Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War

Peacenik informed punditman yesterday that this rally took place this past Thursday without so much as a murmur from the mainstream media. Punditman was not surprised that this important event with some leading American dissidents as well as many ex-soldiers was TOTALLY freaking ignored by the mainstream media; after all, it is hard to keep up on how much they purposely ignore, distort and propagandize. So here it is:

"Soon come, soon come the day this tinderbox is gonna blow in your face"

punditman says...

Scanning the news lately, punditman is beginning to wonder if things aren't starting to come apart at the seams. It's not quite 1968,[1]  but you never know where things are going to end up, especially in Europe. Government austerity packages being implemented across the board in Europe should be viewed for what they are: class warfare aimed at making the middle and lower classes pay for the unpunished corruption and incompetence of an unregulated financial class.

Thanks to the meltdown of 2008, and the criminal greed of Wall Street and their cohorts and minions abroad, citizens of the world have been left with a sputtering "recovery" whose salient features include massive unemployment, deep cuts to pensions, and social services—all overseen by the same political class who oversaw the disaster in the first place. Apparently they have no proper ideas of how to fix things. Time for a change.

Moving on to free speech and government transparency, the so-called hallmarks of democracy; those freedoms we are told that our soldiers are fighting and dying to uphold in Afghanistan, it's now official: the emperors truly have no clothes. Thanks to Wikileaks, and the dumping of just a fraction of 250,000 diplomatic cables and the earlier spilling of  hundreds of thousands of files from the Iraq and Afghan Wars, the world is being exposed to a good sampling of some of official duplicity, hypocrisy and state crimes behind American diplomacy and warcraft. To list just a smidgen: the unaffordable, depressing Iraq and Afghan wars with their massive collateral killings and the actual thoughts of cynical state apologists and propagandists who often know a war is hopeless but pretend otherwise; gossipy diplomatic spats between so-called mature nations; and, of course, the attempt to kill the messenger Julian Assange (figuratively in some quarters, literally in others) and those who do business with Wikileaks. Assange, for his part, recently wrote the following:

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

Do governments have a legitimate concern to protect sensitive diplomatic information and lives, when it comes to matters of diplomacy and security? As a general principle, most would say of course they do. But what we have seen from Wikileaks ranges from bland and embarassing to revealing and disturbing, rather than endangering. Indeed Assange recently pointed out the following:

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting...

Punditman says going after Assange rather looks and feels like it is part of the more generalized trend to intimidate citizens and squash free speech by going after the messenger, rather than genuine concern for safety and security. Punditman reserves judgement regarding the allegations of sex crimes against Assange.

It comes as no surprise that we are being lied to or misled, but the extent of manipulation, intrigue, and "things not being as they appear" is startling. They would have us all played for fools. But a pox on all their houses, because it matters not what country we cite, be it "free" or unfree. Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran; Sweden is a secret NATO member and US intelligence sharing is kept from their Parliament; Britain's so-called Iraq War inquiry was fixed to protect US interests. Fifteen thousand more Iraqis have been killed than was publicly acknowledged. The list goes on and on.

As for US foreign policy, with its murderous drone strikes, torture chambers, secret prisons, and GIs who shoot innocent civilians from helicopters like fish in a barrel, we can now add to these the fact that the US "asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties." The descending superpower's paranoia astounds. Decades of supposed multilateralism and this is what we get?

Modern statecraft laid bare. Time for a change.

And what of Canada? Well, as revealed by the Wikileaks diplomatic cables, back in 2009, Jim Judd, the former director of the CSIS, met with senior advisor to US Secretary of State Secretary Condoleezza Rice, Eliot Cohen and discussed security matters. He said that Canadians had an "Alice in Wonderland" worldview and Canadian judges, "have tied CSIS in knots, making it ever more difficult to detect and prevent terror attacks in Canada and abroad." Judd doesn't seem to have much time for civil rights. Nor did the Toronto police force or the Ontario government during the G20 back in June.

Actually, the civil liberties file is in deep trouble across the Western world, with routine violations of basic human rights, police brutality, and taser deaths occurring on a regular basis. With repression on the rise, there's bound to be some payback from those with nothing left to lose.

As punditman says, things may take a turn off the rails hither and yon. At the core of all this is a profound distrust of the will of the people on the part of elites.

Precient lyrics come to punditman's mind as we see the massive injustices that dominate our age:

"One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast, 
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast, 
They call the revolution."[2]

Hear, hear, Bruce Cockburn. Now there's a great Canadian. Or this portentous passage from the American singer-song writer Natalie Merchant:

"Soon come, soon come the day, this tinderbox 
Is gonna blow in your face, 
I don't have the gift of the prophecy, 
Telling everybody how it's gonna be, 
But you go passing wrong for right and right for wrong, 
People only stand for that for just so long."[3]

Indeed. Indications are that people will only stand for this for "just so long." For students in London facing a tripling in tuition fees (see video below), the pot has officially boiled over. Where it all goes from here is anybody's guess. Time for a change.

1. At around 3:04 of the video, Professor Chris Knight of the University of East London is introduced. He says it's just like 1968, noting that back then it started with the students. Time will tell.
2. Bruce Cockburn. "Call it Democracy." World of Wonders. True North Records, 1986.
3. Natalie Merchant. "This House is on Fire." Motherland. Elektra, 2001.

Liberals accuse NDP of ‘hypocrisy’ on Afghanistan

Peacenik emailed Ignatieff and asked him to not support the extension of Canada's role in Afghanistan. Ignatieff didn't respond. Peacenik has voted for the Liberals strategically in the past. Peacenik will not be voting for the Liberals ever again. The Globe's view is that "leaving Afghanistan entirely after years of brave service would be foolish." Peacenik's view is that staying in Afghanistan is insane. But Harper, Ignatieff, Nato, and the U.S. cannot admit a mistake. Has Canada beat the USSR's record for occupying Afghanistan yet? A record of futility and stupidity. Bring the troops home now.

1. Divide and conquer. Without the Conservatives to attack, Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals are gunning for Jack Layton and the NDP, accusing them of adopting a position on Afghanistan that is “simply not credible.”

The Liberals support the Harper government’s decision to keep Canadian troops in Afghanistan after the scheduled July pull-out; the New Democrats do not – playing right into the Tory strategy of splitting the opposition.

The criticism of the NDP is contained in a series of talking points issued by the Grits to their supporters Tuesday.

“Jack Layton has called for a ‘massive civilian deployment’ to provide stability in Afghanistan, but you can’t achieve this in the midst of conflict without providing Afghans with the tools to protect their security and their democracy,” the memo says. “Liberals firmly support ending the combat mission in Afghanistan as scheduled in July 2011 and we support the new post-combat training presence as outlined by the government today.”

Read on...

PM plans ‘inside the wire' Afghan role while U.S. presses for riskier one

Its bad enough that Obama has sided with Wall Street against mainstreet. He's backed down on almost every policy initiative that got him elected. Now he is twisting the arm of a very pliable Stevie Harper to continue Canada's combat role in Afghanistan. Obama is a George Bush acolyte. He is a warmongerer. As is Harper. Peacenik wants to puke. Bring the troops home now.

The United States is asking Canada to take on a more robust – and risky – role after the planned 2011 pullout of combat troops from Afghanistan, including risking enemy fire outside of bases to mentor Afghan security forces in the field.
The push comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to announce next week the government's new plan for Afghanistan – a plan that will likely keep Canada “inside the wire.”

But the United States wants more. The Americans are seeking greater Canadian participation – a role “outside the wire” – and are hoping for such an announcement before next week's NATO summit in Lisbon.

Read on...

On Poppies and Politics

 
Punditman says...

Punditman is hesitant to even write this, knowing the strong emotions that surround Remembrance Day. In fact, if the symbol of the poppy had arisen out of the horrors of World War Two and the fight against fascism, punditman would not have written this piece. But the poppy's legacy surfaced out of the horrors of World War One (which punditman will return to shortly). It has been used henceforth in remembrance throughout the Western world.

So I write this with all due respect to those who may take offence; however, there is a certain irrationality in the air that should be addressed.

Punditman feels that since Canada became involved in Afghanistan, poppy wearing begins earlier and is more widespread than in past eras. No surprise there, punditman supposes; these days, war is never far from people's minds. Does punditman detect a subtle but increased social pressure to wear a poppy? Perhaps. Are the two issues connected? Does wearing a poppy presuppose support for the Afghan mission? Punditman thinks he is not alone with such questions. But wearing a poppy should be a personal and reflective act, not an ideological reflex that feels socially enforced.

The poppy owes its heritage to Guelph's John McCrae, a Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel, who wrote the poem "In Flander's Fields" on May 3, 1915, after witnessing the death of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer the previous day. It was published on December 8, 1915 by Punch magazine in Britain:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

The poem, which we all learned as school children, has not escaped critique. Wikipedia cites Paul Fussell, cultural and literary historian, and professor emeritus of English literature at the University of Pennsylvania:

Critic Paul Fussell, in The Great War and Modern Memory, pointed out the sharp distinctions between the pastoral, sacrificial tone of the poem's first nine lines and the "recruiting-poster rhetoric" of the poem's third stanza; Fussell said the poem, appearing in 1915, would serve to denigrate any negotiated peace which would end the war, and called these lines "a propaganda argument," saying "words like vicious and stupid would not seem to go too far."

Those strong words come from a decorated American World War Two veteran; but who is better equipped to opine on the power of propaganda?

Irrationality comes into play when the poppy is used not simply to honour veterans and all of war's victims and to recognize their sacrifice and sufferings but to also attack the voices of dissent. Irrationality’s ignorant face is displayed in the attitudes of those who have been attacking writer Peter Smollett for writing a piece entitled, War resisters also deserve a memorial in yesterday’s Toronto Star. Some of the reactions to this well researched article are disturbing.

Remember, Smollet is talking about World War One only here, a conflict that began 96 years ago when Canadian forces were still under British command. But for the militarist faction of today's right wing, the political subtext of Remembrance Day is that all Canada's wars are by default noble endeavours that protect our freedom and security; and all soldiers from all wars are heroes, while all pacifists are cowards. They will hear nothing of dissent or from those who happen to believe that most wars are unnecessary and unjust.

In writing about World War One, Peter Smollet's great sin was to outline the generalized slaughter and senselessness of what was essentially a struggle between imperial powers divvying up the spoils of their colonies. He explains how they used the working classes as cannon fodder and how generals and politicians advanced their careers off the blood of the poor. How can anyone who knows their history seriously disagree with this assessment? Many veterans of that conflict arrived at the same conclusion.

The so-called "war to end all wars" was a major factor in the rise of Bolshevism and revolution in Russia; and the Armistice and Treaty of Versailles contributed to fascism taking root in Germany and the rise of Hitler. This was the lovely little war that the would be over by Christmas!

Resistance to the First World War's bloodbath was widespread throughout belligerent countries and Smollet does a good job outlining the various anti-war movements of the time, including Canadians who made great sacrifices, including losing their lives, in the name of peace. For his efforts, Smollet gets a ton of brickbats tossed at him from wingnut corner.

Punditman believes in remembering the war dead and all of war’s casualties—but on all sides, including all the civilians who have perished or have been maimed in war. It seems this is what the remembering part of Remembrance Day should be about.

There was a time not so long ago when the sentiment for peace was as strong as for war, when people were not afraid to speak up and when wearing a poppy could just as easily mean "never again" as "support out troops."

Honouring conscientious objectors and others who bravely stood in opposition to the slaughter of World War One is not about to happen any time soon. The current zeitgiest leaves no room for nuance, only group think. Important symbols are easily used to keep the herd in line. Those who lambast Smollet's opinion piece say it is a disgrace to publish it during Remembrance Week because they believe World War One was all about protecting our freedoms. But if they truly understood freedom, they should have no problem with the Star publishing a different viewpoint.

So wear a poppy if it feels right. But don't be afraid to say what you think—of any war.

Punditman is wearing a poppy.

Note in the margin:
The lines, "To you from failing hands we throw / The torch; be yours to hold it high" are also written on the wall of the Montreal Canadiens dressing room. Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment ownership take note: stirring, inspiring words apparently help teams win Stanley Cups. Or at least make them playoff bound!

Ottawa talks of extending Afghan mission

Peacenik doesn't have the will to go back and document why it is crazy for Ottawa to extend the Afghan mission. Everyone knows all the arguments. There is no mission being a major one. There can be no victory. Torture and war crimes are part of everyday life in Afghanistan. Canada can't afford to be pissing money away in Afghanistan. But lies, propaganda and irrelevancies will be used to bang the drums for more war. The Conservative Party of Canada is addicted to war. And the other parties are too gutless to say enough. Bring the troops home now.

Bowing to intense pressure from the United States and other allies, the Harper government now acknowledges that hundreds of Canadian troops could remain in Afghanistan years after its long and bloody combat mission officially ends in 2011.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Ottawa is looking at the possibility of keeping a significant number of soldiers “behind the wire” in the war-torn country to help train the Afghan army and local police.

“Knowing that the mission in Afghanistan has work that is yet to be done, we are now considering this,” Mr. MacKay told reporters in Halifax Sunday at the conclusion of an international security conference.

“Training is an option and it’s something we’re very good at, quite frankly.”

Read on...

Child Soldier, Omar Khadr, Pleads Guilty in Plea Agreement

Peacenik doesn't understand why a child soldier is being charged with anything. But when the U.S. is making the rules anything can happen. Disgusting. As is the Harper governments silence. Time to bring the troops home now. And Omar Khadr




Khadr's defense team say he was pushed into fighting the US by his father, said to be a close associate of Osama bin Laden. Human rights defenders have criticised Barack Obama, the US president, for seeking to prosecute Khadr.

A Canadian prisoner in Guantanamo Bay has pleaded guilty to killing an American soldier while he was a young teenager as part of a deal that will allow him to avoid a war crimes trial.

Omar Khadr on Monday pleaded guilty to five charges, including murder, for throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. He was just 15 at the time of the incident, which occurred during a fierce firefight at an al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan.

Khadr, now 24, also admitted to planting improvised explosive devices and receiving weapons training from al-Qaeda. His defence lawyers say that because Khadr was a child when the offences occurred, he should not be tried for war-crimes.

Read on...

Wall Street May Break Pay Record -- Again

Peacenik says this story about record Wall Street compensation. The too big to fail banks and Wall St. firms are bankrupt. They only exist by phony accounting rules. Their executives should be in jail. But wait. Another story heralds the rise of the GOP. The same lying, incompetent, corrupt, warmongers who led the world into this mess are about to take over congress. But wait. The Washington Post reports progress in Afghanistan. Of course this is simply propaganda. But nothing is too preposterous for the neo con pages of the Post. The United States is going crazy. Is crazy. It is a symptom of collapse. The death rattle of a society. And unfortunately it will be the tea partiers, the birthers, fascists, and the kooks who will emerge to start something new. And something very bad.

Wall Street is on track to pay its employees $144 billion this year, breaking a record for the second year in a row, the Wall Street Journal reports. Despite financial reform intended to curb compensation, and a steep decline in trading volume, pay in the financial services industry has shown few signs of fading.
Pay is expected to rise at 26 out of the 35 firms according to the WSJ. According to it's analysis, the $144 billion overall figure is a 4 percent increase over last year's $139 billion. Revenue on Wall Street grew only 3 percent this year, the WSJ says, but, unlike at some businesses outside the financial sector, employee compensation remains a high priority.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, passed in July, gives regulators the power to write rules governing executive pay. But it remains to be seen how effective -- or restrictive -- those rules will be. Last month, regulators from the SEC, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve testified before the House Financial Services Committee, to explain how they intended to curb executive compensation. But as the rule-making is still in progress, the conversation included few specific strategies or numbers.

Read on...

Canadian pullout could threaten Afghan mission, senior NATO officer says

Shouldn't all these military types just shut their collective pie holes. Peacenik thought civilians ran the military. Peacenik has lost track of how long NATO has been in Afghanistan. One day was one day too many. Canada's departure could threaten the Afghan mission. What mission was that? There is no mission. There never was a mission. Just one big boondoggle. Bring the troops home now.

Canada's plan to bring its troops home from Afghanistan next year has the potential to hurt NATO's chances of success in Kandahar, a senior officer with the coalition said Wednesday.

Col. Dave Bellon, who is the chief of operations for NATO soldiers in southern Afghanistan, indicated that the United States would be left picking up the slack after the Canadian withdrawal.

Canadian soldiers are scheduled to begin returning home in July 2011, which Col. Bellon said would be at a critical juncture in the mission.

Read on...

The American Way: Spreading Democracy to Afghanistan, One Journalist’s Arrest at a Time

Can someone tell Peacenik again why Canada is involved in a corrupt, pointless, never -ending war in Afghanistan? No freedom of the press in Afghanistan. Corrupt elections. Drug production going through the roof. Innocent civilians getting killed all over the place. And war crimes that are shrugged off like it was just kids having a bit of harmless fun. Oh yeah, and Canada can't afford to pay the tab.

Are any of the reasons trotted out by politicians true? Can any politician make a cogent case for why Canada should be involved in Afghanistan? But the worst thing about Canada's involvement is that not one politician will stand up and say "Bring the troops home now." Peacenik doesn't know which is worse: this pointless war being covered by a kowtowing  corporate media or having Canada governed by the biggest bunch of gutless, chickenshit politicians imaginable. Bring the troops home now. There. Peacenik said it again. Why won't any politician?

by Dave Lindorff

US-led forces in Afghanistan sure did a bang-up job this week at promoting the concept of Western "democracy."

The so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the puppet intelligence agency of the Afghan government, between them, arrested and held three journalists, Rahmatullah Nekzad, a freelance reporter for Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, Mohammed Nader, a staff correspondent and cameraman for Al Jazeera, and Hojatullah Mojadadi, an Afghan local radio station manager, and held them all without charge for the "crime" of allegedly having developed contacts with the Taliban. Nekzada and Nader were held for three days. Mojadadi was held by Afghan authorities for six days.

The three were ultimately released following international pressure and following demands for the release of the two NATO-held journalists made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Read on...

False Reality vs. Iraq and Afghan Facts

punditman says...

According to Richard Gwyn, in today's Toronto Star, the Americans have "gone" from Iraq. This of course is wrong; Gwyn surely knows it and Punditman will email him and ask why he planted this falsehood in an otherwise insightful piece about how insiders blabbed to Bob Woodward about Afghanistan in Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars.

We are led to believe that Iraq, while perhaps not Disneyland (for example, torture continues unabated), is a much better place now that Saddam is dead and the Americans have gone stayed on in large numbers and are still participating in combat. Of course they have not gone. Just as there is no way that they intend on leaving Afghanistan. As an example of how false reality becomes news, journalist John Pilger recently wrote a revealing article entitled Flying the Flag, Faking the News. He cites the Iraq example as follows:

False reality: The last US combat troops have left Iraq "as promised, on schedule", according to President Barack Obama. TV screens have filled with cinematic images of the "last US soldiers" silhouetted against the dawn light, crossing the border into Kuwait.

Fact: They are still there. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces’ assassinations. The number of "military contractors" is currently 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control. 

The difference is that with Afghanistan, at least for the time being, the US and NATO are publicly stating they have no way of leaving and no intention of doing so. Quoting from Woodward's book, Gwyn notes that General David Patreus certainly isn't anticipating some near time exit, “I don't think you win this war...You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives, and probably our kids' lives.”

But look for that storyline to change. Punditman says that at some point, for political reasons, the propagandists of our era will decide to "engineer public consent" for the greater good by creating yet another "false reality," which will then become a "news event" (i.e., "we are now leaving Afghanistan"). Will a reality-TV, celebrity-obsessed, distracted populace believe them? Punditman won't. Peacenik won't. Stay tuned.

Postscipt:

Punditman's email to Mr. Gwyn has gone unanswered. Meanwhile, for an army that has "gone" from Iraq, the US military sure continues to do a lot of damage: US Combat Continues in ‘Post-Combat’ Iraq Despite Claims of 'End of Combat' in Iraq, Rules of Engagement Never Changed.

US soldiers 'killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies'

punditman says...Lovely. Another sure way to win hearts and minds. Now, what were those idiots saying about the great progress being made in Afghanistan?

Chris McGreal in Washington

The Guardian

Soldiers face charges over secret 'kill team' which allegedly murdered at random and collected fingers as trophies of war

Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.

Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.

In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

Keep Reading...

Serial Denial and the Permanent War System

by Gareth Porter

Two months ago, I wrote that the Obama administration and the U.S. command in Afghanistan faced an "Iraq 2006 moment" in the second half of 2010 - a collapse of domestic political support for a failed war paralleling the political crisis in Bush's Iraq War in 2006. Now comes Republican Congressman Frank Wolf to make that parallel with 2006 eerily precise.

Wolf published a letter to President Obama last week calling for the immediate establishment of an "Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group". It would be the son of the Iraq Study Group. Wolf is the Congressman who authored the legislation in 2005 creating the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group to come up with fresh ideas for that failing war. The Wolf proposal came nearly a year after American public had turned against the war decisively in January 2005, when support for the war fell to 39 percent.

The U.S. public had withdrawn its support because it had become obvious that the war was a failure. The Bush administration had overthrown the Saddam Hussein regime only to unleash a violent Sunni-Shi'a sectarian power struggle that the U.S. military couldn't control. Even worse, the U.S. military presence was objectively supporting one side in that power struggle by building up a clearly sectarian military and police sector, even as it pretended by the honest broker between Sunni and Shi'a.

Read on...

When the history is written about the Iraq/Afghan wars, Peacenik doesn't think anyone is going to look good. No one looks good now. Bring the troops home now.

Too Lazy To Read The Wikileaks Data? Here It Is, In Easily Digestable Video Format

Submitted by Tyler Durden

Too lazy to comb through the thousands of disclosures in the Wikileaks data? Shannon Larratt has created the following youtube video of monthly IED events in Afghanistan, in which a monthly tally of injuries and casualties is kept, both "friendly" and "enemy." The results are dramatic, and reminiscent of the clip showing how the US and Russia nuked their own territory several thousand times in the past 60 years. They are also reminiscent of various admonitions (unheeded) from The Prince Bride.

Here is how Shannon describes the data:

Read on...

Follow the link and check out the video. Peacenik says bring the troops home now.

A Response to Controversial 'Time' Cover: What ALSO Happens If We Leave Afghanistan

Greg Mitchell

As I noted early this morning over at my Daybook, Time magazine's cover story this week arrives with a graphic cover image next to the title, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." It shows an Afghan teen named Aisha whose nose and ears had been sliced off by the Taliban.

Inside, editor Rick Stengel explains that he consulted psychologists about what harm could be done to children who might see this disturbing image. But he also defends the aim of the story itself in the following paragraph:

"The much publicized release of classified documents by WikiLeaks has already ratcheted up the debate about the war. Our story and the haunting cover image by the distinguished South African photographer Jodi Bieber are meant to contribute to that debate. We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it. We do it to illuminate what is actually happening on the ground. As lawmakers and citizens begin to sort through the information about the war and make up their minds, our job is to provide context and perspective on one of the most difficult foreign policy issues of our time. What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents: a combination of emotional truth and insight into the way life is lived in that difficult land and the consequences of the important decisions that lie ahead."

Read on...

This Time cover may go down as one of the most manipulative ever. Pure propaganda. Pure warmongering. First the media refuses to publish pictures of the carnage of war caused by the U.S. and their allies, including Canada. Then they put out this. Peacenik will never read another word in Time Magazine. Bring the troops home now.

Assange: WikiLeaks Has 15,000 More Documents ‘Under Review’

punditman says...Go WikiLeaks! 

Posted By Jason Ditz On July 26, 2010 @ 7:02 pm

In an interview Monday evening on CNN, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange revealed that his organization has another 15,000 classified US documents above and beyond the 92,000 such documents released yesterday, and that these documents may be released at some point in the future.

In the brief interview, Assange dismissed Obama Administration claims that his organization was a threat to national security, saying it was a typical “shoot the messenger” attitude that the group has often faced in leaks.

It was at this point that Assange explained that while the 92,000 leaked documents had been vetted by the organization and found to be of no tactical value before their release, they have some 15,000 other documents that are still undergoing review to make sure that, among other things, they don’t reveal the names of Afghans secretly working for the NATO occupation forces.

Assange’s organization has been behind a number of previous leaks against a number of governments, but its role in US foreign policy emerged earlier this year when they leaked a classified video from 2007 showing US helicopters killing Iraqi civilians.

Afghan War Leaks Expose Costly, Deceitful March of Folly

by Ray McGovern

The brutality and fecklessness of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan have been laid bare in an indisputable way just days before the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on whether to throw $33.5 billion more into the Afghan quagmire, when that money is badly needed at home.

On Sunday, the Web site Wikileaks posted 75,000 reports written mostly by U.S. forces in Afghanistan during a six-year period from January 2004 to December 2009. The authenticity of the material - published under the title "Afghan War Diaries" - is not in doubt.

The New York Times, which received an embargoed version of the documents from Wikileaks, devoted six pages of its Monday editions to several articles on the disclosures, which reveal how the Afghan War slid into its current morass while the Bush administration concentrated U.S. military efforts on Iraq.

Wikileaks also gave advanced copies to the British newspaper, The Guardian, and the German newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, thus guaranteeing that the U.S. Fawning Corporate Media could not ignore these classified cables the way it did five years ago with the "Downing Street Memo," a leaked British document which described how intelligence was "fixed" around President George W. Bush's determination to invade Iraq.

Read on...

This War Can be Won, You Want Me to Believe? Rules of Engagement

punditman says...How not to win hearts and minds.

By RON JACOBS

On July 2, 2010 the US Senate 99-0 voted to spend $37 billion more dollars to fund the war in Afghanistan. Not long before that vote, the US House Appropriations Subcommittee announced that it would cut off $4 billion in US aid to Washington's client regime in Kabul, Afghanistan. The reasons cited for this decision center around the widely publicized corruption of that regime. For some reason, the subcommittee’s action was met with cheers from some elements in the moribund US antiwar movement. It's as if this attempt to blame the US-sponsored Karzai government for the corruption endemic in Afghanistan is the beginning of the end of the US assault on the Afghan people.

Of course, the exact opposite is the more likely truth. Obama's dismissal of McChrystal does not seem to be about admitting a failed policy as much as the appointment of Petraeus appears to announce that the US military plans on ramping up its bloody assault. One can call it a surge or one can call it something else, but what occurred under Petraeus' command in Iraq was simple. First, the US rules of engagement were relaxed. Then, the US provided support--tacit and active--to certain armed political factions within Iraq. These factions in turn attacked their enemies, killing thousands while dividing the nation along sectarian lines that continue to simmer. Meanwhile, US forces assisted in these endeavors by putting up concrete barriers dividing neighborhoods, and arresting and killing Iraqis who opposed the factions favored by Washington.

According to a paper published by the Afghanistan Analysts Network, some key support for the Taliban and other resistance groups in Afghanistan comes from communities "who have prisoners in the Guantanamo system." If this is the case (and it makes perfect sense), then it is also fair to assume that the upcoming escalation of the war and the accompanying increase in the arrest of insurgents will enhance this type of support, as well. Still, when one reads the current scenarios about the next few months in Afghanistan, it seems as if the war planners believe that, yes there will be an upsurge in resistance at first but that the US and its escalation will prevail. It's as if they believe the military might of the US-led forces will prevail over whatever the insurgency can put up, despite the fact that the insurgency has been able to stalemate all of the forces arrayed against it for almost ten years.

Keep Reading...

When the Tough Should Get Going

punditman says...

A little levity for these panic-ridden times is just what Dr. Punditman has ordered for you today.

You may know Garrison Keelor as the American author, storyteller, humorist, columnist, musician, satirist, radio personality and the host of the Minnesota Public Radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," who also wrote the screenplay and appeared in the '06 movie of the same name. Or you may not.

Here, he makes a series of witty points about about stubbornness and futility we are seeing on the part of officialdom as the Afghan War continues to drag on...and on.

By Garrison Keillor
www.antiwar.com

The former Marine officer Matthew Hoh, who resigned his Foreign Service post in Afghanistan because he feels the war is pointless and not worth dying for, deserves all the attention he’s gotten and more. The Obama administration faces hard decisions there, and the man made a good case against deeper American involvement. He says that our presence among the Pashtun people, the rural, religious people, is only aggravating a civil war between them and the urban, secular (and, it seems, fraudulent) government of Kabul, and the role of the Taliban and al-Qaeda is not central – the real issues are tribal and cultural.

American families, he said, "must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can be made any more."

It is rare that a high-level official – he was the senior State Department guy in Zabul province – resigns in protest, and in all the to-do about his four-page resignation letter [.pdf], nobody had a single bad thing to say about Matthew Hoh.

The American people tend not to admire quitters, which is maybe why protest resignations are so rare. You can get up on your high horse and talk about your principles, but we suspect that you’re just another slacker looking for an easy way out. Your old football coach told you that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and by "get going" he didn’t mean "write a four-page letter about your disillusionment with his coaching and the split-T offense in general" – he meant, Toughen Up, Assume the Three-Point Stance, Hit ‘Em Hard, Eat Some Turf, Get Up and Hit ‘Em Again.

Keep Reading...

Insurgents Share a Name, but Pursue Different Goals

punditman says...punditman is posting an article from the New York times. That's probably a first. The Times has been a bastion of neo-con warmongering for as long as this man of punditry can recall. Of course, as with all corporate media, there are always exceptions. There are informative articles. This is one such piece.

Even experts have trouble keeping up with how complex the situation really is in the AfPak theatre. No surprise then, that many people do not know the difference between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban, or the fact that there are real tensions between these two movements. Or, that the Afghan Taliban are a "genuine national movement," whatever we may think of them. Or that the Afghan Taliban say that their interests lie solely in Afghanistan. In fact, in a recent interview, an Afghan Taliban leader said that they “don’t have any interest in fighting against other countries.” “Our aim was, and is, to get the occupation forces out and not to get into a fight with a Muslim army,” the commander added. Many people don't realize that while the Afghan Taliban are supported by elements in Pakistan's intelligence services, it is the Pakistan Taliban who are attacking Pakistani forces and causing a lot of havoc and misery for Pakistan.

This is worse than Iraq. Western governments are deluded if they really believe they can somehow manage and control this region. When you read this, you should realize that idea has become a joke, really--something to keep in mind when you hear shallow platitudes about "staying the course" from idiotic politicians.

Punditman says that the United States and NATO face an impossible situation, which is what often happens when you invade and occupy other countries. You stir up a hornet's nest. It is one helluva mess over there.

Punditman is posting an article from the New York times.

By SCOTT SHANE

Published: October 22, 2009

WASHINGTON — As it devises a new Afghanistan policy, the Obama administration confronts a complex geopolitical puzzle: two embattled governments, in Afghanistan and Pakistan; numerous militias aligned with overlapping Islamist factions; and hidden in the factions’ midst, the foe that brought the United States to the region eight years ago, Al Qaeda.

But at the core of the tangle are the two Taliban movements, Afghan and Pakistani. They share an ideology and a dominant Pashtun ethnicity, but they have such different histories, structures and goals that the common name may be more misleading than illuminating, some regional specialists say.

“The fact that they have the same name causes all kinds of confusion,” said Gilles Dorronsoro, a French scholar of South Asia currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Read On...