Showing posts with label war of necessity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war of necessity. Show all posts
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Obama's Expanding War On Terra
By Pete Stanislaw, Get Off This!
A new front is revealed in our Nobel Peace Laureate President's war for the last few resources left on Terra. That front is Yemen, with cruise missile attacks ordered by the commander-in-chief against alleged "al-Qaeda" targets for the purpose - we are repeatedly told - of fighting the threat of terrorism. The last cowardly lobbing of incredibly powerful ordnance across the Yemeni border killed a large group of high school-age boys. This brings the total of largely Muslim nations that our government's military is either occupying or bombing the shit out of from a safe distance to five - Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Yemen, the last two added since the new administration took office on a surge of pro-peace votes.
Since Yemen has been acknowledged to be a "covert" front in the alleged war on terror (until now), there may be others our government doesn't think we should know about. At this point, our docility in the face of utter lies and proclaimed absurdities is comic in the extreme. Whoever still believes that these violent interventions have anything at all to do with fighting terrorism is suffering from willful blindness.
In the last eight years, our government's military has done more to expand the cause(s) of terrorism on the planet than any nation accused (by our government) of "harboring" or "sponsoring" terrorists. The story for the mediated masses has always been that we have to "get in there and smoke 'em out", which makes for entertaining movies but lousy international relations, especially since it only takes 3 minutes of rational thought to realize that terrorism and terrorists are red herrings. How in hell does killing civilians in poor Muslim nations fight against angry extremists? Wouldn't such actions produce more angry extremists? Yes they would and indeed they do!
The object has never changed. Control over the resources which are absolutely necessary to sustain our wasteful and largely ignorant lifestyles remains the rationale for mass murder of those who happen to occupy the earth above said resources. The continued war and occupation in Afghanistan by the US forces as well as the puppet government we have entrenched there has much more to do with the completion and the securing of two oil and natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea across Afghanistan from existing Turkmenistan fields. They would continue through Pakistan to shipping ports in the south. Unfortunately, they will have to pass through areas controlled by the theocratic Taliban, who are actively maneuvering for position in whatever government should result in the aftermath of the violence. These fighters for their perceived birthright are known in the US mass media as "insurgents". One would do well to realize that they were here before our government's military was. This is their nation, when imperial powers aren't occupying it. But I digress.
My point is this: As Alexander Cockburn said in Counterpunch two months ago, President Obama's receiving the Nobel Peace Prize should come as acknowledgement that absurdity is part and parcel of the human condition. That he can order cruise missiles to be launched over sovereign borders the world over and still be regarded by the Nobel Committee as deserving of a Peace Prize is patently absurd.
Remember, Henry Kissinger has one too...
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Kabul-Shit
Trigger-Happy in Afghanistan
By RICHARD NEVILLE, Counterpunch
The brain disease sweeping the West is virulent and vicious, like the golden Staph which haunts so many hospitals. Most at risk are Presidents, Prime Ministers, Generals and journalists. The ailment is not triggered by bacteria but by an ideology as old as history, which every so often resurfaces as a new strain, and this one hasn’t been named. It’s often fatal. Less so to the carriers than those caught in their sights. Let’s call it Kabul-shit – the propensity to ignore the years of violence inflicted on Afghanistan and to paint the invaders as heroes.
It sometimes seems that the greater the slaughter of civilians, the louder the praise for the mission. This may be due to guilt. Britain’s Gordon Brown: We are in Afghanistan to purge terrorism. Australia’s Kevin Rudd: Our soldiers are building schools. America’s Barack Obama: This is a war of necessity. The Sydney Morning Herald: The mission is to bolster Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and to support regional stability in Pakistan.
Tosh, the lot of it. The war started as an act of revenge on the perpetrators of the 9/11 tragedy and was not authorized by the United Nations. It took two years and a thousand bloody air strikes before UN Resolution 1510 finally granted the invaders an after-the-fact "legitimacy". Many legal scholars still regard the invasion as illegal under international law.
Since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001, how many Afghani civilians have been blown away? Take a guess. It’s not widely publicized. Wikipedia puts civilian casualties at “roughly” between 9,000 and 27,000. This does not include the thousands of maimed children.
All for what? Why are we there? The Taliban were not responsible for 9/11. “Yes they are” claims the Sydney Morning Herald, they “nurtured Al Qaeda”. Breast feeding Osama bin Laden, tucking in his little romper suit…? The Herald editorial ignores the role of the CIA in seeding the Taliban, and pouring in cash and weapons for the Mujahideen to kick out the Soviets.
In October 2001, shortly after the US started its own invasion, the Taliban offered to surrender Osama bin Laden to a third country for trial, so long as the bombing was halted and they were shown evidence of his involvement in 9/11. George Bush’s reply: "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."
A perfect example of Kabul-shit. If Bush possessed the evidence, why wasn’t it divulged? Three years later, in October 2004, a video was delivered to Al Jazeera in which bin Laden claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
And so, eight years after the invasion, despite what Western Generals keep promising, US and NATO bombs continue to pulverise this unhappy land. It’s like a never ending blood sport. Why can’t we pull out? Every politician has a different answer. Former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard pithily expressed the fear that lurks in the souls of warmongers: A premature withdrawal would be a blow to the prestige of the West. Remember Prince William a few years ago, calling in air strikes on “enemy positions”, the media thrilled. Hurrah for Western prestige. Never mind that our continued occupation involves aerial assassination on a massive scale, a kind of slow motion genocide – look at the record.
And in February this year, it was plucky little Australia that kicked off the shooting season, with a special forces attack on a compound in Uruzgan, killing 5 Afghan children. In April, American forces killed four civilians - a man, a woman, and two children - as well as an unborn baby. At first the US military said these were "armed militants", but – as is often the case - it was later conceded the dead were civilians. In May, we had the Farah massacre.
The US military claimed that only militants were hit, but the Afghan Defense Ministry announced a death toll of 140 villagers, producing an official list with the names and ages of those killed: 93 were children, 22 were adult males.
This was a bit too much, even for the Pentagon. The previous commander was dumped. President Obama appointed General Stanley McChrystal, formerly head of Task Force 6-26, a death squad that ran a brutal interrogation unit at Camp Narnia, near Baghdad. "High-value" detainees were kept in the Black Room, formerly a Saddam dungeon. Its décor featured a darkened cell with butcher’s hooks hanging from the ceiling. Basically, McChrystal’s task force ran a secret prison and his unit was implicated in two prisoner deaths. A prosecution was initiated, but ran out of steam after a “computer glitch” had disappeared the unit’s records. An Esquire writer who visited Camp Narnia, John H. Richardson, reported it was so secret that its officers used false names and it was a place where “bad things happened”, a place where Stanley McChrystal had made a “personal promise that the Red Cross would never be allowed into the camp”, in violation of US treaty obligations.
Last week came the disastrous US fighter jet air strike in the northern province of Kunduz, which a prominent Afghan rights group claims to have killed up to 70 civilians, a figure based on interviews with local residents. A few days later, it was reported that Soldiers from the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division made an armed raid on a hospital in eastern Afghanistan, searching for insurgents. The soldiers bound guards and relatives before turning patients out of beds and ransacking a women’s ward, it is claimed. Nato is investigating.
“This war has nothing to do with defending the American people”, commented a New York Times feedback contributor, “Obama’s war is the war of the overgrown military industrial complex that needs a continuous flow of dollars in order to survive”.
Another writes: “The so-called “new strategy” announced by general McChrystal is nothing but a propaganda ploy to appease the American public. The Afghan war is continued exactly as it was pursued by the defunct Bush policy. Carpet bomb everything and perhaps the enemy will disappear”.
According to Russian analyst Andrei Konurov, Washington and Brussels have far broader geo-strategic objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and “ultimately the world”, to abandon current operations and occupations. He points out that "the US has deployed 19 military bases in Afghanistan and Central Asian countries” since 2001.
US Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman today told the NY Times an Afghan pullout could deny the United States bases from which it carries out Predator bombing missions. From their dual perspectives, both experts seem to believe that the US gameplan is far more complex, entrenched and far reaching than dreamed of by media analysts.
Finally, a comment from Dr Abdullah, the leading opposition candidate: "We have insecurity in this country. We have bad government. We have corruption. We have narcotics. We have a war. We have an insurgency. On top of that, if a leadership is imposed on the people based on fraudulent elections, what will happen? What will happen to Afghanistan?"
There are no easy answers. Curbing air strikes is a start, as well as holding clean elections. Many westerners seek a bright future for Afghanistan and the voices of the well informed, and of the local people, must prevail over trigger happy soldiers, secret geo-political maneuverings and the endless flood of Kabul-shit.
Richard Neville lives in Australia, the land that formed him. In the Sixties he raised hell in London and published Oz. He can be reached through his websites, http://www.homepagedaily.com/ and http://www.richardneville.com.au/
By RICHARD NEVILLE, Counterpunch
The brain disease sweeping the West is virulent and vicious, like the golden Staph which haunts so many hospitals. Most at risk are Presidents, Prime Ministers, Generals and journalists. The ailment is not triggered by bacteria but by an ideology as old as history, which every so often resurfaces as a new strain, and this one hasn’t been named. It’s often fatal. Less so to the carriers than those caught in their sights. Let’s call it Kabul-shit – the propensity to ignore the years of violence inflicted on Afghanistan and to paint the invaders as heroes.
It sometimes seems that the greater the slaughter of civilians, the louder the praise for the mission. This may be due to guilt. Britain’s Gordon Brown: We are in Afghanistan to purge terrorism. Australia’s Kevin Rudd: Our soldiers are building schools. America’s Barack Obama: This is a war of necessity. The Sydney Morning Herald: The mission is to bolster Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and to support regional stability in Pakistan.
Tosh, the lot of it. The war started as an act of revenge on the perpetrators of the 9/11 tragedy and was not authorized by the United Nations. It took two years and a thousand bloody air strikes before UN Resolution 1510 finally granted the invaders an after-the-fact "legitimacy". Many legal scholars still regard the invasion as illegal under international law.
Since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001, how many Afghani civilians have been blown away? Take a guess. It’s not widely publicized. Wikipedia puts civilian casualties at “roughly” between 9,000 and 27,000. This does not include the thousands of maimed children.
All for what? Why are we there? The Taliban were not responsible for 9/11. “Yes they are” claims the Sydney Morning Herald, they “nurtured Al Qaeda”. Breast feeding Osama bin Laden, tucking in his little romper suit…? The Herald editorial ignores the role of the CIA in seeding the Taliban, and pouring in cash and weapons for the Mujahideen to kick out the Soviets.
In October 2001, shortly after the US started its own invasion, the Taliban offered to surrender Osama bin Laden to a third country for trial, so long as the bombing was halted and they were shown evidence of his involvement in 9/11. George Bush’s reply: "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."
A perfect example of Kabul-shit. If Bush possessed the evidence, why wasn’t it divulged? Three years later, in October 2004, a video was delivered to Al Jazeera in which bin Laden claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
And so, eight years after the invasion, despite what Western Generals keep promising, US and NATO bombs continue to pulverise this unhappy land. It’s like a never ending blood sport. Why can’t we pull out? Every politician has a different answer. Former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard pithily expressed the fear that lurks in the souls of warmongers: A premature withdrawal would be a blow to the prestige of the West. Remember Prince William a few years ago, calling in air strikes on “enemy positions”, the media thrilled. Hurrah for Western prestige. Never mind that our continued occupation involves aerial assassination on a massive scale, a kind of slow motion genocide – look at the record.
And in February this year, it was plucky little Australia that kicked off the shooting season, with a special forces attack on a compound in Uruzgan, killing 5 Afghan children. In April, American forces killed four civilians - a man, a woman, and two children - as well as an unborn baby. At first the US military said these were "armed militants", but – as is often the case - it was later conceded the dead were civilians. In May, we had the Farah massacre.
The US military claimed that only militants were hit, but the Afghan Defense Ministry announced a death toll of 140 villagers, producing an official list with the names and ages of those killed: 93 were children, 22 were adult males.
This was a bit too much, even for the Pentagon. The previous commander was dumped. President Obama appointed General Stanley McChrystal, formerly head of Task Force 6-26, a death squad that ran a brutal interrogation unit at Camp Narnia, near Baghdad. "High-value" detainees were kept in the Black Room, formerly a Saddam dungeon. Its décor featured a darkened cell with butcher’s hooks hanging from the ceiling. Basically, McChrystal’s task force ran a secret prison and his unit was implicated in two prisoner deaths. A prosecution was initiated, but ran out of steam after a “computer glitch” had disappeared the unit’s records. An Esquire writer who visited Camp Narnia, John H. Richardson, reported it was so secret that its officers used false names and it was a place where “bad things happened”, a place where Stanley McChrystal had made a “personal promise that the Red Cross would never be allowed into the camp”, in violation of US treaty obligations.
Last week came the disastrous US fighter jet air strike in the northern province of Kunduz, which a prominent Afghan rights group claims to have killed up to 70 civilians, a figure based on interviews with local residents. A few days later, it was reported that Soldiers from the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division made an armed raid on a hospital in eastern Afghanistan, searching for insurgents. The soldiers bound guards and relatives before turning patients out of beds and ransacking a women’s ward, it is claimed. Nato is investigating.
“This war has nothing to do with defending the American people”, commented a New York Times feedback contributor, “Obama’s war is the war of the overgrown military industrial complex that needs a continuous flow of dollars in order to survive”.
Another writes: “The so-called “new strategy” announced by general McChrystal is nothing but a propaganda ploy to appease the American public. The Afghan war is continued exactly as it was pursued by the defunct Bush policy. Carpet bomb everything and perhaps the enemy will disappear”.
According to Russian analyst Andrei Konurov, Washington and Brussels have far broader geo-strategic objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and “ultimately the world”, to abandon current operations and occupations. He points out that "the US has deployed 19 military bases in Afghanistan and Central Asian countries” since 2001.
US Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman today told the NY Times an Afghan pullout could deny the United States bases from which it carries out Predator bombing missions. From their dual perspectives, both experts seem to believe that the US gameplan is far more complex, entrenched and far reaching than dreamed of by media analysts.
Finally, a comment from Dr Abdullah, the leading opposition candidate: "We have insecurity in this country. We have bad government. We have corruption. We have narcotics. We have a war. We have an insurgency. On top of that, if a leadership is imposed on the people based on fraudulent elections, what will happen? What will happen to Afghanistan?"
There are no easy answers. Curbing air strikes is a start, as well as holding clean elections. Many westerners seek a bright future for Afghanistan and the voices of the well informed, and of the local people, must prevail over trigger happy soldiers, secret geo-political maneuverings and the endless flood of Kabul-shit.
Richard Neville lives in Australia, the land that formed him. In the Sixties he raised hell in London and published Oz. He can be reached through his websites, http://www.homepagedaily.com/ and http://www.richardneville.com.au/
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