The occupied government of Afghanistan and the United Nations have both concluded that U.S.-led troops recently dragged eight sleeping children out of their beds, handcuffed some of them, and shot them all dead. While this apparently constitutes an everyday act of kindness, far less intriguing than the vicious singeing of his pubic hairs by Captain Underpants, it is at least a variation on the ordinary American technique of murdering men, women, and children by the dozens with unmanned drones.
Also this week in Afghanistan, eight CIA assassins (see if you can find a more appropriate name for them) were murdered by a suicide bombing that one of them apparently executed against the other seven. The Taliban in Pakistan claims credit and describes the mass-murder as revenge for the CIA's drone killings. And we thought unmanned drones were War Perfected because none of the right people would have to risk their lives. Oops. Perhaps Detroit-bound passengers risked theirs unwittingly.
We are halfway through a story that is about to turn winter in one of the most beautiful places in the world profoundly ugly.
Just like in a Cecil B. DeMille movie, we have a cast of millions, we have epic scenery, and we have made acquaintance with someone who will go on to perform a heroic act.
Unlike your typical Hollywood production, however, this movie is not going to have a happy ending-in fact, you could make the argument that it's not over yet.
So wrap yourself up in something comfortable, grab something to drink...and when you're ready, we're packing up and heading to the Alps.
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. ~ Barack Obama (President of the United States. Peace Prize Acceptance Speech. December 10, 2009)
For years, Americans saw live, and in person, or on television screens, Presidential aspirant Barack Obama. Several mused; the man is calm in a crisis. "No drama Obama" was the phrase most often associated with the candidate. Those closely and personally connected to the potential President corroborated what was for most only an observation. The election did not change Barack Obama. His calm demeanor remained intact. Yet, many perceived a difference, not in his response to a predicament, but in the President's rhetoric. Empathy evolved into escalation. This was perhaps most evident on two occasions, when Mister Obama delivered his Address on the War in Afghanistan, and then again when the Commander-In Chief offered his Remarks in acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. After these events, the pensive pondered; what was there all along, Cerebral Discord, the Two Faces of Barack Obama.
We have another one of those "amazing history" stories for you today-and this one's a real doozy.
We're going to spend the better part of four years in the Italian Alps (or, to be more accurate, what was intended to be the Italian Alps), and by the time we're done, nearly 400,000 soldiers will have been killed-and 60,000 of those will have died as a result of avalanches that were set by one side or the other.
In the middle of the story: a mountaineer and soldier who was so highly regarded that even those who fought against him accorded him the highest honors they could muster, creating a legend that lives on to this very day.
And even though a young Captain Erwin Rommel fought in these battles...it's not him.
Oh, by the way: did I mention that there are also some handy object lessons for anyone who might be thinking about fighting a war in Afghanistan?
Well, there are, Gentle Reader, so follow along, and let's all learn something today.
It is said, as individuals, we can achieve all we conceive, if only we truly believe. President Barack Obama once knew this. He lived this veracity. Indeed, candidate Obama's audacity and accomplishments gave Americans hope. When Barack Obama reached for the sky he realized what no one thought he could. The electorate was energized. People came to expect the country was in for a change. Now, it seems Mister Obama is bogged down by what Eisenhower understood, concerns of the Military Industrial Complex.
The intricacy of the Armed Forces mission does not confine itself to forceful martial escalation. Nothing escapes the wide reach of combative nation building. Lives are lost. Limbs crushed. With bullets ablaze, brains are battered or blown to smithereens. Hope suffers. Hearts are hurt.
War Is Not The Answer. U.S. Intelligence Admits: There Are Only 100 Members of Al Queda In Afghanistan. Revival Of The Domino Theory.
I listened to President Obama the other night trying to justify his decision to escalate the U.S. Wars in the Middle East. I don't think there was one word in his speech that had not been carefully placed there, with great deliberation, to allow him and the Democrats lots of wiggle-room and disclaimers for the future.
Some people "heard" that the U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 18 months, by July of 2011. But that's not what he said. Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. was on Rachel Maddow the following evening, and she made hair-splitting statements on that issue such as no, the troops will not be withdrawn by July of 2011, but the U.S. will begin to withdraw troops as the situation allows. Rachel Maddow asked whether Rice meant all the troops -- was Obama saying all the troops would begin to be withdrawn with no permanent U.S. bases staffed and in place forever? Or did he just mean some of the 30,000 additional troops would begin to be withdrawn? The answer was slick, clever, and evasive. Draw your own conclusions, but mine is that there is no intention by the U.S. to withdraw troops from the countries we now occupy, other than for the purpose of attacking and invading other countries such as Pakistan and Iran.
What is really going on is a revival of the old Domino theory. Listening to the ambassador try to justify this military occupation was a convoluted effort. Yes (she acknowledged) it's true that there are not many al Queda people in Afghanistan (U.S. intelligence admits that there are only One Hundred people, 100 al Queda people inside Afghanistan). See http://www.informationclearing...
But, the Ambassador worries, even if there are very few al Queda members inside Afghanistan, they might come back someday. They could. It's possible. And therefore, we need to send in an additional 30,000 troops, bringing U.S. troops levels in Afghanistan to 100,000.
Obama said he was going to be honest with the American public about the cost of his escalation. He says the escalation will cost Thirty Billion Dollars. $30,000,000,000.00. Some people heard that the entire continuation of the war would cost Thirty Billion, but that's not true. Thirty Billion is the extra amount that we'll spend on top of the money we were already spending in Afghanistan.
According to the website Cost Of War, the U.S. has spent $233 Billion so far in the war against Afghanistan which, according to Obama, was not really much of a war at all. We've spent $706 Billion on the U.S. War against Iraq. Total for the two wars so far is $939 Billion, almost One Trillion Dollars. That's just what we've spent so far, and does not include the costs to our country for the injured veterans' care in the future. It does not include the costs of escalation. It does not include the new war we are starting against Pakistan. It does not include the war they want to start against Iran. Our economy is in ruins, our politicians are all on the payroll of the corporations which really run this country, our jobs have been sent to China to be done by slave labor, foreclosures are at a record high. These wars are bankrupting our country. Some estimates show that each family in this country will end up paying $50,000 for these wars. A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it starts to add up. http://www.costofwar.com/
Instead of just being honest with the American public about the additional cost from escalating the war, how about if Obama instead explains exactly how he plans to pay for this. With my money? I'm an American citizen, I don't have any money. The Republicans stole it all. So how will Obama pay for this, when the country is already broke? Shutting down schools, firing cops, failing to help the bankrupt states so they have to raise tuition in state colleges and only the rich can afford an education? How exactly does he plan to pay for all this war? If we're going to get honest about money, let's get real honest.
After all, the Ambassador continued, Pakistan is the real problem. She went on and on about Pakistan. But madam Ambassador, I wish Rachel had said, the Constitution gives only Congress the authority to declare war. Not the President. The President has no authority to start a war against any nation unless Congress has voted to do so. So how on earth can Obama now argue that we need 30,000 troops to fight in Afghanistan against people in Pakistan, when we are not at war with Pakistan. There has been no Congressional authorization for the U.S. to start a war against Pakistan. Does Obama, the Constitutional law scholar, intend to follow the Bush Doctrine, which is that the President can do whatever he wants, invade any country he wants?
First we had World War I, the War to End All Wars. When Americans came back from that war, they said no thanks, we don't want no more stinkin' wars. Then we had World War II. Which was largely the result of the economic crash in the entire world caused by U.S. criminals operating on Wall Street and stealing everyone else's money. Then we had Korea. What the heck was the U.S. doing in Korea? And Vietnam. And the standoff in Berlin with the U.S. on one side and the Soviet Union on the other. The Cold War. I'm not sure why it was called that, but on the surface it was mostly the U.S., the Soviet Union and China all claiming the others were trying to destroy them, all obtaining weapons and threatening to annihilate the other if they attacked first. Think of two well-armed men in a small room pointing a loaded gun at each other, fingers in the trigger, then standing there for 50 years.
Instead of having a peace dividend at the end of World War II, the military industrial complex (private war profiteers) began cheerleading for more weapons, more wars, so they could continue to take most of the U.S. budget every year for "defense." Instead of building schools and providing healthcare and free education for all Americans, instead of building affordable housing and providing all Americans with a decent pension on retirement, instead of that our money is stolen and used to pay for useless weapons.
How is this possible? Why would the American public stand for it? Such a waste.
The Domino Theory was one popular explanation as to why we needed to spend most of our public money on military contractors, buy more weapons, more planes, more bombs, more tanks. The Domino Theory is this: if one nation "falls" to communism (becomes a communist government) then every other nation in the region will also "fall" to communism. In other words, under the Domino Theory you don't even need one communist, or one al Queda member, inside a country, in order to justify invading it and militarily occupying it forever. After all, somebody might come along if we weren't there, and might try to set up a communist government. Better safe than sorry. Better dead than red.
And now we have the highly esteemed U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. trying to explain that Obama essentially has adopted the Domino Theory as his middle east policy. Talk about Deja Vu all over again. No, there is not much of an al Queda presence in Afghanistan (some U.S. intelligence experts say there are fewer than 100 al Queda members in Afghanistan). But they might come back. And if they did, then they could take over Pakistan too, and maybe Iraq or Saudi Arabia. When one Domino falls, it topples the whole line. We would be in danger if that happened.
Here's the truth. Whatever the imagined de jure bogey-man fear is that is used to justify the U.S. military attacking and invading and occupying and controlling other countries, dogmas and doctrines come and go, but the underlying conditions for world instability remain the same: poverty, hopelessness, oppression, injustice, lack of opportunity and despair.
People who have good lives have no interest in blowing up their neighbors. People who have nothing to lose will risk their lives for a bite of bread. Nobody acknowledges that the widespread appeal of the Taliban and al Queda comes from the conditions imposed on the middle east by western nations stealing their oil: widespread unemployment, lack of opportunity, horrendous levels of poverty, humiliation for over a century by Western occupation, injustice, despair and hopelessness.
Those are the conditions that give rise to people willing to risk their lives for a little bread for themselves, hope for their children. These are the conditions that give rise to the level of rage that would lead a person to fly an airplane into a hi-rise building. All the Western nations have done in the middle east is occupy the countries, demean and humiliate the people, and steal their resources. That's it. And occasionally our occupying forces and private contractors rape the women, just because they can.
Want to end the instability in the middle east and everywhere else in the world? Listen to Marvin Gaye. War is not the answer. War creates victims which creates enemies which creates more violence and more war.
The U.S. should immediately end the wars and instead use these billions of dollars to begin a reconstruction program through an international organization, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Only local people can be hired. Build homes, roads, sanitation facilities, water systems, hospitals, clinics, schools. Condition the assistance on civil rights for women including the right to travel, to work, to be free from abuse.
Listen to Marvin Gaye: Barack Obama, we don't need to escalate. War is not the answer....
http://NABNYC.blogspot.com
In every village of the kingdom the heralds would cry out the news. And always it would be the same news from every herald who wore the purple sash. But other heralds would cry out different news, crazy news, news that wasn't news at all.
The U.S. Constitution leaves the decision to wage war to Congress, and Congress can enforce its decision not to wage war by refusing to fund it. Blocking a funding bill for wars requires the House of Representatives alone, and both Democrats and Republicans in the House are rapidly joining us in saying No to war funding.
It's time to finally get serious, to lobby, to protest, to sit in, to nonviolently disrupt and resist in local district offices until enough Representatives commit to voting No on any bill to fund more war.
Here's a link to a rapidly-changing whip list in the form of a google document that you can embed on your own website:
This statement will come as no surprise to Open Left readers: People with power tend to use it for their own benefit. Of course, the explanations given for various actions are almost never: "We're doing because it's good for us and our friends." Instead, a variety of rationalizations are given which often seem to "make sense" if one doesn't ponder things for too long. How does this play out when considering policies affecting our youngest voting citizens, those aged 18, 19 and 20 years old?
Keep in mind that policy makers are, generally, old. The average U.S. Senator is 63. Representatives average a few years younger. Recent Presidents range from late 40s to about 70 with a mean in the late 50s.
These older (wiser?) men and women (a few) think it's just fine to send the youngest citizens to die in wars. In fact, 76.5 percent of U.S. casualties in Iraq have been soldiers younger than 30. The percentage for Afghanistan is 66.5. Rationalization: soldiers need to be in top physical condition, so the young must bear this burden.
But the greatest hypocrisy concerns 18-20 year olds. So far, 850 have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this decade; 748 in Iraq and 102 in Afghanistan. Another 600 just turned 21 before they died in those countries. And yet, we prohibit 18-20 year olds from drinking alcohol. Why is this?
It's because old people would prefer that young people don't drink. Young people are, obviously, too irresponsible to drink. Give them an assault weapon or a tank but not a beer. It's a simple power play: we'd prefer you not drink so we won't let you and we'd prefer you go and die in wars but not us.
This is the point in the argument where the call for changing the drinking age is supposed to come but I'm not going to do that. Doesn't really matter that much. Instead, I'll call for this: change the age for combat to 40-65. Educate the young and let them start careers and families. Send the older citizens to die in war.
Added benefit: war policies might begin to change.
This Tuesday Obama is supposed to announce his decision on troops and Afghanistan (the last guess I heard was 30,000 as opposed to the 40,000 the General asked for) and we will once again see our middle-east battle commitment increase.
But is there a reason why the President didn't turn the problem over to the State Department for a negotiated solution? Sherwood Ross in OpEdNews writes an extended article on why diplomacy wasn't even considered. here's a clip:
This is a terrific story about the collapse of empire, the degradation of the citizens of our country, the brutality of the U.S. government in its quest to steal the resources of all the world, expand the empire, plunder, pillage, ignore and destroy families, women, babies. What a disgrace.
There is a woman named Alexis Hutchinson who is a cook in the Army. She is also a single mother with a baby, an infant under the age of one. She was ordered to deploy to Afghanistan but did not get on the flight because she had no one to take care of her baby while she was overseas. She told her superiors before the flight that she had a sudden problem with finding care for her baby. The Army told her tough luck, stick the kid in foster care, but get her ass on the plane.
Hutchinson explained that her mother had originally agreed to take the baby, but at the last minute decided she simply could not do it. Hutchinson's mother, the baby's Grandma, was already caring for three other family members who have health problems. Isn't that just so typical of modern America? When people have problems or get sick, it all falls on the women to care for them, usually with no help whatsoever from the government. And now, when a woman with an infant who's not even a year old suddenly has no one who can take her baby while she's gone, the military tells her to stick the kid into institutional care. With strangers.
What does the military care about babies, anyway? Who exactly is it that we've been killing in Iraq and Afghanistan? It certainly includes lots of babies. So don't look to the military for compassion or support for the babies of the world.
Hutchinson has been arrested by the military. She's being held on a base. They took the kid away from her, too, and put the baby into some institutional care facility on the base. Think about that for a minute. The military arrested this young woman, 21 year old woman, and took away her infant son and stuck him into some military institutional facility. Any reason mom couldn't keep the kid, other than to torture her? Finally, they let grandma take the baby, at least for now. I'm surprised they didn't deploy the kid, too.
As soon as the mom got an attorney, the military started backing down from their position. Now they say they would never force a single woman with an infant to stick the baby into institutional care. Now they say that.
It turns out that Grandma had originally said she could keep the baby. But life has a way of piling up on all of us, even the grandmas in this country. And now Grandma's own mother got sick, so she's taking care of her, and her sister got sick, so she's taking care of her too. Grandma also has another daughter who has special needs, and she has to take care of her too. In order to get by, Grandma runs a daycare out of her home. Poor Grandma, sounds like she's got a tough life. Ultimately, Grandma realized she could not take on an infant on top of everything else. Who can blame her? Well, actually, the U.S. Army can. Suck it up Grandma, Uncle Sam is holding your daughter in jail, so either you take the baby or they'll stick it in a home with a bunch of strangers.
I'm thinking of Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks was a poor black woman who worked for a living every day, and every day she would get on the public bus at the end of the day for a long ride home, and every day she would have to go to the back of the bus, behind some line they drew on the floor, and if there were no seats in the back of the bus then she had to stand the whole way home, even if there were empty seats in the front of the bus. Black people were not allowed in the front of the bus.
I'm thinking of Rosa Parks, and I'm wondering if this young Army woman was white, and her little baby was white, whether anybody in the U.S. military would have thrown this young woman into jail and taken her baby away from her, whether they would have told her to stick him in foster care. I'm just thinking that some babies, white babies, are cared for. But the non-white babies are too often considered disposable. Just like their mothers are.
And all of this for what? To pursue an ongoing war against the people of Afghanistan for reasons nobody can articulate. Four airplanes were hijacked in the U.S. on 9/11 2001 mostly by people from Saudi Arabia, funded by rich people from Saudi Arabia. And in response, W and Cheney invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Not Saudi Arabia. We have now been in Afghanistan for over eight years. For what?
Originally, we were going to go get bin Laden, but then W allowed bin Laden to escape and go into Pakistan, where he has been left alone. Most of his supporters left Afghanistan too. So then we decided that we weren't just looking for al Queda, we were now going to fight against "Insurgents." That means anybody who opposes having the U.S. military occupy their country. But who wouldn't? Nobody wants to be occupied by a foreign power.
And the young lady whose baby they've taken away, the young lady they've thrown in jail and traumatized and humiliated, the young lady they are threatening to give a harsh prison sentence, what was the imperative nature of her assignment in Afghanistan? She's a cook.
And now, the Congress has just voted to send another $46 million to Columbia, of all places, to begin sprucing up just one of seven military bases the U.S. is taking over inside that country for the purpose of -- get this -- fighting against terrorism. One military representative has admitted that the U.S. plans to occupy Columbia, in seven permanent bases, and use that as the jumping-off point to attack all the other countries in South American who do not please the Empire, countries that are considered to be anti-American, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (lots of oil there), Evo Morales in Bolivia, Nicaragua, all the countries that are entering into their own trade agreements for their mutual benefit. What's wrong with these people? Don't they realize that they are just colonies of the U.S., that they have no rights?
Poor Ms. Hutchinson. Poor women and babies everywhere, poor people, poor world. The U.S. military is on the march intent on expanding its Empire to every country in the world. We're doomed. Where is our Rosa Parks? Where are our leaders who can inspire the citizens of this country to demand an end to this madness, to sit down or stand up or march or do something. When an empire begins stealing women's babies, and murdering other women's babies, isn't that enough to rouse the citizenry?
The last time I was on Laura Flanders's GRIT tv I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest -- some Washington, D.C., "progressive" -- argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn't know anything about Afghanistan.
When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don't know any better.
When I spoke to a philosophy department at a university this month, a number of the professors objected to my advocacy of majority-rule on the grounds that experts often know best.
Let's set aside for a moment the ludicrous propaganda that maintains that the reason we occupy other people's countries is to impose democracy on them. Let's assume we're imposing the rule of elite experts. Even so, even on those terms, here are some possible responses to this line of thinking.
It's like we're in a Saturday morning kids scifi show... the goodguy robot (in this case MSNBC) is telling us that the Repubs are getting ready to attack the Senate's vote on a Health Care Plan any way they can.
To start with, more than one of the Repub Senators (led by Lamar Alexander - R, TN) have called for new "Town Hall" meetings, like the ones the House members had in August - and it looks like the groups of lobbyists are ready to bus the same people in.
Around the United States, peace groups are engaged in effective campaigns against proposed new military installations, local funding of weapons companies, and the routine destruction of the environment and of workers' health by such companies. Activists are building better media outlets, educating young people, educating old people, keeping military testing and recruiting out of schools, and discouraging the Army from building real-weapon video arcades in shopping malls. But when it comes to stopping our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, our citizens are less clear how to go about it.
Why is it that every time we elect "peace" candidates we defund the peace movement, stop calling for an end to wars, and limit our demands exclusively to opposing war escalations?
In 2006 we voted into Congress the candidates who looked most likely to end the war in Iraq. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done. Then we mildly urged them not to escalate the war they'd been elected to end, and they escalated it anyway.
Eight years of slaughter, and not so much as a hint at what a "victory" would look like. It's gotten to the point where even polls by Fox News show a majority of Americans against escalating the war in Afghanistan, and polls by more honest organizations show a majority wanting to bring home the troops that are there now.
But our so-called representatives in Congress are reluctant to "interfere" with their own primary Constitutional responsibilities, and the so-called executive whom they've given free reign is undecided about whether to listen to us or the military. There's no time like the present to "go out there and make him do it."
The new film "Virtual JFK" is marketed as the story of the Vietnam War had John F. Kennedy not been killed. I expected a fantasy account of what might have been, and this led me to expect the following problem with the story: If Kennedy was killed because he would not fight a war in Vietnam, then supposing him to have survived Dallas would simply have left him in danger of assassination at each ongoing instant in the drama. We would have had to constantly fantasize Kennedy back to life through the course of such a movie.
Michael Vick, the football player who's all over the news, should have tortured humans instead of dogs. Then we would have been told to overlook it for the sake of moving forward. Better yet, he should have killed humans rather than only torturing them. Then we would have been told next to nothing about it at all. It might have been reported, but it wouldn't have become a hot topic, an echo-chambered story to be dismissed only after a great deal of hand-wringing. It certainly would not have interfered with watching football games.
If Attorney General Eric Holder creates a special prosecutor for torture but forbids him or her to prosecute the lawyers who facilitated torture or the top officials who ordered it, proposing to go after only torturers who exceeded the limitations outlined in the lawyers' memos, what are the risks?
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