting in the capacity of a true government or military whistleblower by proactively seeking out the media in hopes of bringing to light what he considered information vital to the public interest.
“I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan. It might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day.” –Bradley Manning
Manning also explained his deeper motivations, which included hopes that the leaks documents would expose the “true costs of war”. According to Pilkington’s account, Manning stated:
“I felt we were risking so much for people who seemed to be unwilling to cooperate with us leading to frustration and hostility on both sides. I began to get depressed about he situation we were mired in year after year.
“We were obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and ignoring goals and missions. I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan. It might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day.”
Thursday’s courtroom proceedings were covered best on Twitter:
Thursday’s revelations came as Manning read a prepared statement—reportedly handwritten over 35 pages—before a packed military courtroom. The statement is Manning’s first complete account of what government and military information he leaked to Wikileaks, and an explanation of why he chose to do so.
Manning pled guilty to a series of charges, including providing Wikileaks with confidential military information, but denied the most serious charge against him, that of “aiding the enemy.”
According to FireDogLake’s Kevin Gosztola, reporting live from the courtroom, Manning’s plea makes possible two rulings by the presiding judge: “guilty to lesser-included offenses pursuant to the plea” or “guilty of the greater offenses in the original charges.” The court cannot find him “not guilty” based on his plea.
Pilkington also reported that Manning “confirmed he wants to be tried by military judge [Colonel Denise Lind] alone,” with no military equivalent of a jury.
In addition to revealign his attempts to contact other outlets first, Manning also told the courtroom that once he’d established communication with Wikileaks, “No one associated with [the outlet] pressured me into sending more information.”
In regards to his leak of the collateral murder video, Manning said, “I was disturbed by the response to injured children” and that the soldiers captured in the video “seemed to not value human life by referring to [their targets] as ‘dead bastards.’”
He also said that he released the intelligence because he wanted to “spark a domestic public debate about our foreign policy and the war in general,” and added: “At the time I believed, and I still believe, these are … [among] … the most significant documents of our time.”
Pilkington continues:
Through his lawyer, David Coombs, the soldier pleaded guilty to 10 lesser charges that included possessing and wilfully communicating to an unauthorised person all the main elements of the WikiLeaks disclosure. That covered the so-called “collateral murder” video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq; some US diplomatic cables including one of the early WikiLeaks publications the Reykjavik cable; portions of the Iraq and Afghanistan warlogs, some of the files on detainees in Guantanamo; and two intelligence memos.
These lesser charges each carry a two-year maximum sentence, committing Manning to a possible upper limit of 20 years in prison.
Manning also pleaded not guilty to 12 counts, including to the largest charge of “aiding the enemy,” which would have supposed that he knowingly gave help to al-Qaida either by leaking secret intelligence directly or via its publication on the internet. He also denied that at the time he gave the information to Wikileaks, he had “reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation”.
According to Gosztola, Manning pled guilty to “all that was anticipated except he did not plead guilty to releasing the Granai air strike video.”
______________________________
King: I Have a Dream. Obama: I Have a Drone. January 16, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, History, War.Tags: Afghanistan War, anti-war, civilian casualties, civilian deaths, drone missiles, I have a dream, inaugural address, martin luther king, mlk, nobel peace, norman solomon, obama inaugartion, obama nobel, peace, roger hollander, war
add a comment
A simple twist of fate has set President Obama’s second Inaugural Address for January 21, the same day as the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday.
Obama made no mention of King during the Inauguration four years ago — but since then, in word and deed, the president has done much to distinguish himself from the man who said “I have a dream.”
After his speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, King went on to take great risks as a passionate advocate for peace.
After his Inaugural speech in January 2009, Obama has pursued policies that epitomize King’s grim warning in 1967: “When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men.”
But Obama has not ignored King’s anti-war legacy. On the contrary, the president has gone out of his way to distort and belittle it.
In his eleventh month as president — while escalating the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, a process that tripled the American troop levels there — Obama traveled to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. In his speech, he cast aspersions on the peace advocacy of another Nobel Peace laureate: Martin Luther King Jr.
The president struck a respectful tone as he whetted the rhetorical knife before twisting. “I know there’s nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naive — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King,” he said, just before swiftly implying that those two advocates of nonviolent direct action were, in fact, passive and naive. “I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people,” Obama added.
Moments later, he was straining to justify American warfare: past, present, future. “To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason,” Obama said. “I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause. And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.”
Then came the jingo pitch: “Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.”
Crowing about the moral virtues of making war while accepting a peace prize might seem a bit odd, but Obama’s rhetoric was in sync with a key dictum from Orwell: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”
Laboring to denigrate King’s anti-war past while boasting about Uncle Sam’s past (albeit acknowledging “mistakes,” a classic retrospective euphemism for carnage from the vantage point of perpetrators), Obama marshaled his oratory to foreshadow and justify the killing yet to come under his authority.
Two weeks before the start of Obama’s second term, the British daily The Guardian noted that “U.S. use of drones has soared during Obama’s time in office, with the White House authorizing attacks in at least four countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It is estimated that the CIA and the U.S. military have undertaken more than 300 drone strikes and killed about 2,500 people.”
The newspaper reported that a former member of Obama’s “counter-terrorism group” during the 2008 campaign, Michael Boyle, says the White House is now understating the number of civilian deaths due to the drone strikes, with loosened standards for when and where to attack: “The consequences can be seen in the targeting of mosques or funeral processions that kill non-combatants and tear at the social fabric of the regions where they occur. No one really knows the number of deaths caused by drones in these distant, sometimes ungoverned, lands.”
Although Obama criticized the Bush-era “war on terror” several years ago, Boyle points out, President Obama “has been just as ruthless and indifferent to the rule of law as his predecessor.”
Boyle’s assessment — consistent with the conclusions of many other policy analysts — found the Obama administration’s use of drones is “encouraging a new arms race that will empower current and future rivals and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent.”
In recent weeks, more than 50,000 Americans have signed a petition to Ban Weaponized Drones from the World. The petition says that “weaponized drones are no more acceptable than land mines, cluster bombs or chemical weapons.” It calls for President Obama “to abandon the use of weaponized drones, and to abandon his ‘kill list’ program regardless of the technology employed.”
Count on lofty rhetoric from the Inaugural podium. The spirit of Dr. King will be elsewhere.
Norman Solomon is founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org. He co-chairs the national Healthcare Not Warfare campaign organized by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State“.
The ‘War on Terror’ – by Design – Can Never End January 5, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Iraq and Afghanistan, War, War on Terror.Tags: afghanistan occupation, Afghanistan War, al-Qaeda, glenn greenwald, Guantanamo, habeas corpus, jed johnson, obama administgration, patriot act, Pentagon, presidential assassination, roger hollander, state secrets, Taliban, terrorism, U.S. imperialism, war on terror, warrantless eavesdropping
add a comment
.
Published on Friday, January 4, 2013 by The Guardian
As the Pentagon’s former top lawyer urges that the war be viewed as finite, the US moves in the opposite direction
by Glenn Greenwald
A U.S. Army soldier takes cover as a Black Hawk chopper takes off from a U.S. military base in Arghandab valley near Kandahar. (Photo: Reuters)
Last month, outgoing pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson gave a speech at the Oxford Union and said that the War on Terror must, at some point, come to an end:
“Now that efforts by the US military against al-Qaida are in their 12th year, we must also ask ourselves: How will this conflict end? . . . . ‘War’ must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. We must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the ‘new normal.’ Peace must be regarded as the norm toward which the human race continually strives. . . .
“There will come a tipping point at which so many of the leaders and operatives of al-Qaida and its affiliates have been killed or captured, and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States, that al-Qaida will be effectively destroyed.”
On Thursday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow interviewed Johnson, and before doing so, she opined as follows:
“When does this thing we are in now end? And if it does not have an end — and I’m not speaking as a lawyer here, I am just speaking as a citizen who feels morally accountable for my country’s actions — if it does not have an end, then morally speaking it does not seem like it is a war. And then, our country is killing people and locking them up outside the traditional judicial system in a way I think we maybe cannot be forgiven for.”
It is precisely the intrinsic endlessness of this so-called “war” that is its most corrupting and menacing attribute, for the reasons Maddow explained. But despite the happy talk from Johnson, it is not ending soon. By its very terms, it cannot. And all one has to do is look at the words and actions of the Obama administration to know this.
There’s no question that this “war” will continue indefinitely. There is no question that US actions are the cause of that, the gasoline that fuels the fire.
In October, the Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported that the administration was instituting a “disposition matrix” to determine how terrorism suspects will be disposed of, all based on this fact: “among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade.” As Miller puts it: “That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”
The polices adopted by the Obama administration just over the last couple of years leave no doubt that they are accelerating, not winding down, the war apparatus that has been relentlessly strengthened over the last decade. In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has diluted decades-old Miranda warnings; codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil; plotted to relocate Guantanamo to Illinois; increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the camp; minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens; renewed the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years, as well as the Patriot Act, without a single reform; and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of indefinitely held detainees.
Does that sound to you like a government anticipating the end of the War on Terror any time soon? Or does it sound like one working feverishly to make their terrorism-justified powers of detention, surveillance, killing and secrecy permanent? About all of this, the ACLU’s Executive Director, Anthony Romero, provided the answer on Thursday: “President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day. His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended.”
There’s a good reason US officials are assuming the “War on Terror” will persist indefinitely: namely, their actions ensure that this occurs. The New York Times’ Matthew Rosenberg this morning examines what the US government seems to regard as the strange phenomenon of Afghan soldiers attacking US troops with increasing frequency, and in doing so, discovers a shocking reality: people end up disliking those who occupy and bomb their country:
“Such insider attacks, by Afghan security forces on their Western allies, became ‘the signature violence of 2012′, in the words of one former American official. The surge in attacks has provided the clearest sign yet that Afghan resentment of foreigners is becoming unmanageable, and American officials have expressed worries about its disruptive effects on the training mission that is the core of the American withdrawal plan for 2014. . . .
“But behind it all, many senior coalition and Afghan officials are now concluding that after nearly 12 years of war, the view of foreigners held by many Afghans has come to mirror that of the Taliban. Hope has turned into hatred, and some will find a reason to act on those feelings.
“‘A great percentage of the insider attacks have the enemy narrative — the narrative that the infidels have to be driven out — somewhere inside of them, but they aren’t directed by the enemy,’ said a senior coalition officer, who asked not to be identified because of Afghan and American sensitivities about the attacks.”
In other words, more than a decade of occupying and brutalizing that country has turned large swaths of the population into the “Taliban”, to the extent that the “Taliban” means: Afghans willing to use violence to force the US and its allies out of their country. As always, the US – through the very policies of aggression and militarism justified in the name of terrorism – is creating the very “terrorists” those polices are supposedly designed to combat. It’s a pure and perfect system of self-perpetuation.
There is zero reason for US officials to want an end to the war on terror, and numerous and significant reasons why they would want it to continue.
Exactly the same thing is happening in Yemen, where nothing is more effective at driving Yemenis into the arms of al-Qaida than the rapidly escalated drone attacks under Obama. This morning, the Times reported that US air strikes in Yemen are carried out in close cooperation with the air force of Saudi Arabia, which will only exacerbate that problem. Indeed, virtually every person accused of plotting to target the US with terrorist attacks in last several years has expressly cited increasing US violence, aggression and militarism in the Muslim world as the cause.
There’s no question that this “war” will continue indefinitely. There is no question that US actions are the cause of that, the gasoline that fuels the fire. The only question – and it’s becoming less of a question for me all the time – is whether this endless war is the intended result of US actions or just an unwanted miscalculation.
It’s increasingly hard to make the case that it’s the latter. The US has long known, and its own studies have emphatically concluded, that “terrorism” is motivated not by a “hatred of our freedoms” but by US policy and aggression in the Muslim world. This causal connection is not news to the US government. Despite this – or, more accurately, because of it – they continue with these policies.
One of the most difficult endeavors is to divine the motives of other people (divining our own motives is difficult enough). That becomes even more difficult when attempting to discern the motives not of a single actor but a collection of individuals with different motives and interests (“the US government”).
But what one can say for certain is that there is zero reason for US officials to want an end to the war on terror, and numerous and significant reasons why they would want it to continue. It’s always been the case that the power of political officials is at its greatest, its most unrestrained, in a state of war. Cicero, two thousand years ago, warned that “In times of war, the law falls silent” (Inter arma enim silent leges). John Jay, in Federalist No. 4, warned that as a result of that truth, “nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it . . . for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans.”
Only outside compulsion, from citizens, can make an end to all of this possible.
If you were a US leader, or an official of the National Security State, or a beneficiary of the private military and surveillance industries, why would you possibly want the war on terror to end? That would be the worst thing that could happen. It’s that war that generates limitless power, impenetrable secrecy, an unquestioning citizenry, and massive profit.
Just this week, a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration need not respond to the New York Times and the ACLU’s mere request to disclose the government’s legal rationale for why the President believes he can target US citizens for assassination without due process. Even while recognizing how perverse her own ruling was – “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me” and it imposes “a veritable Catch-22″ – the federal judge nonetheless explained that federal courts have constructed such a protective shield around the US government in the name of terrorism that it amounts to an unfettered license to violate even the most basic rights: “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret” (emphasis added).
Why would anyone in the US government or its owners have any interest in putting an end to this sham bonanza of power and profit called “the war on terror”? Johnson is right that there must be an end to this war imminently, and Maddow is right that the failure to do so will render all the due-process-free and lawless killing and imprisoning and invading and bombing morally indefensible and historically unforgivable.
But the notion that the US government is even entertaining putting an end to any of this is a pipe dream, and the belief that they even want to is fantasy. They’re preparing for more endless war; their actions are fueling that war; and they continue to reap untold benefits from its continuation. Only outside compulsion, from citizens, can make an end to all of this possible.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited
Glenn Greenwald is a columnist on civil liberties and US national security issues for the Guardian. A former constitutional lawyer, he was until 2012 a contributing writer at Salon. His most recent book is, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. His other books include: Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, and How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.
US Military Detains More Than 200 Afghan Teens as ‘Enemy Combatants’ December 9, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: afghan teenagers, Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, bagram, childrens rights, enemy combatant, International law, roger hollander
add a comment
Roger’s note: the United States invades a country on the other side of the world that poses no threat to its security, throwing down death and destruction. Cowardly unmanned missiles rain down on civilian targets, and here we learn that children are captured and thrown into the hell hole dungeon know as the Bagram prison. God Bless America. It knows how to treat its “enemies” regardless of age.
Published on Saturday, December 8, 2012 by Common Dreams
‘Children as young as 11 or 12′ detained at Bagram
More than 200 Afghan teenagers have been captured and detained by the US military, the United States told the United Nations in a very troubling report distributed this week.
(Photo: Cpl. Reece Lodder / Marine Corps)
In recent years, the US has received criticism from a number of human rights organizations for failing to meet commitments to protect children in war zones.
The report was written in response to questions raised earlier this year by the United Nations committee charged with implementing the international treaty on the rights of children in armed conflict, formally known as the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (OPAC).
According to the report, the State Department detained the children for up to a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
Characterized as “enemy combatants,” the purpose of detention was “not punitive but preventative: to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield,” the report said.
Though the US military estimates that most of the juvenile Afghan detainees were about 16 years old, their age was not usually determined until after capture.
“I’ve represented children as young as 11 or 12 who have been at Bagram,” said Tina M Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile detainees.
Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s human rights program, added that it was “highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by US forces.”
In regards to the inexplicably long detention, Dakwar added, “This is an extraordinarily unacceptably long period of time that exposes children in detention to greater risk of physical and mental abuse, especially if they are denied access to the protections guaranteed to them under international law.”
Allison Frankel of the ACLU human rights program wrote Saturday that there were significant and troubling lapses in information in the report:
The U.S. still has not provided any specific information about where these children were transferred to, or what forms of rehabilitation and reintegration assistance has been made available to them. Although this support is mandated under OPAC, evidence suggests that the U.S. has thus far failed to provide such assistance, let alone remedies for wrongful detention and abuse in U.S. custody.
According to the Associated Press, the State Department filed a similar report in 2008, providing a “snapshot” of the “US military’s effort in the endgame of the Bush presidency”:
In 2008, the US said it held about 500 juveniles in Iraqi detention centers and then had only about 10 at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. A total of some 2,500 youths had been detained, almost all in Iraq, from 2002 through 2008 under the Bush administration.
Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 in part on winding down active US involvement in the Iraq war, and shifting the military focus to Afghanistan. The latest figures on under-18 detainees reflect the redeployment of US efforts to Afghanistan.
The report was issued within the same week as an objectionable article in Military Times entitled “Some Afghan Kids Aren’t Bystanders,” quoted a senior officer who said that the military isn’t just out to bomb “military age males,” anymore, but kids, too:
“It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion “Ced” Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”
Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah specializing in counter-terrorism, said Carrington’s remarks reflected the shifting definitions of legitimate military targets within the Obama administration, the Guardian reports.
He is articulating a deeply troubling policy adopted by the Obama administration.
The decision about who you consider a legitimate target is less defined by your conduct than the conduct of the people or category of people which you are assigned to belong to … That is beyond troubling. It is also illegal and immoral.
The U.S. will undergo formal review by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in January 2013.
Mental Trauma of War to Haunt Generation of Afghanistan’s Children November 17, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Uncategorized.Tags: Afghanistan, afghanistan children, Afghanistan War, roger hollander, war
add a comment
Roger’s note: Why is the United States at war in Afghanistan? Does anyone remember? Something to do with the Afghani government not turning over Osama Bin Laden after 9/11, the Afghani’s wanted some proof, the Americans just wanted Osama. So they decided to destroy the country AND ITS CHILDREN. Osama is dead and buried (at sea we are told by the president who had him assassinated), but the killing and traumatizing still goes on. American tax payer: this is where your money goes.
Published on Friday, November 16, 2012 by Common Dreams
“Day by day the mental health problems caused by the war are increasing,” said psychiatrist Said Najib Jawed
The horrors of years of war in Afghanistan whose mental scars on children last long after combat ends are detailed in a report on Friday from Reuters.
(photo: Sgt. Roland Hale via flickr) For children 11 and younger, there’s only been life under the U.S.-led occupation, and its toll has manifested in widespread mental health problems.
“The generation born after 2001 when the international community entered Afghanistan might be 10, 11 year olds now, and I’ve been seeing 11 year olds and 10 year olds nowadays who are presenting with so many mental health problems: nightmares, depression, anxiety, incontinence,” Mohammad Zaman Rajabi, clinical psychology advisor at the Kabul Mental Health Hospital, the only facility in the country that treats mental illness, told Reuters.
The mental toll of years of war — regardless of any troop drawdown — are on the rise.
“The physical aspects of war (last) for a limited time, but the psychological aspects of the war extend for many years. Day by day the mental health problems caused by the war are increasing,” consultant psychiatrist Said Najib Jawed told Reuters.
Rajabi adds that the impacts of this traumatized younger generation, who’s known nothing but violence as the norm, will be widespread.
“All these things will lead to a generation of people who are not very healthy mentally, and this will affect everything in the country: education, relationships, families, generally the development of the country.”
To make matters worse, “the public health system, like much of the country’s infrastructure, has been wrecked by decades of war.”
US attack kills 5 Afghan kids May 8, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel, Gaza & Middle East, Media, War.Tags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, civilian casualties, collateral damage, corporate media, drone missiles, drones, glenn greenwald, muslim terrorists, roger hollander, yemen, yemen airstrikes
add a comment
The way in which the U.S. media ignores such events speaks volumes about how we perceive them
By Glenn Greenwald, www.salon.com, May 8, 2012
Yesterday, I noted several reports from Afghanistan that as many as 20 civilians were killed by two NATO airstrikes, including a mother and her five children. Today, the U.S. confirmed at least some of those claims, acknowledging and apologizing for its responsibility for the death of that family:
The American military claimed responsibility and expressed regret for an airstrike that mistakenly killed six members of a family in southwestern Afghanistan, Afghan and American military officials confirmed Monday.
The attack, which took place Friday night, was first revealed by the governor of Helmand Province, Muhammad Gulab Mangal, on Monday. His spokesman, Dawoud Ahmadi, said that after an investigation they had determined that a family home in the Sangin district had been attacked by mistake in the American airstrike, which was called in to respond to a Taliban attack. . . . The victims were the family’s mother and five of her children, three girls and two boys, according to Afghan officials.
This happens over and over and over again, and there are several points worth making here beyond the obvious horror:
(1) To the extent these type of incidents are discussed at all — and in American establishment media venues, they are most typically ignored — there are certain unbending rules that must be observed in order to retain Seriousness credentials. No matter how many times the U.S. kills innocent people in the world, it never reflects on our national character or that of our leaders. Indeed, none of these incidents convey any meaning at all. They are mere accidents, quasi-acts of nature which contain no moral information (in fact, the NYT article on these civilian deaths, out of nowhere, weirdly mentioned that “in northern Afghanistan, 23 members of a wedding celebration drowned in severe flash flooding” — as though that’s comparable to the U.S.’s dropping bombs on innocent people). We’ve all been trained, like good little soldiers, that the phrase “collateral damage” cleanses and justifies this and washes it all way: yes, it’s quite terrible, but innocent people die in wars; that’s just how it is. It’s all grounded in America’s central religious belief that the country has the right to commit violence anywhere in the world, at any time, for any cause.
At some point — and more than a decade would certainly qualify — the act of continuously killing innocent people, countless children, in the Muslim world most certainly does reflect upon, and even alters, the moral character of a country, especially its leaders. You can’t just spend year after year piling up the corpses of children and credibly insist that it has no bearing on who you are. That’s particularly true when, as is the case in Afghanistan, the cause of the war is so vague as to be virtually unknowable. It’s woefully inadequate to reflexively dismiss every one of these incidents as the regrettable but meaningless by-product of our national prerogative. But to maintain mainstream credibility, that is exactly how one must speak of our national actions even in these most egregious cases. To suggest any moral culpability, or to argue that continuously killing children in a country we’re occupying is morally indefensible, is a self-marginalizing act, whereby one reveals oneself to be a shrill and unSerious critic, probably even a pacifist. Serious commentators, by definition, recognize and accept that this is merely the inevitable outcome of America’s supreme imperial right, note (at most) some passing regret, and then move on.
(2) Yesterday — a week after it leaked that it was escalating its drone strikes in Yemen — the Obama administration claimed that the CIA last month disrupted a scary plot originating in Yemen to explode an American civilian jet “using a more sophisticated version of the underwear bomb deployed unsuccessfully in 2009.” American media outlets — especially its cable news networks — erupted with their predictable mix of obsessive hysteria, excitement and moral outrage. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last night devoted the bulk of his show to this plot, parading the standard cast of characters — former Bush Homeland Security adviser (and terrorist advocate) Fran Townsend and its “national security analyst” Peter Bergen — to put on their Serious and Concerned faces, recite from the U.S. Government script, and analyze all the profound implications. CNN even hauled out Rep. Peter King to warn that this shows a “new level” of Terror threats from Yemen. CNN’s fixation on this plot continued into this morning.
Needless to say, the fact that the U.S. has spent years and years killing innocent adults and children in that part of the world — including repeatedly in Yemen — was never once mentioned, even though it obviously is a major factor for why at least some people in that country support these kinds of plots. Those facts are not permitted to be heard. Discussions of causation — why would someone want to attack a U.S. airliner? – is an absolute taboo, beyond noting that the people responsible are primitive and hateful religious fanatics. Instead, it is a simple morality play reinforced over and over: Americans are innocently minding their own business — trying to enjoy our Freedoms — and are being disgustingly targeted with horrific violence by these heinous Muslim Terrorists whom we must crush (naturally, the solution to the problem that there is significant anti-American animosity in Yemen is to drop even more bombs on them, which will certainly fix this problem).
Indeed, on the very same day that CNN and the other cable news networks devoted so much coverage to a failed, un-serious attempt to bring violence to the U.S. — one that never moved beyond the early planning stages and “never posed a threat to public safety” — it was revealed that the U.S. just killed multiple civilians, including a family of 5 children, in Afghanistan. But that got no mention. That event simply does not exist in the world of CNN and its viewers (I’d be shocked if it has been mentioned on MSNBC or Fox either). Nascent, failed non-threats directed at the U.S. merit all-hands-on-deck, five-alarm media coverage, but the actual extinguishing of the lives of children by the U.S. is steadfastly ignored (even though the latter is so causally related to the former).
This is the message sent over and over by the U.S. media: we are the victims of heinous, frightening violence; our government must do more, must bomb more, but surveil more, to Keep Us Safe; we do nothing similar to this kind of violence because we are Good and Civilized. This is how our Objective, Viewpoint-Free journalistic outlets continuously propagandize: by fixating on the violence done by others while justifying — or, more often, ignoring — the more far-reaching and substantial violence perpetrated by the U.S.
(3) If one of the relatives of the children just killed in Afghanistan decided to attack the U.S. — or if one of the people involved in this Yemen-originating plot were a relative of one of the dozens of civilians killed by Obama’s 2009 cluster bomb strike — what would they be called by the U.S. media? Terrorists. Primitive, irrational, religious fanatics beyond human decency.
* * * * *
This point cannot be emphasized enough.
In Midnight Signing Ceremony, Obama Promises at Least Ten More Years of War in Afghanistan May 2, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: Afghanistan, afghanistan government, afghanistan occupation, Afghanistan War, al-Qaeda, bin Laden, Karzai, roger hollander, Taliban
add a comment
One thing crystal clear in secretive US-Afghan ‘strategic partnership agreement’: War not even close to ending
President Obama’s secret trip to Afghanistan, shrouded in secrecy for security reasons, culminated in a midnight meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the signing of a ‘strategic partnership agreement’, the full details of which have not been made available to either the American or Afghan public.
US President Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan late Tuesday on a surprise visit and signed a ‘strategic partnership agreement’ with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a midnight ceremony. (AFP)
”If ever there was an image to convey the limits of the UK-US success in Afghanistan, it was the way that Barack Obama, the Commander-in-Chief of the liberating, Taliban-scattering forces was forced to skulk into Kabul last night under the cover of darkness,” writes the Telegraph‘s Peter Foster. “After landing at Bagram Airbase just after 10pm local time, there was a low-level, cover-of-darkness of helicopter insertion to the Presidential Palace where the ten-page deal (which contains no specifics on funding or troop levels) was signed around midnight.”
The agreement, broadly understood, codifies the ongoing conditions under which the US government agrees to operate in Afghanistan and will guide policies on the management of military bases, authority over detainees, the execution of night raids and other security operations, and will set conditions for troop levels and residual US forces that will remain in Afghanistan even after a ‘withdrawal’ commences in 2014. The agreement also deals with ongoing financial support for the Afghan government and military into the future.
Though Obama spoke optimistically of ‘light of a new day’ in Afghanistan and many media reports heralded the agreement as a ‘signal to the end of war’, more sober analysts arrived at more troubling conclusions.
“Interestingly,” writes Jason Ditz at Anti-war.com, “with the ink now drying on the document and the US officially committed to the occupation of Afghanistan for another decade, officials are continuing to tout 2014 as the “end” of the war. This speaks to how the 2024 date, though openly discussed by the Karzai government in Afghanistan and privately acknowledged as part of the secret pact, has not been publicly presented to the American public. When they will officially spring it on us remains unclear.”
“While the world may accept that the US and Afghan governments have some ‘state’ or ‘noble’ considerations for not revealing the contents of the US/Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement, how about the democratic consideration of involving Afghans in their own future?” asked Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, who is currently on a peace walk from Madison, Wisc. to Chicago, where she will arrive in time for the upcoming NATO Summit.
“The SPA is likely to prolong fighting in the region,” Kelly added, “because the Taliban and neighboring countries have clearly stated that they won’t accept US foreign troop presence. Also, many Afghans wonder if the US and NATO want to protect construction of the TAPI [Trans-Afghanistan] pipeline, which the 2010 NATO summit approved of and the New Silk Road which Hilary Clinton has promised the US will construct.”
President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai sign a strategic partnership agreement at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday. (Charles Dharapak/AP)
US veteran Sgt. Jacob George, who served in Afghanistan but now speaks out against the war, argued the agreement speaks to the futility of US military efforts in Afghanistan that began with the US invasion in 2001. “The agreement actually allows for sustaining a ‘post-conflict’ force of 20,000 to 30,000 troops for a continued training of indigenous forces. They are pretending this is something new, but it’s not. That’s what I was doing in 2001 — and 2002, 2003 and 2004. This is just disastrous, for ten years, with the greatest military the world has ever seen, we’ve been unable to defeat people with RPGs. And a year after Bin Laden was killed, we’re still planning to keep tens of thousands of troops there.”
Andrey Avetisyan, Russian ambassador to Kabul, speaking to the Telegraph newspaper ahead of the agreement, revealed concern for the long-term impacts of a sustained US military presence. “Afghanistan needs many other things apart from the permanent military presence of some countries. It needs economic help and it needs peace. Military bases are not a tool for peace.”
“Does anyone think our staying until 2024 is going to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan?” ask Kevin Martin and Michael Eisenscher in an op-ed today on Common Dreams. “We’ve already been there for eleven years – the longest war in our country’s history. What do we really have to show for it? We’ve spent almost $523 billion. Almost 2000 Americans have been killed and another 15,300 wounded. 1000 NATO troops have lost their lives.” Eisenscher is National Coordinator of U.S. Labor Against the War and Martin is the executive director of Peace Action.
Dec. 19, 2001 — Marine Lt. Ronald Reed of Virginia waits inside his fighting position on the perimeter of the bombed-out airport in Kandahar. More than eleven years later, an end to the disaster that is the US war in Afghanistan is nowhere in sight. (Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times)
They continue: “Staying through 2024 will be a hard sell to the majority of Americans. According to last week’s Pew Research public opinion poll, only about a third of those polled think U.S. troops should stay in Afghanistan ‘until the situation there is stabilized’ (whatever that means). About two-thirds of Obama supporters, and almost as many swing voters (who make up nearly a quarter of the electorate), want a swift withdrawal of U.S. troops, while Mitt Romney supporters are split just about evenly.”
Today also marks the one year anniversary of the US killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Martin and Eisensche conclude: “It’s not clear what the year since the killing of Bin Laden has done to improve U.S. or Afghan security. It’s even less clear what staying for another dozen years will do for either country. The time to bring U.S. forces home is now, not 2014, and certainly not 2024.”
And Robert Naiman, Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy, asks in his analysis at Common Dreams, ‘What Did We Get for 381 US Dead Since the Death of bin Laden?‘ and writes:
In his speech, President Obama said, “As we move forward, some people will ask why we need a firm timeline.” I’m delighted that President Obama supports the principle of a firm timeline. But it’s far from obvious that we actually have a “firm timeline,” and if we do, exactly what it is. Certainly there is no timeline for when all U.S. troops will be withdrawn. President Obama did seem to imply that we can be sure that there will be no U.S. troops involved in “combat” in Afghanistan after December 31, 2014. But they may be involved in “counterterrorism,” which presumably is combat, and “training,” and if you ask the military what “training” is, they will say it includes embedding with Afghanistan troops who are engaged in combat. So “training” is also combat. And therefore it is far from obvious that we actually have a “firm timeline” for anything. [...]
In his speech, President Obama said: “we are pursuing a negotiated peace. In coordination with the Afghan government, my Administration has been in direct discussions with the Taliban. We have made it clear that they can be a part of this future if they break with al Qaeda, renounce violence, and abide by Afghan laws. “
Isn’t this essentially the same policy that Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was proposing in October 2006 when he said that the Afghan Taliban couldn’t be defeated militarily and that the U.S. should bring “people who call themselves Taliban” into the Afghan government? Why have we waited almost six years to adopt this policy? Are we really going to get a much better deal now than we could have had six years ago? If so, will the difference be sufficient to justify the additional sacrifice of the last six years?
If we stopped the killing now, how sure are we that the political deal that would result would be much worse for us than the deal that will result if we keep killing? Shouldn’t someone have to answer that? What if we tried having an offensive cease-fire for 30 days, just as an experiment, to see if it facilitated peace talks? What exactly would be the downside of giving that experiment a try?
# # #
- Post as …
-
Image
Showing 10 comments
-
The ‘mother lode’ of Afghan lithium is so thinly dispersed it will take moving hundreds of tons of rock to obtain a pound of lithium, and cost more money than it will be worth.
This idea of Afghan lithium was shot down by the market more than a year ago.
-
“Obama Promises Ten More Years of War in Afghanistan.”
Finally.
A political campaign promise everybody knows Obama will keep.
After Afghan Massacre, War Gets Victim Status March 12, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Iraq and Afghanistan, Media, War.Tags: afghan massacre, Afghanistan, afghanistan occupation, Afghanistan War, chuck schumer, civilian casualties, Karzai, lindsey graham, Media, robert mcdonnell, roger hollander, war, war reporting
add a comment
| Roger’s note: it is tragic, it is surreal; it is Kafkesque; it is an Alice
in Wonderland world; it is the mentality of mass media reporters and politicians in an imperial nation completely divorced from reality and from the death and terror it creates. All in the name of freedom and democracy. Orwellian, yes. There is one thing, however, that the the media and political pundits are getting right: their anticipation that the chickens will come home to roost.
Media Advisory After Afghan Massacre, War Gets Victim Status Media treat killings as PR problem for occupation 3/12/12 “Afghanistan, once the must-fight war for America, is becoming a public relations headache for the nation’s leaders, especially for President Barack Obama,” explained an Associated Press analysis piece (3/12/12). Reuters (3/12/12) called it “the latest American public relations disaster in Afghanistan.” On the NBC Today show (3/11/12) the question was posed this way: “Could this reignite a new anti-American backlash in the unstable region?” The answer: “This is not going to bode well for the U.S. and NATO here in Afghanistan,” explained reporter Atia Abawi. “Obviously people here very fearful as to what’s going to happen next, what protests will come about throughout different parts of Afghanistan, and how the Taliban are going to use this to their advantage.” “People,” as used here, would not seem to include Afghans, who are presumably less frightened by protests against a massacre of children than they are by the massacre itself. The front-page headline at USA Today (3/12/12) read, “Killings Threaten Afghan Mission.” The story warned that the allegations “threaten to test U.S. strategy to end the conflict.” In the New York Times (3/12/12), the massacre was seen as “igniting fears of a new wave of anti-American hostility.” The paper went on to portray occupation forces as victims: The possibility of a violent reaction to the killings added to a feeling of siege here among Western personnel. Officials described growing concern over a cascade of missteps and offenses that has cast doubt on the ability of NATO personnel to carry out their mission and has left troops and trainers increasingly vulnerable to violence by Afghans seeking revenge. The fact that the massacres occurred two days after a NATO helicopter strike killed four civilians was “adding to the sense of concern.” Another Times piece (3/12/12) began with this: The outrage from the back-to-back episodes of the Koran burning and the killing on Sunday of at least 16 Afghan civilians imperils what the Obama administration once saw as an orderly plan for 2012.
That sounds as if “outrage” is the most serious problem–the reaction to the actions, not the actions themselves. Covering the latest atrocity, the Washington Post (3/12/12) reported that “the killings Sunday threatened to spark a new crisis in the strained relationship between the United States and Afghanistan.” A separate piece quoted an anonymous U.S. official complaining that massacres “plays to the absolute worst fears and stereotypes” of the U.S. military, and that “it’s the type of boogeyman [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai has always raised, but we’ve never had an incident like this.” But there have been similar single incidents, most notably a 2007 attack by Marines that killed 19 civilians. And night raids by NATO forces have killed Afghans throughout the war. On the Sunday talkshows, Republicans and Democrats spoke about the massacre–often with little to distinguish their points of view. On ABC‘s This Week (3/11/12), Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told viewers that “unfortunately, these things happen in war…. You just have to push through these things.” He added that “the surge of forces has really put the Taliban on the defensive…. We can win this thing. We can get it right.” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) remarked: I think the president has a good plan. Obviously, it’s a very difficult situation because we have real terrorism that emanated from Afghanistan. The president doesn’t get enough credit. He’s done an amazing job with the drones and Al-Qaeda.
On NBC‘s Meet the Press (3/11/12), Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell, a Republican, said the news was “tragic because we have so many brave men and women, David, for now 10-plus years in the global war on terror, have done marvelous work for the cause freedom in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places…. It’s too bad and we’ll have to see the details. But I’m really proud of what our kids are doing there.” Is it too much to expect that the dominant reaction after a grisly atrocity should involve sympathy for its victims rather than pride in the forces whom the perpetrator belonged to?
|
Freedom Rider: Obama Usurps the GOP March 2, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in 2012 Election, Barack Obama, Political Commentary.Tags: 2012 election, Afghanistan War, bailout, conservatives, election debate, margaret kimberley, Obama, obamacare, religious conservatives, Republican candidates, republicans, roger hollander
add a comment
Roger’s note: I generally stay away from posting articles analyzing the 2012 election, not because it is irrelevant, but because the election ”debate” has little to do with the real world and the dangers therein, it is rather an exercise in surrealistic entertainment that would be funny if it weren’t tragically and menacingly insane. The Black Agenda Review web site has consistently told it like it is about the Obama presidency, and this article while not necessarily brilliant, does put things in their proper perspective.
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley, www.blackagendareport.com, February 29, 2012
“Republicans don’t know how to run against Obama because he has governed as one of them from the start.”
It seems strange that the issues of abortion and contraception have taken up such a large proportion of Republican campaign rhetoric. Every Republican presidential debate features candidates outdoing one another in declaring their opposition to a woman’s right to choose abortion.
“I’m against abortion,” one will say, only to be silenced by another candidate declaring that he has been opposed to abortion longer, or with more vehemence, or even in cases of rape. Bizarre statements about contraception are the order of the day, and former senator Rick Santorum uses his home schooled children as a rallying point, unless of course he is telling Americans not to enjoy sex, because it is only for making babies. Liberals, who love nothing more than feeling superior to conservatives, are mystified by the campaign, which looks more like a trip in a time machine back to the 1950s.
Why would the Republicans use campaign issues which appeal to such a small group of their electorate? It is true that religious conservatives make up a large portion of their base of support, but there is something else going on, too.
The prominence of these outlier issues are a direct result of Barack Obama having taken over every other Republican talking point. Before he even took office Obama showed whose side he was on when he made it clear that he would continue the bailouts to the banks that George W. Bush began. He has expanded America’s defense budget and the wars that inevitably result. His “grand bargain” with conservatives has resulted in cuts to government programs and an agreement on austerity measures which are the exact opposite of what should be done to improve the economy and prospects for unemployed people.
“Bizarre statements about contraception are the order of the day.”
Republicans don’t know how to run against Obama because he has governed as one of them from the start. They may mutter about “Obamacare” but his health care plan is a bailout of the health insurance industry and Big Pharma. They can’t call him weak on defense issues when he sends drones to kill people in Afghanistan or Pakistan or when he makes good on his threat to kill Muammar Gaddafi. Even American citizens like Anwar al-Awlaki are not safe when the president decides to literally take them out.
What is a conservative to do? Conservative pundit Bill Kristol called Obama a born again neo-con and Republican commentator Ben Stein said that Obama was the perfect Republican candidate. There is nowhere for the Republican faithful to go except to rail against the birth control mandate in the health care plan and call Obama an enemy of the Catholic church.
It isn’t difficult to amuse oneself when Rick Santorum says he throws up thinking about John F. Kennedy’s promise to the American public to keep religion out of government. It is all seemingly harmless theater, but the economic elite, the 1% if you will, win no matter who is in office.
It is indeed appalling when state legislatures across the country take on extreme positions in order to attack abortion. But make no mistake about it, there is never any opposition to thievery at the top because both parties kiss the rings of the rulers. The divide and conquer strategy is at work once again. While it is necessary to point out the dangerous Republican positions regarding women’s reproductive rights, it is also necessary to remember who runs the country and how they and their corporate media spokespersons never allow us to truly debate the most fundamental issues of the day.
“Conservative pundit Bill Kristol called Obama a born again neo-con and Republican commentator Ben Stein said that Obama was the perfect Republican candidate.”
The media do not point out the inherent dangers of a billion dollar presidential campaign. If they did so, they would have to reveal how they manufacture public opinion and create phony outrage regarding a number of topics. Despite all the campaign rhetoric to the contrary, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama are all conservatives. Gingrich may call Obama the food stamp president now, but neither man had any problems with the other when they joined forces to conduct a jeremiad against public education. Gingrich was welcomed to the White House, and he joined Obama mininion Al Sharpton in pushing for privatization of the schools and promoting a panoply of deadly corporate school “reform” measures.
We are fed a steady diet of manufactured opinion, pure propaganda which diverts our attention from the one constant in American politics. Money rules, and it will rule in January 2013 on inauguration day. Barack Obama will be that person because he plays the game better than anyone else. He has moved as far to the right as Ronald Reagan but Democrats still see him as their savior, the facts be damned. While the media have succeeded in creating smoke screens around contraception or the debate over the role of religion and government, the bailouts continue.
On Election Day in November 2012, we the people will lose, no matter who is giving a concession speech. All the outrage will have been misplaced and another defender of corporate control will rule over the rest of us. The divide and conquer strategy still wins the day.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com.Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
Meet an officer who has been killing soldiers at Ft. Lewis February 24, 2012
Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: Afghanistan War, dallas homas, fort lewis, ft. lewis, Iraq war, kevin baker, march forward, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, ptsd, roger hollander, soldier suicides, veterans
add a comment
ROGER’S NOTE: I DEDICATE THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE TO THOSE REPUBLICAN (AND DEMOCRATS LIKE HILLARY CLINTON) CHICKEN HAWKS WHO FROM THE SAFETY OF THEIR MANSIONS SEND AMERICAN MEN AND WOMEN OUT TO KILL AND DIE, AND TO ALL THOSE SUPER PATRIOTS WHO DRIVE AROUND WITH “SUPPORT OUR TROOPS” BUMPER STICKERS ON THEIR CARS.
 |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
||||||
 |
 |
|||||
It’s all smiles for Col. Homas; he’s got a sweet job, with no accountability for his actions—even if dozens of wounded soldiers die on his watch.
I am sure that the war profiteers and defense contractors are just delighted that they have another ten years of war profits to look forward to.
In ten years, the US troops will have been abandoned to the Afghans tender mercies, and the US economy will look like Russia’s on a bad day.
Eternal occupations and wars equal an eternal revenue stream for the military industrial complex (MIC).
Ever larger domestic program cuts branded as austerity will be required to fund the MIC’s ever larger corporate welfare programs.
Ok. a Couple things here…
Everytime we read about the “cost” of the war, it’s always in Amerocentric terms: We’ve spent almost $523 billion. Almost 2000 Americans have been killed and another 15,300 wounded. 1000 NATO troops have lost their lives. NO mention of how much the war has cost the Afghans. Shows that even so-called “progressives” hold this racist view.
Martin and Eisensche conclude: “It’s not clear what the year since the killing of Bin Laden has done to improve U.S. or Afghan security.
It’s very clear actually… it’s done NOTHING to “improve” Afghan security for sure. This is because the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan had very little to do with Osama BIn Laden and far more to do with geo-political strategies.
As far as “improving” American security? Americans are pretty much secure from “foreign terrorists”… The idea that there’s a Jihadi hiding behind every rock waiting to murder helpless Americans is retarded. The ONLY threat to American Security is American in origin.
Regarding US Military “security” in Afghanistan. The ONLY security they will ever have is when they LEAVE the country. Afghans will not accept a foreign occupation, no matter how it’s packaged. Period. End of story. An Occupation army does NOT deserve security.
‘President McCain’s secret trip to Afghanistan, shrouded in secrecy for security reasons, culminated in a midnight meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the signing of a ‘strategic partnership agreement’, the full details of which have not been made available to either the American or Afghan public.’
…’Though McCain spoke optimistically of ‘light of a new day’ in Afghanistan and many media reports heralded the agreement as a ‘signal to the end of war’, more sober analysts arrived at more troubling conclusions.’
Asked again: How would you react if McCain did and said the things Obama has?
Asked again: Is there anything Obama could do that would finally make you say, “Enough … I can support you no more.”?
Why would you PREplan the length or a war. That’s sick and Obama is a threat to humanity. The two parties of the genocidal elite must be gotten rid of for the sake of humanity. This is beyond horrible. Obama sells his soul again Not that he had one
Obviously the pipeline is behind schedule.
Not only the pipeline, but also the largest deposit of Lithium outside of China.
And guess where it is located exactly….the Swat Valley.