Those Uyghur jihadists stuck in Idlib province in Syria and in refugee camps in Turkey are
bound to get a warm welcome from the Taliban when Ankara finally ships them off to Kabul as
part of this proposed "security force" to protect the airport so the CIA can continue to ship
out its heroin.
The US MSM is ablaze with "Taliban against Afghan forces" headlines, conveniently forgetting
that the Taliban are Afghan forces too, in fact they preceded the current "Afghan forces" in
government until the US intervention.
So why do their guys always beat our guys? Because their guys fight for their country and our
guys fight for us.
@ ToivoS, why did the U$A withdraw from Vietnam? There was conscription in the U$A, thereby
the rich were at risk. Also, the U$A was being constrained by money creation due to the gold
standard. Both of these issues have been addressed.
Name a nation that the U$A has WITHDRAWN its military after occupying it, other than
Vietnam. Aren't we still in Germany, Japan, South Korea, ...?
It ain't over 'til it's over.
How much DEBT has the Afghanistan conflict created so far? In trillions? Who got that
money?
@ CJC #10
re: . . . Turkey to retain control of airport after NATO withdraws
It's more than NATO.
The US-Taliban agreement:
The United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United
States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel,
private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel within
fourteen (14) months following announcement of this agreement. . .
here
@ Max
re: . . . why did the U$A withdraw from Vietnam?
The US had no choice because the conscription-based US Army was broken, with troops refusing
to obey orders and fragging their superiors etc. . .So Washington pulled out the troops and
ended the draft.
The US "experts" who are crying about a possible, or inevitable, return to Talban
government haven't read the agreement.
The US-Taliban Agreement of Feb 29, 2020 called for all foreign forces to leave Afghanistan
by May 2021, and recognized that the outcome would be a return to a Taliban government. For
example one agreement condition, II-5:: "The Taliban will not provide visas, passports,
travel permits, or other legal documents to those who pose a threat to the security of the
United States and its allies to enter Afghanistan." . .
here
re: Why is the US in Afghanistan?
Decades ago Washington had its own "Silk Road" strategy, to move into the -Stans in Central
Asia after the uSSR breakup. There was a large interest in Kazakhstan up north, as well as
the other -Stands including Afghanistan. It was of course a road to nowhere but as we know
the creeps in Washington ain't too bright. There were no seaports to accommodate this road,
for one thing. There were some other considerations, like an energy pipeline, but it was all
just going nowhere until 9-11 came along, giving the US to do what it does worst, employ its
military.
@ Abe 32
re: This simplistic "views" are as inaccurate as insulting.
You need to get out more.
. . .from Fragging: Why U.S. Soldiers Assaulted Their Officers in Vietnam
During its long withdrawal from South Vietnam, the U.S. military experienced a serious
crisis in morale. Chronic indiscipline, illegal drug use, and racial militancy all
contributed to trouble within the ranks. But most chilling of all was the advent of a new
phenomenon: large numbers of young enlisted men turning their weapons on their superiors.
The practice was known as "fragging," a reference to the fragmentation hand grenades often
used in these assaults. . . here
Glad to hear that Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan is not letting the US use Pakistan
as a base for its continued machinations, in spite of heavy US pressure, and that Pakistan as
a whole was saying #AbsolutelyNot. Kudos Pakistan.
According to M. K. Bhadrakumar:
"Washington is now considering the hiring of Pentagon contractors (mercenaries) to secure
Kabul airport. But that will be a hugely controversial step with grave consequences, as
apparent from Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's brusque rejection of the very idea of
American military presence on Pakistani soil in relation to the Afghan situation."
MKB also places all this into the context of "the US' grand project to create rings of
instability in [Russia and China's] adjacent regions -- Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia, Hong
Kong, Myanmar, Afghanistan."
You forget the ISIS group that magically appeared in Afghanistan a few years ago. The same
group that immediately attacked the Taliban, forcing the Taliban to dedicate its best forces
to countering the threat instead of fighting the puppet child sex slaver Quisling warlord
regime. What's more likely than continuing the occupation in the name of "fighting ISIS"?
Just like Iraq was reinvaded and reoccupied in the name of "fighting ISIS" and continues to
be occupied to this day?
In an interview with Fox News ' Bret Baier this week, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) denied that she
spread the
discredited CIA "Russian bounty" story. That CIA tale, claiming Russia was paying Taliban
fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, was cooked up by the CIA and then published by The
New York Times on June 27 of last year, right as former President Trump announced
his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Times story, citing anonymous
intelligence officials, was then continually invoked by pro-war Republicans and Democrats --
led by Cheney -- to justify their blocking of that troop withdrawal. The story was discredited
when the U.S. intelligence community admitted last month
that it had only "low to moderate confidence" that any of this even happened.
When Baier asked Cheney about her role in spreading this debunked CIA story, Cheney
blatantly lied to him, claiming "if you go back and look at what I said -- every single thing I
said : I said if those stories are true , we need to know why the President and Vice President
were not briefed on them." After Baier pressed her on the fact that she vested this story with
credibility, Cheney insisted a second time that she never endorsed the claim but merely spoke
conditionally, always using the "if these reports are true" formulation. Watch Cheney deny her
role in spreading that story.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fd6u_p0K9aE
Liz Cheney, as she so often does, blatantly lied. That she merely spoke of the Russian
bounty story in the conditional -- " every single thing I said: I said if those stories are
true" -- is completely and demonstrably false. Indeed, other than Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) , there are few if
any members of Congress who did more to spread this Russian bounty story as proven truth, all
in order to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In so doing, she borrowed from a pro-war
playbook pioneered by her dad, to whom she owes her career: the former Vice President
would leak CIA claims to The New York Times to justify war, then go on Meet the Press with
Tim Russert, as he did on September
8, 2002 , and cite those New York Times reports as though they were independent
confirmation of his views coming from that paper rather than from him:
MR. RUSSERT: What, specifically, has [Saddam] obtained that you believe would enhance his
nuclear development program? ..
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Now, in the case of a nuclear weapon, that means either plutonium or
highly enriched uranium. And what we've seen recently that has raised our level of concern to
the current state of unrest, if you will, if I can put it in those terms, is that he now is
trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able
to enrich uranium to make the bombs.
MR. RUSSERT: Aluminum tubes.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Specifically aluminum tubes. There's a story in The New York Times this
morning this is -- I don't -- and I want to attribute The Times . I don't want to talk about,
obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it's now public that, in fact, [Saddam] has
been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring
through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge.
And the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched
uranium, which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.
So having CIA stories leak to the press that fuel the pro-war case, then having pro-war
politicians cite those to justify their pro-war position, is a Cheney Family speciality.
On July 1, the House Armed Services Committee, of which Rep. Cheney is a member, debated
amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, the bill that authorized $740.5 billion
in military spending. One of Cheney's top priorities was to align with the Committee's pro-war
Democrats, funded by weapons manufacturers, to block Trump's plan to withdraw all U.S. troops
from Afghanistan by the end of 2020 and to withdraw roughly 1/3 of the 34,000 U.S. troops in
Germany.
To justify her opposition, Cheney -- contrary to what she repeatedly insisted to Baier --
cited the CIA's Russian bounty story without skepticism . In a joint statement with Rep. Mac
Thornberry (R-TX), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, that Cheney published
on her website on June 27 -- the same day that The New York Times published its first story
about the CIA tale -- Cheney pronounced herself "concerned about Russian activity in
Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces." There was nothing
conditional about the statement: they were preparing to block troop withdrawal from Afghanistan
and cited this story as proof that "Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan."
After today's briefing with senior White House officials, we remain concerned about
Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces. It
has been clear for some time that Russia does not wish us well in Afghanistan. We believe it
is important to vigorously pursue any information related to Russia or any other country
targeting our forces. Congress has no more important obligation than providing for the
security of our nation and ensuring our forces have the resources they need.
An even more definitive use of this Russia bounty story came when Cheney held a press
conference to explain her opposition to Trump's plans to withdraw troops. In this statement,
she proclaimed that she "remains concerned about Russian activities in Afghanistan." She then
explicitly threatened Russia over the CIA's "bounty" story, warning them that "any targeting of
U.S. forces by Russians, by anyone else, will face a very swift and deadly response." She then
gloated about the U.S. bombing of Russia-linked troops in Syria in 2018 using what she called
"overwhelming and lethal force," and warned that this would happen again if they target U.S.
forces in Afghanistan:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_NUXZog_Vf0
Does this sound even remotely like what Cheney claimed to Baier? She denied having played a
key role in spreading the Russia bounty story because, as she put it, " every single thing I
said, I said: if those stories are true." She also told him that she never referred to that CIA
claim except by saying: "if these reports are true." That is false.
The issue is not merely that Cheney lied: that would hardly be news. It is that the entire
media narrative about Cheney's removal from her House leadership role is a fraud. Her attacks
on Trump and her party leadership were not confined to criticisms of the role played by the
former president in contesting the validity of the 2020 election outcome or inciting the
January 6 Capitol riot -- because Liz Cheney is such a stalwart defender of the need for truth
and adherence to the rule of law in politics.
Cheney played the key role in
forming an alliance with pro-war Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee to
repeatedly defeat the bipartisan anti-war minority [led by Ro Khanna (D-CA), Rep. Tulsi Gabbard
(D-HI) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)] to prevent any meaningful changes promised by Trump during
the 2016 campaign to put an end to the U.S. posture of Endless War. As I
reported about the House Armed Services Committee hearing last July, the CIA tale was
repeatedly cited by Cheney and her allies to justify ongoing U.S. troop presence in
Afghanistan.
Cheney is motivated by power, not ethics. In 2016, Trump ran -- and won -- by explicitly
inveighing against the Bush/Cheney foreign policy of endless war, militarism and imperialism
that Liz Cheney, above all else, still vehemently supports. What she is attempting to do is
reclaim the Republican Party and deliver it back to the neocons and warmongers who dominated it
under her father's reign. She is waging an ideological battle, not an ethical one, for control
of the Republican Party.
That will be a debate for Republican voters to resolve. In the meantime, Liz Cheney cannot
be allowed to distance herself from the CIA's fairy tale about Russians in Afghanistan. Along
with pro-war Democrats, she used this conveniently leaked CIA story repeatedly to block troop
withdrawal from Afghanistan. And just as her father taught her to do -- by example if not
expressly -- she is now lying to distance herself from a pro-war CIA script that she, in fact,
explicitly promoted.
For those who have not seen it, I produced a one-hour video report last July on how and why
the House Armed Services Committee succeeded in enacting virtually every pro-war amendment they
considered and how this was accomplished through
an alliance between Liz Cheney and her neocon GOP allies on the one hand, and pro-war,
Raytheon-funded Democrats on the other:
Circular politics, who knew? Happens all the time. 'Leak' a story to a paper that for sure
will publish it, and quote that very same story to push whatever it is you, or more
precisely, your backers, want. Nobody wants war, why is the US spending almost $1T on
defense? Nobody else is spending that kind of money, the MIC is able to force down whatever
it wants on the compliant press, and gullible public
Demologos 7 hours ago
Liz Cheney is carrying daddy's water. This is why there should have been war crimes trials
for the fake wars promoted by the neocons for the benefit of the Wall Street/London/MIC
complex. If Daddy Darth had swung from a rope we wouldn't be dealing with the current
mess.
You can blame the fake news media for the lack of consequences. When they want to, they
can take a thimble full of bad behavior and turn it into an Olympic size pool of condemnation
and character assassination. They were given an Olympic size pool of outright lies and
corruption related to the illegal wars and didn't see anything that offended their sense of
human decency and justice. But a thug dies in the street and the fake news machine turns him
into the national martyr for systemic racism.
vic and blood PREMIUM 7 hours ago remove link
Look at how many RINOs are swamp creatures who establish residency in lower population
states, where campaign cash goes further.
**** Cheney was a swamp creature and fake Wyoming person, just like Liz Cheney.
Pernicious Gold Phallusy 7 hours ago
McCain did that in the 1970s. Abandoned his wheelchair-bound wife and his kids, then
married a rich drug addict in a new State.
pndr4495 7 hours ago
As I have repeated many times here on ZH, a politician is not seriously concerned about
representing the constituents. The politician is busy with reprenting his/her own interests,
especially the financial interest.
vic and blood PREMIUM 7 hours ago remove link
Liz Cheney is a perfect example of how little the neocons differ from the neolibs. They
are the same thing with different cynical marketing strategies.
HAL9000rev1 7 hours ago (Edited)
The roots of neocon philosophy is Trotskyism. Neocons are left/right agnostic, they latch
on to which ever political party in power.
perpetual war/perpetual revolution is thier stratagy
freedommusic 8 hours ago (Edited)
Language was invented so people can lie.
Politics was invented so people can make a career out of lying.
Paul Bunyan 8 hours ago remove link
Language was invented to communicate, but yes, people take advantage.
Pretty Like an Ugly Girl 7 hours ago
I confess that in 2001, and until about 2008, I was part of the crowd that bought the
whole ******* line. Then with Obama I fell for the ******** that it's better to vote for the
lesser of two evils.
Then I started watching the countless documentaries on 911 that show the official 911
report is a bigger concoction of horse**** than the Warren Report. Here's the definitive
documentary, for any searchers out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DOnAn_PX6M
The thing about Cheney back in the day is that he seemed like the most credible/reasonable
man in government. I remember after he debated Joe Lieberman how everybody wished they were
both at the tops of their tickets.
Bottom line is we believe what aligns with what we want to believe, and they know it, and
they took down the towers knowing the majority of the US would be willing to go to war with
the entire world if need be.
Folks who think the covid scam or the stolen election was the beginning of the breakdown
haven't been paying attention. The people haven't been in control of their country for a
long, long time, if ever.
Ms No PREMIUM 7 hours ago
There are anti-human mimicks born, psychopaths, that literally have to study human
emotion, learn it and parrot it. That's why when one watches you, especially at first
encounter, it's so intense.
They are analyzing your every facial crease and body language trying to decode the human
and what it all means. When they lie they will sometimes pause to do this to see if it's
fully taking. They often can't tell if what they are saying is too absurd, they wait for you
to show them. They develop this skill over time.
What's even creepier, is that since they don't use empathy capacity and other human
tendencies, that brain capacity becomes devoted to their predatory nature, analyzing,
imitating and being phony. So they are damn near preternatural at it. They know your
weaknesses and needs immediately.
In addition to their dead, intense analyzing stare, they don't recognize that their stare
is too intense and that they often get too close. Like if this fatty had halitosis for
example, she would always just be at least a little too close to you. They don't understand
what it is about people that wants space They don't have that feeling either. When you squirm
and try to get away, they won't notice or care, unless they are doing it on purpose to
intimidate. They can also lie with ease, because they don't have any of those things that
makes people moral. They are simply annoyances to them. It pisses them off that they have to
pretend to care.
wellwaddyaknow 7 hours ago
So in other words, the CIA makes sht up, floats it out there in the direction of dumb
gullible compromised power hungry members of congress, and then wait to see who picks it up
and smells it.
Ditto. I am sure the CIA will be grinding the generals as we speak. Even the letter in
Politico could well be one of their strategies. I posted a piece in the open thread yesterday
from The HILL that was
pure propaganda.
USA is not alone in losing guerrilla warfare.
Watch for Biden announcing a 'shake up' of the military command in the next few
weeks/months.
The US military 2021 retreat from Kabul will result in a slaughter in the USA.
I see the Pentagon pulling the plug on the opium income for the CIA. Now THAT is the real
war. So the CIA now has to pay its mercenary army to defend the harvest and extraction. That
added cost to the CIA will not be taken lightly.
Biden is privatising the war in Afghanistan. 18,000 private contractors will stay behind
to maintain a landing area for U.S. aircraft should the need arise. According to war monger
Lynn Cheney the "troops will never leave". The U.S. National Guard has been fighting
undeclared wars all over the ME for twenty years and legislation is being proposed at the
state level to end the abuse. I personally know one man who has done three tours in Iraq as a
National Guardsman.
I totally agree with your comments concerning the U.S. government here at home. It is
Bolshevism 2.0.
Apologize will come flowing thru today..... You're out of your mind
if you think any of them will apologize for this cause they knew
what they were doing
i got to say i love how when Kayley isn't talking, she has that very
intense look on her face of listening and paying attention of what
others are saying that is so dang cute. Got to love the most beast
press secretary of all times! Im glad to see her on fox semi
regularly now.
Kaley is articulated and concise, on point, because what she says is
the product of her own intellect, not a script well studied (Psaki).
That the core of the difference in my opinion.
The Afghans (including the Taliban) do not want the US to leave their country. The flow of
US$ into the country (including the flow of heroin$) is what the Afghans have lived on for
many decades. Its not like the Afghans don't have control of their own country. They have
complete control of all the parts of the country that they want to control. They are
perfectly happy to allow Americans to control small parts of the country as long as the $$$
keep flowing into the whole country.
The US power elite may have figured out that just like every other power that has ever
tried to occupy Afghanistan that it is a black hole that sucks the life out of the power
trying to conq
@76 Tom
Interesting! Been too busy for reviewing the new military appointees until I read your post.
It looks like this is a last ditch attempt by Trump to get troops out of Afghanistan and
Syria...
"withdrawing troops from Afghanistan may well be exactly what TPTB want."
Posted by: jinn | Nov 12 2020 23:34 utc | 81
Well, they have had, what 19 years years to do that and now that President Trump makes
another push for it, all hell breaks loose from the forever war team, you know that team of
Democrats and RINO's who are now vying for a spot on Biden's team of psychopaths for war. The
we came, we saw and aren't leaving team.
"withdrawing troops from Afghanistan may well be exactly what TPTB want."
Anything is possible, but given the pushback that is taking place (quietly of course, lest
the masses get awoken) that is seriously doubtful.
Afghanistan can be likened to one of the central squares on a chessboard...control of
central squares is vital as it reduces the mobility of your opponent and lays ground for
offensive action.
China has a border with Afghanistan, as does Iran...were Afghanistan to free itself from
USA occupation, it would make a great conduit for the BRI.
That is without getting into Afghanistan's role in opium trade and the related black
budget, nor its wealth in rare minerals. One might say for the Hegemon to remain the Hegemon
it needs to control Afghanistan.
The problem for the hegemon is Afghanistan is expensive to hold on to...and this is
without Russia, Iran or China putting any effort in to chase US troops out via arming and
training proxies...that could be done quickly, and I am guessing the groundwork is already in
place.
Well, they have had, what 19 years years to do that
_________________________________________
Well sure but you need to remember the story of why we were there in the first place.
They can't just dump all the BS that they have been feeding us for nineteen years and say
"never mind" like Roseanne Roseannadanna.
As for the warmongers who support attacking Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc that was done to send
a message to any country that does not want to knuckle under to the $$$ hegemony and thinks
about trying to escape it.
That messaging does not apply to the Afghan war. That war sends the exact opposite
message.
The war in Afghanistan, now in its 19th year, is the longest and most intractable of America's forever wars. There are now
American
soldiers fighting in Afghanistan
who were born after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the ostensible
casus
belli
. The American public has long ago grown tired of the war. A
YouGov
poll
conducted in July of 2020 showed that 46 percent of Americans strongly supported withdrawing troops from Afghanistan,
with another 30 percent saying they "somewhat" approved of troop withdrawal.
But this 76 percent majority is deceptive. Given the fact that America has a volunteer army and American casualties in
Afghanistan remain sporadic, this is not an issue that the public is passionate about. An inchoate dissatisfaction is compatible
either with disengagement or just a lack of interest. Conversely, those in the national security establishment who do
passionately support the war are able to thwart political leaders who want a drawdown. Under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump,
presidential efforts to disengage from Afghanistan and the larger Middle East were met with resistance from a foreign policy
elite that sees any withdrawal as a humiliating defeat.
Trump tried to resolve the contradiction between his desire to remove troops and the foreign policy elite's commitment to the
Afghan war by
loosening
the rules of war
. The thinking of the Trump administration was that by unleashing the military and intelligence agencies, it
could subdue the Taliban -- thus preparing the way for a drawdown of troops. Special priority was given to CIA-run covert operations
using Afghan paramilitaries, with the belief that this would lead to a more sustainable war that didn't require American soldiers
to participate in fighting.
A report in
The Intercept
, written by reporter Andrew Quilty,
documents
the horrifying consequences
of this policy: Afghan paramilitary units, known as 01 and 02, have acted as death squads,
launching raids against civilians that have turned into massacres. Many of these raids have attacked religious schools, the
famous madrassas, leading to the death of children as young as 8 years old.
According to Quilty, "Residents from four districts in Wardak -- Nerkh, Chak, Sayedabad, and Daymirdad -- spoke of a string of
massacres, executions, mutilation, forced disappearances, attacks on medical facilities, and airstrikes targeting structures
known to house civilians. The victims, according to these residents, were rarely Taliban. Yet the Afghan unit and its American
masters have never been publicly held accountable by either the Afghan or U.S. governments."
These raids all involve Afghan paramilitaries who are outside the control of the Afghan government and working in conjunction
with American handlers who provide high-tech aid and direction, Quilty reports.
The units' American CIA advisers go by pseudonyms or call signs rather than
names.They not only train Afghan unit members, but also choose their targets, which the Americans call "jackpots"; issue
detailed pre-mission briefings; and accompany Afghan paramilitaries on the ground during raids. The Afghans and Americans are
ferried to remote villages at night by American helicopters, and American assault aircraft hover overhead while they conduct
their raids, providing lethal firepower that is sometimes directed at health clinics, madrassa dormitories, or civilian homes.
Despite providing detailed accounts of American-led war crimes,
The
Intercept
's report has been met with near-silence from the American media. Jake Tapper of CNN
retweeted
the article
, but otherwise there is little indication that the American media cares.
As
Intercept
reporter Ryan Grim
notes
,
"It's been two days since this story was published, and the mainstream media has been largely silent on it. Imagine if the media
treated the My Lai massacre this way." (In fact, the mainstream press sat on whistleblower Ron Ridenhour's warnings about My Lai
for a year before Seymour Hersh and the scruffy Dispatch News Service finally broke the silence.)
Grim also suggested that the Biden administration might want to bring justice to the perpetrators of these alleged war crimes.
"One of the most outspoken proponents of bringing a fine legal eye to war has been Avril Haines, who will be Joe Biden's Director
of National Intelligence," Grim observes. "She'll have the authority and the ability to discover who in the CIA was involved in
these operations, and bring them to justice."
This is a forlorn hope given the Obama administration's
failure
to go after war crimes
committed by the CIA under George W. Bush. Further, Biden himself is ambiguous on Afghanistan in a way
that calls to mind Trump himself.
As Quincy Institute president Andrew Bacevich
noted
in
The
Nation
earlier this month, Biden "wants to have it both ways" on the Afghan war. Biden will occasionally say, "These
'forever wars' have to end," but he will also say that America needs to keep a contingent of forces in Afghanistan. As Bacevich
observes, "Biden proposes to declare that the longest war in US history has ended, while simultaneously underwriting its
perpetuation." Biden's support for a light military footprint could very easily lead him to the same position as Trump: using
covert CIA operations to maintain American power in Afghanistan with minimal use of uniformed troops. This is a recipe for more
massacres.
Writing in
The Washington Post
last month, veteran Afghanistan
analyst Carter Malkasian
made
a compelling case
that the United States is facing a "stark choice" between "complete withdrawal by May or keeping 2,500
troops in place indefinitely to conduct counterterrorism operations and to try to prevent the collapse of the Afghan government.
There's no doubt that withdrawal will spell the end of the Afghan government that the United States has supported for 19 years."
Malkasian makes clear that the counterterrorism operations would merely be an exercise of staving off defeat, with no prospect of
an end to the war. Given the enormous moral costs of this counterterrorism, unflinchingly described by
The
Intercept
, the argument for complete withdrawal becomes stronger.
It's likely that Biden will continue the policy of previous presidents of kicking the can down the road by using covert CIA
operators to fend off defeat. But Americans should have no illusions: That means perpetuation of horrific war crimes in a
conflict that cannot be won.
As Americans pause to remember the tragic events of September 11, 2001 which saw almost 3,000 innocents killed in the worst terror
attack in United States history, it might also be worth contemplating the
horrific wars and foreign quagmires unleashed during the subsequent 'war on terror'.
Bush's so-called Global War on Terror targeted 'rogue states' like Saddam's Iraq, but also consistently had a focus on uprooting
and destroying al-Qaeda and other armed Islamist terror organizations (this led to the falsehood that Baathist Saddam and AQ were
in cahoots). But the idea that Washington from the start saw al-Qaeda and its affiliates as some kind of eternal enemy is largely
a myth.
Recall that the US covertly supported the Afghan mujahideen and other international jihadists throughout the 1980's Afghan-Soviet
War, the very campaign in which hardened al-Qaeda terrorists got their start. In 1999 The Guardian in a rare moment of honest
mainstream journalism warned of the Frankenstein
the CIA created -- among their ranks a terror mastermind named Osama bin Laden .
But it was all the way back in 1993 that a then classified intelligence memo warned that the very fighters the CIA previously
trained would soon turn their weapons on the US and its allies. The 'secret' document was declassified in 2009, but has remained
largely obscure in mainstream media reporting, despite being the first to contain a bombshell admission.
"support network that funneled money, supplies, and manpower to supplement the Afghan mujahidin" in the war against the Soviets,
"is now contributing experienced fighters to militant Islamic groups worldwide."
The concluding section contains the most revelatory statements, again remembering these words were written nearly
a decade before the 9/11 attacks :
US support of the mujahidin during the Afghan war will not necessarily protect US interests from attack.
...Americans will become the targets of radical Muslims' wrath. Afghan war veterans, scattered throughout the world, could
surprise the US with violence in unexpected locales.
There it is in black and white print: the United States government knew and bluntly acknowledged that the very militants
it armed and trained to the tune of hundreds
of millions of dollars would eventually turn that very training and those very weapons back on the American people .
And this was not at all a "small" or insignificant group, instead as The Guardian wrote a mere
two years before 9/11 :
American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla
warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up .
But don't think for a moment that there was ever a "lesson learned" by Washington.
Instead the CIA and other US agencies repeated the 1980s policy of arming jihadists to overthrow US enemy regimes in places like
Libya and Syria even long after the "lesson" of 9/11. As War on The Rocks recounted :
Despite the passage of time, the issues Ms. Bennett raised in her
1993 work continue to be relevant today.
This fact is a sign of the persistence of the problem of Sunni jihadism and the "wandering mujahidin." Today, of course, the problem
isn't Afghanistan but Syria. While the war there is far from over, there is already widespread nervousness, particularly in Europe,
about what will happen when the
foreign fighters return from that conflict.
As Americans pause to remember the tragic events of September 11, 2001 which saw almost
3,000 innocents killed in the worst terror attack in United States history, it might also be
worth contemplating the
horrific wars and foreign quagmires unleashed during the subsequent 'war on terror'.
Bush's so-called Global War on Terror targeted 'rogue states' like Saddam's Iraq, but also
consistently had a focus on uprooting and destroying al-Qaeda and other armed Islamist terror
organizations (this led to the falsehood that Baathist Saddam and AQ were in cahoots). But the
idea that Washington from the start saw al-Qaeda and its affiliates as some kind of eternal
enemy is largely a myth.
Recall that the US covertly supported the Afghan mujahideen and other international
jihadists throughout the 1980's Afghan-Soviet War, the very campaign in which hardened al-Qaeda
terrorists got their start. In 1999 The Guardian in a rare moment of honest mainstream
journalism warned of the Frankenstein the CIA created --
among their ranks a terror mastermind named Osama bin Laden .
But it was all the way back in 1993 that a then classified intelligence memo warned that the
very fighters the CIA previously trained would soon turn their weapons on the US and its
allies. The 'secret' document was declassified in 2009, but has remained largely obscure in
mainstream media reporting, despite being the first to contain a bombshell admission.
"support network that funneled money, supplies, and manpower to supplement the Afghan
mujahidin" in the war against the Soviets, "is now contributing experienced fighters to
militant Islamic groups worldwide."
During the war in Afghanistan, eager Arab
youths volunteered en masse to fight a historic "jihad"
against the Soviet •'infidel." The support network
that funneled money, supplies, and manpower to sup-
plement the Afghan mujahidin is now contributing
experienced fighters to militant Islamic groups world-
wide. Veterans of the Afghan jihad are being inte-
... ... ...
dump hundreds more devout fighters into the net-
work. exacerbating the problems of governments that
are accepting the wandering mujahidin.
* * *
When the Boys Come Home
The concluding section contains the most revelatory statements, again remembering these
words were written nearly a decade before the 9/11
attacks :
US support of the mujahidin during the Afghan war will not necessarily protect US
interests from attack.
...Americans will become the targets of radical Muslims' wrath. Afghan war veterans,
scattered throughout the world, could surprise the US with violence in unexpected
locales.
ue until wc throw India out," apparently is well armed
and operating about 80 miles southeast of Srinagar.
Mujahidin in Every Corner
Beyond the Middle East and South Asia, small
numbers of Afghan war veterans are taking up causes
from Somalia to the Philippines. Mujahidin connections
to the larger network heighten the chances that even
an ad hoc group could carry out destructive insurgent
attacks. Veterans joining small opposition groups can
contribute significantly to their capabilities; therefore,
some militant groups are actively recruiting returning
veterans, as in the Philippines where the radical Mus-
lim Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) reportedly is using muja-
hidin members' connections to the network to bolster
funding and broker arms deals. The ASG is believed
to have carried out the May bombings of Manila's
light rail system.
Focus on the United States
The alleged involvement of veterans of the Af-
ghan war in the World Trade Center bombing and the
plots against New York targets arc a bold example of
what tactics some fop^r mujahidin are willing in use
in their ongoing jihad (see box, p. 3). US support of
the mujahidin during the Afghan war will not neces-
sarily protect US interests from attack.
The growing perception by Muslims that the US
follows a double standard with regard to Islamic issues --
particularly in Iraq, Bosnia, Algeria, and the Isracli-
occupicd territories -- heightens the possibility that
Americans will become the targets of radical Muslims'
wrath. Afghan war veterans, scattered throughout the
world, could surprise the US with violence in unex-
pected locales.
(Gina BennoB. INfVTNA)
There it is in black and white print: the United States government knew and bluntly
acknowledged that the very militants it armed and trained to the tune of
hundreds of millions of dollars would eventually turn that very training and those very
weapons back on the American people .
And this was not at all a "small" or insignificant group, instead as The Guardian wrote a
mere two
years before 9/11 :
American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in
bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up
.
But don't think for a moment that there was ever a "lesson learned" by Washington.
So he found a different theatre for his holy war and achieved a different sort
of martyrdom. Three years ago, he was convicted of planning a series of
massive explosions in Manhattan and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Hampton-el was described by prosecutors as a skilled bomb-maker. It was
hardly surprising. In Afghanistan he fought with the Hezb-i-Islami group of
mujahideen, whose training and weaponry were mainly supplied by the CIA.
He was not alone. American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992,12,500
foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla
warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up.
Instead the CIA and other US agencies repeated the 1980s policy of arming jihadists to
overthrow US enemy regimes in places like Libya and Syria even long after the "lesson" of 9/11.
As War on The Rocks recounted :
Despite the passage of time, the issues Ms. Bennett raised in her 1993 work continue to be
relevant today. This fact is a sign of the persistence of the problem of Sunni jihadism and
the "wandering mujahidin." Today, of course, the problem isn't Afghanistan but Syria. While
the war there is far from over, there is already widespread nervousness, particularly in
Europe, about what will happen when the
foreign fighters return from that conflict.
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The U.S. State Dept.'s own numbers at the height of the war in Syria: access the full
report at
STATE.GOV
19 June 2015, From US Department of
State, Country Report on Terrorism 2014:
"The rate of foreign terrorist fighter travel to Syria
[during 2014]- totaling more than 16,000 foreign
terrorist ficjhters from more than 90 countries as
of late December - exceeded the rate of foreign
terrorist fighters who traveled to Afghanistan and
Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, or Somalia at any point in
the last 20 years"
By
Tony
Cox
, a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.
The New York Times and CNN are desperate to paint Donald Trump as an enemy of the military, due to his desire not to get
involved in pointless wars. But this is simply not true, and Trump has the backing of many soldiers.
Someone should tell the
New York Times, CNN and other mainstream media outlets that soldiers don't actually like getting killed or maimed for no good
reason. Nor do they like generals and presidents who spill their blood in vain.
Alas, ignorance of these
obvious truths probably isn't the issue. This is likely just another case of the biggest names in news pretending to not get
the point so they can take the rest of us along for a ride in their confidence game of alternative reality.
The latest example is the
New York Times spinning President Donald Trump's critique this week of Pentagon leadership and the military industrial complex
as disrespect for the military at large.
"Trump has lost the right and authority to be
commander in chief,"
the
Times quoted
retired US Marines General Anthony Zinni as saying. Zinni cited Trump's alleged
"despicable
comments"
about the nation's war dead – reported last week by
The
Atlantic
, citing anonymous sources – as one of the reasons Trump "must go."
Never mind that Trump and all on-the-record administration sources denied The Atlantic's report. The Times couldn't resist
when the pieces seemed to fit so well together for the military's latest propaganda campaign against Trump. First the
president disses the troops, calling them "losers" and "suckers," then he has the
temerity
to say
Pentagon leaders want to fight wars to keep defense contractors happy.
Except the pieces don't
fit. The many people who occupy so-called boots on the ground don't have the same interests as the few people who send them to
war. In fact, combat troops are given reason to hate the generals who send them to die when there's not a legitimate national
security reason for the war they're fighting. And the US has fought a long line of wars that didn't serve the nation's
national security interests. Even when a war is justified, the interests of top brass and front-line soldiers often clash.
Remember that great 1967
war movie, '
The
Dirty Dozen'
? A group of 12 soldiers who were condemned to long prison sentences or execution in military prison for their
crimes were sent on a 1944 suicide mission to kill high-ranking German officers at a heavily defended chateau far behind enemy
lines. After succeeding in the mission and escaping the Germans, the lone surviving convict, played by tough-guy actor Charles
Bronson, told the mission leader,
"Killing generals could get to be a habit with me."
So no, New York Times, speaking out against ill-advised wars does not equal bashing the military. And sorry, General Zinni,
but generals, defense contractors and their media mouthpieces don't get to decide who has the
"right
and authority"
to be commander in chief. The voters decided that already, and they expressed clearly that they don't want
senseless and endless wars and foreign interventions.
The Times cited General
James McConville, the Army's chief of staff, as saying Pentagon leaders would only recommend sending troops to combat
"when
it's required for national security and a last resort."
And no, it wasn't a comedy skit. What's the last US war or combat
intervention that measured up to that standard? Let's just say the late Bronson, who died in 2003 at the age of 81, was a
young man the last time that happened.
CNN tried a similar ploy
on Sunday, while trying to sell the "losers" and "suckers" story in an interview with US Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert
Wilkie. Host Dana Bash said the allegations fit a
"pattern of public statements
" by
the president because Trump called US Senator John McCain a "loser" in 2015 and said McCain shouldn't be considered a hero for
being captured in the Vietnam War. She repeatedly suggested to Wilkie, who didn't take the bait, that Trump's attacks on
McCain, who died in 2018, showed disrespect for the troops.
Apparently, this follows
the same line of propagandist thought which told us that saying there are rapists among the illegal aliens entering the US
from Mexico – which is undeniably true –
equals
saying
all Mexicans are rapists. In CNN land, a bad word about McCain is a bad word about all soldiers.
McCain was
a
warmonger
who didn't mind getting US troops killed or backing terrorist groups in Syria. If
he
had his way
, many more GIs would be dead or disabled, because the intervention in Syria would have been escalated and the
US might be at war with Iran. Soldiers wouldn't want their lives wasted in such conflicts.
All wars are hard on the
people who have to fight them, but senseless wars are spirit-crushing. An average of about 17 veterans commit suicide each day
in the US, according to Veterans Administration
data
.
Veterans account for 11 percent of the US adult population but more than 18 percent of suicides.
The media's deceiving
technique of trying to pretend that ruling-class chieftains and front-line grunts are in the same boat reflects a broader
campaign of top-down revolution against populism. The
military
is
just one of several pro-Trump segments of the population that must be turned against the president. Other pro-Trump segments,
such as
police
,
are demonized and attacked.
Trump has managed to keep
the US out of new wars and has drawn down deployments to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan – despite Pentagon opposition. His rival,
Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, can be expected to rev up the war machine if he takes charge. His foreign policy
adviser, Antony Blinken, lamented in a May
interview
with CBS News
that Trump had given up US "leverage" in Syria.
Trump also has turned
around the VA hospital system, ending
decades
of neglect
that left many veterans to die on waiting lists.
Like past campaigns to
oust Trump, the notion that he's not sufficiently devoted to the troops might be a tough sell. No matter how good their words
may sound, the people who promote endless wars without clear objectives aren't true supporters of the rank and file.
The late June 'Russian bounties in Afghanistan' story lasted no longer than a mere week
given that some of the very publications pushing it
were forced to walk it back based on not only key claims not bearing out, but a slew of top
intel officials and Pentagon generals saying it was baseless.
And then like many other 'Russiagate'-inspired narratives (in this case Trump was accused of
essentially 'looking the other way' while Russians supposedly paid the Taliban to kill US
troops), it was memory-holed.
But this apparently hasn't stopped the State Department or the Pentagon from using it as
leverage while talking to the Russians. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned his counterpart,
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, that "there will be an enormous price to pay" if the Kremlin
did indeed pay Afghan fighters to attack Americans or other Westerners .
"That's what I shared with Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov," Pompeo said. "I know our
military has talked to their senior leaders as well. We won't brook that; we won't tolerate
that."
Russia has of course, denied involvement in any such operation, which many analysts have
pointed out would carry major risk of stoking military conflict with the United States but with
little positive gain in the region.
Pompeo also said in the interview
: "We will do everything we need to do to protect and defend every American soldier and, for
that matter, every soldier from the Czech Republic or any other country that's part of the
Resolute Support Mission to make sure that they're safe."
Importantly, it marks the first time any US official has broached the Russian bounties story
with a Kremlin officials .
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But again, it's somewhat strange given the US administration (and multiple
US intelligence agencies ) has repeatedly denied that it has any merit. Trump has gone so
far as to all it a "hoax". Thus Pompeo's message to the Russians appears a pure tactic for
achieving leverage.
Or alternately, it could be that Pompeo is just plain undermining Trump on this one.
Unitended Consequences , 5 minutes ago
Pompeo is a Deep State mole.
David Wooten , just now
There is still a big disconnect between Trump and the 'Trump' administration.
That's always been the purpose of intelligence agencies - in every nation throughout
history.
Government agencies work for their own benefit, without exception. And the leaders of
government always work the same way, regardless of the actual "national interests" or
"public interest".
The problem is that everyone believes the fantasy that somehow they can "elect" leaders
and government workers who don't do this. But all elections are manipulated by the
political elites themselves to insure that no one gets into power who might the remotest
notion of upsetting the profitable apply cart. And if any movement arose that sought to
prevent the manipulation of elections - say, a "third party" or some movement to de-fund
parties by elites - that movement itself would be deflected or undermined or taken
over.
It's a circus and you all are the circus animals. Get used to it.
I don't know where the idea that China wants Biden to win came from. The consensus I get
from reading actual PRC media in native Chinese is certainly the opposite: They are 100%
sure the Cold War 2.0 is going to escalate either way, so they will rather have Trump's
outward incompetence than another Obama-like knife-behind-the-smile schemer.
It is the rulers themselves and those who rule the rulers, who are fearful of losing
control of the levers of power. I recall the British in Egypt boasting: 'we don't rule
Egypt, we rule the rulers.'
It is not the accumulation of power for its own sake that is the intoxicating elixir of
the ruling elite. It is furthering their objectives, both open and hidden.
To understand their primary objectives one should ask: just what is the single most bi
partisan policy objective of US presidents, since Woodrow Wilson, with a few minor
differences of opinion and emphasis from Eisenhower and Kennedy? Just what was the first
priority item on the agenda at both the 1919 Paris 'Peace' Conference and the first United
Nations meetings at Lake Success?
It was amending the title deeds of Palestine and attempting to confer some kind of quasi
legitimacy on the new title deed holders.
The rulers are very afraid the future of the Zionist project is slipping away from their
control. So in their rabid and delusional minds anything goes from now on in the
furtherance of that self inflicted nightmare and the elimination of anyone or any country
that inhibits that objective. Watch out.
"... While cozying up to Putin on a personal level, Trump has actually taken a harder line against Russia than his predecessors, to the detriment of people in both countries. The President canceled two arms treaties, imposed sanctions on Moscow, and sent Javelin missiles to Ukraine. ..."
"... Defense industries make billions from government contracts. Former military officers and State Department officials rake in six-figure incomes sitting on corporate boards. Aspiring secretaries of state and defense strut their stuff at think tank conferences and, until the pandemic, at alcohol-fueled, black tie events in Washington. ..."
"... "There's an entire infrastructure influencing policy," says Hoh, who had an inside seat during his years with the government. ..."
"... And that's what the current Russia-Taliban scandal is all about: An unreliable Afghan report is blown into a national controversy in hopes of forcing the White House to cancel the Afghan troop withdrawal. Demonizing Russia (along with China and Iran) also justifies revamping the US nuclear arsenal and building advanced fighter jets that can't fly . ..."
On June 26, in a major front page story, The New York Times
wrote that Russia paid a bounty to the Taliban to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan last
year. The story quickly unraveled.
While the military is investigating the allegations, Mark Miley, chair of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff says
there's no proof that Russian payments led to any US deaths. The National Security Agency
says it found
no communications intelligence supporting the bounty claim.
Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., head of the US Central Command, says he's not
convinced that American troops died as a result of Russian bounties.
"I just didn't find that there was a causative link there," he
tellsThe Washington Post .
Sina Toossi, senior research analyst at the National Iranian American Council, tells me
the controversy reveals an internecine battle within the foreign policy establishment. "Many
in the national security establishment in Washington are searching for reasons to keep US
troops in Afghanistan," Toossi says. "This story plays into those broader debates."
Troop withdrawal?
Faced with no end to its unpopular war in Afghanistan, the Trump Administration negotiated an agreement with
the Taliban in February. Washington agreed to gradually pull out troops, and the Taliban
promised not to attack US personnel.
The Taliban and Afghan government are supposed to hold peace talks and release prisoners
of war. The US troop withdrawal won't be completed until May 2021, giving the administration
in power the ability to renege on the deal.
Nevertheless, powerful members of the Afghan intelligence elite and some in the US
national security establishment strongly object to the agreement and want to keep US troops
in the country permanently.
Matthew Hoh, who worked for the State Department in Afghanistan and is now a senior fellow
with the Center for
International Policy , tells me that the reports of Russian bounties likely originated
with the Afghanistan intelligence agency.
"The mention of Russia was a key word," says Hoh. CIA officials fast-tracked the Afghan
reports. They argued that Russia's interference, and Trump's failure to respond, only
emboldens the Russians.
Originally, the Times
claimed $500,000 in Russian bounty money was seized at the home of a Taliban operative
named Rahmatullah Azizi. He turned out to be an Afghan drug smuggler who had previously
worked as a contractor
for Washington.
The Times later admitted that
investigators "could not say for sure that it was bounty money."
Hoh says the alleged bounties make no sense politically or militarily. Last year, he says,
"The Taliban didn't need any incentives to kill Americans." And this year, it has stopped all
attacks on US forces as part of the February agreement.
But leading Democrats ignore the unraveling of the story in a rush to attack the White
House from the right. Joe Biden reached deep into his Cold War tool box to blast Trump.
"Not only has he failed to sanction or impose any kind of consequences on Russia for this
egregious violation of international law, Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing
campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin," Biden
told a town hall meeting.
Demonizing Russia
While cozying up to Putin on a personal level, Trump has actually taken a harder line
against Russia than his predecessors, to the detriment of people in both countries. The
President canceled
two arms treaties,
imposed sanctions on Moscow, and
sent Javelin missiles to Ukraine.
Both high-ranking Republicans and Democrats benefit politically by creating an evil
Russian enemy, according to Vladimir Pozner, Putin critic and host of a popular Russian TV
interview program.
The bounty accusation "keeps the myth alive of Putin and Russia being a vicious,
cold-blooded enemy of the US," Pozner tells me.
Some call it the foreign policy establishment; others say the national security state or
simply the Deep State. A group of officials in the Pentagon, State Department, intelligence
agencies and war industries have played an outsized role in foreign policy for decades. And
it's not out of the goodness of their hearts.
Defense industries make billions from government contracts. Former military officers and
State Department officials rake in six-figure incomes sitting on corporate boards. Aspiring
secretaries of state and defense strut their stuff at think tank conferences and, until the
pandemic, at alcohol-fueled, black tie events in Washington.
"There's an entire infrastructure influencing policy," says Hoh, who had an inside seat
during his years with the government.
The Deep State is not monolithic, he cautions. "You won't find a backroom with guys
smoking cigars. But there is a notion of US primacy and a bent towards military
intervention."
And that's what the current Russia-Taliban scandal is all about: An unreliable Afghan
report is blown into a national controversy in hopes of forcing the White House to cancel the
Afghan troop withdrawal. Demonizing Russia (along with China and Iran) also justifies
revamping the US nuclear arsenal and building advanced fighter jets that
can't fly .
"It's Russia hysteria," says Hoh.
Afghans suffer
While the Washington elite wage internal trench warfare, the people of Afghanistan suffer.
More than 100,000 Afghans have died because of the war, with 10,000
casualties each year, according to the United Nations . The Pentagon
reports 2,219 US soldiers
died and 20,093 were wounded in the Afghan war.
A lesser imperialist power, Russia has its own interests in Afghanistan. It has taken
advantage of the US decline in the region to expand influence in Syria and Libya.
According to Pozner, Russia doesn't favor a Taliban government in Afghanistan. The Kremlin
considers the Taliban a dangerous terrorist organization. But if the Taliban comes to power,
Pozner says, "Russia would like to have stable relations with them. You have to take things
as they are and build as good a relationship as possible."
Neither Russia nor any other outside power has the means or desire to control Afghanistan.
At best, they hope for a stable neighbor, not one trying to spread extremism in the
region.
That's been the stated US goal for years. Ironically, it can't be achieved until US troops
withdraw.
Reese Erlich's nationally distributed column, Foreign Correspondent, appears every two
weeks. Follow him onTwitter, @ReeseErlich; friend him onFacebook; and visit hiswebpage.
The willingness of the press to circulate any account that puts Russia in a bad light has not diminished with the collapse of
the Russia-Trump collusion narrative.
hroughout the Trump years, various reporters have presented
to great fanfare one dubious, thinly sourced story after another about Moscow's supposedly nefarious plots against the United
States. The unsupported allegations about an illegal collusion between Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and the Russian government
spawned a host of subsidiary charges that
proved
to be bogus
. Yet, prominent news outlets, including the
New York Times
, the
Washington Pos
t, CNN, and
MSNBC ran stories featuring such shaky accusations as if they were gospel.
The willingness of the press to circulate any account that
puts
Russia
in
a bad light has not diminished with the collapse of the Russia-Trump collusion narrative. The latest incident began when the
New
York Times
published a front-page article on June 28, based on an anonymous source within the intelligence community,
that Moscow had
put
a bounty
on the lives of American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. The predictable, furious reaction throughout the
media and the general public followed. When the White House insisted that the intelligence agencies had never informed either
the president or vice president of such reports, most press reactions were scornful.
As with so many other inflammatory news accounts dealing
with
Russia
,
serious doubts about the accuracy of this one developed almost immediately. Just days later, an unnamed intelligence official
told CBS reporter Catherine Herridge that the information about the alleged bounties
was
uncorroborated
. The source also revealed to Herridge that the National Security Agency (NSA) concluded that the
intelligence collection report "does not match well-established and verifiable Taliban and Haqqani practices" and lacked
"sufficient reporting to corroborate any links." The report had reached "low levels" at the National Security Council, but it
did not travel farther up the chain of command. The Pentagon, which apparently had
originated
the bounty allegations
and tried to sell the intelligence agencies on the theory, soon retreated and issued
its
own statement
about the "unconfirmed" nature of the information.
There was a growing sense of déjà vu, as though the episode
was the second coming of the infamous, uncorroborated Steele dossier that caused the Obama administration to launch its 2016
collusion investigation. A number of conservative and antiwar outlets highlighted the multiplying doubts. They had somewhat
contrasting motives for doing so. Most conservative critics believed that it was yet another attempt by a hostile media to
discredit President Trump for partisan reasons. Antiwar types suspected that it was an attempt by both the Pentagon and the
top echelons of some intelligence agencies to use the media to generate more animosity toward
Russia
and
thwart the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a process that was still in its early stages following Washington's
February 29, 2020, peace accord with the Taliban.
The bounty stories certainly had that effect.
Congressional hawks in both parties immediately
called
for a delay
in further withdrawals while the allegations were investigated. They also made yet more "Trump is Putin's
puppet" assertions. Nancy Pelosi
could
not resist
hurling another smear with that theme. "With him, all roads lead to Putin," Pelosi said. "I don't know what the
Russians have on the president, politically, personally, or financially."
Despite the growing cloud of uncertainty about the source
or accuracy of the bounty allegation, several high-profile journalists treated it as though it was incontrovertible. A
typically blatant, hostile spin was evident in a
New York Times
article
by
Michael Crowley and Eric Schmitt. The principal "evidence" that they cited for the intelligence report was the earlier story
in their own newspaper. An admission that there were divisions within the intelligence agencies about the report, the authors
buried far down in their article.
High-level intelligence personnel giving the president
verbal briefings did not deem the bounty report sufficiently credible, much less alarming, to bring it to his attention.
Former intelligence official Ray McGovern reached a
blunt
conclusion
: "As a preparer and briefer of The President's Daily Brief to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush,
I can attest to the fact that -- based on what has been revealed so far -- the Russian bounty story falls far short of the PDB
threshold."
Barbara Boland, a national security correspondent for the
American
Conservative
and a veteran journalist on intelligence issues, cited some "glaring problems" with the bounty charges. One
was that the Times' anonymous source stated that the assessment was based "on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and
criminals." Boland noted that John Kiriakou, a former analyst and case officer for the CIA who led the team that
captured senior al-Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah in 2002, termed reliance on coercive interrogations "a red flag." Kiriakou
added, "When you capture a prisoner, and you're interrogating him, the prisoner is going to tell you what he thinks you want
to hear." Boland reminded readers that under interrogation Khalid Sheik Mohammed made at least 31 confessions, "many of which
were completely false."
A second problem Boland saw with the bounty story was
identifying a rational purpose for such
a
Russian initiative
since it was apparent to everyone that Trump was intent on pulling U.S. troops out. Moreover, she
emphasized, only eight U.S. military personnel were killed during the first six months of 2020, and the
New York Times
story
could not verify that even one fatality resulted from a bounty. If the program existed at all, then it was extraordinarily
ineffective.
Nevertheless, most media accounts breathlessly repeated the
charges as if they were proven. In the
New York Times
, David Sanger and Eric Schmitt
asserted
that,
given the latest incident, "it doesn't require a top-secret clearance and access to the government's most classified
information to see that the list of Russian aggressions in recent weeks rivals some of the worst days of the Cold War." Ray
McGovern responded to the Sanger-Schmitt article by impolitely reminding his readers about
Sanger's
dreadful record
during the lead-up to the Iraq War of uncritically repeating unverified leaks from intelligence sources
and hyping the danger of Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Another prominent journalist who doubled down on the bounty
allegations was the
Washington Post's
Aaron
Blake
. The headline of his July 1 article read "The only people dismissing the Russia bounties intel: the Taliban, Russia
and Trump." Apparently, the NSA's willingness to go public with its doubts, as well as negative assessments of the allegations
by several veteran former intelligence officials, did not seem to matter to Blake. As evidence of how "serious" the situation
was (despite a perfunctory nod that the intelligence had not yet been confirmed), Blake quoted several of the usual hawks from
the president's own party.
As time passed, outnumbered media skeptics of the bounties
story nevertheless lobbed increasingly vigorous criticisms of the allegations. Their case for skepticism was warranted. It
became clear that even the CIA and other agencies that embraced the charges of bounties ascribed only "medium confidence" to
their conclusions. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
, there are three levels of
confidence, "high," "moderate," and "low." A "moderate" confidence level means "that the information is credibly sourced and
plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence." The NSA (and
apparently the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and possibly other portions of the intelligence community) gave the reports
the "low" confidence designation,
meaning
that
"the information's credibility and/or plausibility is questionable, or that the information is too fragmented or poorly
corroborated to make solid analytic inferences, or that [there are] significant concerns or problems with the sources."
Antiwar journalist Caitlin Johnstone offered an especially
brutal
indictment
of the media's performance regarding the latest installment of the "Russia is America's mortal enemy" saga.
"All parties involved in spreading this malignant psyop are absolutely vile," she wrote, "but a special disdain should be
reserved for the media class who have been entrusted by the public with the essential task of creating an informed populace
and holding power to account. How much of an unprincipled whore do you have to be to call yourself a journalist and
uncritically parrot the completely unsubstantiated assertions of spooks while protecting their anonymity?"
The media should not have ignored or blithely dismissed the
bounty allegation, but far too many members ran enthusiastically with a story based on extremely thin evidence, questionable
sourcing, and equally questionable logic. Once again, they seemed to believe the worst about Russia's behavior and Trump's
reaction to it because they had long ago mentally programmed themselves to believe such horror stories without doubt or
reservation. The
assessment
by
Alan MacLeod of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is devastatingly accurate. With regard to the bounty story, he
concluded, "evidence-free claims from nameless spies became fact" in most media accounts. Instead of sober, restrained
inquiries from a skeptical, probing press, readers and viewers were treated to yet another installment of over-the-top
anti-Russia diatribes. That treatment had the effect, whether intended or unintended, of promoting even more hawkish policies
toward Moscow and undermining the already much-delayed withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It was a biased,
unprofessional performance that should do nothing to restore the public's confidence in the media's already tattered
credibility.
This is all about maintaining the US-centered global neoliberal empire. After empires is created the the USA became the
salve of imperial interests and in a way stopped existing as an independent country. Everything is thrown on the altar of "full
spectrum Dominance". The result is as close to a real political and economic disaster as we can get. Like USSR leadership the US
elite realized now that neoliberalism is not sustainable, but can't do anything as all bets were made for the final victory of
neoliberalism all over the world, much like Soviets hoped for the victory of communism. That did not happened and although the USA
now is in much better position then the USSR in 60th (but with the similar level of deterioration of cognitive abilities of the
politicians as the USSR). In this sense COVID-19 was a powerful catalyst of the crush of the US-centered neoliberal empire
Notable quotes:
"... On the other side are the targets of "inveterate antipathies." This also characterizes US Middle East policy. So hated are Iran and Syria that Washington, DC is making every effort to destroy their economies, ruin their people's livelihoods, wreck their hospitals, and starve their population. The respective governments are bad, to be sure, but do not threaten the US Yet, as the nation's first president explained to Americans, "Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy." ..."
"... Consider how close the US has come to foolish, unnecessary wars against both nations. There were manifold demands that the US enter the Syrian civil war, in which Americans have no stake. Short of combat the Obama administration indirectly aided the local affiliate of al-Qaeda, the terrorist group which staged 9/11 and supposedly was America's enemy. Moreover, there was constant pressure on America to attack Iran, targeted by the US since 1953, when the CIA helped replace Tehran's democracy with a brutal tyrant, whose rule was highlighted by corruption, torture, and a nuclear program – which then was taken over by Iran's Islamic revolutionaries, to America's horror. ..."
"... The US now is pushing toward a Cold War redux with Russia, after successive administrations treated Moscow as if it was of no account, lying about plans to expand NATO and acting in other ways that the US would never tolerate. Imagine the Soviet Union helping to overthrow an elected, pro-American government in Mexico City, seeking to redirect all commerce to Soviet allies in South America, and proposing that Mexico join the Warsaw Pact. US policymakers would be threatening war. ..."
"... In different ways many US policies illustrate the problem caused by "passionate attachments" – the almost routine and sometimes substantial sacrifice of US economic and security interests to benefit other governments. For instance, hysteria swept Washington at the president's recent proposal to simply reduce troop levels in Germany, which along with so many other European nations sees little reason to do much to defend itself. There are even those who demand American subservience to the Philippines, a semi-failed state of no significant security importance to the US Saudi Arabia is a rare case where the attachment is mostly cash and lobbyists. In most instances cultural, ethnic, religious, and historical ties provide a firmer foundation for foreign political influence and manipulation. ..."
Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, unkindly characterized the
foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C., as "the Blob." Although policymakers
sometimes disagree on peripheral subjects, membership requires an absolute commitment to U.S.
"leadership," which means a determination to micro-manage the world.
Reliance on persuasion is not enough. Vital is the willingness to bomb, invade, and, if
necessary, occupy other nations to impose the Blob's dictates on other peoples. If foreigners
die, as they often do, remember the saying about eggs and omelets oft repeated by communism's
apologists. "Stuff happens" with the best-intentioned policies.
One might be inclined to forgive Blob members if their misguided activism actually benefited
the American people. However, all too often the Blob's policies instead aid other governments
and interests. Washington is overrun by the representatives of and lobbyists for other nations,
which constantly seek to take control of US policy for their own advantage. The result are
foreign interventions in which Americans do the paying and, all too often, the dying for
others.
The problem is primarily one of power. Other governments don't spend a lot of time
attempting to take over Montenegro's foreign policy because, well, who cares? Exactly what
would you do after taking over Fiji's foreign ministry other than enjoy a permanent vacation?
Seize control of international relations in Barbados and you might gain a great tax
shelter.
Subvert American democracy and manipulate US foreign policy, and you can loot America's
treasury, turn the US military into your personal bodyguard, and gain Washington's support for
reckless war-mongering. And given the natural inclination of key American policymakers to
intervene promiscuously abroad for the most frivolous reasons, it's surprisingly easy for
foreign interests to convince Uncle Sam that their causes are somehow "vital" and therefore
require America's attention. Indeed, it is usually easier to persuade Americans than foreign
peoples in their home countries to back one or another international misadventure.
The culprits are not just autocratic regimes. Friendly democratic governments are equally
ready to conspiratorially whisper in Uncle Sam's ear. Even nominally classical liberal
officials, who believe in limiting their own governments, argue that Americans are obligated to
sacrifice wealth and life for everyone else. The mantra seems to be liberty, prosperity, and
peace for all – except those living in the superpower tasked by heaven with protecting
everyone else's liberty, prosperity, and peace.
Although the problem has burgeoned in modern times, it is not new. Two centuries ago fans of
Greek independence wanted Americans to challenge the Ottoman Empire, a fantastic bit of
foolishness. Exactly how to effect an international Balkans rescue was not clear, since the
president then commanded no aircraft carriers, air wings, or nuclear-tipped missiles. Still,
the issue divided Americans and influenced John Quincy Adams' famous 1821 Independence Day
address.
Warned Adams:
"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there
will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of
monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the
champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance
of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting
under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would
involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of
individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of
freedom."
"The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force . She
might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit .
[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a
spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has
been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of
mankind would permit, her practice."
Powerful words, yet Adams was merely following in the footsteps of another great American,
George Washington. Obviously, the latter was flawed as a person, general, and president.
Nevertheless, his willingness to set a critical precedent by walking away from power left an
extraordinary legacy. As did his insistence that the Constitution tasked Congress with deciding
when America would go to war. And his warning against turning US policy over to foreign
influences.
Concern over obsequious subservience to other governments and interests pervaded his famous
1796 Farewell Address. Applied today, his message indicts most of the policy currently made in
the city ironically named after him. He would be appalled by what presidents and Congresses
today do, supposedly for America.
Obviously, the US was very different 224 years ago. The new country was fragile, sharing the
Western hemisphere with its old colonial master, which still ruled Canada and much of the
Caribbean, as well as Spain and France. When later dragged into the maritime fringes of the
Napoleonic wars the US could huff and puff but do no more than inconvenience France and
Britain. The vastness of the American continent, not overweening national power, again
frustrated London when it sought to subjugate its former colonists.
Indeed, when George Washington spoke the disparate states were not yet firmly knit into a
nation. Only after the Civil War, when the national government waged four years of brutal
combat, which ravaged much of the country and killed upwards of 750,000 people in the name of
"union," did people uniformly say the United States "is" rather than "are." However, the
transformation was much more than rhetorical. The federal system that originally emerged in the
name of individual liberty spawned a high tax centralized government that employed one of the
world's largest militaries to kill on a mass scale to enforce the regime's dictates. The modern
American "republic" was born. It acted overseas only inconsistently until World War II, after
which imperial America was a constant, adding resonance to George Washington's message.
Today Washington, D.C.'s elites have almost uniformly decided that Russia is an enemy,
irrespective of American behavior that contributed to Moscow's hostility. And that Ukraine, a
country never important for American security, is a de facto military ally, appropriately armed
by the US for combat against a nuclear-armed rival. A reelection-minded president seems
determined to turn China into a new Cold War adversary, an enemy for all things perhaps for all
time. America remains ever entangled in the Middle East, with successive administrations in
permanent thrall of Israel and Saudi Arabia, allowing foreign leaders to set US Mideast policy.
Indeed, both states have avidly pressed the administration to make their enemy, Iran, America'
enemy. The resulting fixation caused the Trump administration to launch economic war against
the rest of the world to essentially prevent everyone on earth from having any commercial
dealing of any kind with anyone in Tehran.
Under Democrats and Republicans alike the federal government views nations that resist its
dictates as adversaries at best, appropriate targets of criticism, always, sanctions, often,
and even bombs and invasions, occasionally. No wonder foreign governments lobby hard to be
designated as allies, partners, and special relationships. Many of these ties have become
essentially permanent, unshakeable even when supposed friends act like enemies and supposed
enemies are incapable of hurting America. US foreign policy increasingly has been captured and
manipulated for the benefit of other governments and interests.
George Washington recognized the problem even in his day, after revolutionary France sought
to win America's support against Great Britain. He warned: "nothing is more essential than that
permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for
others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all
should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual
fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either
of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."
Is there a better description of US foreign policy today? Even when a favored nation is
clearly, ostentatiously, murderously on the wrong side – consider Saudi Arabia's
unprovoked aggression against Yemen – many American policymakers refuse to allow a single
word of criticism to escape their lips. The US has indeed become "a slave," as George
Washington warned.
The consequences for the US and the world are highly negative. He observed that "likewise, a
passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the
favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no
real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the
former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement
or justification."
This is an almost perfect description of the current US approach. American colonists
revolted against what they believed had become ever more "foreign" control, yet the US backs
Israel's occupation and mistreatment of millions of Palestinians. American policymakers parade
the globe spouting the rhetoric of freedom yet subsidize Egypt as it imprisons tens of
thousands and oppresses millions of people. Washington decries Chinese aggressiveness, yet
provides planes, munitions, and intelligence to aid Riyadh in the slaughter of Yemeni civilians
and destruction of Yemeni homes, businesses, and hospitals. In such cases, policymakers have
betrayed America "into a participation in the quarrels and wars without adequate inducement or
justification."
On the other side are the targets of "inveterate antipathies." This also characterizes US
Middle East policy. So hated are Iran and Syria that Washington, DC is making every effort to
destroy their economies, ruin their people's livelihoods, wreck their hospitals, and starve
their population. The respective governments are bad, to be sure, but do not threaten the US
Yet, as the nation's first president explained to Americans, "Antipathy in one nation against
another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of
umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute
occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation,
prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the
best calculations of policy."
Consider how close the US has come to foolish, unnecessary wars against both nations. There
were manifold demands that the US enter the Syrian civil war, in which Americans have no stake.
Short of combat the Obama administration indirectly aided the local affiliate of al-Qaeda, the
terrorist group which staged 9/11 and supposedly was America's enemy. Moreover, there was
constant pressure on America to attack Iran, targeted by the US since 1953, when the CIA helped
replace Tehran's democracy with a brutal tyrant, whose rule was highlighted by corruption,
torture, and a nuclear program – which then was taken over by Iran's Islamic
revolutionaries, to America's horror.
Read George Washington and you would think he had gained a supernatural glimpse into today's
policy debates. He worried about the result when the national government "adopts through
passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation
subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and
pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the
victim."
What better describes US policy toward China and Russia? To be sure, these are nasty
regimes. Yet that has rarely bothered Uncle Sam's relations with other states. Saudi Arabia, a
corrupt and totalitarian theocracy, has been sheltered, protected, and reassured by the US even
after invading its poor neighbor. Among Washington's other best friends: Bahrain, Turkey,
Egypt, and United Arab Emirates, tyrannies all.
The US now is pushing toward a Cold War redux with Russia, after successive administrations
treated Moscow as if it was of no account, lying about plans to expand NATO and acting in other
ways that the US would never tolerate. Imagine the Soviet Union helping to overthrow an
elected, pro-American government in Mexico City, seeking to redirect all commerce to Soviet
allies in South America, and proposing that Mexico join the Warsaw Pact. US policymakers would
be threatening war.
Washington, DC also is treating China as a near-enemy, claiming the right to control China
along its own borders – essentially attempting to apply America's Monroe Doctrine to
Asia. This is something Americans would never allow another nation, especially China, to do to
the US Imagine the response if Beijing sent its navy up the East Coast, told the US how to
treat Cuba, and constantly talked of the possibility of war. America's consistently hostile,
aggressive policy is the result of "projects of pride, ambition, and other sinister and
pernicious motives."
This kind of foreign policy also corrupts the American political system. It encourages
officials and people to put foreign interests before that of America. As George Washington
observed, this mindset: "gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote
themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own
country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; guiding, with the appearances of a
virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal
for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation."
For instance, Woodrow Wilson and America's Anglophile establishment backed Great Britain
over the interests of the American people, dragging the US into World War I, a mindless
imperial slugfest that this nation should have avoided. After the Cold War's end Americans with
ties to Central and Eastern Europe pushed to expand NATO to their ancestral homes, which
created new defense obligations for America while inflaming Russian hostility. Ethnic Greeks
and Turks constantly battle over policy toward their ethnic homelands. Taiwan has developed
enduring ties with congressional Republicans, especially, ensuring US government support
against Beijing. Many evangelical Christians, especially those who hold a particularly bizarre
eschatology (basically, Jews must gather together in their national homeland to be slaughtered
before Jesus can return), back Israel in whatever it does to assist the apparently helpless God
of creation finish his job. The policies that result from such campaigns inevitably are shaped
to benefit foreign interests, not Americans.
Regarding the impact of such a system on the political system George Washington also was
prescient: "As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are
particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities
do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead
public opinion, to influence or awe the public council. Such an attachment of a small or weak
towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter."
In different ways many US policies illustrate the problem caused by "passionate attachments"
– the almost routine and sometimes substantial sacrifice of US economic and security
interests to benefit other governments. For instance, hysteria swept Washington at the
president's recent proposal to simply reduce troop levels in Germany, which along with so many
other European nations sees little reason to do much to defend itself. There are even those who
demand American subservience to the Philippines, a semi-failed state of no significant security
importance to the US Saudi Arabia is a rare case where the attachment is mostly cash and
lobbyists. In most instances cultural, ethnic, religious, and historical ties provide a firmer
foundation for foreign political influence and manipulation.
What to do about such a long-standing problem? George Washington was neither naïf nor
isolationist. He believed in what passed for globalism in those days: a commercial republic
should trade widely. He didn't oppose alliances, for limited purposes and durations. After all,
support from France was necessary for the colonies to win independence.
He proposed a practical policy tied to ongoing realities. The authorities should "steer
clear of permanent alliances," have with other states "as little political connection as
possible," and not "entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils" of other nations'
"ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice." Most important, the object of US foreign
policy was to serve the interests of the American people. In practice it was a matter of
prudence, to be adapted to circumstance and interest. He would not necessarily foreclose
defense of Israel, Saudi Arabia, or Germany, but would insist that such proposals reflect a
serious analysis of current realities and be decided based on what is best for Americans. He
would recognize that what might have been true a few decades ago likely isn't true today. In
reality, little of current US foreign policy would have survived his critical review.
George Washington was an eminently practical man who managed to speak through the ages.
America's recently disastrous experience of playing officious, obnoxious hegemon highlights his
good judgment. The US, he argued, should "observe good faith and justice towards all nations;
cultivate peace and harmony with all."
America may still formally be a republic, but its foreign policy long ago became imperial.
As John Quincy Adams warned, the US is "no longer the ruler of her own spirit." Americans have
learned at great cost that international affairs are too important to be left to the Blob and
foreign policy professionals, handed off to international relations scholars, or, worst of all,
subcontracted to other nations and their lobbyists. The American people should insist on their
nation's return to a true republican foreign policy.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute . A former Special Assistant to President Ronald
Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire .
The headline
blares that it's a big "administration" conspiracy to play up doubts and play down proofs
of the bounties plot, but the text itself reveals that it's the National Intelligence Council
that did the new review and that even the CIA , the agency out in front on this story,
has only "medium" or "moderate" confidence on the reality of the plot. Meanwhile DoD and NSA
both still say they give it low confidence and cannot verify.
You gotta appreciate the desperate spin of the Times reporters and their editors
here:
"A memo produced in recent days by the office of the nation's top intelligence official
acknowledged that the C.I.A. and top counterterrorism officials have assessed that Russia
appears to have offered bounties to kill American and coalition troops in Afghanistan, but
emphasized uncertainties and gaps in evidence, according to three officials."
Oh how cynical of the National Intelligence Council to "emphasize" doubts instead of
running with wild unverified claims! Their anonymous sources assure us that the memo "was
intended to bolster the Trump administration's attempts to justify its inaction" over the
alleged Russian interference. But intelligence officials tell the New York Times
lots of things .
I buried the lead nearly as badly as they did, but here it is before they go meandering
off saying nothing and refusing to acknowledge the importance of the following admission:
"The memo said that the C.I.A. and the National Counterterrorism Center had assessed
with medium confidence -- meaning credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of near
certainty -- that a unit of the Russian military intelligence service, known as the G.R.U.,
offered the bounties, according to two of the officials briefed on its contents.
"But other parts of the intelligence community -- including the National Security
Agency, which favors electronic surveillance intelligence -- said they did not have
information to support that conclusion at the same level, therefore expressing lower
confidence in the conclusion, according to the two officials. A third official familiar with
the memo did not describe the precise confidence levels, but also said the C.I.A.'s was
higher than other agencies."
So Charlie Savage
admits that his whole stupid
story is based on a medium -confidence conclusion of the CIA against the
views of the NSA
and DoD . I wonder if he noticed the same people gave the story to the Wall Street
Journal and Washington Post at the same time as an
obvious attempt to use their stenography in a plot to prevent Trump from considering an
"early" withdrawal from Afghanistan.
"'Afghan officials said prizes of as much as $100,000 per killed soldier were offered
for American and coalition targets,' the Times reported. And yet, when Rukmini Callimachi, a
member of the reporting team breaking the story, appeared on MSNBC to elaborate further, she
noted that 'the funds were being sent from Russia regardless of whether the Taliban followed
through with killing soldiers or not. There was no report back to the GRU about casualties.
The money continued to flow.'
"There is just one problem -- that's not how bounties work."
And they will keep on jerking that rusty old chain.
Here's a great must-see 36-minute piece by Abby Martin about the US perpetual occupation
of Afghanistan.
It was posted on YouTube on June 26, but I only came across it last night thanks to a Paul
Craig Roberts article, and I don't think it's been mentioned here at MoA yet by anyone yet
(at least I wasn't able to find any mentions using the MoA search.)
I'm sure many of us have come across many of the points over the years, but she does a
great job of reviewing and bringing it all together.
Google/Youtube has of course made the video "age-restricted", though I don't really see
why, requiring sign-in and probably greatly reducing its viewership as a result.
This alternate link to the same video doesn't seem to require sign-in:
Looks like Liz Cheney words for Russians. Her action suggest growing alliance between Bush
repoblicans and neolibral interventionaistsof the Democratic Party. The alliance directed against
Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... As Boland explains, the amendment passed by the committee yesterday sets so many conditions on withdrawal that it makes it all but impossible to satisfy them: ..."
"... The longer that the U.S. stays at war in Afghanistan, the more incentives other states will have to make that continued presence more costly for the U.S. When the knee-jerk reaction in Washington to news of these bounties is to throw up obstacles to withdrawal, that gives other states another incentive to do more of this. ..."
"... Prolonging our involvement in the war amounts to playing into Moscow's hands. For all of their posturing about security and strength, hard-liners routinely support destructive and irrational policies that redound to the advantage of other states. This is still happening with the war in Afghanistan, and if these hard-liners get their way it will continue happening for many years to come. ..."
The immediate response to a story that U.S. forces were being targeted is to keep fighting a
losing conflict.
Barbara Boland
reported yesterday on the House Armed Services Committee's vote to impede withdrawal of
U.S. from Afghanistan:
The House Armed Services Committee voted Wednesday night to put roadblocks on President
Donald Trump's vow to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, apparently in response to
bombshell report published by The New York Times Friday that alleges Russia paid dollar
bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan to kill U.S troops.
It speaks volumes about Congress' abdication of its responsibilities that one of the few
times that most members want to challenge the president over a war is when they think he might
bring it to an end. Many of the members that want to block withdrawals from other countries
have no problem when the president wants to use U.S. forces illegally and to keep them in other
countries without authorization for years at a time. The role of hard-liner Liz Cheney in
pushing the measure passed yesterday is a good example of what I mean. The hawkish outrage in
Congress is only triggered when the president entertains the possibility of taking troops out
of harm's way. When he takes reckless and illegal action that puts them at risk, as he did when
he ordered the illegal assassination of Soleimani, the same members that are crying foul today
applauded the action. As Boland explains, the amendment passed by the committee yesterday
sets so many conditions on withdrawal that it makes it all but impossible to satisfy
them:
Crow's amendment adds several layers of policy goals to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan,
which has already stretched on for 19 years and cost over a trillion dollars. As made clear
in the Afghanistan Papers, most of these policy goals were never the original intention of
the mission in Afghanistan, and were haphazardly added after the defeat of al Qaeda. With no
clear vision for what achieving these fuzzy goals would look like, the mission stretches on
indefinitely, an unarticulated victory unachievable.
The immediate Congressional response to a story that U.S. forces were being targeted is to
make it much more difficult to pull them out of a war that cannot be won. Congressional hawks
bemoan "micromanaging" presidential decisions and mock the idea of having "535
commanders-in-chief," but when it comes to prolonging pointless wars they are only too happy to
meddle and tie the president's hands. When it comes to defending Congress' proper role in
matters of war, these members are typically on the other side of the argument. They are content
to let the president get us into as many wars as he might want, but they are horrified at the
thought that any of those wars might one day be concluded. Yesterday's vote confirmed that
there is an endless war caucus in the House, and it is bipartisan.
The original reporting of the bounty story is questionable for the reasons that Boland has
pointed out before, but for the sake of argument let's assume that Russia has been offering
bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. When the U.S. keeps its troops at war in a country for
almost twenty years, it is setting them up as targets for other governments. Just as the U.S.
has armed and supported forces hostile to Russia and its clients in Syria, it should not come
as a shock when they do to the same elsewhere. If Russia has been doing this, refusing to
withdraw U.S. forces ensures that they will continue to have someone that they can target.
The longer that the U.S. stays at war in Afghanistan, the more incentives other states
will have to make that continued presence more costly for the U.S. When the knee-jerk reaction
in Washington to news of these bounties is to throw up obstacles to withdrawal, that gives
other states another incentive to do more of this.
Because the current state of debate about Russia is so toxic and irrational, our political
leaders seem incapable of responding carefully to Russian actions. It doesn't seem to occur to
the war hawks that Russia might prefer that the U.S. remains preoccupied and tied down in
Afghanistan indefinitely.
Prolonging our involvement in the war amounts to playing into Moscow's hands. For all of
their posturing about security and strength, hard-liners routinely support destructive and
irrational policies that redound to the advantage of other states. This is still happening with
the war in Afghanistan, and if these hard-liners get their way it will continue happening for
many years to come.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in
the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review , Politico
Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a
columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides
in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
One needs to mention the democratic deficit in the US. All the members voting yes are
representatives, they represent the people in their constituencies, and presumably vote for
what the majority in those constituencies would want, or past promises.
Any poll shows that Americans would rather have the troops brought back home, thank you very
much. But this is not what their representatives are voting for. Talk about democracy!
And what's the logic, if you make an accusation against someone you don't like it must be
true. Okay well then let's drone strike Putin. If you are going to be Exceptional and
consistent, Putin did everything Soleimani did so how can Liz Cotton argue for a different
punishment?
1. Killed U.S. troops in a war zone, 2. planning attacks on U.S. troops.
The entire Russian military plans for attacks all the time just like ours does but the
Neocons have declared that we are the only ones allowed to do that. Verdict, death penalty for
Putin.
Interesting, well reasoned article as usual from Mr. Larison. However, I have to say that I
don't see why Russia would want the US in Afghanistan indefinitely. In primis, they have a
strategic partnership with China (even though we've got to see how Russia will behave now when
there is the India-China rift), and China has been championing the idea of rebuilding the Silk
Road (brilliant idea if you ask me) so in this sense it's more reasonable to assume that they
might be aiming to get stability in the region rather than keep it in a state of unrest (as to
be strategic partners you need to have some kind of common strategy, or at least not a
completely different strategy). In 2018 they (Russia) actually were trying to organise a
mediation process which would have the Afghan Gvt. and the Talibans discuss before the US would
retire the troops, and it was very significative as they managed to get all the parties sitting
around a table for the very first time (even the US participated as an observer).
Secondly, Russia also has pretty decent relations with Iran (at least according to Iranian
press, which seems to be realistic as Russia is compliant to the JCPOA, is not aggressive
towards them, and they're cooperating in the Astana process for a political solution for Syria,
for example), and it wouldn't be so if Russia would pursue a policy which would aim to keep the
US in the Middle East indefinitely, as Iran's WHOLE point is that they want the US out of the
region, so if Russia would be trying to keep the US in the Middle East indefinitely, that would
seriously upset Iran.
Thirdly, Russia is one of the founders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which now
includes most of the states in Central Asia, China, India and Pakistan. The association never
made overt statements about their stance on the US's presence in the region; yet they've been
hinting that they don't approve of it, which is reasonable, as it is very likely that those
countries would all have different plans for the region, which might include some consideration
for human and economic development rather than constant and never-ending militarisation (of
course Pakistan would be problematic here, as the funds for the Afghan warlords get channeled
through Pakistan, which receives a lot of US money, so I don't know how they're managing this
issue).
Last but not least, I cannot logically believe that the Talibans, who've been coherent in
their message since the late 70's ("we will fight to the death until the invaders are defeated
and out of our national soil") would now need to be "convinced" by the Russians to defeat and
chase out the invader. This is just NOT believable at all. Afghanistan is called the Graveyard
of Empires for a reason, I would argue.
In any case I am pleased to see that at TAC you have been starting debunking the
Russia-narrative, as it is very problematic - most media just systematically misrepresents
Russia in order to justify aggressive military action (Europe, specifically Northern Europe, is
doing this literally CONSTANTLY, I'm so over it, really). The misrepresentation of Russia as an
aggressive wannabe-empire is a cornerstone of the pro-war narrative, so it is imperative to get
some actual realism into that.
As if the Afghan freedom fighters need additional incentive to eliminate the invaders? In
case Amerikans don't know, Afghans, except those on the US payroll, intensely despise Amerika
and its 'godless' ways. Amerikans forces have been sadistic, bombing Afghan weddings, funerals,
etc.
Even if the Russians are providing bounties to the Afghans, to take out the invaders, don't
the Amerikans remember the 80s when Washington (rightfully) supported the mujahedin with funds,
arms, Stinger missiles, etc.? Again, the US is on shaky ground because of the neocons.
Afghanistan is known through the ages to be the graveyard of empires. They have done it on
their own shedding blood, sweat, and tears. Also, the Afghan resistance have been principled
about Amerikans getting out before making deals.
T he perpetual occupation of Afghanistan has become so normalized that it mostly serves as
background noise to most Americans. It's even jokingly referred to as the "Forever War,"
accepted as just another constant reality. A soldier dies now and again, a couple of dozen
civilians get killed in another bombing. It's never enough to stir the population to pressure
Washington enough to stop it. And the endless war drags on.
From George W. Bush to Barack Obama, to Donald Trump, every U.S. president has promised to
end the war. But their plans to bring the troops home inevitably require first sending more
troops to the country. You can't look at all this rhetoric and reality and not conclude that
the United States wants to stay in Afghanistan forever. And there is a reason, despite an
unresolvable military quagmire, that the Empire won't let go of Afghanistan.
In this latest "Empire Files" documentary, journalist Abby Martin covers reveals the reality
of America's Wars in Afghanistan, from the CIA construct of the 1980s through today's senseless
stalemate. MintPress brings you documentary in its entirety, published with permission
from filmmaker Abby Martin.
Because they seem to creep around Washington, from one administration to the next, forever whispering in the ears of the power players, and more recently, weaving their evil spells directly to millions, as respected members of the MSM
Notable quotes:
"... I advocate for 'scum' as a serviceable moniker of all-around utility for those who do the dirt because it's business and pleasure, all in one. ..."
"... Now that I think of it, " the filth" is British slang for the police. That could work. Cockney rhyming slang is "Sweeney" ("flying squad" = "Sweeny Todd"). That has the right connotations, but it's a little twee. ..."
"... "The Slime" also seems to fit quite nicely. ..."
Um irony work not well on screen, methinks and not for the first (or last) time
But as to "intelligence community" pejorative, I think good old-fashioned 'scum' works
quite well. Mind you, this is for those who have "proven" themselves by persisting and upping
the ante of loathesomeness; I certainly do not mean to include people-in-process who
sometimes exit Big Brother's nether fissure to emerge as woken humans.
I'm thinking specifically and especially of John Kiriakou, for whom I had the honor of
extending jail support during the time he was incarcerated for "outing" a CIA torturer (who,
needless to say, received not even a tap on the wrist).
Keep it simple, pithy, homely, and familiar: I advocate for 'scum' as a serviceable
moniker of all-around utility for those who do the dirt because it's business and pleasure,
all in one.
> I think good old-fashioned 'scum' works quite well.
Now that I think of it, "
the filth" is British slang for the police. That could work. Cockney rhyming slang is
"Sweeney" ("flying squad" = "Sweeny Todd"). That has the right connotations, but it's a
little twee.
Re. preferred pejorative, I lean toward "IC creep" myself. Because they seem to creep
around Washington, from one administration to the next, forever whispering in the ears of the
power players, and more recently, weaving their evil spells directly to millions, as
respected members of the MSM.
It is also a remarkable attempt to ignore the factual history:
[The Taliban] have outlasted a superpower through nearly 19 years of grinding war. And
dozens of interviews with Taliban officials and fighters in three countries, as well as
with Afghan and Western officials, illuminated the melding of old and new approaches and
generations that helped them do it.
After 2001, the Taliban reorganized as a decentralized network of fighters and low-level
commanders empowered to recruit and find resources locally while the senior leadership
remained sheltered in neighboring Pakistan.
That is simply wrong. Between the end of 2001 and 2007 there were no Taliban. The movement
had dissolved.
The author later acknowledges that there were no Taliban activity throughout those years.
But the narrative is again skewed:
Many Taliban commanders interviewed for this article said that in the initial months after
the invasion, they could scarcely even dream of a day they might be able to fight off the
U.S. military. But that changed once their leadership regrouped in safe havens provided by
Pakistan's military -- even as the Pakistanis were receiving hundreds of millions of
dollars in American aid.
From that safety, the Taliban planned a longer war of attrition against U.S. and NATO
troops. Starting with more serious territorial assaults in 2007, the insurgents revived and
refined an old blueprint the United States had funded against the Soviets in the same
mountains and terrain -- but now it was deployed against the American military.
Even before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan the Taliban had recognized that they lacked the
capability to run a country. They had managed to make Afghanistan somewhat secure. The
warlords who had fought each other after the Soviet draw down were suppressed and the streets
were again safe. But there was no development, no real education or health system and no
money to create them.
When the U.S. invaded the Taliban dispersed. On December 5 2001 Taliban leader Mullah Omar
resigned and went into hiding within Afghanistan. For one day the Taliban defense minister
Mullah Obaidullah became the new leader. From the
The Secret Life of Mullah Omar by Bette Dam:
The next day, Mullah Obaidullah drove up north to Kandahar's Shah Wali Kot district to meet
with Karzai and his supporters. In what has become known as the "Shah Wali Kot Agreement",
Mullah Obaidullah and the Taliban agreed to lay down their arms and retire to their homes
or join the government. The movement effectively disbanded itself. Karzai agreed, and in a
media appearance the next day, he announced that while al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were
the enemies of Afghanistan, the Taliban were sons of the soil and would effectively receive
amnesty. For the moment, the war was over.
The Taliban fighters went back to their home villages and families. Most stayed in
Afghanistan. Some of the leaders and elder members went back to the tribal regions of
Pakistan where their families had been living as refugees since the Soviet invasion in
1979.
The Taliban did not plan a longer war of attrition - at least not between 2001 and 2006.
The movement had simply ended to exist.
The big question is then why it came back but the New York Times has little to
say about that:
From the start, the insurgents seized on the corruption and abuses of the Afghan government
put in place by the United States, and cast themselves as arbiters of justice and Afghan
tradition -- a powerful part of their continued appeal with many rural Afghans in
particular. With the United States mostly distracted with the war in Iraq, the insurgency
widened its ambitions and territory.
No, the 'corruption and abuses of the Afghan government' were not the reason the Taliban
were reestablished. It were the abuses of the U.S. occupation that recreated them. The
publicly announced amnesty Karzai and Mullah Obaidullah had agreed upon, was ignored by the
U.S. commanders and politicians.
The CIA captured random Afghans as 'Taliban' and brutally tortured them - some to death.
U.S. Special Forces randomly raided private homes and bombed whole villages to rubble. The
brutal warlords, which the Taliban had suppressed, were put back into power. When they wanted
to grab a piece of land they told their U.S. handlers that the owner was a 'Taliban'. The
U.S. troops would then removed that person one way or the other. The behavior of the
occupiers was an affront to every Afghan.
By 2007 Mullah Omar and his helper Jabbar Omari were hiding in Siuray, a district around
twenty miles southeast of Qalat. A large U.S. base was nearby. Bette Dam
writes of the people's mood:
As the population turned against the government due to its corruption and American
atrocities, they began to offer food and clothing to the house-hold for Jabbar Omari and
his mysterious friend.
It was the absurd stupidity and brutality with which the U.S. occupied the country that
gave Afghans the motive to again fight against an occupier or at least to support such a
fight.
At the same time the Pakistani military had come to fear a permanent U.S. presence in its
backyard. It connected the retired Taliban elders with its sponsors in the Gulf region and
organized the logistics for a new insurgency. The Taliban movement was reestablished with new
leadership but under the old name.
The old tribal command networks where again activates and the ranks were filled with newly
disgruntled Afghans. From that point on it was only a question of time until the U.S. would
have to leave just like the Soviets and Brits had to do before them.
By December 2001 the war against the Taliban had ended. During the following five years
the U.S. fought against an imaginary enemy that no longer existed. It was this war on the
wider population that by 2007 created a new insurgency that adopted the old name.
A piece that claims to explain why the Taliban have won the war but ignores the crucial
period between 2001 and 2007 misses the most important point that made the Taliban victory
possible.
The will of the Afghan people to liberate their country from a foreign occupation. Thanks
b for doing a good job in restating the record. IMO, the Outlaw US Empire followed the same
MO as it did in Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines well before them all, all of which were
based on the White Supremacist Settler credo underlying the culture of the US military that
was just called out--again-- in
this very powerful NY Times Editorial , and Iraq was no different either. The
contrast between the Editorial Board and its Newsroom writers is quite stark when their
products are compared--one lies about recent history while the other attempts to educate more
fully about the very sordid past of the most revered federal government institution.
Bombing civilians is recruiting more enemies. Also, in this mistaken adventure the US has
been stupidly allied with and funding the neighboring country (Pakistan) which is supporting
the people (Taliban) who are killing Americans.
General McChrystal's Report to President Obama, Aug 30, 2009:
'Afghanistan's insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan. . .and are reportedly
aided by some elements of Pakistan's ISI [Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence ]. .
. .Indian political and economic influence is increasing in Afghanistan, including
significant efforts and financial investment. In addition, the current Afghan government is
perceived by Islamabad to be pro-Indian. While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan
people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional
tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India." . . .Simply put,
Pakistan didn't want to be in an Indian sandwich with its mortal enemy on two sides.
President Obama was then in the process of more than tripling the US military strength in
Afghanistan, sending 70,000 more troops to that graveyard of empires (UK, Russia). Three
months later, December 1, 2009 at West Point, Obama gave a rah-rah speech to cadets
including: . . ."Third, we will act with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan
is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan."
This article wants on purpose link taliban to Pakistan..there is no connection between
Talibans and yanks backed Pakistani militias..and there is no pakistani talibans..they want
to hide the truth confusing the people but the truth is that the violent and illegal
occupation of Afghanistan created a strong resistance in an already strong population.The
puppet-method didn't work there and this article is the last (I hope) attempt to give a false
narrative of the events.18 years of war for nothing..what the empire has gained from this
war?nothing.
LuBa--
"what the empire has gained from this war?nothing"
Hmmm, not sure about that. First of all it has kept Russia out of Afghanistan, and
somewhere I read that Afghanistan is very central to controlling Eurasia.
I'm pretty sure that attacking Afghanistan was planned before 911 as well, so there must
be some reason for that.
The writer of that NYT piece, Mujib Mashal, studied history (presumably the history of
Afghanistan and western and southern Asia) at Columbia University - O'Bomber's alma mater, I
believe - and in-between working as an NYT intern in Kabul and his current senior
correspondent role, worked for a time with Al Jazeera in Doha. One wonders how much effort
Mashal and other NYT writers with similar backgrounds put into reordering reality to fit
whatever fairy-tale narratives they were taught at Columbia University.
The underlying aim in MM's hit-piece must surely be to set up Pakistan as a target for
criticism. Some sort of narrative arc leading to removing Imran Khan as Prime Minister there
can't be too far away.
Soviet invasion? The Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty signed in December 1978 permitted -
inter alia - military assistance and advice to the Afghani government if requested. Saying
the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan is like saying Russia invaded Syria.
Opium production is now seven-fold since the arrival of the empire. It is afflicting
Afghanistan and neighboring countries with addiction all the while paying for CIA
operations.
Mission Accomplished.
Let's not forget the MOAB, we are told was detonated over -- caves?
Millions of dollars earned off-the-books from drug trafficking plus enough product to
carry out narco-aggression against Iran, Russia, China and the 'stans is nothing?
Superb.
The relationship with Pakistan has two aspects : the borders between the countries, imposed
by the British, make no sense, dividing the Pashtun people artificially. The second is that
the US has long used Pakistan as a pawn in the region. This goes back to the foundation of
the country in 1948 and malign US influence in Pakistan has been the major factor in the
country's problems. It is a reminder that there are no known limits to the hypocrisy of the
people running the USA that the links between the Taliban, nurtured under US sponsorship in
Pakistan which was used as a secure base beyond Kabul's writ, and Pakistan are attributed to
Pakistan's initiative.
Another matter which one supposes that the New York Times neglected to mention is that under
US sponsorship since 2001 the Heroin industry, reduced almost to nothing by the Taliban
government has ballooned into the proportions we have grown to expect where US influence is
established. Besides the corpses of those bombed, tortured and shot to death by the
imperialist armies there are millions of victims of the drug trades, ranging from those
killed by death squads in the producing countries, and those in, for example Colombia and
Honduras, victimised by narco governments to the millions of addicts around the world.
Part of the truth of Afghanistan is that the US and its allies have been protecting the
criminal narcotics trade in order to employ its profits for their own evil purposes.
Please allow to add to b 's very good overview another subject: drug planting,
producing and dealing in Afghanistan. The Taliban first were against drugs (religious
reasons), but when they saw that the people were exhausted by the Americans and their corrupt
Afghan friends, and had no more income, they allowed the farmers to plant opium poppy for the
EXPORT. Soon they also realized the profits for themselves (to change into weapons). And so
it happened that Afghanistan became a major producer for the world market. It's an open
question (at least for me) how much international networks with connections to US-people and
US-institutions (like CIA) are involved in this drug dealing business originating in
Afghanistan.
arby | 7 wrote:
I'm pretty sure that attacking Afghanistan was planned before 911 as well, so there
must be some reason for that.
Interesting question (more see below)! A few days ago I made some research to a parallel
problem: was "homeland security" also in the development before 9/11? Parallel to the war
against Afghanistan another war was started: against the American people. Under the roof of
'Homeland Security' in the interior; parallel zu 'National Security' as a topic in foreign
politics. Bush jun. appointed Tom Ridge within 28 days, did they have some plans before? I
found some remarks in Edward LIPTON's book, Homeland Security Office (2002), indicating
plannings as early as Dec. 2000 and Jan. 2001. Please also remember that there were anthrax
mailings parallel to 9/11. Please remember that Homeland Security Act has some paragraphs
about defense against bioweapon attacks and has some paragraphs about vaccine, too. Please
remember that early plannings of homeland security had also controlling american people with
the help of lockdowns. That trail was followed during the next years in 'hidden' further
plannings as You may find them here:
Next interesting question: when did THEY begin to focus on the twin towers? WTC area was
public property and administration. Very profitable. Then SIVLERSTEIN bought the WTC7 ground
and started to built and rented it, among others, to CIA. And then THEY were looking just out
of the window to see the twin towers. And then these very pofitable buildings were privatized
- why? And they were insured. That privatization was a very dramatic poker which was won by
SILVERSTEIN, too. Why? Some 'renovation' had to be done of course when SILVERSTEIN took over
the property. I remember that companies included were overseen by one of the Bush sons
(Jebb?), and so on ...
Back to the questions about planning of War against Afghanistan. There should be documents
available (foreign policy planning & military planning) because the background primarily
was (according to my estimation) geopolitical. But there is a greater framework within which
the war against terrorism has to be seen. On the day after 9/11 a document was published for
the first time which had been collected under Bush Sen. in the 1980s: 'Report of the Vice
President's Task Force on Combatting Terrorism'. It says that terrorism follows
overpopulation in undeveloped countries. So we are here within the idea of depopulation, and
realizing that we can look on the Bill & Melinda Gates' Charitable Works as a far more
human version. For further reading three LINKs are given below.
Concluding, I would like to say: unterstanding and commenting the past doesn't help much.
THEY are acting and THEY are planning, day by day. Things only will change if 'we' are
planning and acting, too. And if 'we' want a better world our instruments must be better than
THEIRs.
Soviet invasion? The Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty signed in December 1978 permitted -
inter alia - military assistance and advice to the Afghani government if requested. Saying
the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan is like saying Russia invaded Syria.
Posted by: arby | May 26 2020 20:03 utc | 7 I'm pretty sure that attacking Afghanistan was
planned before 911 as well, so there must be some reason for that.
It's called 1) oil pipeline, and 2) heroin for the CIA to finance their "black black"
operations. That's not a typo: there are "black budget" operations not identified in the
Federal budget - and "black black" operations that are financed outside the Federal budget.
No one knows how much that is.
The "official" Black Budget operations are described in a Harvard University document
as:
On March 18, 2019 the Office the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), announced its
request for the largest sum ever, $62.8 billion, for funding U.S. intelligence operations
in Fiscal Year (FY) 2020.1This request spans the classified funding from more than a dozen
agencies that make up the National Intelligence Program (NIP).2 The U.S. Government spends
these funds on data collection, counterintelligence, and covert action.3 The DNI also
requested $21.2 billion for FY 2019 for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) devoted to
intelligence activity in support of U.S. military operations.4 For FY2020, it is likely to
request a similar figure, for a total estimated request of approximately $85 billion for
the "Black Budget," t he U.S. Government's secret military and intelligence expenditures.
Interesting article here that shows how some of this has been done in Asia, Saudi Arabia,
Central America, etc.
Before his arrest, the alleged drug trafficker worked with the CIA and the DEA, received
payments from the government, and, at one point, visited Washington and New York on the
DEA's dime. ,/BLOCKQUOTE
It took a rabid nationalist like Donald Trump to end the war in Afghanistan , whereas
faithful neoliberal Barack Obama kept the war around because it provided "markets" for weapons
corporations.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani rejected on Sunday a Taliban demand for the release of 5,000
prisoners as a condition for talks with Afghanistan's government and civilians –
included in a deal between the United States and the Islamist militants.
"The government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners,"
Ghani told reporters in Kabul, a day after the deal was signed in Qatar to start a
political settlement aimed at ending the United States' longest war.[.]
was the Afghan government not a party to the negotiations? Strange!
It was a stalemate, in which Afghan government held power over central towns and mujahidins
over part of provinces. Neither can defeat each other. This stalemate was ruptured by the
collapse of the USSR.
Afghanistan
Now that the Americans have been defeated in Afghanistan perhaps they'll go back with a more
critical eye to look at what happened in the Afghan-Soviet war against the mujaheddin. The
Soviet Union decided to withdraw because it had reached a stalemate but the communist
government managed to soldier on for three more years, and it was the collapse of the Soviet
Union for financial reasons that resulted in funds being cutoff to the communist government
that in turn led to the collapse of the government, so the Soviet Union was not brought
down/defeated by the mujaheddin.
Will coronavirus lead to the collapse of the Washington establishment? I don't know if it
will but the descendants of the mujaheddin will no doubt claim responsibility for the defeat
of the United States if it occurs.
Yet again, Washington demonstrates that it doesn't really understand war.
The USA is an imperial country. And wars is how empire is sustained and expanded. Bacevich does not even mention this
fact.
Notable quotes:
"... While perfunctory congressional hearings may yet occur, a meaningful response -- one that would demand accountability, for example -- is about as likely as a bipartisan resolution to the impeachment crisis. ..."
"... This implicit willingness to write off a costly, unwinnable, and arguably unnecessary war should itself prompt sober reflection. What we have here is a demonstration of how pervasive and deeply rooted American militarism has become. ..."
"... we have become a nation given to misusing military power, abusing American soldiers, and averting our gaze from the results. ..."
"... The impeachment hearings were probably the reason the WaPo published when it did. After all, the article tells us little that any semi-sentient observer hasn't known for over a decade now. ..."
"... Then, today, we have another American trooper killed in Afghanistan, with many Afghans. Then, we have Trump, jutting his jaw out, as usual, to show how tough he is and...by golly, how tough America is. How patriotic! Damn it! Rah rah. He pardons and receives a war criminal at the white house, one of those Seals that murdered Afghans. ..."
"... By military standards, there is supposed to be rules of engagement and punishment for outright breaking of such rules. But no, Trump is one ignorant, cold dude and the misery in numerous US invaded nations means nothing to this bum with a title and money ..."
"... Were our senior government leaders more familiar with military service, especially as front line soldiers, they might have been less inclined to dawdle in these matters, agree with obfuscated results for political reasons, and waste so much effort. ..."
The Afghanistan Papers could have been the start of redemption, but it's all been subsumed
by impeachment and an uninterested public.
....
While perfunctory congressional hearings may yet occur, a meaningful response -- one
that would demand accountability, for example -- is about as likely as a bipartisan resolution
to the impeachment crisis.
This implicit willingness to write off a costly, unwinnable, and arguably unnecessary war
should itself prompt sober reflection. What we have here is a demonstration of how pervasive
and deeply rooted American militarism has become.
Take seriously the speechifying heard on the floor of the House of Representatives in recent
days and you'll be reassured that the United States remains a nation of laws, with Democrats
and Republicans alike affirming their determination to defend our democracy and preserve the
Constitution, even while disagreeing on what that might require at present.
Take seriously the contents of the Afghanistan Papers and you'll reach a different
conclusion: we have become a nation given to misusing military power, abusing American
soldiers, and averting our gaze from the results. U.S. military expenditures and the Pentagon's
array of foreign bases far exceed those of any other nation on the planet. In our willingness
to use force, we (along with Israel) lead the pack. Putative adversaries such as China and
Russia are models of self-restraint by comparison. And when it comes to cumulative body count,
the United States is in a league of its own.
Yet since the end of the Cold War and especially since 9/11, U.S. forces have rarely
accomplished the purposes for which they are committed, the Pentagon concealing failure by
downsizing its purposes. Afghanistan offers a good example. What began as Operation Enduring
Freedom has become in all but name Operation Decent Interval, the aim being to disengage in a
manner that will appear responsible, if only for a few years until the bottom falls out.
So the real significance of the Post 's Afghanistan Papers is this: t hey invite
Americans to contemplate a particularly vivid example what our misplaced infatuation with
military power produces. Sadly, it appears evident that we will refuse the invitation. Don't
blame Trump for this particular example of Washington's egregious irresponsibility.
Andrew Bacevich is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new
book, The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory ,will
be published next month.
The impeachment hearings were probably the reason the WaPo published when it did. After all,
the article tells us little that any semi-sentient observer hasn't known for over a decade
now.
Anyway, nobody likes a bipartisan fiasco that cannot be neatly blamed on Team R (or Team
D).
Then, today, we have another American trooper killed in Afghanistan, with many Afghans.
Then, we have Trump, jutting his jaw out, as usual, to show how tough he is and...by golly,
how tough America is. How patriotic! Damn it! Rah rah.
He pardons and receives a war criminal at the white house, one of those Seals that murdered
Afghans.
By military standards, there is supposed to be rules of engagement and punishment for
outright breaking of such rules. But no, Trump is one ignorant, cold dude and the misery in
numerous US invaded nations means nothing to this bum with a title and money. What a joke
this nations foreign policy is and the ignorant, don't care American people have become. Like
never before. There were years when people actually talked about subjects. Not now, if you
mention the weather they cower and look pained. The old days really were better.
One example aside from the above: compare President Kennedy to Trump. What a riot...
Well, these documents are highly unsurprising. Everybody has known the facts for a long time.
Everybody also knows that the US "government" will not change its ways. Its sole purpose and
mission is to obliterate everything except Israel, and these documents are evidence of
massive SUCCESS in its mission, not evidence of failure.
Were our senior government leaders more familiar with military service, especially as front
line soldiers, they might have been less inclined to dawdle in these matters, agree with
obfuscated results for political reasons, and waste so much effort.
This is also to say that misleading documents and briefings from the military about
progress in Afghanistan, while contemptible, did not cause the strategic failure.
Contemporary reports from the press and other agencies indicated the effort was not working
out plainly to anyone who wanted to pay attention. Our political leaders chose to ignore the
truth for political gain.
A more realistic temperament chastened by experience would have been more inclined to
criticize and make corrections, and summon the courage to cut our losses rather than crow
ignominiously about "cutting and running." Few such temperaments, it seems at least, make it
to the top thee days.
However, according to some reports, the United States and the Taliban have recently managed
to define the main terms of a future peace deal:
- The Taliban guarantee that they will not allow international terrorist groups such as
al-Qaeda (banned in Russia) to use Afghanistan as a training ground for attacks abroad;
– The US must withdraw its troops from the country. In particular, the terms
include the following:
About 5,000 US soldiers are expected to be withdrawn immediately after the peace deal is
signed, and the remaining troops will leave the country within the next two years;
– Against the backdrop of an indefinite truce in Afghanistan, the conflicting
parties should begin an internal political dialogue.
The Taliban must be naive not to insist on a total cessation to military air assaults and
reconnaissance. There is no way the USA will stop bombing Afghanistan into the stone age -
because it can AND good live training for its murderous home pilots.
And then the predictable USA treachery and ingredient to walk back the treaty:
The Kabul government, however, is not taking part in those talks at the insistence of the
Taliban, which considers the current official government to be a puppet. But the US is in
favor of Kabul reaffirming its commitment to the peace terms, because otherwise the last
condition of the agreement will not be fulfilled.
I guess most of these open threads are going to gravitate to electoral politics--tis the
season--but before it gets lost I did want to share what I thought was an unusually well
written piece on the US leaving Afghanistan.
The author doesn't just go on a diatribe of criticism of the US, although obviously he
feels the US needs to be leaving--the sooner the better, and likely will eventually be
leaving whether it wants to or not. But he points out several "tells" related to just how
serious the US might be any time it starts talking about leaving, or indeed starts leaving. I
would highly recommend reading this article. Really thought provoking.
A very hard-hitting exposé of the US combination of criminality and blundering in
Afghanistan, and what seems to be a comprehensive and completely rational plan for getting
out of that country under the best possible terms for the people of that country, and for the
people of the US.
Not so good for the US military and civilian satraps who are tearing things up, and raking
it in.
"... It would be highly ironic if these American military aircraft were shot down with the (in)famous US Stinger missiles that America gave to Afghan jihadists against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. ..."
"... Uncle Sam has declared War on the World, thinking it is just a bunching bag. Now he is finding out that sometimes punching bags can punch back... ..."
If the $1.6 trillion cost of the US military being in Afghanistan is correct, then the loss
of 4 helicopters and even the E11 won't significantly increase US overall spend there. $1.6
trillion over 18 years is a tad under $250 million per day
...I recall a quotation from that good man, Winston C, who wrote long ago about
Afghanistan...{populated by} "poverty-stricken illiterate tribesmen possessed of the finest
Martini-Henry Rifles..."
That was over 100 years ago...
Now, it seem, "possessed of the finest surface to air missiles."
It would be highly ironic if these American military aircraft were shot down with the
(in)famous US Stinger missiles that America gave to Afghan jihadists against the Soviet Union
in the 1980s.
9K38-Igla-M
MANPADS represent a large leap in the 'death by 1000 cuts' equation.
The stinger missile made a huge difference in the battle dynamics when the Soviets were in
Afganistan. 2000 Iglas trickled into Afganistan would be a huge headache for occupying
forces. No more close air support, very dangerous take-off and landings along with possible
higher altitude interceptions.
In regard to the financing of the ongoing operations, war profiteers are happy to continue
that ad infinitum. The American war in Viet-Nam was a test run of sorts, how to keep things
running for maximum profit and burn. Weapons in and commodities (hmmmm...)out makes for quite
a killing.
The sense I get is that the escalation cause by the various air strikes and assassinations
was designed as a last ditch effort to keep things escalating lest peace and stability break
out. Granted that is a distant horizon, but if Iran and the KSA found some common ground,
Syria was mopped up and Lebanon was able to shake off the elements that continually throw
spanners in the works USA/isreal interests would definitely be less likely to prosper. Given
the pattern of provocation by the USA trying to get Iran to do something extreme in order to
justify all out war, the murder of the highly prized generals seems not to have worked as
intended. Rather than striking out impulsively, the Resistance appears to have engaged in a
broad spectrum highly controlled campaign to do just what it has promised. Expel the USA from
the MidEast.
We live in world of countermeasures and gone are the days of total domination by the usual
suspects. Anti aircraft missile defense is the current keystone to this balance. As with many
things MANPADS are very much a double edged sword, so one must be judicious with sales and
distribution. There is nothing stopping them from biting the manufacturer in the arse.
Not long ago such missiles would be easier to trace, but given the amount of exports and
knock-offs they could filter into the Afgan theater from anywhere. If there are in fact a
quantity of them in play, then the occupiers are going to have a very bad day(s) indeed.
"WHAT are the Americans actually bombing?
Let me suggest - nothing, just an opportunity to use up the existing arsenal."
Posted by: Alex_Gorsky | Jan 27 2020 17:14 utc | 12
No, they are bombing homes and trying to genocide the Pashtuns that live on/over a fortune in
minerals and whatnot,.-
Try to research how many Pashtun children the united states of terrorist and nato terrorists
have raped and killed, ALL just to steal Afghanistans wealth.
To Ant 10, Per/Norway 18: Afghanistan is a vast source of mineral wealth, and has valuable
potential oil/gas pipeline routes. As usual, US/ZATO wants to "protect" these for their pet
corporate thieves. That the CIA/Mossad runs the opium industry is just a cash-cow to pay-off
the local drug kingpins/warlords.
The Taliban had decimated the opium industry a couple times, but the CIA/Mossad always
pushes back in and keeps the country in chaos.
The Taliban are no angels, but at least they eradicate the opium industry. If the US/ZATO
and CIA/Mossad got out of Afghanistan, it wouldn't take long for the locals to throw out the
Taliban. The locals put up with the Taliban because they are slightly less destructive than
the US/ZATO/CIA/Mossad thugs.
Ukies got Javelin anti-tank weapons. (though the US controls them or half of them would be
sold off).
Then, there was a counter-move. Not in Donbass. Elsewhere.
Taliban have MANPADS.
Soon, the Iraqi PMF will have MANPADS.
It's a weapons war that the US cannot win.
Too many people want the Hegemon out of their country.
We see this weapons war in Africa. Russia and China are there to teach the weapons'
use.
You don't need big nukes and aircraft to win a war.
Vietnam won with artillery, sappers and AK-47s.
Houthis are winning with homemade missiles and drones.
Taliban will force out the US. Russia and China will do whatever they can to see that will
be the outcome.
There must be some Iranian special Quods force operating deep inside Afghanistan using their
own SAM, not giving them to the Taliban, who are their longtgerm enemies.
The Iranians will choose how, when and where they are going to kill US soldiers and CIA
opertatives with total deniability if required; probably in this plane there were some CIA
dudes involved in dirty operations in the ME affecting Iran, now they have reaped what they
sown
If I wanted to attack the US I would do it in Afghanistan. Hostile territory, hostile
population, impossible lines of communication. If it isn't Taliban, then it probably someone
in alliance with them. China? Shares a border with Afghanistan (even if a bit inaccessible).
Pakistan? Iraq? Iran? Russia (I doubt it but you never know). There must be so much general
ordnance kicking around in the Middle East, most of it supplied or sourced by the US. I'm
surprised it hasn't been done before. Certainly, if whoever it is has a regular supply of
surface to air missiles, Bhagram, and the US are toast.
The afghans canteach the iraqi how to bring down those planes, then the NATO would be a
sitting duck in Iraq and the only option to get out alive would be a peacedeal the israeli
can not refuse.
I tend to agree with that thinking. The Outlaw US Empire will need to be ousted from
wherever it occupies as with 'Nam, although there's still the question of the Current
Oligarchy's domestic viability and ability to retain control over the federal government.
What's promising in the latter regard is the very strong pushback aimed at
DNC Chair Perez's committee appointments , which is being called Trump's Re-election
Campaign Committee for good reasons. However IMO, people need to look beyond Trump and the
Duopoly at those pulling the strings. And the easiest way to cut the strings is to elect
people without any.
Hard to say just what the Iranian-Taliban relationship is at this juncture. Tehran
continues to deny supplying them, but it's clear Taliban are the only force capable to
defeating the Outlaw US Empire's Terrorist Foreign Legion it imported into the Afghan
theatre. Iran's watched the Taliban up close and personal for 24+ years now, so I'd be very
surprised if there wasn't at least a strong backchannel com between them. IIRC, Iran okayed
Taliban's inclusion in the Moscow talks and has suggested they become a part of any future
Afghan government.
@ 38 Quixotic 1
Guarantee you- "the Empire is not going to cede its position anywhere on the globe. It's
not going to leave Syria, it's not going to leave Iraq, and it certainly is not going to
leave it's foothold in the underbelly of Eurasia.
Because to do so would mean the end of the Hegemonic project.
I have 1st dibs on that Guarantee
by 2025. Be ready to deliver in gold.
Here is how. Watch KSA and that old 1973 deal to price oil in USD$; follows then ALL
countries need USD to buy oil. Fast Forward. KSA wants in on their share of oil to China AND
the price will be paid in Yuan. Ask Qatar.
See the historical Timeline of currencies at link.
The USD is losing its appeal because Uncle Sam foolishly weaponized its currency. A review
of history: Bullies have a limited
life as do Reserve Currencies all things end. And sanctions are wearing thin.
The epitaph reads "US$, aka the greenback, met its demise by sanctions."
Well may be the Iranians could supply the Taliban with weapons, or may be they supply them
to the Hazara, that are much more close to them and are the real allies in Afghanistan, and
it is a way to protect them un a post-US future. So may be the Hazara could become the new
Houthies in Afghanistan
Johan Galtung predicted, in the year 2000, the end of the US Empire in 2020, he also
predicted, in the year 1980, the end of the Soviet Empire before the end of that decade, and
he nailed.
This is an interview in 2010, but the book with his predictions is much old:
He said:
"It's an empire against a wall; an empire in despair; an empire, I would say, in its last
phase. My prediction in the book that is here, that you mentioned, The Fall of the US
Empire–And Then What?, is that it cannot last longer than 'til about 2020. In 1980, I
predicted for the Soviet empire that it will crack at its weakest point, the wall of Berlin,
within ten years, and it happened in November 1989, and the Soviet empire followed. So my
prediction is a similar one for the US empire"
In another interview he said that after the cracks in the Empire and the loss of the
Imperial Wealth Pump:
"The most dangerous variable is the definitive end of the American dream, due to domestic
hardship. This would lead to the functional breakdown of the establishment and Treaty of the
Union, which would be the political end of the North American multi-state entity. At this
point, Galtung says, the empire would be split into a confederation of states, more or less
powerful, that would seek an independent solution to the external and internal crisis."
Can someone explain to mean what 'ZATO' (as in 'US/ZATO') means on this site?
As for China being a possible source for the anti-aircraft missiles, I doubt it is via the
Xinjiang/Afghanistan border and must instead be using established smuggling routes and
intermediaries groups.
I've heard it said that the missiles fired by Houthis on the Abqaiq oil facility are based
on Iran designs, some of which are in turn copies or reverse-engineered from Chinese designs.
If the Afghanistan situation is like that, then the Chinese connection is mediated instead of
immediate, such as via Iran. The missiles doesn't even need to be reverse-engineered --- just
swap out some parts for generic ones. For various reasons, such as plausible deniability, I
doubt that China would directly supply Taliban with such equipment.
Native people were classified as militarily apt and militarily inept, and recruitment to
colonial armies was guided by that principle. Arabs were typically classified as inept,
unlike Gurkhas and the Sikh. Persians were not recruited, but they were known to colonial
leaders who had education in classics."
iotr Berman@48
This is Raj History 101 bullshit recycled. Far from being classified as inept- Arabs,
particularly Sunni
desert Arabs were very highly regarded by the British for their military prowess. Hence the
entrusting to
the current Gulf rulers of the British protectorates handed back in the 1960s.
The Arab Legion in 1948 came out of the war with its reputation intact.
So far as their educational achievements are concerned: it was the Arabs who brought Europe
the Renaissance.
Anyone who really believes that Arabs are incapable of developing IEDs is likely to be
part of that unfortunate portion of humanity that holds them to be 'sand niggers' etc. And
likely to suffer
the fate of racist fools throughout history.
I continue to see Twitter reports, like this one that the
Prince of Darkness aka Mike de Andrea was killed in that shootdown. As with the commander at
the base Iran attacked in Iraq who is now rumored to have died, the easiest refutation would
be for them to appear in public.
2) The Soviet Union never invaded Afghanistan, they were invited in in by then sovereign
UN-recognised Gov of Afghan (golly wonder why)
Posted by: Ant. | Jan 27 2020 17:03 utc | 10
Wiki (quite accurate): Meanwhile, increasing friction between the competing factions of
the PDPA -- the dominant Khalq and the more moderate Parcham -- resulted (in
July–August 1979) in the dismissal of Parchami cabinet members and the arrest of
Parchami military officers under the pretext of a Parchami coup.[62]
In September 1979, President Taraki was assassinated in a coup within the PDPA
orchestrated by fellow Khalq member Hafizullah Amin, who assumed the presidency. The
situation in the country deteriorated under Amin and thousands of people went missing.[63]
The Soviet Union was displeased with Amin's government and decided to intervene and invade
the country on 27 December 1979, killing Amin that same day.[64]
A Soviet-organized regime, led by Parcham's Babrak Karmal but inclusive of both factions
(Parcham and Khalq), filled the vacuum.
------
Perhaps Taraki invited Soviets just as he was beset by assassins, or Amin did it for
reasons he never got a chance to explain. Honestly, left to their own devices, PDPA, the
Afghan Communists, were making royal mess. In any case, the western supported anti-progress
guerilla, fighting horrors like schools for girls, predated Soviet "invasion".
Easiest route for Afghan Taliban to obtain weapons is from Pakistani Taliban, with ISI
permission.
Remember Pakistani ISI ran Al-Qaeda back in the day.
It is also forgotten that the Tallys prevent the muj warlords from raping the country's
teenagers, of both genders, their favorite sport. Thus they are forgiven for suppressing the
poppy farming.
"The US govt seems to be actively hiding this information from the public, but the Taliban
has verified this to the Iranians, who in turn passed the message to the GCC states. There is
a gruesome photograph of one of the passengers who died, & he has the same profile as
D'Andrea."
And:
"The CIA's Michael D'Andrea, who was in charge of the CIA's anti-Iran operations, was in
fact killed yesterday in a plane crash in Afghanistan, which the Iranian-backed Taliban
claims to have downed. He was killed alongside 4 other people, including 2 USAF pilots &
2 CIA figures."
Not equivalent in stature to Soleimani but important nonetheless. I'll add a small caveat
that this still isn't 100% confirmed.
@ S (club) 7 and karlofi 93
Yes I'm hearing Ayatollah Mike was one of the several CIA officers among the dead. BIG loss
for US and good retaliatory strike (if true) for Iran. The Dark Prince Mike was indeed head
of CIA anti-Iran operations and likely played a big part in the Soleimani assassination. We
may never know for sure, but the premature departure of CIA officers is always good for the
rest of humankind.
I have long wondered why the Russians have not paid back the US for their aid to the Afghan
guerrilla in the 1980's. The US supplied stinger missiles and other anti-aircraft systems and
at one point they were knocking down one Russian aircraft a day. Maybe the Russians smell
Western blood on the water and have chosen this as the time to pay them back with select arms
deliveries to the Taliban.
It was this loss of aviation support that hastened their departure and it would certainly
hasten a US departure. I do not think the US has it in them to ramp it up at this
point...
Good point Afghanistan. The newly appointed General Ghaani was active in Afghanistan. As he
is famimiar with the place, that may well be where he decides to retaliate.
The introduction of manpads would be no less significant an impact on the occupying force as
it was when the Soviet's were there when the SEE EYE AYE showered the Afghani's with
Stingers. It completely changed the modus of the Soviet army once they were introduced.
Helicopters became dangerous to be in and could no longer fly near the ground. Good
observations though, the assassination of Assad could prove to be magnitudes greater a spark
than any of us could imagine. I hope for the sake of, among the many, the Christians he's
been protecting from the foreign merc's. that he stays safe. He must keep a low profile and
let's hope the S400's will take care of any Predator drones that try to fly the Damascus
airspace.
It seems US (or perhaps Israel) didn't give you time enough to think about what could be the
next move (breaking news from Sputinik, 23:30 GMT): vehicle convoy carrying Iraqi PMF leaders
hit by airstrike, 6 dead at least.
Thanks for posting this. I wonder if Soleimani consciously ( on many human and beyond human
levels) wanted to offer the Yanks a "target" (a type of sacrifice, namely himself) that was
just too big to ignore, knowing that the stupid enemy would take the bait, and having a
secure knowledge that his death would set in motion a chain of events that will (underline
will) result in the final terrible fall of the US, and Israel. Stupid American "leaders",
right now, they are dancing in idiotic joy, saying foolish words for which we will pay, also
knowing what the future holds: the death of countless people, throughout not only the Middle
East, but here in the US as well. Yes, I do hate them for what they have unleashed.
Rest In Peace, Soleimani. You very well may achieve far more in death that you attained in
your eventful life.
It's rare that I read something on the Washington Post that I don't find highly biased, even
repugnant. But with
their recent article on the Afghanistan Papers, they truly knocked the ball out of the
park.
The facts they shared should have every American protesting in the streets.
Trillions of dollars have been spent on a war that the Pentagon knew was unwinnable all
along. More than 2300 American soldiers died there and more than 20,000 have been injured. More
than 150,000 Afghanis were killed, many of them civilians, including women and children.
And they lied to us constantly.
Congress just proved that the truth doesn't matter, though. A mere 22 hours after the
release of this document, the new National Defense Authorization Act that breezed through the
House and Senate was signed by the President. That bill authorized
$738 billion in military spending for 2020 , actually increasing the budget by $22 billion
over previous years.
So, how is your representation in Washington, DC working out for you?
What are the
Afghanistan Papers?
The Afghanistan Papers are
a brilliant piece of investigative journalism published by the Washington Post and the
article is very much worth your time to read. I know, I know – WaPo. But believe me when
I tell you this is something all Americans need to see.
This was an article that took three years of legal battles to bring to light. WaPo acquired
the documents using the Freedom of Information Act and got more than 2000 pages of insider
interviews with "people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid
workers and Afghan officials." These documents were originally part of a federal investigation
into the "root failures" of the longest conflict in US history – more than 18 years
now.
Three presidents, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have been involved in this
ongoing war. It turns out that officials knew the entire time this war was "unwinnable" yet
they kept throwing American lives and American money at it.
Here's an excerpt from WaPo's report. Anything that is underlined is taken verbatim from the
papers themselves – you can click on them to read the documents.
In the interviews, more than 400 insiders offered unrestrained criticism of what went
wrong in Afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of
warfare.
With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare pent-up complaints,
frustrations and confessions, along with second-guessing and backbiting.
The important thing to note about these interviews is that the interviewees never expected
their words to become public. They weren't "blowing the whistle." They were answering questions
for a federal investigation. So they didn't hold back. These aren't "soundbites." It's what the
real witnesses are saying.
The U.S. government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has
spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering.
Since 2001, the Defense Department, State Department and U.S. Agency for International
Development have spent or appropriated between $934 billion and $978 billion, according to an
inflation-adjusted estimate calculated by Neta Crawford, a political science professor and
co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University.
Those figures do not include money spent by other agencies such as the CIA and the
Department of Veterans Affairs, which is responsible for medical care for wounded
veterans.
"What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion?" Jeffrey Eggers, a
retired Navy SEAL and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, told government interviewers.
He added, "After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in
his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan." (
source )
The US government deliberately misled the American people.
What's more, if you officials, up to and including three presidents, knew they were throwing
money at something that could never be achieved. They did it anyway and they lied to our faces
about it.
The documents also contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents,
military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making
progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.
Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S.
government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military
headquarters in Kabul -- and at the White House -- to distort statistics to make it appear
the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.
It's been an epic 18-year-long exercise in CYA. (Cover Your A$$). I don't see how anyone
could fail to be outraged by this. And what I've cited here is just the crap icing on the
maggot cupcake. It's a festering mess and I urge you, if you really want to know the truth, to
read this article on WaPo and click on these links.
How was all this money spent?
A lot of it went to building infrastructure in Afghanistan. It was flagrantly and
frivolously used there while we live in a place where people are going bankrupt at best and
dying at worst because they
can't afford medical care and there are places in our country without clean running
water or toilets.
The defense industry certainly reaped rewards and it's highly likely a lot of people who had
the power to allow it to go on made some "wise investments" that have paid off for them. But
for the rest of us, this conflict has done nothing except ensure that our tax dollars are not
here improving our infrastructure or helping Americans lead better and more productive
lives.
Dr. Ron Paul refers to this as the crime of the century.
It is not only members of the Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations who are guilty of
this massive fraud. Falsely selling the Afghanistan war as a great success was a bipartisan
activity on Capitol Hill. In the dozens of hearings I attended in the House International
Relations Committee, I do not recall a single "expert" witness called who told us the truth.
Instead, both Republican and Democrat-controlled Congresses called a steady stream of neocon
war cheerleaders to lie to us about how wonderfully the war was going. Victory was just
around the corner, they all promised. Just a few more massive appropriations and we'd be
celebrating the end of the war.
Congress and especially Congressional leadership of both parties are all as guilty as the
three lying Administrations. They were part of the big lie, falsely presenting to the
American people as "expert" witnesses only those bought-and-paid-for Beltway neocon think
tankers.
What is even more shocking than the release of this "smoking gun" evidence that the US
government wasted two trillion dollars and killed more than three thousand Americans and more
than 150,000 Afghans while lying through its teeth about the war is that you could hear a pin
drop in the mainstream media about it. Aside from the initial publication in the Washington
Post, which has itself been a major cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan, the mainstream
media has shown literally no interest in what should be the story of the century. (
source )
And it's most likely that nobody will ever face punishment for this deception. If this is
not the very definition of the term "war crimes" I can hardly imagine what is. Dr. Paul
continues:
We've wasted at least half a year on the Donald Trump impeachment charade – a
conviction desperately in search of a crime. Meanwhile one of the greatest crimes in US
history will go unpunished. Not one of the liars in the "Afghanistan Papers" will ever be
brought to justice for their crimes. None of the three presidents involved will be brought to
trial for these actual high crimes. Rumsfeld and Lute and the others will never have to fear
justice. Because both parties are in on it. There is no justice . (
source )
The response? Silence and a budget increase.
The people in government don't care that we know about all this. Sure, it's mildly
inconvenient but "whatever."
How do I know this?
Simple. Less than a full day after the story broke, the new NDAA ended up on President
Trump's desk and was signed, authorizing an additional 22 billion dollars for next year's
defense spending. And all anyone can talk about is, "Oooohhhh Space Force!!!"
Government: "Merry Christmas. We're going to blow through more of your tax money and you
won't get a damned thing for it."
I couldn't make this up if I tried. In a notable, must-read op-ed ,
Darius Shahtahmasebi cited some horrific incidents and concluded:
We can't let this recent publication obscure itself into nothingness. The recent reaction
from Congress is a giant middle finger designed to tell you that (a) there will never be
anything you can do about it and (b) they simply don't care how you feel. Democracy at its
finest from the world's leading propagator of democratic values. ( source )
When is enough going to be enough? Why are we not enraged en masse? Why haven't we recalled
these treasonous bastards and taken our country and our budget back?
For a country that is ready to take up arms and waste countless hours "impeaching" Trump
over something he said on a phone call, it sure says a lot about those same people ignoring 18
years of treasonous behavior by three separate administrations.
Why isn't the media raising hell over this? Why aren't these lives important? Why isn't
sending trillions of our dollars to be frittered away an outrage?
People love to say "America First" and "impeach Trump for treason" and all that jazz. They
love to call anti-war people "un-American" and recommend a quick, one-way trip to Somalia if we
don't "support our troops." However, I think is far more evidence of supporting our troops to
want out of there, not risking their lives based on a castle of lies that further enriches
powerful and wealthy people who have nothing to lose.
Most people love to be outraged about frivolous matters. But when a report like this and its
following insult are met with resounding silence, it's pretty obvious that hardly anybody is
really paying attention.
"... Some, such as General David Petraeus , seem to sincerely believe that the U.S. was on the right track and could have made progress if only those pesky civilians in the Beltway hadn't pulled the rug out from under them by announcing a premature withdrawal. ..."
When Will the Afghan War Architects Be Held Accountable?
Even after the release of the Afghanistan Papers, our elites are still determined to escape
without blame. CERNOBBIO, ITALY - SEPTEMBER 06: Chairman of the KKR Global Institute David
Howell Petraeus attends the Ambrosetti International Economic Forum 2019 "Lo scenario
dell'Economia e della Finanza" on September 6, 2019 in Cernobbio, Italy. (Photo by Pier Marco
Tacca/Getty Images)
Almost two weeks after the Washington Post 's Craig Whitlock published his six-part
series on the trials, tribulations, and blunders of Washington's 19-year-long social science
experiment in Afghanistan, those involved in the war effort are desperately pointing fingers as
to who is to blame. An alternative narrative has emerged among this crop of elite policymakers,
military officers, and advisers that while American policy in Afghanistan has been horrible,
the people responsible for it really did believe it would all work out in the end. Call it the
"we were stupid" defense.
There were no lies or myths propagated by senior U.S. officials, we are told, just honest
assessments that later proved to be wrong. Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, who
has advised U.S. commanders on Afghanistan war policy, wrote that "no, there has not been a
campaign of disinformation, intentional or subliminal." Former defense secretary Jim Mattis,
who led CENTCOM during part of the war effort, called the Post 's reporting "not really
news" and was mystified that the unpublished interviews from the U.S. special inspector general
were generating such shock. Others have faulted the Post for publishing the material to
begin with, claiming that public disclosure would scare future witnesses from cooperating and
threaten other fact-finding inquiries (the fact that the newspaper was legally permitted to
publish the transcripts after winning a court case against the government is apparently
irrelevant in the minds of those making this argument).
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
All of these claims and counter-claims should be seen for what they truly are: the flailings
of a policymaking class so arrogant and unaccountable that it can't see straight. That they're
blaming the outrage engendered by the Afghanistan Papers on anything other than themselves is
Exhibit A that our narcissistic policy elite is cocooned in their own reality.
Analysts have been pouring over the Afghanistan interview transcripts for over a week in
order to determine how the war went wrong. Some of the main lessons learned have long been
evident. The decision to impose a top-down democratic political order on a country that
operated on a system of patronage and tribal systems from the bottom-up was bound to be
problematic. Throwing tens of billions of dollars of reconstruction assistance into a nation
that had no experience managing that kind of money -- or spending it properly -- helped fuel
the very nationwide corruption Washington would come to regret. Paying off warlords to fight
the Taliban and keep order while pressuring those very same warlords into following the rules
was contradictory. The mistakes go on and on and on: as Lieutenant General Douglas Lute said,
"We didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking."
One of the most salient findings about this ghastly two-decade-long misadventure surfaced
after the Afghanistan Papers were released: the commentariat will stop at nothing to absolve
themselves of the slightest responsibility for the disaster they supported. The outright
refusal of the pundit class to own up to its errors is as disturbing as it is infuriating. And
even when they do acknowledge that errors were committed, they tend to minimize their own role
in those mistakes, explaining them away as unfortunate consequences of fixed withdrawal
deadlines, inter-agency tussling, Afghanistan's poor foundational state, or the inability of
the Afghans to capitalize on the opportunities Washington provided them. Some,
such as General David Petraeus , seem to sincerely believe that the U.S. was on the right
track and could have made progress if only those pesky civilians in the Beltway hadn't pulled
the rug out from under them by announcing a premature withdrawal.
It's always somebody else's fault.
Whether out of arrogance, ego, or fear of not being taken seriously in Washington's foreign
policy discussions, the architects of the war refuse to admit even the most obvious mistakes.
Instead they duck and weave like a quarterback escaping a full-on defensive rush, attempting
yet again to fool the American public.
But the public has nothing to apologize for. It is those who are making excuses who have
exercised disastrous judgment on Afghanistan. And they owe the country an apology.
Daniel R. DePetris is a columnist for the Washington Examiner and a contributor
to The American Conservative.
Afghan war demonstrated that the USA got into the trap, the Catch 22 situation: it can't
stop following an expensive and self-destructive positive feedback loop of threat inflation
and larger and large expenditures on MIC, because there is no countervailing force for the
MIC since WWII ended. Financial oligarchy is aligned with MIC.
This is the same suicidal grip of MIC on the country that was one of the key factors
in the collapse of the USSR means that in this key area the USA does not have two party
system, It is a Uniparty: a singe War party with two superficially different factions.
Feeding and care MIC is No.1 task for both. Ordinary Americans wellbeing does matter much
for either party. New generation of Americans is punished with crushing debt and low paying
jobs. They do not care that people over 50 who lost their jobs are essentially thrown out
like a garbage.
"41 Million people in the US suffer from hunger and lack of food security"–US Dept.
of Agriculture. FDR addressed the needs of this faction of the population when he delivered
his One-Third of a Nation speech for his 2nd Inaugural. About four years later, FDR expanded
on that issue in his Four Freedoms speech: 1.Freedom of speech; 2.Freedom of worship;
3.Freedom from want; 4.Freedom from fear.
Items 3 and 4 are probably unachievable under neoliberalism. And fear is artificially
instilled to unite the nation against the external scapegoat much like in Orwell 1984.
Currently this is Russia, later probably will be China. With regular minutes of hate replaced
by Rachel Maddow show ;-)
Derailing Tulsi had shown that in the USA any politician, who try to challenge MIC, will
be instantly attacked by MIC lapdogs in MSM and neutered in no time.
One interesting tidbit from Fiona Hill testimony is that neocons who dominate the USA
foreign policy establishment make their living off threat inflation. They literally are
bought by MIC, which indirectly finance Brookings institution, Atlantic Council and similar
think tanks. And this isn't cheap cynicism. It is simply a fact. Rephrasing Samuel Johnson's
famous quote, we can say, "MIC lobbyism (which often is presented as patriotism) is the last
refuge of scoundrels."
The Washington Post, through documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, has
published a long investigation into Afghanistan. Journalists have collected over 400
testimonies from American diplomats, NATO generals and other NATO personnel, that show that
reports about Afghanistan were falsified to deceive the public about the real situation on the
ground.
After the tampering with and falsification of the report of the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), we are witnessing another event that will certainly
discomfit those who have hitherto relied on the official reports of the Pentagon, the US State
Department and international organizations like the OPCW for the last word.
There are very deliberate reasons for such disinformation campaigns. In the case of the
OPCW, as I wrote some time back, the aim was to paint the Syrian government as the fiend and
the al-Qaeda- and Daesh-linked "moderate rebels" as the innocent souls, thereby likely
justifying a responsibility-to-protect armed intervention by the likes of the US, the UK and
France. In such circumstances, the standing and status of the reporting organization (like the
OPCW) is commandeered to validate Western propaganda that is duly disseminated through the
corporate-controlled mainstream media.
In this particular case, various Western capitals colluded with the OPCW to lay the
groundwork for the removal of Assad and his replacement with the al-Nusra Front as well as the
very same al-Qaeda- and Daesh-linked armed opposition officially responsible for the 9/11
attacks.
As if the massaging of the OPCW reports were not enough in themselves to provoke
international outrage, this dossier serves to give aid and comfort to jihadi groups supported
by the Pentagon who are known to be responsible for the worst human-rights abuses, as seen in
Syria and Iraq in the last 6 years.
False or carefully manipulated reports paint a picture vastly different from the reality on
the ground. The United States has never really declared war on Islamic terrorism, its
proclamations of a "War on Terror" notwithstanding. In reality, it has simply used this
justification to occupy or destabilize strategically important areas of the world in the
interests of maintaining US hegemony, intending in so doing to hobble the energy policies and
national security of rival countries like China, Iran and the Russian Federation.
The Post investigation lays bare how the US strategy had failed since its inception, the
data doctored to represent a reality very different from that on the ground. The inability of
the United States to clean up Afghanistan is blamed by the Post on incorrect military planning
and incorrect political choices. While this could certainly be the case, the Post's real
purpose in its investigation is to harm Trump, even as it reveals the Pentagon's efforts to
continue its regional presence for grand geopolitical goals by hiding inconvenient truths.
The real issue lies in the built-in mendacity of the bureaucratic and military apparatus of
the United States. No general has ever gone on TV to say that the US presence in Iraq is needed
to support any war against Iran; or that Afghanistan is a great point of entry for the
destabilization of Eurasia, because this very heart of the Heartland is crucial to the
Sino-Russian transcontinental integration projects like the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and
the Belt and Road Initiative. In the same vein, the overthrow of the Syrian government would
have ensured Israel a greater capacity to expand its interests in the Middle East, as well as
to weaken Iran's main regional ally.
The Post investigation lays bare the hypocrisy of the military-industrial complex as well as
the prevailing political establishments of Europe and the United States. These parties are not
interested in human rights, the wellbeing of civilians or justice in general. Their only goal
is to try and maintain their global hegemony indefinitely by preventing any other powers from
being able to realize their potential and thereby pose a threat to Atlanticist preeminence.
The war in Iraq was launched to destabilize the Middle East, China's energy-supply basin
crucial to fueling her future growth. The war in Syria served the purpose of further
dismantling the Middle East to favor Saudi Arabia and Israel, the West's main strategic allies
in the Persian Gulf. The war in Afghanistan was to slow down the Eurasian integration of China
and Russia. And the war in Ukraine was for the purposes of generating chaos and destruction on
Russia's border, with the initial hope of wresting the very strategically area of Crimea from
Russia.
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and this has been on full display in
recent times. Almost all of Washington's recent strategic objectives have ended up producing
results worse than the status quo ante. In Iraq there is the type of strong cooperation between
Baghdad and Tehran reminiscent of the time prior to 1979. Through Hezbollah, Iran has
strengthened its position in Syria in defense of Damascus. Moscow has found itself playing the
role of crucial decider in the Middle East (and soon in North Africa), until only a few years
ago the sole prerogative of Washington. Turkey's problems with NATO, coupled with Tel Aviv's
open relation with Moscow are both a prime example of Washington's diminishing influence in the
region and Moscow's corresponding increase in influence.
The situation in Afghanistan is not very different, with a general recognition that peace is
the only option for the region being reflected in the talks between the Afghans, the Taliban,
the Russians, Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis. Beijing and Moscow have well known for over a
decade the real intent behind Washington's presence in the country, endeavoring to blunt its
impact.
The Post investigation only further increases the public's war weariness, the war in
Afghanistan now having lasted 18 years, the longest war in US history. Jeff Bezos, the owner of
the Post, is a bitter opponent of Trump and wants the president to come clean on the
Afghanistan debacle by admitting that the troops cannot be withdrawn. Needless to say,
admitting such would not help Trump's strategy for the 2020 election. Trump cannot afford to
humiliate the US military, given that it, along with the US dollar, is his main weapon of
"diplomacy". Were it to be revealed that some illiterate peasants holed up in caves and armed
with AK-47s some 40 years ago are responsible for successfully keeping the most powerful army
in history at bay, all of Washington's propaganda, disseminated by a compliant media, will
cease to be of any effect. Such a revelation would also humiliate military personnel, an
otherwise dependable demographic Trump cannot afford to alienate.
The Washington Post performed a service to the country by shedding light on the
disinformation used to sustain endless war. But the Post's intentions are also political,
seeking to undermine Trump's electoral chances by damaging Trump's military credentials as well
as his standing amongst military personnel. What Washington's elite and the Post do not know,
or perhaps prefer to ignore, is that such media investigations directed against political
opponents actually end up doing irreparable damage to the political and military prestige of
the United States.
In other words, when journalist do their job, the military industrial complex finds it
difficult to lie its way through wars and failures, but when a country relies on Hollywood to
sustain its make-believe world, as well as on journalists on the CIA payroll, on compliant
publishers and on censored news, then any such revelations of forbidden truths threaten to
bring the whole facade crashing down.
Philip Giraldi Ph.D., Executive Director of the
Council for the National Interest
It's a bit like calling 9/11 an intelligence failure. First, identify the actual measure
of success against which this outcome should really be judged...
An excerpt:
"Here's the real "secret history" of the Afganistan war: It wasn't a failure, it was a
success. In every facet, on every front, Afghanistan is exactly what America needed it to be.
They dripfeed in the blood of young Americans, they destroy 100,000s of Afghan lives, and
they reap the rewards they always intended to reap:
The permanent slow-simmer conflict gives them an excuse to keep thousands of US military
personnel in a country which borders Iran, Pakistan AND China. (Not to mention a host of
ex-Soviet states).
It keeps military expenditure nice and high, so Congressman, ex-generals and everyone else
on the boards of Boeing or Lockheed Martin get great big bonuses every year.
They have sole access to the rare-Earth elements and other vital metals in the Afghan
mountains. Lithium, most importantly of all.
They have control of the world's opium industry. A vital cog in the relations of the US
intelligence agencies, and organised crime. It's essentially reverse money-laundering –
turning tax-payer funds into dark money that can be spent hiring mercenaries, organising
assassinations, arranging coups or simply be stolen.
They have access to all the "radicalised" young men they could ever want. A little Jihadi
farm, where "terrorists" can be named, trained and sent off to fight proxy wars in Syria, or
spread fear and chaos in the West."
"I wish that people would realize that to interfere, in any way shape or form in wars that
occur in Islamic States is pissing into the wind.
We simply cannot and do not understand the religious/tribal and feudal component of these
societies.
It is better that we just let them go at each other. Sooner or later one despot will end
up being top dog - so be it."
Hmm. Do you know the history of colonialism in MENA? I did not think so.
My guess is that your 'knowledge' of Afghanistan and its history is based on your obvious
xenophobia aka Islamophobia and lofty Western superiority complex. Don't feel alone, that's
what folks use to make themselves feel better and able to sleep at night. Check this out:
"Despite close relations to the Axis powers, Zahir Shah refused to take sides during World
War II and Afghanistan remained one of the few countries in the world to remain neutral. In
1944 and 1945, Afghanistan experienced a series of revolts by various tribes.[13] After the
end of the Second World War, Zahir Shah recognised the need for the modernisation of
Afghanistan and recruited a number of foreign advisers to assist with the process.[14] During
this period Afghanistan's first modern university was founded.[14] During his reign a number
of potential advances and reforms were derailed as a result of factionalism and political
infighting.[15] He also requested financial aid from both the United States and the Soviet
Union, and Afghanistan was one of few countries in the world to receive aid from both the
Cold War enemies.[16] In a 1969 interview, Zahir Shah said that he is "not a capitalist. But
I also don't want socialism. I don't want socialism that would bring about the kind of
situation [that exists] in Czechoslovakia. I don't want us to become the servants of Russia
or China or the servant of any other place."[17]
Zahir Shah was able to govern on his own during 1963[9] and despite the factionalism and
political infighting a new constitution was introduced during 1964 which made Afghanistan a
modern democratic state by introducing free elections, a parliament, civil rights, women's
rights and universal suffrage.[14]"
Any particular American war has no purpose, but the USA waging it does. The main points of
what war does:
1. Transfers wealth from social services to the military industrial complex. Americans
don't have education, infrastructure, or healthcare, but they do have a generation of
soldiers with PTSD, national debt, worldwide hatred, and an ever increasing sense of
exceptionalism.
2. Traps Americans in a cycle of fear and persecution. Americans don't need a bogeyman,
but our corporate overlords do, its how they monetize the populace. Find some disparate
population of brown people who want self autonomy, send in the CIA to fuck them up, and when
they retaliate tell Americans that people who live in a 3rd world land locked country several
thousands of miles away are a threat to their very existence and way of life because they
don't like God and Walmart.
Sadly the US uses the MIC to keep a large chunk of its population under control, as well as
providing a convenient coverup of the actual numbers of people who are unemployable or would
be unemployed if it were'nt for the taxpayer funding humungous spending in the so-called
defence sector, which needs a a constant supply of conflict to keep going. The frankly
moronic 'thank you for your service' soundbite drives me insane but it shows how much the
American public has been brainwashed.
For years my home state of Washington had a New Deal Democrat Senator named Henry Jackson,
AKA the Senator from Boeing.
He did good things for the state & was hugely popular here. One reason being that because
he brought the Federal pork back home.
IMO the things Gen. Butler wrote about in the 1920s are still the modus operandi of US
foreign policy.
If the Afghanistan war ends, the USA will go to war with someone else. You cannot spend so
much on military & not be at war. America must have an enemy. And, don’t forget,
they always have “God on our side!”
The neocons in power during 2001 were hell bent on taking out Saddam Hussein. When 9/11
happened, they were looking for avenues to blame Iraq so that they could launch the war on
that nation. Since things could not be put together, and all evidence pointed to Afghanistan,
they took a detour in their war plan with a half hearted approach.
In fact Afghanistan was never the problem - It was Pakistan that held Afghanistan on the
string and managed all terror related activities. Everything related to 9/11 and beyond
pointed directly at Pakistan. Whatever threat Bush and his cronies projected about Iraq was
true in the case of Pakistan. The war was lost when they made Pakistan an ally on the war on
terror. It is like allying with Al Capone to crack down on the mafia.
Pakistan bilked the gullible American war planners, protected its assets and deflected all
the rage on to the barren lands of Afghanistan. They hid all key Al Qaeda operatives and
handed off the ones that did not align with their strategic interests to the US, while
getting reward for it. War in Iraq happened in a hurry because the Bush family had scores to
settle in Iraq. Pressure was lifted on Afghanistan. This is when the war reached a dead
end.
The Taliban knew time was on their hands and waited it out. Obama did understand the
situation and tried to put Af-Pak together and tightened the grip on Pakistan. He got the
troops out of Iraq. Pakistan is almost bankrupt now for its deep investment on terror
infrastructure. The US has drained billions of dollars and lives in Afghanistan due to
misdirected goals. I am surprised Bush and Cheney have not been sent to jail on lies to
launch the Iraq war and botching the real war on terror.
he American people have known that the war in Afghanistan was a lost cause for quite some
time. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans' views of the war
started to go south right around the end of 2011, until eventually a majority started
seeing the writing on the wall about two years later.
That's why the Washington Post
report this week on the so-called "Afghanistan Papers", detailing how US officials
"deliberately mislead the public" on the war's progress, is almost sort of unremarkable. If the
piece took away any shred of innocence left from this ghastly enterprise, it's that perhaps
some of us thought our leaders, while failing miserably at building a nation thousands of miles
away, were at least acting in good faith.
At the same time, the Post report is rage inducing, not just because of the sheer stupidity
of American leaders continuing to fight a war they knew they could not win, but also how their
unwillingness to take responsibility for a failed policy caused so much death, destruction and
heartbreak, particularly among those American families who have admirably dedicated their lives
to serving their country, and the countless number of Afghan civilians trapped in a cycle of
endless war they have nothing to do with.
Of course, the "Afghanistan Papers" immediately recalled memories of the Pentagon variety
leaked to the New York Times nearly a half century ago because they too were government
documents outlining how numerous American administrations had lied to the public about Vietnam
– another long, costly and unnecessary war with no military solution.
But there's one major difference: the war in Afghanistan doesn't have as direct an impact on
the lives of everyday Americans as the Vietnam war did, when the military draft meant that
everyone had to deal with the cold war proxy conflict in south-east Asia
one way or another . Therefore, it's entirely possible, likely even, that this major and
important report from the Post will drift into the wilderness just like the dozens of Trump-era
stories that would have,
for example , taken down any other US president in "normal times".
But there's one big question the Post report raises but does not address: why? Why did so
many people – from government contractors and high-ranking military officers, to state
department and National Security Council officials – feel the need to lie about how the
war in Afghanistan
was going?
The easy answer is that there's a long tradition in Washington, particularly among the
foreign policy establishment, that self-reflection, taking responsibility and admitting failure
is a big no-no. Heck, you can get convicted of lying to Congress about illegal arms sales, and
cover up brutal atrocities and still get a job at the
state department . Did you torture anyone? No problem .
While DC's culture of no culpability certainly plays a role in this case, the more
compelling answer lies somewhere near the fact that once the American war machine kicks into
gear, no amount of facts undermining its very existence is going to get in the way.
Indeed, the United States has so far doled out nearly one trillion dollars for the war in
Afghanistan (the true cost of the war
will be trillions more ) and everyone's on the take: from defense industry executives,
lobbyists and US political campaign coffers to Afghan government officials and poppy farmers to
anyone and anything in between.
What's more is that this
military-industrial-congressional complex is largely insulated from public accountability,
so what's the incentive to change course? The Pentagon's entire budget operates in much the
same way: unprecedented amounts in unnecessary appropriations resulting in hundreds of billions
of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. Yet Congress continues to throw more and more money at
the defense department every year without ever requiring it to account for how it spends the
money. In fact, the war in Afghanistan is small potatoes by comparison.
The bottom line is that the Afghanistan Papers clearly show that a lot of people were
killed, injured and subject to years, if not lifetimes, of psychological trauma and financial
hardship because a bunch of men – yes, mostly men – in Washington didn't want to
admit publicly what they knew privately all along. If we don't start holding these people to
account – and it's not just about Afghanistan
– the DC foreign policy establishment will continue to act with impunity, meaning that
it's probably more likely than not that in 50 years there'll be another batch of "papers"
revealing once again that we've failed to learn obvious lessons from the past.
The documents also contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who
assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting.
Look at this:
Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public.
They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul -- and at the White House -- to distort statistics to make it appear
the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.
As commanders in chief, Bush, Obama and Trump all promised the public the same thing. They would avoid falling into the trap
of "nation-building" in Afghanistan.
On that score, the presidents failed miserably. The United States has allocated more than $133 billion to build up Afghanistan
-- more than it spent, adjusted for inflation, to revive the whole of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II.
The Lessons Learned interviews show the grandiose nation-building project was marred from the start.
If you can get through it all, good for you. I got so mad that I had to quit reading not long after the paragraph above. We have
lost about 2,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, and sustained about 21,000 casualties of war. (Not to mention all the dead innocent Afghan
civilians, and the dead and wounded troops of our NATO allies.) We have spent altogether almost $1 trillion on that country. The
Afghan officials stole a fortune from us. We never knew what to do there. And every one of our leaders lied about it. Lied! All those
brave American soldiers, dead or maimed for life, for a war that our leaders knew that we could not win, but in defense of which
they lied.
It's the Pentagon Papers all over again. You know this, right.
Trump is negotiating now with the Taliban over the possibility of US withdrawal. The story says US officials fought the Post
in court over these documents, and have said most recently that publishing them would undermine the administration's negotiating
position. I don't care. Tell the truth, for once. Let's cut our losses and go before more Americans die in this lost cause. Poor
Afghanistan is going to fall under the tyrannical rule of the mullahs. But if, after 18 years, a trillion dollars, and all those
dead and wounded Americans, we couldn't establish a stable and decent Afghan regime, it's not going to happen.
If any of my children want to join the US military, I'm going to go to the mat to talk them out of it. I do not want them, or
anybody's sons or daughters, sent overseas to die in hopeless countries in wars that we cannot win, and shouldn't have fought, but
kept doing because of bipartisan Establishment foreign policy delusions. To be clear, we should have bombed the hell out of Afghanistan
after 9/11. The Taliban government gave shelter to Al Qaeda, and brought retribution upon itself. But the Bush Administration's nation-building
insanity was never going to work. Eight years of Obama did not fix this. Nor, so far, has three years of Trump, though maybe he will
be the one to stop the bleeding. If he does withdraw, I hope he blasts the hell out of his two predecessors and the military leadership
for what they've done here.
I've been writing lately in this space, and in the book I'm working on, about the parallels between late-imperial Russia and our
own time and place. And I've been writing about what Hannah Arendt had to say about the origins of totalitarianism. Arendt says that
one precursor of totalitarianism is a widespread loss of faith in a society's and a government's institutions.
According to a 2019 Gallup poll, the
US military is one of the few institutions that enjoys broad confidence. How can anybody possibly believe them after this? How can
we believe our Commanders-in-Chief? According to the secret documents, the men in the field have been were their commanders for a
long time that this Afghan thing was not working, and wasn't ever going to work. But they kept sending them back in.
Why? Pride? Too full of themselves to admit that it was a failure? As soldier John Kerry turned antiwar activist said back in
the 1970s, about Vietnam, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" No more American dying in and for Afghanistan.
Bring the troops home. They did not fail. Their superiors did.
How do you convince young people to join an institution whose leadership -- civilian as well as military -- is prepared to sacrifice
them for a lost cause, and then lie, and lie, and lie about it? How do you convince mothers and fathers to send their sons and daughters
with confidence to that military? How do you convince taxpayers to support throwing more money into the sh*thole that is the Pentagon's
budget?
The questions that are going to come up sooner than most of us think, and, in some version, from both the Left and the Right:
just what kind of order do we have in America anyway? Why do I owe it my loyalty? What does it mean to be a patriot when you cannot
trust the nation's leaders and institutions?
These are the kinds of questions that, depending on how they are answered, can lead to the unraveling, and even the overthrow,
of a regime. It has been said that the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was a prime mover in the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev and the
collapse of the Soviet system. We are not the Soviet Union -- but I wouldn't be so quick to take comfort in that, if I were a political
or military leader.
We learned nothing from Vietnam, did we? Not a damn thing. It is beyond infuriating. It is beyond demoralizing. And you know,
the only thing more infuriating and more demoralizing than this will be if there are no consequences for it, or if people fall back
into partisan positions. The report makes clear that this is a disaster that was launched by a Republican administration, continued
under a Democratic administration, and has been overseen by another Republican administration.
One of the reasons Donald Trump is president today, and not some other Republican, is he was the one Republican primary candidate
who denounced the wars. If he can't get us out of Afghanistan, what good is he?
UPDATE: I was just thinking about something a military friend told me almost 15 years ago, based on his direct personal knowledge
of the situation: that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was lying to the nation about how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were
going. And if Rumsfeld was lying, so was the administration. My friend was deeply discouraged. Rumsfeld left office in 2006 -- but
the habit remained with our leadership.
The only thing that surprised me in the WaPo article was that it was published in the CIA's house organ.
EDIT: I should have added that the squandering of blood and treasure, fighting a pointless war that benefits nobody but the
financiers, contractors, arms manufacturers and generals, all while the politicians and generals proclaim that victory is just
at hand, we can't turn back now, - all this reminds me of nothing so much as a smaller scale WWI.
Trump wants us out of Afghanistan, but Iran is a different story. He's sending more troupes to Saudi Arabia to defend the Saudi's
from Iran, how is that disentangling from the ME. I think the Saudi's Wahhabism, basically the same as ISIS practices, is the
most dangerous religion in the word today and they are busy exporting it to the rest of the world. I really think Trump is a false
prophet, a lying prophet, who serves first himself.
Didn't vote for Trump - but: He has attempted to stand up to the elite establishment intelligence-military-arms manufacturing
complex and start cutting back the forever wars. Everyone attacks him for this--establishment Republicans, Democrats, State Department,
Military, Intelligence, Media--everybody. The attacks are immediate and intense. He is almost always forced to pull back. He seems
determined to keep trying, but, as is evident, they will do anything it takes to stop him.
Gosh, the Taliban wiped out poppy production in 2000. The Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001.
Bush (son of CIA Bush) invaded Afghanistan to... well, to do what? To defeat the Taliban?
Why? To restore poppy production? To find bin Laden? Didn't really do that. After all he was
in Pakistan. And what has happened to poppy farming since we invaded? Booming. For 17 years.
Those farming families are doing really well under the protection of U.S. troops. Just like
the oil families in Syria that are protected by U.S. troops. Now, Trump seems to be throwing
a spanner in all this. Of course, "We came, we saw, he died [giggle, giggle]" Clinton would
have never committed Trump's crimes. Trump's just a loose cannon.
Angleton, quoting Jesus, said "In my Father's house are many mansions."
I guess we know which mansion Brennan inhabits.
May 20, 2001
The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan under Taliban rule have concluded
that the movement's ban on opium-poppy cultivation appears to have wiped out the world's
largest crop in less than a year, officials said today.
The American findings confirm earlier reports from the United Nations drug control program
that Afghanistan, which supplied about three-quarters of the world's opium and most of the
heroin reaching Europe, had ended poppy planting in one season.
But the eradication of poppies has come at a terrible cost to farming families, [A
TERRIBLE COST TO FARMING FAMILIES, OH, THOSE POOR FARMING FAMILIES]and experts say it will
not be known until the fall planting season begins whether the Taliban can continue to
enforce it.
''It appears that the ban has taken effect,'' said Steven Casteel, assistant administrator
for intelligence at the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington.
The findings came in part from a Pakistan-based agent of the administration who was one of
the two Americans on the team just returned from eight days in the poppy-growing areas of
Afghanistan.
Tue 11 Sep 2001: 9/11
Tue 25 Sep 2001:
In a dramatic and little-noticed reversal of policy, the Taliban have told farmers in
Afghanistan that they are free to start planting poppy seeds again if the Americans decide to
launch a military attack.
Drug enforcement agencies last night confirmed that they expect to see a massive resumption
of opium cultivation inside Afghanistan, previously the world's biggest supplier of heroin,
in the next few weeks.
The Taliban virtually eradicated Afghanistan's opium crop last season after an edict by
Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader.
In July last year he said that growing opium was "un-Islamic" and warned that anyone
caught planting seeds would be severely punished.
Taliban soldiers enforced the ruling two summers ago and made thousands of villagers
across Afghanistan plough up their fields. Earlier this year UN observers agreed that
Afghanistan's opium crop had been completely wiped out.
"... Yet in spite of all this American sacrifice, the Taliban controls more territory than at any time since 2001. ..."
"... After all, President Trump hasn't even signed off on Khalilzad's draft deal, and even if he does, he could always change his mind. The ability of the Blob to swallow presidents is not to be underestimated -- and Trump is a case in point. For decades, reaching back to his career as a businessman, Trump had been a skeptic of foreign military engagements, and he explicitly campaigned against "endless wars" in 2016. ..."
"... Yet since then, the Blob has been extending pseudopods of keep-the-status-quo cajolery deep within his administration. Trump has thus been persuaded to keep the U.S. engaged, or, if one prefers, quagmired ..."
"... The Taliban are not an invading military force. The struggle as it is has been one of internal forces and players sharing the land and never having been but various communities that fought, lived and negotiated agreements all nearly all of the countries history, unlike Vietnam which has almost entire history had a North/South division. ..."
"... Quit calling the Kabul regime a "client". It's a puppet. The minute US forces leave Afghanistan, the puppet government in Kabul will fall. Don't be surprised if it collapses before the last US transport has its landing gear all the way up. Notwithstanding 2., yes, it's over. Time to pack up and move on. However, Trump can't do that. ..."
"... If Trump had really wanted to leave Afghanistan, the time to do it was when he first entered office. Blame his predecessors and wash his hands of the situation while the political price was at its lowest. But Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated. He listened to the generals, and the price of leaving has only risen and will only keep rising. ..."
"... They aren't much good for anything but staging, but Trump wants those Afghan outposts for the war on Iran that his Saudi owners and Israeli masters so crave. ..."
"... All the Democrats should be on the bandwagon for withdrawal yesterday because Trump's October Surprise could be announcing peace in our time and getting the hell out. It is a promise he can actually keep. It is not like he is getting his wall. ..."
"... Trump has become, himself, part of "the Blob." By hiring Pompeo and Bolton to head his foreign policy team he has abandoned any pretense of being an anti-war pro-restraint president. He's gone full neo-con and it's long past time conservatives stop pretending he hasn't. ..."
Needless to say, the news from Afghanistan is always murky, and the U.S. is far from gone.
Still, the BBC headline from September 3 tells us a lot:
"Afghanistan war: US-Taliban deal would see 5,400 troops withdraw." U.S. negotiator Zalmay
Khalilzad has hammered out an agreement, "in principle," with the Taliban.
He has now shared some of the details with the Afghan government -- which, revealingly,
hasn't been involved in the negotiations -- and with the world as well. In other words, the
U.S. has been bypassing its Kabul client regime in pursuit of a deal with the Taliban.
Obviously, the fact that our Afghan ally has been left out of the negotiations is not a good
sign for its relevance -- or its viability.
To be sure, even if those 5,400 American troops leave, another 8,600 would remain, plus an
unknown number of contractors and operatives. Yet it's obvious that if the U.S. couldn't pacify
Afghanistan with
100,000 troops at the beginning of this decade, it's not going to do much with a tiny
fraction thereof. In fact, our current dealings with the Taliban recall our dealings with North
Vietnam in the early '70s.
Back then, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger were
looking to negotiate with North Vietnam to find a way out. Their hope was for "peace with
honor." Yet the appearance of "peace with honor" is not necessarily the same thing as
the reality . Behind the scenes, it was grubbier. Nixon and Kissinger understood that
the South Vietnamese government was deathly afraid of a U.S. deal with North Vietnam because
Saigon understood that any such agreement would leave it in the lurch, unable to defend itself.
North Vietnam, after all, was supported by both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of
China. And so Nixon and Kissinger simply pushed South Vietnam out of the loop. Indeed, South
Vietnamese fears would have been fully confirmed had they heard Kissinger speaking to Nixon
inside the White House in October 1972, as recorded by the notorious secret taping system.
As Kissinger put it, the U.S. should be hoping for a
"decent interval" between the American departure and the inevitable fall of the Saigon
government. And that's what happened: the Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973,
and barely more than two years later, on April 30, 1975, Saigon fell. Understandably, millions
of South Vietnamese sought to flee the communists, and that, again, is how D.C. -- and the U.S.
as a whole -- gained so many new restaurants. All that history is familiar to the policymakers
and pundits of today. And so inside the Beltway, the debate over the future of Afghanistan --
more precisely, U.S. involvement in the conflict -- is far from over.
As TAC contributor
Doug Bandow noted on August 29, the foreign policy establishment, a.k.a. "the
Blob," is perpetually in favor of staying in Afghanistan, because, well, establishments are
always perpetually in favor of doing everything that they're doing, perpetually. After all, who
wants to admit a mistake? Especially when establishmentarians can snugly oversee the war from
their armchairs in a Massachusetts Avenue think-tank? In the meantime, American losses continue
to mount. On August 29, another G.I. was killed in Afghanistan; that would be Army Sergeant
First Class
Dustin B. Ard of Idaho Falls, Idaho. He leaves behind his pregnant wife Mary and daughter
Reagan. Ard's death was the 15th this year, bringing the total of American military deaths in
Afghanistan to nearly 2,400
.
Yet in spite of all this American sacrifice, the Taliban controls more territory than at
any time since 2001. Indeed, the Taliban has proven its ability to strike anywhere,
including inside Kabul; just on September 3, suicide bombers struck an international compound,
killing at least 19. Tellingly, local Afghans now want the international residents out of their
neighborhood, because they know the presence of foreigners is a magnet for Taliban killers --
whom nobody seems able to stop.
We can pause to observe that such popular fatalism dooms a regime. It makes people --
especially those with links to the West -- likely to flee. To be sure, there's no telling
exactly when the Kabul government will crumble, as well as how, exactly, it will crumble.
After all, President Trump hasn't even signed off on Khalilzad's draft deal, and even if
he does, he could always change his mind. The ability of the Blob to swallow presidents is not
to be underestimated -- and Trump is a case in point. For decades, reaching back to his career
as a businessman, Trump had been a skeptic of foreign military engagements, and he explicitly
campaigned against "endless wars" in 2016.
Yet since then, the Blob has been extending pseudopods of keep-the-status-quo cajolery
deep within his administration. Trump has thus been persuaded to keep the U.S. engaged, or, if
one prefers, quagmired .
Remarkably, in August 2017, Trump even delivered a primetime speech on Afghanistan in which
he pledged
"victory." Even if Trump doesn't talk up victory anymore, nobody can say what exactly he
will do. Does he want to get credit for extricating the U.S., finally, from an unpopular
war?
Or does he not want to see a foreign capital fall on his watch? Whatever the case, it seems
evident that the remaining sand is running out of the Afghan hourglass.
In the two years since that go-get-'em speech, Trump has expended zero rhetorical effort in
support of the Afghan mission; instead he and his administration have shifted their focus to
China. (And yes, there's also that fascination with Iran, although there again, because Trump
is Trump, it's hard to know what will come of it. It could be anything from an armed conflict
to a Kim Jong-un-ish summit.) In the meantime, the Democrats, too, have moved on. It wasn't
that long ago that Barack Obama was referring to Afghanistan as the "good war," while surging
American troops; Obama, too, was pseudopod-ed by the Blob. And while the 44th president soon
enough realized that the new doctrine of counter-insurgency wasn't working any better than the
old doctrine of counter-terrorism, he chose not to get cross-wise with the Blob -- and so
American troops stayed. Yet today, nobody in the 2020 Democratic presidential field -- not even
Obama alum Joe Biden -- has any enthusiasm for the Afghan mission. So whether it's a re-elected
Trump or a newly elected Democrat in the White House in 2021, the U.S. is going to be looking
for that fig-leafy "decent interval." It could come in the form of a bilateral agreement, or
perhaps an international conference, complete with the promise of U.N. peacekeepers (although
unless they're Pakistani or Chinese "peacekeepers," any foreign force will likely wilt in the
face of the Taliban, which is nothing if not good at killing). Yes, it's intriguing to note
that Afghanistan has trillions of dollars' worth of natural
resources waiting to be mined. And so if a stable regime could ever be established in that
war-crossed land, great wealth could spring forth. But that's a manifest
destiny for someone else, not Uncle Sam. What we're going to get stateside when this
misadventure finally comes to an end is a lot of new refugees -- and a lot of new
restaurants.
James P. Pinkerton is an author and contributing editor at . He served as a White
House policy aide to both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
IMHO, we should have left Afghanistan years ago. I'll settle for yesterday. To hell with the
Rare Earth and our warmongers running/ruining foreign affairs!
Too late. The "decent interval" ended well over fifteen years ago.
I'm actually surprised that Trump isn't getting us out of there. He's told a lot of lies
and broken a lot of promises, but that's one that would have been easy to keep, and he didn't
do it. No spine.
This all depends on one simple factor. The integrity of the Taliban verses the integrity of
the communists in North Vietnam.
And trying to hedge a "we lost in Vietnam" slip and slide assail has no more veracity
here than it had in 1975.
The Taliban are not an invading military force. The struggle as it is has been one of
internal forces and players sharing the land and never having been but various communities
that fought, lived and negotiated agreements all nearly all of the countries history, unlike
Vietnam which has almost entire history had a North/South division.
We are going to have foreign restaurants regardless, but interventions just invite more of
them.
Quit calling the Kabul regime a "client". It's a puppet. The minute US forces leave
Afghanistan, the puppet government in Kabul will fall. Don't be surprised if it collapses
before the last US transport has its landing gear all the way up. Notwithstanding 2., yes,
it's over. Time to pack up and move on. However, Trump can't do that.
a. If Trump were to order a withdrawal from Afghanistan, his political opponents would
pounce. Expect lots of cries of "Putin puppet", angry denunciations of "Who lost
Afghanistan?" and heart-rending images depicting the fates of suffering girls. Not to mention
the grisly fates those persons so foolish as to cooperate with the United States.
Let us not kid ourselves - some of these images will in fact be genuine.
Also, Sunni Islamicists will be emboldened. It took some 18 years, but in the end, they
sent the Americans home packing.
No matter how you spin it, they won and we lost. Yes, the much hyped and much bloated
United States military was unable to defeat some medieval farmers in flip flops, who cannot
boast so much as a Piper Cub to their name, much less a drone or a cluster bomb.
If Trump had really wanted to leave Afghanistan, the time to do it was when he first
entered office. Blame his predecessors and wash his hands of the situation while the
political price was at its lowest. But Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated. He
listened to the generals, and the price of leaving has only risen and will only keep
rising.
b. They aren't much good for anything but staging, but Trump wants those Afghan outposts
for the war on Iran that his Saudi owners and Israeli masters so crave.
Of course, eighteen odd years and countless dollars, only to be defeated by peasants
without a single fighter jet or drone is not exactly great PR for the folks trying to
convince us that they really can win this time, why, Iran will be a walk in the park!
Trump is an imbecile, of course, but he is doing about the only thing he can do in
Afghanistan, which is, to try and maintain a semblance of control over major population
centers and pretend we're not losing.
All the Democrats should be on the bandwagon for withdrawal yesterday because Trump's October
Surprise could be announcing peace in our time and getting the hell out. It is a promise he
can actually keep. It is not like he is getting his wall.
'Does he want to get credit for extricating the U.S., finally, from an unpopular war? Or does
he not want to see a foreign capital fall on his watch?'
Any politician with sense knows that the American public could not care less about the
fall of Kabul (what's a kabul?). That's the American people. Campaign contributions from the
MIC is a different matter.
Trump has become, himself, part of "the Blob." By hiring Pompeo and Bolton to head his
foreign policy team he has abandoned any pretense of being an anti-war pro-restraint
president. He's gone full neo-con and it's long past time conservatives stop pretending he
hasn't.
Who gets to decide how many "refugees" the US will get from Afghanistan? Some of us would
gladly forgo all these wonderful new restaurants to protect our communities from yet another
"refugee" surge.
This is all false. The goal was establish military bases in former soviet republics to encircle Russia and this goal was
achieved. Putin was probably not so wise giving 100% support to Bush invasion, which was a typical false flag invasion.
Taliban was the creation of the USA to fight Soviets, like political Islam in general so any complains are just pure
hypocity.
Notable quotes:
"... Afghanistan borders China. For that reason alone, we are never leaving whatever the cost in blood or treasure. The country is a very forward, strategic military base that can be used to launch air attacks on Chinese assets and impede China's Belt and Road initiative. ..."
"... Despite his bluster, Trump is very weak and knows the Taliban is winning and fears they will try to drive us out before the election, ushering in his defeat. Most of his time is spent cowering in his golf resorts, ranting and raving on a tiny little cellphone. ..."
"... The Blob will not allow any of his fears to shake the resolve of the Deep State to make Afghanistan a colony for a thousand years. ..."
"... American's negotiating position in every instances with rival nations is to dictate the terms for surrender regardless of the circumstances on the ground. It's an untenable position and guarantees perpetual war and occupation which is precisely the point. ..."
"... It seems to me that if one parsed reports from the Special Inspector General Afghanistan Reconstruction along with the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime's "Afghanistan Opium Survey", any illusions as to what the reasons for the West's intervention in that country were, should dissipate rather speedily. ..."
"... we invaded Afghanistan so that we could steal the foreign aid money that we would give them and could sponsor the opium trade. ..."
"... Gramsci and his like stand vindicated. Capture the academies and the rest of us follow, often willingly. ..."
"... And just a few, of those in the public eye, standing up true and declaring "This emperor has no clothes!" ..."
Where we are now in Afghanistan- Editorial Opinion by PL
(Lt. Hamilton VC at Kabul where he commanded Sir Louis Cavangnari's escort)
A year or so after the US intervention in Afghanistan began in 2001 I perceived that there
was a danger that US public and government opinion might begin to favor the idea of "nation
building" in Afghanistan. From long experience in and study of the area of Islamicate
civilization and its history it seemed clear to me that such an effort would be doomed to
failure at any price that one should be willing to pay in; expended effort over time, money and
blood shed on all sides.
The basic problem with Afghanistan is that there "is no there there." Afghanistan is really
a geographical expression rather than a country in the sense understood of the word in the
post-Westphalian system of independent states.
Across the Islamicate world from Mauritania to BanglaDesh and beyond to Oceania there is a
pronounced tendency to atomization in group perception of identity. Arabs do not identify with
Berbers, etc., Tribes and clans within these groups regard all others as rivals and often
enemies unless they are needed as temporary allies.
The Islamic religion which holds unity to be an ideal is often thought to be a unifier
against the atomizing tendency in these cultures, but in fact there are many, many varieties of
Islam, each one believing that it is uniquely favored by God. This often cancels out whatever
unifying effect Islam, as religion, can have.
Afghanistan, created as a buffer between imperial Russia and British India, is an extreme
case of atomization among the inhabitants of a state which has recognition in the world
political system including membership in the UN. In spite of that status , a status that might
deceive one into believing that there is such a thing as "the Afghan People,"the population of
Afghanistan is actually made up of a number of different ethnic nations; Pushtuns, Hazzara,
Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turcomans, Arabs, etc. These different peoples all speak mutually
unintelligible languages which often have such extreme separation in dialect that this amounts
to uninteligibility as well. Some of these groups are Sunni and others Shia. This is yet
another factor in the separation of the segments of the population.
The country has little substantial physical infrastructure. What there is was largely
constructed in the 50s and 60s as part of Cold War competition between the USSR and the US.
There is very little legal or governmental infrastructure. A commercial company investing its
own or borrowed money in Afghanistan is taking a great risk of never being able to recover its
investment from the local "pirates." Government is generally predatory in its attitude toward
foreign investment funds. I tried to find a safe haven in Afghanistan for some of my company's
funds and could find none. Senior Afghan government people would typically respond to questions
about legal infrastructure with exhortations to "bring your project, all will be well."
Needless to say ...
US intervention in this place was inevitable after 9/11, but what was not necessary or wise
were repeated US decisions for a COIN nation building campaign. As this tendency began to be
evident I argued for a much more limited goal in which the US would keep about 20K troops in
country to maintain a government controlled enclave around Kabul and Bagram. This would enable
pursuit of located international terrorist groups through raiding operations from that base
area. The basis for this strategy was my conclusion that the US could never "pacify" all of the
territory of Afghanistan and that we would "break our teeth" trying.
I pressed this belief in various fora and with various individuals within the Obama
Administration even as Obama endlessly contemplated the entreaties of the COINista generals,
Petraeus, Mattis, McChrystal etc. for a country wide nation building COIN campaign. The most
interesting of these encounters was at an IQ2 debate at NYU in 2009 where I (and teammates)
argued that "The US can never win in Afghanistan." My side lost on points but the leader of the
other team recently told me that he knows now that we were completely correct. Obama gave in to
the generals, and gave them the COIN war that they wanted. I suppose that for "Barry" it was
immensely flattering to have them "butter him up."
It is clear now that the COIN strategy has failed miserable and totally. Afghanistan is not
one bit more united or modernized than it has ever been. The US has spent a sea of money there
and many brave people have perished or been wrecked in chasing the idea of Afghanistan as a
Central Asian Switzerland.
Trump has allowed Zalmai Khalilzad to attempt to achieve a negotiated peace with the
Taliban, the former salafi takfiri, Pushtun rulers of Afghanistan, in the apparent belief that
they could be "talked down out of the tree" just as his business competitors could always be
talked down to meet at a "closing" table where his supposed "closing genius' would bring a
DEAL.
Unfortunately this belief in his closing talent goes unrewarded in Palestine, Syria,
Turkey,Yemen, Iran, China (not yet), North Korea and Afghanistan. IMO his difficulty in finding
solutions lies in his entrapment within his own New York City business model, a model in which
everything is for sale if the deal is structured skillfully to advantage the stronger party
while all the while claiming that the party you are screwing is your friend.
Sadly for The Donald all those "stupid" foreigners do not understand that "everything is for
sale." Among them, the Taliban, an army and religio-political movement are notable for a lack
of belief in the commercial possibilities of selling out to Donald Trump for a "mess of
pottage" or thirty pieces of silver whichever reference you prefer. They want to win, and they
want to be seen to have driven the "crusaders" from Afghanistan and in the process to have
humiliated the US as the leading infidel state. To that end they lie, prevaricate and await the
day when they can crush the puny forces of "modernism" after the American departure. Zalmai
Khalilzad is an Afghan pushtun Sunni by birth and rearing. Did he not know that they could not
be trusted in dealings with the US? I do not blame the Taliban for being what they are. I blame
all the American and NATO fools for believing that they could make the Taliban either go away
or become "happy campers." They were never going to do either of those things. We should have
known that. Some of us did, but Americans are addicted to all the melting pot, right side of
history foolishness so common in "levelled" America,
What should the US do now that the scales have fallen from Trump's eyes and the time of
"good faith" negotiation with the Taliban is "dead?" The first thing to do is to fire
Khalilzad.
Last night, Col. (ret.) Douglas Macgregor told Tucker Carlson that the US should simply
leave, and should have never intervened. IOW we should get the hell out totally and forever.
This is a tempting thought. I have wrestled with the attractiveness of the idea but there are
certain problems with it.
1. We should not want to give the jihadi movements proof of our feckless defeatability. IMO
if we leave suddenly the Afghan government and armed forces will soon collapse. The country
will then further disintegrate into a welter of jihadi factions and regional tribal strongmen,
the strongest of which will be the Taliban.
2. We have encouraged modernist Afghan men, women and girls to emerge from the shadows.
Shall we leave them to their fates under the rule of the jihadis.
3. What about all the translators, base workers and other people who have cast their lots
with us. The Taliban and other jihadis will simply kill them as apostates. We abandoned a lot
of such people in Iraq. Will we do it again?
On balance I would say Macgregor is right that we must leave. The time for a small remaining
presence is past. The forces in the field are too strong for a small force to maintain itself
even with massive long range air support. Think of Sir Louis Cavangnari. No, we should leave,
but we should leave on a schedule that will enable us to control the timing of our going and to
protect the departure of those who wish to leave with us. pl
BTW, SWMBO says that no mutually understood languages = no country.
"We should not want to give the jihadi movements proof of our feckless defeatability."
Gee, like admit to reality?
My view: Acknowledge the U.S. is not omnipotent, and has very limited ability to
influence, let alone, control, other parts of the world other than those to which it has
extremely close ties, most especially the Five Eyes and other parts of what was once called
Western Civilization.
I just want to mention that about once a year I dig the IQ2 debate out and watch it again
in full. Call it a sanity check I suppose. It is clear that you were trying to be substantive
throughout, which was somewhat hampered by the amorphous premise of "success" undergirding
the debate question. The other side (Nagle in particular) was trying to "win" the debate by
defining success so broadly as to exclude questions over the "how," and they used that as an
excuse to dodge your indictment of COIN. But it is very clear who had the right of it, and it
is at least somewhat gratifying to hear that same admission was made to you.
I suspect that we will retain our forces in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. To
understand why you've got to consider the politics rather than the pragmatics.
No president wants to be the one who "lost Afghanistan" (as though it were ours to lose)
or, worse yet, be the president who removed forces from a country from which an attack on the
U. S. would emanate afterwards or be staged from or planned from.
The greatest likelihood of our removing our forces from Afghanistan would be towards the
end of a president's second term, especially if that president were a Democrat and could
expect to take less heat from the media. In other words Obama should have removed our forces
from Afghanistan and if he wouldn't Trump won't, especially not before being re-elected.
These kind of wars seem to take 3 presidents to end. Trump is this war's Nixon and was
elected on a platform which included 'losing' Afghanistan. The media will howl once the
Taliban take over, but it will swiftly pass as they realize Americans have no interest in a
place where their countrymen are no longer dying.
No matter what the US government does or does not do, wouldn't Afghanistan revert to its
natural state as you have described it?
It seems Trump's "negotiated" deal with the Taliban would have been a good approach to
getting out but that's now no longer a possibility. Would supporting the Tajiks through
Russia and India as a counter-balance to the Taliban work to keep them from completely
dominating? Russia and India likely have an interest in preventing jihadis from using Taliban
dominated territory to infiltrate. Is it even worth any effort on the part of the US
government? It would seem Pakistan and China would continue working to influence events
there.
My longstanding belief is that Afghanistan to be 'tamed' requires the type of Steel that only
existed long ago.
The Modern World has modernized beyond the brutal realities that taming it likely
requires, and as such may lose a fraction of the Lives and Treasure as past - but cannot
sustain it politically or socially.
The next Question - If Afghanistan is simply a construct, why not forsake most of it and
develop the regions of Afghanistan that ARE more amiable and Homogenous?
A lot of the Tadzhiks and Uzbeks (varied Turkmen) I suspect could be far more easily
propped up and supported in their own Lands, which back to back with the Central Asian FSU
States is a more viable 'Nation Building' Exercise.
What ultimately tamed the 'Wilds'? The Development of strong local States, Force of Arms
and ultimately - Demographics. If you will not do it yourself, pick a unified Team and back them in doing it. Ironically the means to inflict harm on occupying Militaries seems to go down as those
Armies means to stomach it does also.
The next obvious Question. Is it worth considering (not necessarily for the US and Western
States - who will appear as desperate Losers the idea that Afghanistan if allowed to run as
strong Armed Islamic State, albeit modernized - might actually one day develop into one more
approachable to further modernization?
I agree we should unilaterally withdraw all our forces from Afghanistan. The military can
surely plan and carry out a unilateral withdrawal. Just do it. The Taliban are not al Qaeda
or the Islamic State. Their desires don't extend beyond the mountains of Afghanistan. Hell,
they're fighting IS. Let them do so and don't give them reason to go over to them.
The rub will be all those Afghanis who tied their futures to us. We should resettle them
here or somewhere more familiar to them as part of that withdrawal. The chance of that
happening under the Trump administration is nil.
That is the exact same argument I heard in 72 and again in 75. By early 76 no one cared.
There are in every country and in every involvement Quislings and main chancers who find the
short term gelt available to be worth the future risk of making the wrong and visible
choice.
In the case of most of these Afghanis the tie was a slip knot at best.
A "long, long, time ago" in "a land far away", Najibullah was deposed. Pat, you'll recall
that I was then serving as the chair of the Inter-agency Task Force on Afghanistan. Well, we
had our regular meeting at which a couple of the folks opined that this was a wonderful
development for the country and the folks would now all join hands, dance around the
campfire, and sign Kumbaya. To bring the group back to reality, I asked for someone to
identify the national sport of Afghanistan. One of the group said that, obviously, it was
buzkhasi. So I then asked for someone else to clarify how such a game unfolds and another
stalwart did so. This dialogue quickly brought everyone back to reality. For those unfamiliar
with the sport, buzkhasi consists of two nominal "teams" on horseback trying to get a
headless goat carcass across the opponent's goal line. All goes well at first, but ultimately
the teams disintegrate until it's every man for himself in mass mayhem. Thus, IMHO will go
Afghanistan.
Sadly enough this old quote seems especially true in the case of the "Afghan War" or whatever
it is. Our experts' obdurate insistence on pursuing "peace with honor" or some outcome we can
get our heads around and feel good about has become a receding horizon...
The only way we could "win" would be by waging a war of extermination with the goal of
totally depopulating the entire territory and building an impenetrable barrier around it. But
of course that would be a hard sell for a country with a good guy reputation to protect. And
then what would we do with the land? After all, we still haven't been able to settle most of
Nevada and Wyoming!
"History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about
by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."
I said at the beginning of this mess that the one sure thing was that we would end up with
chains of Iraqi and afghan restaurants begun by the refugees who had to leave their countries
with us when we left. I just hope we have progressed from leaving behind card indexes of our
in-country supporters for the Taliban to discover, as allegedly happened in Vietnam.
I enjoyed the IQ2 debate you reference, particularly your coining of the word "Vermontize".
Incredible to think this conversation about an 8 year old war was 10 years ago - and we are
still having it. Here is the link for anyone interested:
I really enjoy these type of situational overview and analysis posts, thanks!
Although I see your point about Trump's crass business approach, let's face it... the
military and various US gov't orgs have had any many years to try various approaches to
"solving" (cough, cough) Afghanistan. After all the US has been in Afghanistan since 2001. We
had been in Afghanistan for 15 years before Trump was elected. After all those years of failure
by the Borg I have no problem whatsoever with Trump taking a shot at the situation in his own
way. Trump tried a certain tactic and it didn't work. Oh well, but lessons learned. He'll
regroup, get more advice and try something else. He's making more of an effort to resolve
things than previous presidents, and willing to think outside of the Borg box.
No, all Trump was doing was looking for a re-election publicity stunt and a shot at that
elusive Nobel like Obama got....he's done this kind of thing for the last 40 years - he isn't
going to change his personality now...
If the US leaves and I believe it should it doesn't have to mean the end of days. China,
Russia, Iran, India and Pakistan have all expressed interest in clearing the area of
terrorists. They have all been blocked by the US presence. Preferably the US would work a
deal with those players who are far better connected and prepared to clean up the
neighbourhood than the US is from the other side of the world. Russia was willing to act as
guarantor for the collapsed deal. Work a deal for one or more of them to move in as the US
moves out.
My concern is that with all the big players wanting a piece of the pie that it evolves into
an even worse proxy war. But China, Pakistan, Russia and Iran are all rowing in more or less
the same direction these days and India has bitten off all it can chew in Kashmir so this may
be the perfect time. Americans just have to get over that indispensable nation nonsense.
Thank you for thinking of the women and girls....and perhaps their little boys.
I've lived through the abandonment of Vietnam and the influx of refugees from that part of
the world, the mess after the Iraq War that included bringing to our country many who had
tied their fortunes to us. We can not this time decide to abandon any who have tied their
hopes to us after we came in and caused so much turmoil in their country.
I always thought it was hubris on our part to think we could do what the Soviets failed to
do.
If we bring these people here, my hope is that we examine how our bringing in Somalis has,
in many places, not been a successful effort in regard to integrating them into our society.
(Do not many of us, including Nancy Pelosi, regret the bringing in of at least one Somali
woman?) We need to prepare for their entry into our country in some way that will not mean
just dropping them somewhere and letting them fend for themselves.
I know the government has some sort of protocol for finding them places to live. Often,
however, the people seem to be dropped in and left in some ways to depend on themselves "as
strangers in a strange land." This should be our last time. Stop the "nation-building"
efforts.
I feel that most Americans are welcoming and friendly people, but they often just do not
understand how difficult it is for some to adapt to a very different way of life.
Afghanistan borders China. For that reason alone, we are never leaving whatever the cost in
blood or treasure. The country is a very forward, strategic military base that can be used to
launch air attacks on Chinese assets and impede China's Belt and Road initiative.
Despite his bluster, Trump is very weak and knows the Taliban is winning and fears they
will try to drive us out before the election, ushering in his defeat. Most of his time is
spent cowering in his golf resorts, ranting and raving on a tiny little cellphone.
The Blob will not allow any of his fears to shake the resolve of the Deep State to make
Afghanistan a colony for a thousand years.
They have been successful in implanting in the psyche of every American the incorrect
notion that the Taliban launched 9/11. That notion alone means there is no support for any
truce or treaty with our bete noir.
These lines from Rudyard Kipling immediately came to my mind:
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!"
We are never going to change Afghanistan so getting out and taking those who supported us
is appealing to me.
Maybe that's why Mr. Prince wanted Trump to make him the viceroy of Afghanistan.
What a career that would be - a former SEAL lieutenant, then mercenary, promoted to
something like a field marshal, bringing fabulous quarter numbers, strategy or something like
that, peace and freedom to the place by privatizing the war and fighting it more cost
effective for himself .
It is not a base. It is a sinkhole--A distinction without a difference.
Confusedponderer
Your reference to Mr. Prince was spot on. He understood what the long-term plans for
Afghanistan were and still are. A viceroy is the designated ruling representative of a
colonial power.
American's negotiating position in every instances with rival nations is to dictate the
terms for surrender regardless of the circumstances on the ground. It's an untenable position
and guarantees perpetual war and occupation which is precisely the point.
It seems to me that if one parsed reports from the Special Inspector General Afghanistan
Reconstruction along with the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime's "Afghanistan Opium
Survey", any illusions as to what the reasons for the West's intervention in that country
were, should dissipate rather speedily.
so, your belief is that we invaded Afghanistan so that we could steal the foreign aid money that we would give them and
could sponsor the opium trade. Funny! A joke right?
IMO Trump has no clarity of anyhthing in foreign policy. He is just trying to make a deal
in accordance with his experience of deal making and is not doing well. It will be
interesting to see if he and Trudeau can sell the USMCA to Pelosi. this is clearly a
gooddeal. Let's see how hard he pushes for it. With regard to the ME, have reached the
conclusion that his basic attitudes are formed in the culture of New York City Jewry. A
Christian Brother who had two PH.D.s in STEM and was a New York City guy once told me that I
had to understand that everyone in NY City is to some extent Jewish, even the cardinal
archbishop.
I spent several years in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2014. I was there, with a front row
seat, when the shift to nation-building began. The best days of my life were in Afghanistan,
spent amongst the finest men and women from many nations...including Afghanistan.
We lost the war a long time ago. By 2006, I could see we were losing. By 2008, I knew it
was lost. How many Afghans have hitched their horses to our wagon? More than enough. How many others
chose to live as free men and women because we were there? A significant part of the
population. They face a reckoning for living that hope out loud, in public.
The Afghan people are amazing, and a lot of them believed in us, and in a future where
women could be more than a piece of property. I can see why some would say we should walk
away, and, it's hard to argue against that.
I'll carry what we did in Afghanistan to my grave. DOL,
Colonel ...I agree with your Opinion on this matter of Withdrawal. I have read a Year by Year
timeline of The Millions spent. for the Training Of Afghanistan Military and Security
Forces and Like in Viet Nam..they will fail. Fail to defend themselves..
Their hearts wont be in it..and like Vietnam..It Just made The Communist North Vietnamese the Third Most Powerful
Conventional Weapons stockpile in the World..with all the Equipment we Left
behind...The..billions spent to keep our military presence there..
The millions Spent for VA
Resources to care for our wounded. Many with traumatic head injuries...The loss of Our People
there..Overt and Covert...The loss of Seal Team 6 in the Aftermath of Finally Getting Osama
Bin Laden...It will Never End...
There will always be those willing to die for JiHad..Forever..Over a Trillion Dollars..Plus all The Money we sent to
Pakistan. Which has
been Most of Our Foreign Aid..Its been a Tragic Blunder and there has never been such a
thing as "Mission Accomplished"..
This has been the second most Costly War since WWII.
..Bring Them Home.. ...
9/11/2001,,,,9/11/2019.A War of the Politicians..By The Politicians
For The Politicians.and the Military..Industrial Complex....and Their Egos..and Bank
accounts..Period...Thomas Jefferson Knew This was coming.
I know nothing about Doug Macgregor but he sounds really sane in this interview with
Tucker. If Trump does what he suggests it would be a welcome approach and drive the Borg
insane.
I agreed with sending SOF in to kill AQ being harbored by the Taliban. I said at the time,
"Go in, kill the people who need killing & get the hell out."
There is only one thing that can unify Afgan tribes, that's the presence of foreigners. A
very long history has resulted in the reference to "the graveyard of empires." I don't
believe that the Taliban is a threat to the US outside of Afghanistan. They are a threat to
any American in Afghanistan. Nation building in Afghanistan is domed to failure. The only
issue is what is to be the fate of the Afghani's who assisted us or bought into the idea of
westernization. Our recent history is to abandon these people.
Eventually we will join the list of Afghan invaders from Cyrus, to Alexander, to the
Brits. The only question is how we depart & how much more blood & treasure we
spend.
In my experience, nothing can unify Afghan tribes, or even the sub-tribes. There is a saying
amongst the Pashtun: "Me against my brothers, my brothers and I against my cousins, my
cousins and I against the world." The real Taliban (meaning the political entity, exiled to
the east, also known as "The Quetta Shura," have never been able to get "Taliban" factions in
Afghanistan to unite against anything. COL Lang is spot-on, there is no collective "Afghan"
identity.
Afghanistan is still run by warlords. The vast majority of folks referred to as "Taliban"
are really just warlords (and the warlords' minions) wrapping themselves in the Taliban flag,
as it suits them now. If the Taliban were to come back to controlling power in Afghanistan,
many of the warlords would switch to fighting the Taliban. True territorial gains in
Afghanistan are generally made when warlords switch sides. Afghan warlords are the most loyal
people money can buy...well, rent, anyway.
The IQ2 debate was significant for me personally when I first saw it. The arguments for
staying in Afghanistan were set out coherently and for perhaps the first time I caught a
glimpse of the immense intellectual effort, in the think tanks and the academies, that goes
into justifying the neocon position. That neocon position working through almost by osmosis
to the heavyweight newspapers and media outlets, and providing the narrative framework within
which the Intelligence Initiatives of this world right down to the little propaganda sites
work. Such varied figures as Charles Lister or Peter Tatchell have backup, and how.
It's an intellectual fortress, the whole, and for many of us in the general public
it confirms us comfortably in the neocon rationale. It gives us the arguments, and the
excuses, and as long as one declines to notice that those arguments and excuses do shift
around, we pay our taxes for this or that crazy neocon venture without complaint and often
gladly. Gramsci and his like stand vindicated. Capture the academies and the rest of us
follow, often willingly.
And just a few, of those in the public eye, standing up true and declaring "This emperor
has no clothes!"
Which happened, as I saw several years later when I got to view it, in that IQ2 debate.
Around that time I came across Major Stueber's documentary which had rather more than seven
minutes to lay out how hopeless it was for Western armies to fight alongside local forces,
when those local forces were so hopelessly factional, corrupt, and therefore ineffectual.
And a footnote just recently. I head a Swedish aid worker relating just how impossible it
was for him too to function in Afghanistan. Money put through to local groups swallowed up in
false invoicing, ghost workers whose salaries went to swell the pay packet of their
superiors, slush funds because that was the only way to get things done.
It was never a doable venture, Afghanistan. That was clear to a few in that debate ten
years ago and it's clear to more now. I hope it's possible to get out without leaving the
urban Westernised Afghans too much at the mercy of the rest.
And perhaps, also reflecting that the Rovean narratives that the academies and think tanks
conjure up for us, at such expense and at such effort, all crumble eventually when reality,
as it must finally, breaks through.
We have been in Afghanistan for how long? 16 years? It is our longest war. How much progress
have we actually made?
1. The government that we have tried so long to nurture controls a shrinking percentage of
both territory and population.
2. How much money have we poured into the pockets of crooks of all nationalities? In spite
of that the country is severely lacking in physical, social, legal, and business
infrastructure.
3. The country's armed forces have been expanded under NATO tutelage to such a size that the
small GDP will never be able to pay for them on its own. In spite of that they are unable even
to defend their own installations.
4. The country is still racked by tribal, ethnic and jihadi wars. It has always been thus
with the exception of a golden age when the last Afghan king ruled in the 50s and 60s. How did
he do that? He did it by careful inter-ethnic diplomacy and a minimum effort to "unify" his
realm.
5. Attacks on NATO personnel by Afghan soldiers and police continue.
6. The capital, Kabul, is not secured and is regularly attacked.
7. The much vaunted COIN doctrine has failed there as it has failed in so many places in the
world.
In spite of this the generals and the COIN nuts persist in trying to reverse Obama's policy
of withdrawal from the "country" (a geographical expression really). President Trump, who knows
nothing of things military or geo-political is about to begin the process of re-introducing US
combat and training forces into this blank space on the map, a space filled with hostile
tribesmen and religious fanatics. This blank space was given the dubious status of a state in
the international system of states because the Russians and the British wanted to establish a
buffer entity between the Tsar's empire and the Raj.
President Trump should be told that there is nothing there of real importance to the US,
nothing worth more vast quantities of our money and more rivers of our blood. Let the Afghans,
Chinese, Pakistanis, Iranians and Russians deal with the chaos. pl
"... The man was remarkable at one specific thing: pleasing his bosses and single-minded self-promotion. Sure he lacked anything resembling empathy, saw his troops as little more than tools for personal advancement, and his overall personality disturbingly matched the clinical definition of sociopathy. Details, details ..."
It has taken me years to tell these stories. The emotional and moral wounds of the
Afghan War have just felt too recent, too raw.
After all, I could hardly write a thing
down about my Iraq War experience for nearly ten years, when, by accident, I churned out a
book
on
the subject. Now, as the American war in Afghanistan – hopefully – winds to something approaching a
close, it's finally time to impart some tales of the madness. In this new, recurring, semi-regular
series, the reader won't find many worn out sagas of heroism, brotherhood, and love of country. Not
that this author doesn't have such stories, of course. But one can find those sorts of tales in
countless books and numerous trite, platitudinal Hollywood yarns.
With that in mind, I propose to tell a number of very different sorts of stories –
profiles, so to speak, in absurdity.
That's what war is, at root, an exercise in
absurdity, and America's hopeless post-9/11 wars are stranger than most. My own 18-year long quest
to find some meaning in all the combat, to protect my troops from danger, push back against the
madness, and dissent from within the army proved Kafkaesque in the extreme.
Consider what
follows just a survey of that hopeless journey...
The man was remarkable at one specific thing: pleasing his bosses and single-minded
self-promotion.
Sure he lacked anything resembling empathy, saw his troops as little more
than tools for personal advancement, and his overall personality disturbingly matched the clinical
definition of sociopathy. Details, details
Still, you (almost) had to admire his drive, devotion, and dedication to the cause of
promotion, of rising through the military ranks.
Had he managed to channel that
astonishing energy, obsession even, to the pursuit of some good, the world might markedly have
improved. Which is, actually, a dirty little secret about the military, especially ground combat
units; that it tends to attract (and mold) a disturbing number of proud owners of such personality
disorders. The army then positively reinforces such toxic behavior by promoting these sorts of
individuals – who excel at mind-melding (brown-nosing, that is) with superiors – at
disproportionate rates. Such is life.
Only there are
real
consequences,
real
soldiers,
(to say nothing of local civilians) who suffer under their commanders' tyranny.
Back in 2011-12, the man served as my commander, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army.
As such, he led – and partly
controlled the destinies of – some 500 odd soldiers
.
Then a lowly captain, I commanded about one-fifth of those men and answered directly to the
colonel.
I didn't much like the guy; hardly any of his officers did.
And he didn't
trust my aspirational intellectualism, proclivity to ask "why," or, well,
me
in general.
Still, he mostly found this author an effective middle manager. As such, I was a means to an end
for him – that being self-advancement and some positive measurable statistics for his annual
officer evaluation report (OER) from his own boss. Nonetheless, it was the army and you sure don't
choose your bosses.
So it was, early in my yearlong tour in the scrublands of rural Kandahar province, that
the colonel treated me to one his dog-and-pony-show visits.
Only this time he had some
unhappy news for me. The next day he, and the baker's dozen tag-alongs in his ubiquitous entourage,
wanted to walk the few treacherous miles to the most dangerous strongpoint in the entire
sub-district. It was occupied, needlessly, by one of my platoons in perpetuity and suffered under
constant siege by the local Taliban, too small to contest the area and too big to fly under the
radar, this – at one point the most attacked outpost in Afghanistan – base just provided an
American flag-toting target. I'd communicated as much to command early on, but to no avail. Can-do
US colonels with aspirations for general officer rank hardly
ever
give up territory to the
enemy – even if that's the strategically sound course.
Walking to the platoon strongpoint was dicey on even the best of days. The route between
our main outpost and the Alamo-like strongpoint was flooded with Taliban insurgents and provided
precious little cover or concealment for out patrols.
On my first jaunt to the outpost, I
(foolishly, it must be said) walked my unit into an ambush and was thrown over a small rock wall by
the blast of a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) with my apparent name on it. Since then, it was
standard for our patrols to the strongpoint to suffer multiple ambushes during the roundtrip
rotation. Sometimes our kids got wounded or killed; sometimes they were lucky. Mercifully, at
least, my intelligence section – led by my
friend
and
rebranded artillery lieutenant – did their homework and figured out that the chronically lazy local
Taliban didn't like to fight at night or wake up early, so patrols to the strongpoint that stepped
off before dawn had a fighting chance of avoiding the worst of ambush alley.
I hadn't wanted to take my colonel on a patrol to the outpost. His entourage was
needlessly large and, when added to my rotational platoon, presented an unwieldy and inviting
target for Taliban ambush.
Still I knew better than to argue the point with my
disturbingly confident and single-minded colonel. So I hedged. Yes, sir, we can take you along,
with one caveat:
we have to leave before dawn!
I proceeded to explain why, replete with
historical stats and examples, we could only (somewhat) safely avoid ambush if we did so.
That's when things went south.
The colonel insisted we leave at nine,
maybe even ten, in the morning, the absolute
peak
window for Taliban attack. This prima
donna reminded me that he couldn't possibly leave any earlier.
He had a "battle rhythm,"
after all, which included working out in the gym at his large, safe,
distant-from-the-roar-of-battle base each morning.
How could I expect him to alter that
predictable schedule over something as minor as protecting the lives and limbs of his own troopers?
He had "to set an example," he reminded me, by letting his soldiers on the base "see him in the
gym" each and every morning. Back then, silly me, I was actually surprised by the colonel's absurd
refusal; so much so that I pushed back, balked, tried to rationally press my point. To no avail.
What the man said next has haunted me ever since.
We would leave no
earlier than nine AM, according to his preference. My emotional pleas – begging really – was not
only for naught but insulted the colonel. Why? Because, as he imparted to me, for my own growth and
development he thought,
"Remember: lower caters to higher, Danny!"
That, he reminded me, was the way of the military world, the key to success and advancement. The
man even thought he was being helpful, advising me on how to achieve the success he'd achieved.
My heart sank forever, and never recovered.
The next day he was late. We didn't step off until nearly ten AM. The ambush, a massive
mix of RPG and machine gun fire, kicked off – as predicted – within sight of the main base. The
rest was history, and certainly could've been worse.
On other, less lucky, days it was.
But I remember this one profound moment. When the first rocket exploded above us, both the colonel
and I dove for limited cover behind a mound of rocks. I was terrified and exasperated. Just then we
locked eyes and I gazed into his proverbial soul. The man was incapable of fear. He wasn't scared,
or disturbed; he didn't care a bit about what was happening. That revelation was more terrifying
than the ongoing ambush and would alter my view of the world irreparably.
Which brings us to some of the discomfiting morals – if such things exist – of this
story.
American soldiers fight and die at the whims of career-obsessed officers as much they do
so at the behest of king and country.
Sometimes its their own leaders – as much as the
ostensible "enemy" – that tries to get them killed. The plentiful sociopaths running these wars at
the upper and even middle-management levels are often far less concerned with long-term, meaningful
"victory" in places like Afghanistan, than in crafting – on the backs of their soldiers sacrifices
– the
illusion
of progress, just enough measurable "success" in their one year tour to
warrant a stellar evaluation and, thus, the next promotion. Not all leaders are like this. I, for
one, once worked for a man for whom I – and all my peers – would run through walls for, a (then)
colonel that loved his hundreds of soldiers like they were his own children. But he was the
exception that proved the rule.
The madness, irrationality, and absurdity of my colonel was nothing less than a
microcosm of America's entire hopeless adventure in Afghanistan.
The war was never
rational, winnable, or meaningful. It was from the first, and will end as, an exercise in futility.
It was, and is, one grand patrol to my own unnecessary outpost, undertaken at the wrong time and
place. It was a collection of sociopaths and imbeciles – both Afghan and American – tilting at
windmills and ultimately dying for nothing at all. Yet the young men in the proverbial trenches
never flinched, never refused. They did their absurd duty because they were acculturated to the
military system, and because they were embarrassed not to.
The Major totally failed to mention
the Patriot Act and the removal of
US Constitutional rights from
Americans based on a false flag
attack that cold bloodily murdered
3,000 people and cost the taxpayers
over 10 trillion dollars.
Just to put it in perspective, the US has been in Afghanistan
for 18 years and has lost less than 3000 troops and just over
20000 wounded. The US was in Vietnam 20 years and loss nearly
60000 troops and 150000 wounded. This not to diminish the
misery of those that served in either war, but not really
comparable in scope.
You did what you had to do, Major. You were a good shabbos goy
for world financial oligarchy but now they don't need you any more
so go shoot heroin up your veins or jump off a ******* building,
but you dare not even so much as ask for a "thank you" from the
financial oligarchy!
The poorest country in Asia – Afghanistan – has totally collapsed
under NATO occupation.
Complete BS! It is the continued Pakistani ISI influence in
Afghanistan presently though their Haqqani Taliban network plus ISIS that is terrorizing Afghanistan,
including intentional bombings of wedding parties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadahan_wedding_bombing
&
https://www.apnews.com
/b5ceb0cfb33d4d73aaaadf5eee19fe9d
The Pakistani army wants Afghanistan as "strategic depth" in case of a conflict with India.
Tony
Ah! So the US-led invasion, with it's endless stream of weak US-approved 'governments', has had
nothing to do with Afghanistan's continued instability then. Got it!!!
Pakistan is the only overland supply route available for the US military; roads via Iran and
Russia are politically out. All their fuel, ammo and food towards Afghanistan is under Pakistani
ISI control from 1978 till now, with the interruption of 2009 – 2015 .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_logistics_in_the_Afghan_War#History
mark
Afghanistan has been the victim and playground for Neocon intrigue for years.
A liberal, progressive left wing regime that furthered women's rights and social provision was
destroyed by Uncle Sam in its own interests to weaken Russia.
Bin Laden and his splendid chaps were put on the CIA payroll for the purpose.
The result was a long running bloodbath with 28,000 Russian and 1,4 million Afghan dead.
Followed by years of civil war, US invasion and the imposition of a narco warlord puppet government
on the country.
Tony
Hasn't Afghanistan gone from having hardly any opium production prior to the US-led invasion, to
currently being the source of something like 99% of the world's source for heroin?
mark
The Cocaine Import Agency runs the coke trade out of South America.
Might as well run the heroin trade out of Afghanistan as well.
Martin Usher
Have you considered that the Pakistan of 1980 may not be the same country with the same players as
the Pakistan of 2019? Also, when you get a weak/chaotic government then its quite likely that
different factions or forces within a country may pursue widely different goals?
"... Throughout, the militias reportedly have committed serious human rights abuses, including numerous extrajudicial killings of civilians. CIA sponsorship ensures that their operations are clouded in secrecy. There is virtually no public oversight of their activities or accountability for grave human rights abuses. " ..."
Been reading an interesting report from
Brown University's Watson Institute about "the CIA army and [it's] threat to human rights
and an obstacle to peace in Afghanistan."
"Afghan paramilitary forces working with the United States Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) have long been a staple in the US war on terrorism in Afghanistan and the
border region with Pakistan. The problems associated with these militias take on new
significance given the recent momentum in talks between the US government and the
Taliban about the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. Whose interests do the
militias represent? How can they be integrated into a peace agreement – if at all?
Will
their use value for the US in future counterterrorist operations outweigh the case for
closing them down in the service of human rights and a sustainable peace?
The
militias
are at least nominally controlled by their CIA paymaster, but to what extent will the
operations of the CIA be monitored and streamlined with overall US policy towards
Afghanistan?
The CIA-supported militias are a particularly troublesome version of the
regionally based militias in Afghanistan that have developed over the years around
local
strongmen with external support. The present units originate in the 2001 invasion,
when US military forces and the CIA organized Afghan militias to fight Islamist
militants.
Almost two decades later, the CIA is still running local militias in operations against
the
Taliban and other Islamist militants.
Throughout, the militias reportedly have
committed serious human rights abuses, including numerous extrajudicial killings of
civilians. CIA sponsorship ensures that their operations are clouded in secrecy. There
is
virtually no public oversight of their activities or accountability for grave human
rights
abuses. "
[My emphasis]
Appears making peace with Afghanistan will be as elusive as any of the other American
regime's various 'wars' and invasions.
"Afghanistan seems doomed to suffer from factionalism long after all NATO/CIA forces are
removed as the longstanding goal for the Outlaw US Empire is to deter Eurasian unity, which
is why Afghanistan was invaded in the first place."
Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 22 2019 23:32 utc | 58
I would say it is more about the drugs and minerals.
During the 1980s, the CIA's secret war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan helped
transform the Afghani-Pakistani borderlands into a launchpad for the global heroin trade. "In
the tribal area," the US state department reported in 1986, "there is no police force. There
are no courts. There is no taxation. No weapon is illegal Hashish and opium are often on
display."
By then, the process of guerrilla mobilisation to fight the Soviet occupation was
long under way. Instead of forming its own coalition of resistance leaders, the CIA had
relied on Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and its Afghan
clients, who soon became key players in the burgeoning cross-border opium traffic.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/09/how-the-heroin-trade-explains-the-us-uk-failure-in-afghanistan
Ahmed Wali Karzai was a drug trafficker on the CIA payroll who happens to be the half
brother of Hamid Karzai the US puppet to lead Afghanistan
The fact that Afghanistan sits on lucrative natural resources was recognized indirectly back
in 2010 when the Afghan ministry of mines rolled out a $1b (!) estimate of what the country
might have, and The New York Times quoted a source in the US Administration as saying that
Afghanistan's list of reserves included copper, gold, cobalt, and even lithium on which the
present-day industry is heavily dependent. A Pentagon memo actually described Afghanistan's
potential lithium holdings as big enough to make it the "Saudi Arabia of lithium". Somehow,
the news flew below the radars of most watchers worldwide.
Afghanistan war was more about TAPI pipeline and securing a friendly government to sign
the contracts and then protect UNOCAL´s investment throughout. Also,ENRON at the time
had their eyes on this and had bet the farm on it before they folded, among other reasons.
That´s why as soon as the Taliban fell out of favor for one reason or another, Hamid
Kharzai and Zalmay Khalilzad, UNOCAL agents were placed in charge of the country.
It didn't come to be of course, since the Taliban had other ideas. This was also ensured
with a little help from friends in Russia and China. The article below is from 2002 but sheds
a lot of light on the actual events of the day.
Now the focus has shifted to stopping BRI. But US empire will never lose sight of their
original investment, nor the reserves in Caspian.
I agree to a degree that US will continue with their divide and conquer policies long
after they pull out. However, if the Taliban who will eventually rule the country can be
shown a different way of life by China and Russia which would lead to new roads, hospitals,
schools and normal farming as oppose to death an destruction, opium and Tribalism, we might
actually see a major change in Afghanistan.
Too optimistic? Perhaps, but the air is ripe.
TAPI might eventually be built, but not for UNOCAL. Have no doubt the Chinese will offer a
much sweeter deal all around.
Pat lost its touch with reality " Around the world, America is involved in quarrels, clashes
and confrontations with almost too many nations to count." That's what empires do. Why he can't
understand this simple fact?
Friday, President Donald Trump met in New Jersey with his national security advisers and
envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who is negotiating with the Taliban to bring about peace, and a U.S.
withdrawal from America's longest war.
U.S. troops have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, in a war that has cost 2,400
American lives.
Following the meeting, Trump tweeted, "Many on the opposite sides of this 19 year war, and
us, are looking to make a deal -- if possible!"
Some, however, want no deal; they are fighting for absolute power.
Saturday, a wedding in Kabul with a thousand guests was hit by a suicide bomber who,
igniting his vest, massacred 63 people and wounded 200 in one of the greatest atrocities of the
war. ISIS claimed responsibility.
Monday, 10 bombs exploded in restaurants and public squares in the eastern city of
Jalalabad, wounding 66.
Trump is pressing Khalilzad to negotiate drawdowns of U.S. troop levels from the present
14,000, and to bring about a near-term end to U.S. involvement in a war that began after we
overthrew the old Taliban regime for giving sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.
Is it too soon to ask: What have we gained from our longest war? Was all the blood and
treasure invested worth it? And what does the future hold?
If the Taliban could not be defeated by an Afghan army, built up by the U.S. for a decade
and backed by 100,000 U.S. troops in 2010-2011, then are the Taliban likely to give up the
struggle when the U.S. is drawing down the last 14,000 troops and heading home?
The Taliban control more of the country than they have at any time since being overthrown in
2001. And time now seems to be on their side.
Why have they persevered, and prevailed in parts of the country?
Motivated by a fanatic faith, tribalism and nationalism, they have shown a willingness to
die for a cause that seems more compelling to them than what the U.S.-backed Afghan government
has on offer.
They also have the guerrillas' advantage of being able to attack at times and places of
their own choosing, without the government's burden of having to defend towns and cities.
Will these Taliban, who have lost many battles but not the war, retire from the field and
abide by democratic elections once the Americans go home? Why should they?
The probability: When the Americans depart, the war breaks out anew, and the Taliban
ultimately prevail.
And Afghanistan is but one of the clashes and conflicts in which America is engaged.
Severe U.S. sanctions on Venezuela have failed to bring down the Nicholas Maduro regime in
Caracas but have contributed to the immiseration of that people, 10% of whom have left the
country. Trump now says he is considering a quarantine or blockade to force Maduro out.
Eight years after we helped to overthrow Col. Moammar Gadhafi, Libya is still mired in civil
war, with its capital, Tripoli, under siege.
Yemen, among the world's humanitarian disasters, has seen the UAE break with its Saudi
interventionist allies, and secessionists split off southern Yemen from the Houthi-dominated
north. Yet, still, Congress has been unable to force the Trump administration to end all
support of the Saudi war.
Two thousand U.S. troops remain in Syria. The northern unit is deployed between our Syrian
Kurd allies and the Turkish army. In the south, they are positioned to prevent Iran and
Iranian-backed militias from creating a secure land bridge from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus
to Beirut.
In our confrontation with Iran, we have few allies.
The Brits released the Iranian tanker they seized at Gibraltar, which had been carrying oil
to Syria. But when the Americans sought to prevent its departure, a Gibraltar court ruled
against the United States.
Iran presents no clear or present danger to U.S. vital interests, but the Saudis and
Israelis see Iran as a mortal enemy, and want the U.S. military rid them of the menace.
Hong Kong protesters wave American flags and seek U.S. support of their demands for greater
autonomy and freedom in their clash with their Beijing-backed authorities. The Taiwanese want
us to support them and sell them the weapons to maintain their independence. The Philippines
wants us to take their side in the dispute with China over tiny islets in the South China
Sea.
We are still committed to go to war to defend South Korea. And the North has lately
test-fired a series of ballistic missiles, none of which could hit the USA, but all of which
could hit South Korea.
Around the world, America is involved in quarrels, clashes and confrontations with almost
too many nations to count.
In how many of these are U.S. vital interests imperiled? And in how many are we facing
potential wars on behalf of other nations, while they hold our coat and egg us on?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and
Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
In July 30, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported
that the Afghan government and international military forces, primarily
the United States , caused most of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan during the first six
months of 2019. That's more killings than those perpetrated in the same time period by the
Taliban and ISIS combined.
Aerial operations were responsible for 519 civilian casualties (356 deaths and 156
injuries), including 150 children (89 deaths and 61 injuries). That constitutes a 39 percent
increase in overall civilian casualties from aerial attacks. Eighty-three percent of civilian
casualties from aerial operations were carried out by the international forces.
The targeting of civilians amounts to war crimes under the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court (ICC).
... ... ...
Team Trump's deadly actions are a continuation of the Bush and Obama
administrations' commission of the most heinous crimes in Afghanistan. On April 12, the ICC's
Pre-Trial Chamber found a "reasonable basis" to
believe that the parties to the Afghan conflict, including the U.S. military and the CIA,
committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, most of them occurring between 2005 and 2015.
They include "the war crimes of torture and cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity,
and rape and other forms of sexual violence pursuant to a policy approved by the U.S.
authorities."
The chamber, however, refused to open a formal investigation into those crimes, as
recommended by ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. In concluding that "an investigation
into the situation in Afghanistan at this stage would not serve the interests of justice," the
chamber questioned the feasibility of such a probe. An investigation would be "very wide in
scope and encompasses a high number of alleged incidents having occurred over a long time
period," the chamber wrote. It noted the extreme difficulty in gauging "the prospects of
securing meaningful cooperation from relevant authorities for the future" and found "the
current circumstances of the situation in Afghanistan are such as to make the prospects for a
successful investigation and prosecution extremely limited."
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of
the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of
Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent
book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.
The war in
Afghanistan has reached new levels of insanity as a UN report shows US forces are killing more
civilians than ISIS and Taliban combined.
For the last several decades, the US government has openly funded, supported, and armed various
terrorist networks throughout the world to forward an agenda of destabilization and proxy war.
It is not a secret, nor a conspiracy theory -- America arms bad guys
. The situation has
gotten so overtly corrupt that the government admitted in May the Pentagon asked Congress for
funding to reimburse terrorists for their transportation and other expenses. Seriously. But that
was just the tip of the iceberg. A new report from the United Nations shows the US and its allies
in Afghanistan have killed more innocent men, women, and children than the group they claim are the
bad guys, the Taliban.
The now 18-year-old quagmire in Afghanistan is raising serious questions and once again,
it appears that the civilians are taking the brunt of the hit -- not the ostensible enemy.
In the first six months of the year, the conflict killed nearly 1,400 civilians and wounded
about 2,400 more. Afghan forces and their allies caused 52 percent of the civilian deaths
compared with 39 percent attributable to militants -- mostly the Taliban, but also the Islamic
State. The figures do not total 100 percent because responsibility for some deaths could not be
definitively established.
The higher civilian death toll caused by Afghan and American forces comes from their greater
reliance on airstrikes, which are particularly deadly for civilians. The United Nations said
airstrikes resulted in 363 civilian deaths and 156 civilian injuries.
"While the number of injured decreased, the number of civilians killed more than
doubled in comparison to the first six months of 2018, highlighting the lethal character of this
tactic,"
the United Nations report said, referring to airstrikes.
Naturally, the US military calls this report by the UN anti-American propaganda.
"We assess and investigate all credible allegations of noncombatant casualties in this
complex environment, whereas others intentionally target public areas, use civilians as human
shields and attempt to hide the truth through lies and propaganda," Colonel Sonny Leggett, a
spokesman for the United States military, said.
The line between the ostensible "good guys" and the "bad guys" has gotten so blurred
that the good guys are now openly supporting the bad while simultaneously killing more innocent
people than the bad ones.
It's a story straight out of The Onion, but in real life.
While the idea of the US government paying to support terrorists or killing more civilians than
terrorists may seem like a crazed notion it has become so overt in recent years that legislation
was specifically introduced for the sole purpose of banning the the flow of money to terrorist
organizations.
However, given the insidious history of the American empire and its creation and fostering of
terrorist regimes across the globe, it should come as no surprise that the overwhelming majority of
politicians would refuse to sign on to a law that requires them to
'Stop
Arming Terrorists.'
And, in 2017, that is exactly what happened.
The text of the bill was quite simple and contained no hidden agendas. It merely stated that it
prohibits
the use of federal agency funds to provide covered assistance to: (1) Al Qaeda, Jabhat Fateh
al-Sham, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or any individual or group that is
affiliated with, associated with, cooperating with, or adherents to such groups; or (2) the
government of any country that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
determines has, within the most recent 12 months, provided covered assistance to such a group or
individual.
The only thing the bill did was prohibit the US government from giving money and weapons to
people who want to murder Americans and who do murder innocent men, women, and children across the
globe. It is quite possibly the simplest and most rational bill ever proposed by Congress. Given
its rational and humanitarian nature, one would think that representatives would have been lining
up to show their support. However, one would be wrong and in the five months after it was proposed,
just 13 members of Congress signed on as co-sponsors.
Not only is the United States refusing to stop arming terrorists, but now they are
becoming more violent than the terrorists they claim to fight. At what point do the American people
wake up to this insanity?
Sadly, it appears that the American people couldn't care less about innocent men women and
children being slaughtered with their tax dollars on the other side of the planet. They only seem
to pay attention to the area when one of these people -- whose seen their children blown to a fine
red mist by a US drone strike -- acts out in a retaliatory way. But instead of understanding that
this is blowback caused by US foreign policy, Boobus Americanus thinks these people simply "hate
our freedom."
Terrorism is necessary for the state. War, is the health of the state.
Without the constant fear mongering about an enemy who 'hates our freedom', Americans begin
questioning things. They challenge the status quo and inevitably desire more freedom. However, when
they are told that boogeymen want to kill them, they become immediately complacent and blinded by
their fear.
While these boogeymen were once mostly mythical, since 9/11, they have been funded and supported
by the US to the point that they now pose a very real threat to innocent people everywhere. As the
horrific attacks earlier this year in Sri Lanka illustrate, terrorists are organizing and
spreading.
Terrorists groups have been exposed inside the UK as well for having ties to the British
government who allowed
them
to freely travel and train with ISIS-linked groups
because those groups were in opposition to
Muammar Gaddafi, who the West wanted to snub out.
It's a vicious cycle of creating terrorists, killing innocence, and stoking war. And,
unless something radical happens, it shows no signs of ever reversing.
The radical change that is necessary to shift this paradigm back to peace is for people to wake
up to the reality that no matter which puppet is in the White House, the status quo remains
unchanged.
Trump is proving that he can lie to get into power and his supporters ignore it. If you doubt
this fact, look at what
Trump
did by calling out Saudi Arabia for their role in 9/11
and their support for terror worldwide
prior to getting elected. He now supports these terrorists and his constituency couldn't care less.
This madness has to stop.
Humanity has to stop being fooled by rhetoric
read from teleprompters by puppets doing the bidding of their masters. If Americans aren't shaken
out of this stupor by the idea that the US military and its allies are now killing more innocent
people than the Taliban and ISIS -- combined -- perhaps
But we love them anyway. They are our heroes, bravely fighting for
our freedoms in Afghanistan. Unless we kill the Afghanis over
there, they'll come here to kill us. Sure, sometimes our boys kill
innocents, but come on, we all know there are no innocent Muslims.
Even if they're kids, they'll eventually grow up to be terrorists
so better to kill them sooner than later. USA! USA! Woof! Woof!
What kind of person, really, joins the US military today?
It was
shown long ago that the Iraq war was based upon lies. Killing
civilians, bombing hospitals, air attacks on weddings, stabbing
captured and unconscious enemy in the throat (and getting away
with it), clearly there is no threat to the US to justify the
killing ...
But the actual killers are getting a bit of a surprise. Women
are being promoted past them and over them. The PC rules are
ruining the boys club and even their language is monitored. The
officers don't give a damn other than progressing to full colonel
at least, retiring with a nice pension and then working for high
pay for the private defense companies. The killers think they
will be admired, but they are just tools and may even be pushed
out.
Interestingly, through all the US bombing and killing, the
population of Afghanistan has increased from about 19 million in
2001 to about 37 million today, nearly doubling during the
senseless US attacks on their culture and people.
Sometimes much can be learned by asking simple questions. Why?
Simple questions most often have answers. Complex questions emerge
because folks can't bear to hear the answers to the simple ones. A
simple question that would be good to ask now is. Why are we
fighting in Afghanistan?
http://quillian.net/blog/your-punishment-for-believing-lies/
In Oct it will be 18 full years in Afghanistan. The US is not a learning organization.
If you trust the media, you trust the hugely funded propaganda machine that makes Goebbels
look stone age primitive.
I am a bit sensitive this week, I am finishing Gloria Emerson's "Winner and Losers"
scratching a lot of scars from Vietnam. Not easy reading if you changed your mind once the
blither was exposed.
Somewhere over Delong's it was recommended and amazon had a hardcover for
$1.56........
Bottomline from Winners and Losers: The blither is reminiscent and much of the news topics
the same.
"... Its political benefit: minimizing the number of U.S. "boots on the ground" and so American casualties in the never-ending war on terror, as well as any public outcry about Washington's many conflicts. ..."
"... Its economic benefit: plenty of high-profit business for weapons makers for whom the president can now declare a national security emergency whenever he likes and so sell their warplanes and munitions to preferred dictatorships in the Middle East (no congressional approval required). ..."
"... Think of all this as a cult of bombing on a global scale. America's wars are increasingly waged from the air, not on the ground, a reality that makes the prospect of ending them ever more daunting. The question is: What's driving this process? ..."
"... In a bizarre fashion, you might even say that, in the twenty-first century, the bomb and missile count replaced the Vietnam-era body count as a metric of (false) progress . Using data supplied by the U.S. military, the Council on Foreign Relations estimated that the U.S. dropped at least 26,172 bombs in seven countries in 2016, the bulk of them in Iraq and Syria. Against Raqqa alone, ISIS's "capital," the U.S. and its allies dropped more than 20,000 bombs in 2017, reducing that provincial Syrian city to literal rubble . Combined with artillery fire, the bombing of Raqqa killed more than 1,600 civilians, according to Amnesty International . ..."
"... U.S. air campaigns today, deadly as they are, pale in comparison to past ones like the Tokyo firebombing of 1945, which killed more than 100,000 civilians; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki later that year (roughly 250,000); the death toll against German civilians in World War II (at least 600,000); or civilians in the Vietnam War. (Estimates vary, but when napalm and the long-term effects of cluster munitions and defoliants like Agent Orange are added to conventional high-explosive bombs, the death toll in Southeast Asia may well have exceeded one million.) ..."
"... the U.S. may control the air, but that dominance simply hasn't led to ultimate success. In the case of Afghanistan, weapons like the Mother of All Bombs, or MOAB (the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. military's arsenal), have been celebrated as game changers even when they change nothing. (Indeed, the Taliban only continues to grow stronger , as does the branch of the Islamic State in Afghanistan.) As is often the case when it comes to U.S. air power, such destruction leads neither to victory, nor closure of any sort; only to yet more destruction. ..."
"... Just because U.S. warplanes and drones can strike almost anywhere on the globe with relative impunity doesn't mean that they should. Given the history of air power since World War II, ease of access should never be mistaken for efficacious results. ..."
"... Bombing alone will never be the key to victory. If that were true, the U.S. would have easily won in Korea and Vietnam, as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq. ..."
"... Despite total air supremacy, the recent Iraq War was a disaster even as the Afghan War staggers on into its 18th catastrophic year. ..."
"... No matter how much it's advertised as "precise," "discriminate," and "measured," bombing (or using missiles like the Tomahawk ) rarely is. The deaths of innocents are guaranteed. Air power and those deaths are joined at the hip, while such killings only generate anger and blowback, thereby prolonging the wars they are meant to end. ..."
"... A paradox emerges from almost 18 years of the war on terror: the imprecision of air power only leads to repetitious cycles of violence and, even when air strikes prove precise, there always turn out to be fresh targets, fresh terrorists, fresh insurgents to strike. ..."
"... Using air power to send political messages about resolve or seriousness rarely works. If it did, the U.S. would have swept to victory in Vietnam. In Lyndon Johnson's presidency, for instance, Operation Rolling Thunder (1965-1968), a graduated campaign of bombing, was meant to, but didn't, convince the North Vietnamese to give up their goal of expelling the foreign invaders -- us -- from South Vietnam. ..."
"... Air power is enormously expensive. Spending on aircraft, helicopters, and their munitions accounted for roughly half the cost of the Vietnam War. ..."
"... Aerial surveillance (as with drones), while useful, can also be misleading. Command of the high ground is not synonymous with god-like "total situational awareness ." ..."
"... Air power is inherently offensive. That means it's more consistent with imperial power projection than with national defense ..."
"... Despite the fantasies of those sending out the planes, air power often lengthens wars rather than shortening them. ..."
"... Air power, even of the shock-and-awe variety, loses its impact over time. The enemy, lacking it, nonetheless learns to adapt by developing countermeasures -- both active (like missiles) and passive (like camouflage and dispersion), even as those being bombed become more resilient and resolute. ..."
"... Pounding peasants from two miles up is not exactly an ideal way to occupy the moral high ground in war. ..."
"... all the happy talk about the techno-wonders of modern air power obscures its darker facets, especially its ability to lock America into what are effectively one-way wars with dead-end results. ..."
"... War's inherent nature -- its unpredictability, horrors, and tendency to outlast its original causes and goals -- isn't changed when the bombs and missiles are guided by GPS. Washington's enemies in its war on terror, moreover, have learned to adapt to air power in a grimly Darwinian fashion and have the advantage of fighting on their own turf. ..."
From Syria to Yemen in the Middle East, Libya to Somalia in Africa, Afghanistan to Pakistan
in South Asia, an American aerial curtain has descended across a huge swath of the planet. Its
stated purpose: combatting terrorism. Its primary method: constant surveillance and bombing --
and yet more bombing.
Its political benefit: minimizing the number of U.S. "boots on the ground" and so
American casualties in the never-ending war on terror, as well as any public outcry about Washington's many
conflicts.
Its economic benefit: plenty of high-profit business for weapons makers for whom the president can now
declare a national security emergency whenever he likes and so sell their warplanes and
munitions to preferred dictatorships in the Middle East (no congressional approval
required).
Its reality for various foreign peoples: a steady diet of "
Made in USA " bombs and missiles bursting here, there, and everywhere.
Think of all this as a cult of bombing on a global scale. America's wars
are increasingly waged from the air, not on the ground, a reality that makes the prospect of
ending them ever more daunting. The question is: What's driving this process?
For many of America's decision-makers, air power has clearly become something of an
abstraction. After all, except for the 9/11 attacks by those four hijacked commercial
airliners, Americans haven't
been the target of such strikes since World War II. On Washington's battlefields across the
Greater Middle East and northern Africa, air power is always almost literally a one-way affair.
There are no enemy air forces or significant air defenses. The skies are the exclusive property
of the U.S. Air Force (and allied air forces), which means that we're no longer talking about
"war" in the normal sense. No wonder Washington policymakers and military officials see it as
our strong suit, our asymmetrical
advantage , our way of settling scores with evildoers, real and imagined.
Bombs away!
In a bizarre fashion, you might even say that, in the twenty-first century, the bomb and
missile count replaced the Vietnam-era body count as a metric of (false) progress . Using data
supplied by the U.S. military, the Council on Foreign Relations estimated that the U.S. dropped
at least 26,172 bombs in seven
countries in 2016, the bulk of them in Iraq and Syria. Against Raqqa alone, ISIS's "capital,"
the U.S. and its allies dropped more than
20,000 bombs in 2017, reducing that provincial Syrian city to
literal rubble . Combined with artillery fire, the bombing of Raqqa killed more than 1,600
civilians, according to
Amnesty International .
Meanwhile, since Donald Trump has become president, after claiming that he would get us out
of our various never-ending wars, U.S. bombing has surged, not only against the Islamic State
in Syria and Iraq but in
Afghanistan as well. It has driven up the
civilian death toll there even as "friendly" Afghan forces are sometimes mistaken for the
enemy
and killed , too. Air strikes from Somalia
to
Yemen have also been on the rise under Trump, while civilian casualties due to U.S. bombing
continue to be
underreported in the American media and
downplayed by the Trump administration.
U.S. air campaigns today, deadly as they are, pale in comparison to past ones like the Tokyo firebombing of 1945,
which killed more than 100,000 civilians; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki later
that year (roughly 250,000); the death toll against German civilians in World War II (at least
600,000); or civilians in the Vietnam War. (Estimates vary, but when napalm and the long-term
effects of cluster
munitions and defoliants like Agent Orange are added to
conventional high-explosive bombs, the death toll in Southeast Asia may
well have exceeded one million.) Today's air strikes are more limited than in those past
campaigns and may be more accurate, but never confuse a 500-pound bomb with a surgeon's
scalpel, even rhetorically. When " surgical " is applied to bombing in today's
age of lasers, GPS, and other precision-guidance technologies, it only obscures the very real
human carnage being produced by all these American-made bombs and missiles.
This country's propensity for believing that its ability to rain hellfire from the sky provides a
winning methodology for its wars has proven to be a fantasy of our age. Whether in Korea in the
early 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s, or more recently in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the
U.S. may control the air, but that dominance simply hasn't led to ultimate success. In the case
of Afghanistan, weapons like the Mother of All Bombs, or MOAB (the most powerful
non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. military's arsenal), have been celebrated as game changers even
when they change nothing. (Indeed, the Taliban only continues to grow stronger
, as does the branch of the Islamic State in Afghanistan.) As is often the case when it comes
to U.S. air power, such destruction leads neither to victory, nor closure of any sort; only to
yet more destruction.
Such results are contrary to the rationale for air power that I absorbed in a career spent
in the U.S. Air Force. (I retired in 2005.) The fundamental tenets of air power
that I learned, which are still taught today, speak of decisiveness. They promise that air
power, defined as "flexible and versatile," will have "synergistic effects" with other military
operations. When bombing is "concentrated," "persistent," and "executed" properly (meaning not
micro-managed by know-nothing politicians), air power should be fundamental to ultimate
victory. As we used to insist, putting bombs on target is really what it's all about. End of
story -- and of thought.
Given the banality and vacuity of those official Air Force tenets, given the
twenty-first-century history of air power gone to hell and back, and based on my own experience
teaching such history and strategy in and outside the military, I'd like to offer some air
power tenets of my own. These are the ones the Air Force didn't teach me, but that our leaders
might consider before launching their next "decisive" air campaign.
Ten Cautionary Tenets
About Air Power
1. Just because U.S. warplanes and drones can strike almost anywhere on the globe with
relative impunity doesn't mean that they should. Given the history of air power since World
War II, ease of access should never be mistaken for efficacious results.
2. Bombing alone will never be the key to victory. If that were true, the U.S. would
have easily won in Korea and Vietnam, as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq. American air
power pulverized both North Korea and Vietnam (not to speak of neighboring
Laos and Cambodia ), yet the Korean War ended in a stalemate and the Vietnam War in
defeat. (It tells you the world about such thinking that air power enthusiasts, reconsidering
the Vietnam debacle, tend to argue the U.S. should have bombed even more -- lots
more .) Despite total air supremacy, the recent Iraq War was a disaster even as the
Afghan War staggers on into its 18th catastrophic year.
3. No matter how much it's advertised as "precise," "discriminate," and "measured,"
bombing (or using missiles like the Tomahawk ) rarely is. The deaths of
innocents are guaranteed. Air power and those deaths are joined at the hip, while such
killings only generate anger and blowback, thereby prolonging the wars they are meant to
end.
Consider, for instance, the "decapitation" strikes launched against Iraqi autocrat Saddam
Hussein and his top officials in the opening moments of the Bush administration's invasion of
2003. Despite the hype about that being the beginning of the most precise air campaign in all
of history, 50 of those attacks, supposedly based on the best intelligence around, failed to
take out Saddam or a single one of his targeted officials. They did, however, cause "dozens"
of civilian deaths. Think of it as a monstrous repeat of the precision air attacks launched
on Belgrade in 1999 against Slobodan Milosevic and his
regime that hit the Chinese
embassy instead, killing three journalists.
Here, then, is the question of the day: Why is it that, despite all the "precision" talk
about it, air power so regularly proves at best a blunt instrument of destruction? As a
start, intelligence is often faulty. Then bombs and missiles, even "smart" ones, do go
astray. And even when U.S. forces actually kill high-value targets (HVTs), there are
always more HVTs out there. A paradox emerges from almost 18 years of the war on terror:
the imprecision of air power only leads to repetitious cycles of violence and, even when air
strikes prove precise, there always turn out to be fresh targets, fresh terrorists, fresh
insurgents to strike.
4. Using air power to send political messages about resolve or seriousness rarely
works. If it did, the U.S. would have swept to victory in Vietnam. In Lyndon Johnson's
presidency, for instance, Operation Rolling Thunder (1965-1968), a
graduated campaign of bombing, was meant to, but didn't, convince the North Vietnamese to
give up their goal of expelling the foreign invaders -- us -- from South Vietnam.
Fast-forward to our era and consider recent signals sent to North
Korea and
Iran by the Trump administration via B-52 bomber deployments, among other military
"messages." There's no evidence that either country modified its behavior significantly in
the face of the menace of those
baby-boomer-era airplanes.
5. Air power is enormously expensive. Spending on aircraft, helicopters, and their
munitions accounted for roughly half the cost of the Vietnam War. Similarly, in the
present moment, making operational and then maintaining Lockheed Martin's boondoggle
of a jet fighter, the F-35, is expected to cost at least
$1.45 trillion over its lifetime. The new B-21 stealth bomber will cost more than $100 billion
simply to buy. Naval air wings on aircraft carriers cost billions each year to maintain and
operate. These days, when the sky's the limit for
the Pentagon budget, such costs may be (barely) tolerable. When the money finally begins to
run out, however, the military will likely suffer a serious hangover from its wildly
extravagant spending on air power.
6. Aerial surveillance (as with drones), while useful, can also be misleading. Command
of the high ground is not synonymous with god-like "total situational
awareness ." It can instead prove to be a kind of delusion, while war practiced in
its spirit often becomes little more than an exercise in destruction. You simply can't
negotiate a truce or take prisoners or foster other options when you're high above a
potential battlefield and your main recourse is blowing up people and things.
7. Air power is inherently offensive. That means it's more consistent with imperial
power projection than with national defense . As such, it fuels imperial ventures, while
fostering the kind of "
global reach, global power " thinking that has in these years had Air Force generals in
its grip.
8. Despite the fantasies of those sending out the planes, air power often lengthens
wars rather than shortening them. Consider Vietnam again. In the early 1960s, the Air
Force argued that it alone could resolve that conflict at the lowest cost (mainly in American
bodies). With enough bombs, napalm, and defoliants, victory was a sure thing and U.S. ground
troops a kind of afterthought. (Initially, they were sent in mainly to protect the airfields
from which those planes took off.) But bombing solved nothing and then the Army and the
Marines decided that, if the Air Force couldn't win, they sure as hell could. The result was
escalation and disaster that left in the dust the original vision of a war won quickly and on
the cheap due to American air supremacy.
9. Air power, even of the shock-and-awe variety, loses its impact
over time. The enemy, lacking it, nonetheless learns to adapt by developing countermeasures
-- both active (like missiles) and passive (like camouflage and dispersion), even as those
being bombed become more resilient and resolute.
10. Pounding peasants from two miles up is not exactly an ideal way to occupy the
moral high ground in war.
The Road to Perdition
If I had to reduce these tenets to a single maxim, it would be this: all the happy talk
about the techno-wonders of modern air power obscures its darker facets, especially its ability
to lock America into what are effectively one-way wars with dead-end results.
For this reason, precision warfare is truly an oxymoron. War isn't precise. It's nasty,
bloody, and murderous. War's inherent nature -- its unpredictability, horrors, and tendency
to outlast its original causes and goals -- isn't changed when the bombs and missiles are
guided by GPS. Washington's enemies in its war on terror, moreover, have learned to adapt to
air power in a grimly Darwinian fashion and have the advantage of fighting on their own
turf.
Who doesn't know the old riddle: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear
it, does it make a sound? Here's a twenty-first-century air power variant on it: If foreign
children die from American bombs but no U.S. media outlets report their deaths, will anyone
grieve? Far too often, the answer here in the U.S. is no and so our wars go on into an endless
future of global destruction.
In reality, this country might do better to simply ground its many fighter planes, bombers, and
drones. Paradoxically, instead of gaining the high ground, they are keeping us on a low road to
perdition.
In December of 2017, Daniel Ellsberg published a book,
"The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner" . Among many other things,
he revealed the actual Strangelovian nature of our military establishment. Most enlightening
is his revelation that many in the high command of our nuclear triggers do not trust, or even
have contempt for, civilian oversight and control of the military. They covertly regard the
presidential leadership as naïve and inept, though it would be professional suicide to
admit such an attitude openly.
Comes now 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕹𝖊𝖜
𝖄𝖔𝖗𝖐 𝕿𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖘 with the
revelation that the Pentagon's Cyber Command has attacked Russia's power grid with software
"implants" designed to destroy that grid the instant a mouse click is given, thereby possibly
initiating global war. Most alarmingly, the details of this secret action were kept from the
President, lest he countermand the operation or leak it to the Russians.
So now we have a general staff that is conducting critical international military
operations on its own, with no civilian input, permission or hindrances of any kind. A
formula for national suicide, executed by a tiny junta of unelected officers who decide to
play nuclear Russian roulette.
We seem to be ineluctably and irreversibly trapped in a state of national dementia.
Just remember this: The U.S. had the technological advantage in Viet Nam, and blasted that
country, along with Cambodia, and Laos, with 7.5 million tons of bombs, (more than the entire
WWII campaign of 2.25 million tons), and the Vietnamese were still able to kick our *** out
of the country by 1975.
There is a 11th tenet: air force operations need airports or aircraft carriers, and these
are very vulnerable to modern, high precision missiles. If the enemy has plenty of missiles,
your fighters and bombers can be impeded to take off and land, or even be destroyed. Modern
aircrafts need very sophisticated and working infrastructures to be operational.
In the case of a full war with Iran, I see all hostile bases and airports destroyed or
damaged by Iranian, Hezbollah and Syrian missiles. They have tens of thousand of them - it is
30 years they have been accumulating missiles in prevision of a possible forthcoming war.
You are right. Also, there are many nations with subs and probably more countries have
acquired nukes than are willing to admit. I strongly suspect Iran already has nukes. If North
Korea has them, I see no reason that Iran wouldn't be even further ahead. They have been
under threat of US attacks for my entire lifetime. Anyway, I would not put it past some other
countries to hit US coastal cities and then deny any knowledge about who did it. There are
many capable and many people have been made enemies by our foreign policy. Surely these
people have treaties to help each other should be attack. And why would they make these
treaties public and antagonize the US military further. I'm sure there are many well kept
secrets out there. We must evolve, or the US and Israel could find it is us against the
world.
War is hell. It has always been so. The failure here is that since World War II all US
wars have been fatuously political. Actions have not been taken to win but to posture about
moral greatness and the ability to force the enemy to deal without destroying his capacity to
resist.
How can you say the US lost in Vietnam when the entire country could have been removed
from the face of the Earth? Yes the price of such removal would have been very high but it
could have been done. Do such considerations mean that if one withdraws one has lost?
The US won the war in the Pacific but it is now considered an excessive use of force that
the US used nuclear weapons to conclude the war. Perhaps the US did not use enough force then
to successfully conclude the Vietnam war? Perhaps, it failed to field the right kind of
force?
The definition of lost is an interesting one. The practical answer is that the US did lose
in many places because it was unwilling to pay the price of victory as publicly expressed.
Yet it could have won if it paid the price.
So an interesting question for military types is to ask how to lower the price. What kind
of weapons would have been needed to quickly sweep the enemy into oblivion in Vietnam let us
say, given the limits of the war? Could the war have been won without ground troops and
choppers but with half a million computer controlled drones armed with machine guns and
grenades flying in swarms close to the ground?
The factories to produce those weapons could have been located in Thailand or Taiwan or
Japan and the product shipped to Vietnam. Since only machines would be destroyed and the
drones are obviously meant to substitute for ground troops then how about a million or two
million of the drones in place of the half a million ground troops? Could the US, with
anachronistic technology to be sure, have won the war for a price that would have been
acceptable to the US?
The idea here is that one constructs an army, robot or otherwise, than can destroy the
enemy it is going to fight at a price which is acceptable. This is actually a form of
asymmetric warfare which requires a thorough understanding of the enemy and his capabilities.
The US did not enter Vietnam with such an army but with one not meant to serve in Vietnam and
whose losses would be deeply resented at home. The price of victory was too high.
But this does not mean that the US cannot win. It only means that the commitment to win in
a poorly thought out war must be great enough to pay the price of victory. This may be a
stupid thing to do but it does not mean that it cannot be done. One cannot assume that the US
will never again show sufficient commitment to win.
Victory means you get to write your own ******** version of history.The most devastating
civilian bombing campaign in human history is not even mentioned in this article. The US fire
bombing of 30 major cities in Korea with the death toll estimated at between 1.2 million and
1.6 million. I bet most US citizens aren't even aware of this atrocity or that the military
requested Truman to authorize the use of nuclear warheads which he, thankfully, declined to
do.
What does the word "victory" mean? It means whatever the rulers want it to mean. In this
case, "victory" is synonymous with prolongation and expansion of warmaking around the world.
Victory does not mean an end to combat. In fact, victory, in the classic sense, means defeat,
at least from the standpoint of those who profit from war. If someone were to come up with a
cure for cancer, it would mean a huge defeat for the cancer industry. Millions would lose
their jobs. CEO's would lose their fat pay packages. Therefore, we need to be clearheaded
about this, and recognize that victory is not what you think it is.
Talked with a guy recently. He is a pilot. He flies planes over Afghanistan. He is a
private contractor.
The program began under the Air Force. It then was taken over by the Army. It is now a
private contractor.
There are approx 400 pilots in country at a time with 3 rotations. He told me what he gets
paid. $200,000 and up.
They go up with a NSA agent running the equipment in back. He state that the dumbass
really does not know what the plane is capable of. They collect all video, audio, infrared,
and more? (You have to sense when to stop asking questions)
I just wanted to know the logistics of the info gathered.
So, the info is gathered. The NSA officer then gets with the CIA and the State Dept to see
what they can release to the end user. The end user is the SOCOM. After it has been through
review then the info is released to SOCOM.
So with all of this info on "goatherders" we still cannot pinpoint and defeat the "enemy"?
No. Too many avenues of profit and deceit and infighting. It will always be. May justice here
and abroad win in the end.
Concentrate on the true enemies. It is not your black, or Jewish, or brown, or Muslim
neighbor. It is the owners of the Fed, Dow chemical, the Rockefellers, McDonnel Douglas and
on and on and on and on and on and on..............
The ROAD to perdition passes through APARTHEID Israhell.
"It does not take a genius to figure out that the United States... has no vital
interests at stake in places like Syria, Libya, Iran and Iraq. Who is driving the process
and benefiting? Israel is clearly the intended beneficiary... " – Philip Giraldi,
Former CIA officer.
"... The appeasers would include the US who fully supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, who provided him with chemical weapons and logistical help in using those weapons, which killed around 50,000 Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians. The same appeasers armed and funded the Taliban (Mujahideen) against the Soviets. The US are the single largest force for terrorism the World has ever seen. ..."
WATCH: US economist urges covert violence to provoke war with Iran "I mean look people, Iranian submarines periodically
go down – someday one of them might not come up." Admin
Many believe war with the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the dream of some hardcore neocons in Washington since at least 2001.
Back in 2012 former employee of the IMF and current economist for the World Bank,
Patrick Clawson , provided fuel for this belief when
he was videoed obliquely advocating using covert violence so that the US president "can get to war with Iran."
In a startlingly frank speech, Clawson makes it clear he believes (and apparently approves) that the US has a history of seeking
war for profit, and of using provocations to goad its perceived enemies into starting such wars. Clawson highlights in particular
the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in 1861
, which, he says, was deliberately engineered by president Lincoln in pursuit of an excuse to launch a war on the Southern secessionist
states.
In light of the recent alleged attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, timed to coincide with the visit of the Japanese prime
minister to Iran, and in light of Secretary of State Capone Pompeo's precipitate and predictable claim the attacks were
likely perpetrated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, this is an apposite time to recall this telling little incident.
Below see the transcript of Mr Clawson's remarks
Transcript
"I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough and it's very hard for me to see how the United States president can get
us to war with Iran which leads me to conclude that if in fact compromise is not coming that the traditional way of America gets
to war is what would be best for US interests
Some people might think that mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us in to the World War two as David mentioned. You may recall we had
to wait for Pearl Harbor.
Some people might think mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World War One. You may recall he had to wait for the Lusitania episode
Some people might think that mr. Johnson wanted to send troops to Vietnam. You may recall they had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin
episode.
We didn't go to war with Spain until the USS Maine exploded, and may I point out that mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call off
the federal army until Fort Sumter was attacked which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing which
the South Carolinians had said would cause an attack.
So if in fact the Iranians aren't going to compromise it would be best if somebody else started the war
But I would just like to suggest that one can combine other means of pressure with sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August
17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down – someday one of them
might not come up.
Who would know why?
We can do a variety of things if we wish to increase the pressure. I'm not advocating that but I'm just suggesting that a it's
this is not a either-or proposition of, you know, it's just sanctions has to be has to succeed or other things.
DunGroanin
Always follow the money they made lots instantly from the firework display, it aint rocket science!
What do you expect from a Zionist Front like WINEP? They've been inciting wars for Israel for decades. "Getting the stupid goys
to fight Israel's wars for decades."
Jen
If Patrick Clawson is typical of the kind of economist employed at the IMF and then promoted to a leading position at the World
Bank, I dread to think of the calibre of people who also applied for his job in the past and were rejected. His speech is so garbled
and full of unconscious slip-ups.
andyoldlabour
The US has convinced itself of its own so called "exceptionalism", where they can say anything out in the open, reveal their greatest
desires, their unholy plans. There must be some "good" Americans who can stop this madness, or have they all become inflicted/infected
with some hate virus?
Milton
Interesting that this Israeli-First traitor Clawson mentions Lincoln and Ft. Sumter. He finally admits what genuine historians
of the Civil War long knew: Lincoln was a warmonger and tyrant, not an emancipator. The Civil war was fought to eliminate true
freedom and equality in this country and it has been downhill ever since. The working class and soldier-class in America today
are slaves in every sense of the word. Slaves to Zion. No wonder the certified warmonger and racist Lincoln is worshiped equally
by Left and Right today, whilst genuine American patriots like Robert E. Lee have their legacy torn down. Lincoln was the proto-Neocon.
Tom Dilorenzo summed up the real Lincoln when he wrote in Lincoln Unmasked:
"Imagine that California seceded from the union and an American president responded with the carpet bombing of Los Angeles,
San Diego, and San Francisco that destroyed 90 percent of those cities. Such was the case with General Sherman's bombardment of
Atlanta; a naval blockade; a blocking off of virtually all trade; the eviction of thousands of residents from their homes (as
occurred in Atlanta in 1864); the destruction of most industries and farms; massive looting of private property by a marauding
army; and the killing of one out of four males of military age while maiming for life more than double that number. Would such
an American president be considered a 'great statesman' or a war criminal? The answer is obvious.
A statesman would have recognized the state's right to secede, as enshrined in the Tenth Amendment, among other places, and
then worked diligently to persuade the seceded state that a reunion was in its best interest. Agreat statesman, or even a modest
one, would not have impulsively plunged the entire nation into a bloody war.
Lincoln's warmongering belligerence and his invasion of all the Southern states in response to Fort Sumter (where no one was
harmed or killed) caused the upper South -- Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas -- to secede after originally voting
to remain in the Union. He refused to meet with Confederate commissioners to discuss peace and even declined a meeting with Napoleon
III of France, who offered to broker a peace agreement. No genuine statesman would have behaved in such a way.
After Fort Sumter, Lincoln thanked naval commander Gustavus Fox for assisting him in manipulating the South Carolinians into
firing at Fort Sumter. A great statesman does not manipulate his own people into starting one of the bloodiest wars in human history."
mathias alexand
Here's a man who holds a press conference to announce a secret plan. Only in America.
False flags here, false flags there, false flags everywhere. All too further the aims of the 'masters of the universe'. We know
who was responsible for the tanker attacks. Who are the 3 countries absolutely desperate to take Iran down and install a completely
pliant puppet regime answerable to Washington, Tel Aviv and to a lesser extent Riyadh. And creatures like Clawson, and all the
other vermin can only see $$$$. Thats all they care about. Opening up more markets to further enrich themselves. I echo the other
commenters also. The evil men stoop to for greed, power and control. Psychopaths.
harry law
The Foreign Office issued a statement saying: "It is almost certain that a branch of the Iranian military – the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps – attacked the two tankers on 13 June. No other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible."
Unbelievable, The UK vassal will use this to as one more reason to evade their responsibilities in implementing the JCPOA.
Er . just a rough guess Bill going on the belligerent foaming at the mouth by people in those places along with the likes of Bolton
and Pompeo. In fact, you can probably go all the way back to about 1980 or so.
mark
I think the real giveaway was when all three rogue states openly stated their intention of doing this 1,000 times over the past
10 years. That was the crucial clue Sherlock Holmes was looking for.
Wilmers31
And who funds the Washington Institute? Last time I looked the International Crisis Group existed thanks to Soros and is usually
treated like a serious organisation.
Many Europeans are not in love with the idea of war with Iran, just to achieve obedience to the US. 90 million people is bigger
than Germany.
wardropper
These are the shysters, the spivs and the con men of bygone times. They are the ones who lurked at street corners, waiting for
someone to come along who was gullible enough to buy the Moon from them.
But, for some reason, they are all in politics today.
Now how could that be?
Only because there are people whom it currently suits to use shysters, spivs and con men in order to create enough chaos for
us to want to give up and just let those people have their way.
I agree with Rhys below. There is no more disgusting example of sub-humanity to be found on earth than these warmongers.
To deal with them, however, we will have to realize that their "philosophy", if you can call it that, runs very deep. It didn't
just enter their heads last week.
They are reared and trained in it.
It will be a tough battle.
wardropper
I should add that, in bygone times, the police and the law were usually able to deal with the shysters, spivs and con men, since
their lack of conscience often gave them away.
The modern version, however, which has moved into politics, was shrewd enough to use a few decades of bribery and threats in order
to build around itself a nice little shell, through which the law simply cannot penetrate, except on special occasions, mainly
for show.
Rhys Jaggar
There is a big cabal of warmongers who stoke the fuel but never see action. I find those people more disgusting than anyone on
earth.
Draft dodgers, academics, 'historians' etc etc.
Ball-less pricks is what I call them .
mark
All fully paid up members of the Bill Clinton Light Infantry.
andyoldlabour
The appeasers would include the US who fully supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, who provided him with chemical
weapons and logistical help in using those weapons, which killed around 50,000 Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians.
The same appeasers armed and funded the Taliban (Mujahideen) against the Soviets.
The US are the single largest force for terrorism the World has ever seen.
William HBonney
The easiest, and perhaps best metric by which to judge a country, is 'do people aspire to live there? '.
I see you admire the Soviet Union, but at its dissolution, people were queuing to leave. And yet the US, and the UK, according
to you, iniquitous places of tyranny, are oversubscribed. Could it be, that for all your implied erudition, you are merely a bellend?
BigB
Well, even as a pacifist: if that is his sentiment – I hope he has sons or daughters in the military stationed in CENTCOM in Qatar.
I bet he hasn't, though.
Rhisiart Gwilym
He should be right there on the frontline himself. That would straighten the disgusting creep's ideas out about the 'usefulness'
of deliberately provoking war
"... "The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan' investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery. ..."
"... "The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike.' ..."
"... But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.) ..."
"... "The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served the rebels well. ..."
"It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and
spread of 'fake news.' These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based
reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating
false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate
power.
"An important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred
news into question. [ ]
"The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement
with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa
Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the
uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission
to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan'
investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times
and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form
of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery.
"The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda
effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity
called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian
propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance
toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions
of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to
your claims? Take a hike.'
But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon
or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.)
"On December 23, 2016, President Obama signed the Portman-Murphy Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, which will supposedly
allow the United States to more effectively combat foreign (namely Russian and Chinese) propaganda and disinformation. It will
encourage more government counter-propaganda efforts, and provide funding to non-government entities to help in this enterprise.
It is clearly a follow-on to the claims of Russian hacking and propaganda, and shares the spirit of the listing of two hundred
tools of Moscow featured in the Washington Post. (Perhaps PropOrNot will qualify for a subsidy and be able to enlarge its list.)
Liberals have been quiet on this new threat to freedom of speech, undoubtedly influenced by their fears of Russian-based fake
news and propaganda. But they may yet take notice, even if belatedly, when Trump or one of his successors puts it to work on their
own notions of fake news and propaganda.
"The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically
clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and
other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did
not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served
the rebels well.
"But the mainstream media never ask cui bono? in cases like this. In 2013, a similar charge against Assad, which brought the
United States to the brink of a full-scale bombing war in Syria, turned out to be a false flag operation, and some authorities
believe the current case is equally problematic. Nevertheless, Trump moved quickly (and illegally), dealing a blow to any further
rapprochement between the United States and Russia. The CIA, the Pentagon, leading Democrats, and the rest of the war party had
won an important skirmish in the struggle over permanent war."
Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017
Below is the second half and conclusion of "Afghanistan,
the Forgotten Proxy War". While the previous sections examined the economic roots of
imperialism, as well as the historical context of the Cold War within which to situate the
Mujahideen, the following explores the anatomy of proxy warfare and media disinformation
campaigns which were at the heart of destabilizing Afghanistan. These were also a large part of
why there was little to no opposition to the Mujahideen from the Western 'left', whose
continued dysfunctionality cannot be talked about without discussing Zbigniew Brzezinski. We
also take a look at what led to the Soviet Union's demise and how that significantly affected
the former Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and many other parts of the world. The United
States has been at war in Afghanistan for four decades now, and it will reach its 40th year on
July 3, 2019. The original "moderate rebel"
One of the key players in the anti-Soviet, U.S.-led regime change project against
Afghanistan was Osama
bin Laden , a Saudi-born millionaire who came from a wealthy, powerful family that owns a
Saudi construction company and has had close ties to the Saudi royal family. Before becoming
known as America's "boogeyman", Osama bin Laden was put in charge of
fundraising for the Mujahideen insurgents, creating numerous charities and foundations in
the process and working in coordination with Saudi intelligence (who acted as liaisons between
the fighters and the CIA). Journalist Robert Fisk even gave bin Laden a glowing review, calling
him a "
peace warrior " and a philanthropist in a 1993 report for the Independent . Bin
Laden also provided recruitment for the Mujahideen and is believed to have also received
security training from the CIA. And in 1989, the same year that Soviet troops withdrew, he
founded the terrorist organization Al Qaeda with a number of fighters he
had recruited to the Mujahideen. Although the PDPA had already been overthrown, and the Soviet
Union was dissolved, he still maintained his relationship with the CIA and NATO, working with
them from the
mid-to-late 1990s to provide support for the secessionist Bosnian paramilitaries and the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the destruction and dismantling of Yugoslavia.
The United States would eventually turn Bin Laden into a scapegoat after the 2001 terrorist
attacks, while still maintaining ties to his family and providing arms, training, and funding
to Al Qaeda and its affiliates (rebranded as "moderate rebels" by the Western media) in its
more recent regime change project against Syria, which started in 2011. The Mujahideen not only
gave birth to Al Qaeda, but it would set a precedent for the United States' regime-change
operations in later years against the anti-imperialist governments of Libya and Syria.
Reagan entertains Mujahideen fighters in the White House.
With the end to the cycle of
World Wars (for the time being, at least), it has become increasingly common for the United
States to use local paramilitaries, terrorist groups, and/or the armed forces of comprador
regimes to fight against nations targeted by U.S. capital interests. Why the use of proxy
forces? They are, as Whitney Webb
describes , "a politically safe tool for projecting the U.S.' geopolitical will abroad."
Using proxy warfare as a kind of power projection tool is, first and foremost, cost-effective,
since paid local mercenaries or terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda will bear the burden of
combat and casualties rather than American troops in places like Libya and Syria. For example,
it costs much less
to pay local paramilitaries, gangs, crime syndicates, terrorist groups, and other reactionary
forces to perform the same military operations as U.S. troops. Additionally, with the advent of
nuclear weapons it became much more perilous for global superpowers to come into direct combat
with one another -- if the Soviet Union and the United States had done so, there existed the
threat of "mutually assured destruction", the strong possibility of instantaneous and
catastrophic damage to the populations and the economic and living standards of both sides,
something neither side was willing to risk, even if it was U.S. imperialism's ultimate goal to
destroy the Soviet Union. And so, the U.S. was willing to use any other means necessary to
weaken the Soviet Union and safeguard its profits, which included eliminating the Democratic
Republic of Afghanistan even if it had neither the intent nor the means of launching a military
offensive on American soil. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had the means of producing a
considerably large supply of modern weapons, including nuclear deterrents, to counter the
credible threat posed by the United States. To strike the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles
would have been a great challenge for the United States, since it would have resulted in
overwhelming retaliation by the Soviet Union. To maneuver this problem, to assure the
destruction of the Soviet Union while protecting the U.S. from similar destruction, the CIA
relied on more unconventional methods not previously thought of as being part of traditional
warfare, such as funding proxy forces while wielding economic and cultural influence over the
American domestic sphere and the international scene. Furthermore, proxy warfare enables
control of public opinion, thus allowing the U.S. government to escape public scrutiny and
questions about legal authorization for war. With opposition from the general public
essentially under control, consent for U.S.-led wars does not need to be obtained, especially
when the U.S. military is running them from " behind the scenes " and
its involvement looks less obvious. Indeed, the protests against the war on Vietnam in the
United States and other Western countries saw mass turnouts.
And while the U.S.-led aggression in Vietnam did involve proxy warfare to a lesser degree,
it was still mostly fought with American "boots-on-the-ground", much like the 2001 renewed
U.S.-led aggression against Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In contrast, the U.S.
assault on Afghanistan that began in 1979 saw little to no protest. The Mujahideen even
garnered support from large portions of the Western left who joined the chorus of voices in the
Western mainstream media in demonizing the PDPA -- a relentless imperialist propaganda campaign
that would be repeated in later years during the U.S. wars on Libya and Syria, with the
difference being that social media had not yet gained prominence at the time of the initial
assault on Afghanistan. This leads to the next question: why recruit some of the most
reactionary social forces abroad, many of whom represent complete backwardness?
In Afghanistan, such forces proved useful in the mission to topple the modernizing
government of the PDPA, especially when their anti-modernity aspirations intersected with U.S.
foreign policy; these ultra-conservative forces continue to be deployed by the United States
today. In fact, the long war on Afghanistan shares many striking similarities with the long war
on Syria, with the common theme of U.S. imperialism collaborating with violent Sunni extremists
to topple the secular, nationalist and anti-imperialist governments of these two former 'Soviet
bloc' countries. And much like the PDPA, the current and long-time government of the Ba'ath
Arab Socialist Party in Syria has made many strides towards achieving national liberation and
economic development, which have included: taking land from aristocratic families (a majority
of whom were Sunni Muslims while Shia Muslims, but especially Alawites, traditionally belonged
to the lower classes and were treated as second class citizens in pre-Ba'athist Syria) and
redistributing and nationalizing it, making use of Syria's oil and gas reserves to modernize
the country and benefit its population, and upholding women's rights as an important part of
the Ba'athist pillars.
Some of these aristocratic landlords, just like their Afghan counterparts, would react
violently and join the Muslim Brotherhood who, with CIA-backing, carried out acts of terrorism
and other atrocities in Hama as they made a failed attempt to topple the government of Hafez al
Assad in 1982.
The connection between the two is further solidified by the fact that it was the Mujahideen
from which Al Qaeda emerged; both are inspired by Wahhabist ideology, and one of their chief
financiers is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (as well as Israel, a regional imperial power and a
key ally of the United States). In either case, these Wahhabi-inspired forces were vehemently
opposed to modernization and development, and would much rather keep large sections of the
population impoverished, as they sought to replace the PDPA and the Ba'athists with Sunni
fundamentalist, anti-Shia, theological autocracies -- Saudi-style regimes, in other words.
These reactionary forces are useful tools in the CIA's anti-communist projects and
destabilization campaigns against independent nationalist governments, considering that the
groups' anti-modernity stance is a motivating factor in their efforts to sabotage economic
development, which is conducive to ensuring a favourable climate for U.S. capital interests. It
also helps that these groups already saw the nationalist governments of the PDPA and the Syrian
Ba'ath party as their 'archenemy', and would thus fight them to the death and resort to acts of
terrorism against the respective civilian populations.
Zbigniew Brzezinski stated in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in response
to the following question:
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given
arms and advice to future terrorists?
[Brzezinski]: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the
collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe
and the end of the cold war?
Once again, he makes it clear that the religious extremism of the Mujahideen fighters was
not an issue for Washington because the real political value lay in eliminating the PDPA and
putting an end to Soviet influence in the Greater Middle East, which would give the U.S. the
opportunity to easily access and steal the country's wealth. And in order to justify the U.S.
imperialist intervention in Afghanistan, as well as to obscure the true nature of the
Mujahideen fighters, the intervention needed to be accompanied by a rigorous mass media
campaign. The Reagan administration -- knowing full well that American mainstream media has
international influence -- continued the war that the Carter administration started and saw it
as an opportunity to "step up" its domestic propaganda war, considering that the American
general public was still largely critical of the Vietnam War at the time.
As part of the aggressive imperialist propaganda campaign, anyone who dared to publicly
criticize the Mujahideen was subjected to character assassination and was pejoratively labelled
a "Stalinist" or a "Soviet apologist", which are akin to labels such as "Russian agent" or
"Assadist" being used as insults today against those who speak out against the U.S.-backed
terrorism in Syria. There were also careful rebranding strategies made specifically for Osama
bin Laden and the Mujahideen mercenaries, who were hailed as "revolutionary freedom fighters"
and given a romantic, exoticized "holy warrior" makeover in Western media; hence the title of
this section. The Mujahideen mercenaries were even given a dedication title card at the end of
the Hollywood movie Rambo III which read, "This film is dedicated to the brave
Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan"; the film itself added to the constructed romantic image as
it portrayed the Mujahideen fighters as heroes, while the Soviet Union and the PDPA were
portrayed as the cartoonish villains. The Rambo film franchise is well known for its
depiction of the Vietnamese as "savages" and as the aggressors in the U.S. war on Vietnam,
which is a blatant reversal of the truth .
The Hollywood blockbuster franchise would be used to make the Mujahideen more palatable to
Western audiences, as this unabashed, blatantly anti-Soviet propaganda for U.S. imperialism
attracted millions of viewers with one of the largest movie marketing campaigns of the time. Although
formulaic, the films are easily consumable because they appeal to emotion and, as Michael
Parenti states in Dirty Truths , "The entertainment industry does not merely give the
people what they want: it is busy shaping those wants," (p. 111). Rambo III may
not have been critically
acclaimed , but it was still the second most commercially successful film in the
Rambo series, grossing a total of $189,015,611 at the box
office . Producing war propaganda films is nothing new and has been a long staple of the
Hollywood industry, which serves capitalist and imperialist interests. But, since the
blockbuster movie is one of the most widely available and distributed forms of media,
repackaging the Mujahideen into a popular film franchise was easily one of the best ways
(albeit cynical) to justify the war, maintaining the
American constructed narrative and reinforcing the demonization campaign against Soviet
Russia and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Now, outside of the cinema, CBS News went as
far as to air fake battle footage meant to help perpetuate the myth that the Mujahideen
mercenaries were "freedom fighters"; American journalists Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould,
although decidedly biased against the Soviet Union and its allies, documented this ruse
in which the news channel participated. In terms of proxy warfare, these were just some of the
ways used to distract from the fact that it was a U.S.-led war.
The dedication title card as it originally appeared at the end of the film Rambo III.
In Afghanistan, proxy forces provided a convenient cover because they drew attention away
from the fact that U.S. imperialism was the root cause of the conflict. The insurgents also
helped to demonize the targets of U.S. foreign policy, the PDPA and the Soviet Union, all the
while doing the majority of the physical combat in place of the American military. In general,
drawing attention away from the fact that it has been the United States "pulling the strings"
all along, using proxy forces helps Washington to maintain
plausible deniability in regard to its relationship with such groups. If any one of these
insurgents becomes a liability, as what had happened with the Taliban, they can just as easily
be disposed of and replaced by more competent patsies, while U.S. foreign policy goes
unquestioned. Criminal gangs and paramilitary
forces are thus ideal and convenient tools for U.S. foreign policy. With the rule of
warlords and the instability (namely damage to infrastructure, de-industrialization, and
societal collapse) that followed after the toppling of the PDPA, Afghanistan's standard of
living dropped rapidly, leading to forced mass migrations and making the country all the more
vulnerable to a more direct U.S. military intervention -- which eventually did happen in
2001.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: godfather of colour revolutions and proxy wars, architect of the
Mujahideen
The late Brzezinski was a key figure in U.S. foreign policy and a highly influential figure
in the Council on Foreign Relations. Although the Polish-American diplomat and political
scientist was no longer the National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan's presidency, he
still continued to play a prominent role in enforcing U.S. foreign policy goals in upholding
Washington's global monopoly. The liberal Cold War ideologue's signature strategy consisted of
using the CIA to destabilize and force regime-change onto countries whose governments actively
resisted against Washington. Such is the legacy of Brzezinski, whose strategy of funding the
most reactionary anti-government forces to foment chaos and instability while promoting them as
"freedom fighters" is now a longstanding staple of U.S. imperialism.
How were the aggressive propaganda campaigns which promoted the Mujahideen mercenaries as
"freedom fighters" able to garner support for the aggression against the former Democratic
Republic of Afghanistan from so many on the Western left who had previously opposed the war on
Vietnam? It was the through the CIA's use of 'soft-power' schemes, because leftist opinion also
needed to be controlled and manipulated in the process of carrying out U.S. foreign and public
policy. Brzezinski mastered the art of targeting intelligentsia and impressionable young people
in order to make them supportive of U.S. foreign policy, misleading a significant number of
people into supporting U.S.-led wars.
The CIA invested money into programs that used university campus, anti-Soviet "radical
leftist activists" and academics (as well as artists and writers) to help spread imperialist
propaganda dressed up in vaguely "leftist"-sounding language and given a more "hip",
"humanitarian", "social justice", "free thinker" appeal. Western, but especially American,
academia has since continued to teach the post-modernist "oppression theory" or "privilege
theory" to students, which is anti-Marxist and anti-scientific at its core. More importantly,
this post-modernist infiltration was meant to distract from class struggle, to help divert any
form of solidarity away from anti-imperialist struggles, and to foster virulent animosity
towards the Soviet Union among students and anyone with 'leftist' leanings. Hence the
phenomenon of identity politics that continues to plague the Western left today, whose strength
was effectively neutered by the 1970s. Not only that, but as Gowans mentions in his book,
Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom :
"U.S. universities recruit talented individuals from abroad, instill in them the U.S.
imperialist ideology and values, and equip them with academic credentials which conduce to
their landing important political positions at home. In this way, U.S. imperial goals
indirectly structure the political decision-making of other countries." (pp. 52-53)
And so we have agencies and think-tanks such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
which has scholarly appeal and actively interferes in elections abroad -- namely, in countries
that are targets of U.S. foreign policy. Founded in 1983 by Reagan and directed by the CIA, the
agency also assists in mobilizing coups and paid "dissidents" in U.S.-led regime change
projects, such as the 2002 failed attempt against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, as well as helping
to create aggressive media campaigns that demonize targeted nations. Another instance of this
"soft power" tactic of mobilizing U.S.-backed "dissidents" in targeted nations are the number
of Sunni Islamic fundamentalist
madrassas (schools) sponsored by the CIA and set up by Wahhabi missionaries from Saudi
Arabia in Afghanistan -- which started to appear in increasing numbers during the 1980s,
reaching over 39,000 during the decade. Afghanistan's public education institutions were
largely secular prior to the fall of Kabul in 1992; these madrassas were the direct,
ideological and intellectual antitheses to the existing institutions of education. The
madrassas acted as centres for cult-like brainwashing and were essentially CIA covert
psychological operations (psy-ops) intended to inspire divisiveness and demobilize younger
generations of Afghans in the face of imperial onslaught so that they would not unite with the
wider PDPA-led nationalist resistance to imperialism.
The NED's founding members were comprised of Cold War ideologues which included Brzezinski
himself, as well as Trotskyists who provided an endless supply of slurs against the Soviet
Union. It was chiefly under this agency, and with direction provided by Brzezinski, that
America produced artists, "activists", academics, and writers who presented themselves as
"radical leftists" and slandered the Soviet Union and countries that were aligned with it --
which was all part of the process of toppling them and subjugating them to U.S. free market
fundamentalism. With Brzezinski having mastered the art of encouraging postmodernism and
identity politics among the Western left in order to weaken it, the United States not only had
military and economic might on its side but also highly sophisticated ideological instruments
to help give it the upper hand in propaganda wars.
These "soft power" schemes are highly effective in masking the brutality of U.S.
imperialism, as well as concealing the exploitation of impoverished nations. Marketing the
Mujahideen mercenaries as "peace warriors" while demonizing the PDPA and referring to the
Soviet assistance as an "invasion" or "aggression" marked the beginning of the regular use of
"humanitarian" pretexts for imperialist interventions. The Cold War era onslaught against
Afghanistan can thus be seen as the template for the NATO-led regime change projects against
Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, which not only involved the use of U.S.-backed proxy forces but
also "humanitarian" pretexts being presented in the aggressive propaganda campaigns against the
targeted countries. It was not until 2002, however, that then-American UN representative
Samantha Powers, as well as several U.S.-allied representatives, would push the United Nations
to officially adopt the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) doctrine into the Charter -- which
was in direct contradiction to the law that recognizes the violation of a nation's sovereignty
as a crime. The R2P doctrine was born out of the illegal 78-day NATO
air-bombing of Yugoslavia from March 24 to June 10, 1999. And although plans to dismantle
Yugoslavia go as far back as 1984, it was not until much of the 1990s that NATO would begin
openly intervening --
with more naked aggression -- starting with the funding and support for secessionist
paramilitary forces in Bosnia between 1994-1995. It then sealed the 1999 destruction of
Yugoslavia with with the balkanization of the Serbian province of Kosovo . In addition
to the use of terrorist and paramilitary groups as proxy forces which received CIA-training and
funding, another key feature of this "humanitarian" intervention was the ongoing demonization
campaigns against the Serbs, who were at the centre of a vicious Western media propaganda war.
Some of the most egregious parts of these demonization campaigns -- which were tantamount to
slander and libel -- were the claims that the Serbs were "
committing genocide " against ethnic Albanians. The NATO bombing campaign was illegal since
it was given no UN Security Council approval or support.
Once again, Brzezinski was not the National Security Advisor during the U.S.-led campaign
against Yugoslavia. However, he still continued to wield influence as a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations, a private organization and Wall Street think tank. The Council on Foreign
Relations is intertwined with highly influential NGOs who are essentially propaganda
mouthpieces for U.S. foreign policy, such as Human Rights Watch, which has fabricated stories
of atrocities allegedly committed by countries targeted by U.S. imperialism. Clearly,
unmitigated U.S. imperial aggression did not end with the destruction of the former Democratic
Republic of Afghanistan, nor with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The post-Cold War years
were a continuation of U.S. imperialism's scramble for more spheres of influence and global
domination; it was also a scramble for what was left of the former 'Soviet bloc' and Warsaw
Pact. The dismantling of Yugoslavia was, figuratively speaking, the 'final nail in the coffin'
of whatever 'Soviet influence' was left in Eastern Europe.
The demise of the Soviet Union and the "Afghan trap" question
Image on the right: Left to right: former Afghan President Babrak Karmal, and former Soviet
leader Leonid Brezhnev. Karmal took office at around the same time (December 1979) the PDPA
requested that Moscow intervene to assist the besieged Afghanistan.
The sabotage and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that only one global
hegemon remained, and that was the United States. Up until 1989, the Soviet Union had been the
barrier that was keeping the United States from launching a more robust military intervention
in Afghanistan, as well as in Central and West Asia. While pulling out did not immediately
cause the defeat of Kabul as the PDPA government forces continued to struggle for another three
years, Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to withdraw Soviet troops arguably had a
detrimental impact on Afghanistan for many years to come. Although there was no Soviet
military assistance in the last three years of Najibullah's presidency, Afghanistan continued
to receive aid from the USSR, and some Soviet military advisers (however limited in their
capacity) still remained; despite the extreme difficulties, and combined with the nation's
still-relatively high morale, this did at least help to keep the government from being
overthrown immediately. This defied U.S. expectations as the CIA and the George H.W. Bush
administration had believed that the government of Najibullah would fall as soon as Soviet
troops were withdrawn. But what really hurt the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan's army was
when the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1991; almost as soon as the dissolution happened and
Boris Yeltsin (with U.S. backing) took over as Russia's president, the aid stopped coming and
the government forces became unable to hold out for much longer. The U.S. aggression was left
unchecked, and to this day Afghanistan has not
seen geopolitical stability and has since been a largely impoverished 'failed state',
serving as a training ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. It continues to be
an anarchic battleground between rival warlords which include the ousted Taliban and the U.S.
puppet government that replaced them.
But, as was already mentioned above, the "Afghan trap" did not, in and of itself, cause the
dismantling of the Soviet Union. In that same interview with Le Nouvel Observateur ,
Brzezinski had this to say in response to the question about setting the "trap":
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself
desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
[Brzezinski]: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we
knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Likewise with Cuba and Syria, the USSR had a well-established alliance with the
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, one of mutual aid and partnership. Answering Kabul's
explicit request for assistance was a deliberate and conscious choice made by Moscow, and it
just so happened that the majority of Afghans welcomed it. For any errors that Leonid Brezhnev,
the General Secretary at the time, may have made (which do deserve a fair amount of criticism,
but are not the focus of this article), the 1979 decision to intervene on behalf of Afghanistan
against U.S. imperialism was not one of them. It is true that both the Soviet and the U.S.
interventions were military interventions, but the key difference is that the U.S. was backing
reactionary forces for the purposes of establishing colonial domination and was in clear
violation of Afghan sovereignty. Consider, too, that Afghanistan had only deposed of its king
in 1973, just six years before the conflict began. The country may have moved quickly to
industrialize and modernize, but it wasn't much time to fully develop its military defenses by
1979.
Image below: Mikhail Gorbachev accepts the Nobel Peace Prize from George H.W. Bush on
October 15, 1990. Many Russians saw this gesture as a betrayal, while the West celebrated it,
because he was being awarded for his capitulation to U.S. imperialism in foreign and economic
policy.
Other than that, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Soviet Union imploded due
to an accumulating number of factors: namely, the gradual steps that U.S. foreign policy had
taken over the years to cripple the Soviet economy, especially after the deaths of Brezhnev and
Yuri Andropov. How Gorbachev responded during the U.S.-led onslaught against Afghanistan
certainly helped to exacerbate the conditions that led to the dissolution. After the deaths of
Brezhnev and Andropov, the Soviet Union's economy became disorganized and was being liberalized
during much of the 1980s. Not only that, but the Reagan administration escalated the arms race,
which intensified after they had scrapped the 'detente' that was previously made in the
mid-1970s. Even prior to Reagan's hardline, bombastic rhetoric and escalation against the USSR,
the Soviet Union was already beginning to show signs of strain from the arms race during the
late-1970s. However, in spite of the economic strains, during the height of the war the
organized joint operations between the Soviet army and the Afghan army saw a significant amount
of success in pushing back against the Mujahideen with many of the jihadist leaders either
being killed or fleeing to Pakistan. Therefore, it is erroneous to say that intervening in
Afghanistan on behalf of the Afghan people "did the Soviet Union in."
In a misguided and ultimately failed attempt to spur economic growth rates, Gorbachev moved
to end the Cold War by withdrawing military support from allies and pledging cooperation with
the United States who promised "peace". When he embraced Neoliberalism and allowed for the USSR
to be opened to the U.S.-dominated world capitalist economy, the Soviet economy imploded and
the effects were felt by its allies. It was a capitulation to U.S. imperialism, in other words;
and it led to disastrous results not only in Afghanistan, but in several other countries as
well. These include: the destruction of Yugoslavia, both wars on Iraq, and the 2011 NATO
invasion of Libya. Also, Warsaw Pact members in Eastern Europe were no longer able to
effectively fight back against U.S.-backed colour revolutions; some of them would eventually be
absorbed as NATO members, such as Czechoslovakia which was dissolved and divided into two
states: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Without Soviet Russia to keep it in check, the United
States was able to launch an unrestrained series of aggressions for nearly two decades. Because
of his decision to withdraw from the arms race altogether, in a vain attempt to transform the
Soviet Union into a social democracy akin to those of the Nordic countries, Gorbachev had
deprived the Russian army of combat effectiveness by making significant cuts to its defense
budget, which is partly why they were forced to evacuate. Not only that, but these diplomatic
and military concessions with the United States gave them no benefit in return, hence the
economic crisis in Russia during the Yeltsin years. Suffice to say, the Gorbachev-Yeltsin years
are not remembered fondly in Russia and many regard Gorbachev as a traitor and Western agent
who helped to bring the Soviet Union to its collapse. In more recent years,
efforts are being made to assess the actions taken by Gorbachev with regards to
Afghanistan; this includes going against and revising the resolution put forth by him which
suggested that the USSR intervention was "shameful".
In short, Afghanistan did not cause the Soviet Union's demise even if it required large
military spending. More accurately: it was Gorbachev's impulsive decision to quickly discard
the planned economy in favour of a market economy in order to appease the United States, who
made the false promise that NATO would not expand eastward. If there was a real "trap", it was
this and Gorbachev played right into the hands of U.S. imperialism; and so, the Soviet Union
received its devastating blow from the United States in the end -- not from a small, minor
nation such as Afghanistan which continues to suffer the most from the effects of these past
events. For many years, but especially since the end of WWII, the United States made ceaseless
efforts to undermine the USSR, adding stress upon stress onto its economy, in addition to the
psychological warfare waged through the anti-Soviet propaganda and military threats against it
and its allies. Despite any advances made in the past, the Soviet Union's economy was still not
as large as that of the United States. And so, in order to keep pace with NATO, the Soviet
Union did not have much of a choice but to spend a large percentage of its GDP on its military
and on helping to defend its allies, which included national liberation movements in the Third
World, because of the very real and significant threat that U.S. imperialism posed. If it had
not spent any money militarily, its demise would most likely have happened much sooner. But
eventually, these mounting efforts by U.S. imperialism created a circumstance where its
leadership under Gorbachev made a lapse in judgment, reacting impulsively and carelessly rather
than acting with resilience in spite of the onslaught.
It should also be taken into account that WWII had a profound impact on Soviet leadership --
from Joseph Stalin to Gorbachev -- because even though the Red Army was victorious in defeating
the Nazis, the widespread destruction had still placed the Soviet economy under an incredible
amount of stress and it needed time to recover. Meanwhile, the convenient geographical location
of the United States kept it from suffering the same casualties and infrastructural damage seen
across Europe and Asia as a result of the Second World War, which enabled its economy to
recover much faster and gave it enough time to eventually develop the U.S. Dollar as
the international currency and assert dominance over the world economy. Plus, the U.S. had
accumulated two-thirds of the world's gold reserves by 1944 to help back the Dollar; and even
if it lost a large amount of the gold, it would still be able to maintain Dollar supremacy by
developing the fiat system to back the currency. Because of the destruction seen during WWII,
it is understandable that the Soviet Union wanted to avoid another world war, which is why it
also made several attempts at achieving some kind of diplomacy
with the United States (before Gorbachev outright capitulated). At the same time, it also
understood that maintaining its military defenses was important because of the threat of a
nuclear war from the United States, which would be much more catastrophic than the Nazis'
military assaults against the Soviet Union since Hitler did not have a nuclear arsenal. This
was part of a feat that U.S. imperialism was able to accomplish that ultimately overshadowed
British, French, German, and Japanese imperialism, which Brzezinski reveals in his book, The
Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives : an unparalleled
military establishment that, by far, had the most effective global reach which allowed the U.S.
to "project forces over long distances", helping it to assert its global domination and impose
its "political will". And what makes the American Empire distinct from the Japanese Empire,
British Empire, and other European empires is that one of the bases for its ideology is the
socially constructed international hierarchy of nations, and not races as was the case with the
other aforementioned empires. This constructed international hierarchy of nations is more
effective because it means not only greater expansionism, but also the greater ability to
exercise global primacy and supremacy. More specific to Central Asia and the Middle East, the
Wahhabist and Salafist
groups propped up by the CIA were always
intended to nurture sectarianism and discord in order to counter a mass, broad-based united
front of nations against imperialism -- an example of divide-and-conquer, which is an age-old
tradition of empire, except this time with Neoliberal characteristics.
Therefore, the
Mujahideen against Afghanistan should not be thought of simply as "the Afghan trap", but rather
as the U.S. subjugation and plundering of West and Central Asia and an important milestone
(albeit a cynical one) in shaping its foreign policy with regards to the region for many years
to come. If one thing has remained a constant in U.S. foreign policy towards West and Central
Asia, it is its strategic partnership with the oil autocracy of Saudi Arabia, which acts as the
United States' steward in safeguarding the profits of American petroleum corporations and
actively assists Western powers in crushing secular Arab and Central Asian nationalist
resistance against imperialism. The Saudi monarchy would again be called on by the U.S.
government in 2011 in Syria to assist in the repeated formula of funding and arming so-called
"moderate rebels" in the efforts to destabilize the country. Once again, the ultimate goal in
this more recent imperial venture is to contain Russia.
Cold War 2.0? American Supremacy marches on
The present-day anti-Russia hysteria is reminiscent of the anti-Soviet propaganda of the
Cold War era; while anti-communism is not the central theme today, one thing remains the same:
the fact that the U.S. Empire is (once again) facing a formidable challenge to its position in
the world. After the Yeltsin years were over, and under Vladimir Putin, Russia's economy
eventually recovered and moved towards a more dirigiste economy; and on top of that, it moved
away from the NATO fold, which triggered the old antagonistic relationship with the United
States. Russia has also decided to follow the global trend of taking the step towards
reducing reliance on the
U.S. dollar , which is no doubt a source of annoyance to the U.S. capitalist class. It
seems that a third world war in the near future is becoming more likely as the U.S. inches
closer to a direct military confrontation against Russia and, more recently, China. History
does appear to be repeating itself. When the government of Bashar al Assad called on Moscow for
assistance in fighting against the NATO-backed terrorists, it certainly was reminiscent of when
the PDPA had done the same many years before. Thus far, the Syrian Arab Republic has continued
to withstand the destabilization efforts carried out by the Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist
groups and Kurdish militias at the behest of the United States, and has not collapsed as Libya,
Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan did.
But what often gets overlooked is the repeated Brzezinskist formula of funding highly
reactionary forces and promoting them as "revolutionaries" to Western audiences in order to
fight governments that defy the global dictatorship of the United States and refuse to allow
the West to exploit their natural resources and labour power. As Karl Marx once said , "Men
make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under
self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted
from the past." Such a phenomenon is no accident or a mere mistake. The geopolitical
instability that followed after the overthrow of the PDPA ensures that no sound, united, and
formidable opposition against U.S. imperialism will emerge for an indefinite number of years;
and it seems that Libya, where the Brzezinskist-style of regime change also saw success and
which is now a hotbed for the slave trade, is on the same path as Afghanistan. This is all a
part of what Lenin calls moribund capitalism
when he discussed the economic essence of imperialism; and by that, he meant that imperialism
carries the contradictions of capitalism to the extreme
limit . American global monopoly had grown out of U.S. foreign policy, and it should go
without saying that the American Empire cannot tolerate losing its Dollar Supremacy, especially
when the global rate of profit is falling. And if too many nations reject U.S. efforts to
infiltrate their markets and force foreign finance capital exports onto their economies in
order to gain a monopoly over the resources, as well as to exploit the labour of their working
people, it would surely spell a sharp decline in American Dollar hegemony. The fact that the
United States was willing to go as far as to back mercenaries to attack the former Democratic
Republic of Afghanistan and fight the Soviet Union, as well as to spend billions of dollars on
a highly elaborate but effective propaganda campaign, shows a sign of desperation of the
American Empire in maintaining its global hegemony.
Since the end of World War II the United States has been, and is by and large still, the
overwhelming world-dominating power. It is true that the American Empire is in decline, in
light of increasing trends towards "de-Dollarization," as well as the rise of China and Russia
which pose as challenges to U.S. interests. Naturally, Washington will desperately try to cling
on to its number one position in the world by accelerating the growth of its global monopolies
-- whether it is through placing wholly unnecessary tariffs against competitors such as China,
or threatening to completely cut
Venezuelan and Iranian oil out of the global market -- even if it means an increasing drive
towards World War III. The current global economic order which Washington elites have been
instrumental in shaping over the past several decades reflects the interests of the global
capitalist class to such an extent that the working class is threatened with yet another world
war despite the unimaginable carnage witnessed during the first two.
When we look back at these historical events to help make sense of the present, we see how
powerful mass media can be and how it is used as a tool of U.S. foreign policy to manipulate
and control public opinion. Foreign policy is about the economic relationships between
countries. Key to understanding how U.S. imperialism functions is in its foreign policy and how
it carries it out -- which adds up to plundering from relatively small or poorer nations more
than a share of wealth and resources that can be normally produced in common commercial
exchanges, forcing them to be indebted; and if any of them resist, then they will almost
certainly be subjected to military threats.
With the great wealth that allowed it to build a military that can "project forces over long
distances," the United States is in a unique position in history, to say the least. However, as
we have seen above, the now four decade-long war on Afghanistan was not only fought on a
military front considering the psy-ops and the propaganda involved. If anything, the Soviet
Union lost on the propaganda front in the end.
From Afghanistan we learn not only of the origins of Al Qaeda, to which the boom in the
opioid-addiction epidemic has ties, or why today we have the phenomenon of an anti-Russia
Western "left" that parrots imperialist propaganda and seems very eager to see that piece of
Cold War history repeat itself in Syria. We also learn that we cannot de-link the events of the
2001 direct U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and what followed from those of 1979;
Afghanistan's colonial-feudal past, its break from that with the 1978 Saur Revolution, and the
U.S.-led Mujahideen are all as much of a part of its history (and the Greater Middle East, by
extension) as the events of 2001. It cannot be stressed enough that it is those historical
conditions, particularly as they relate to U.S. foreign policy, that helped to shape the
ongoing conflict today.
Obviously, we cannot undo the past. It is not in the interests of the working class
anywhere, in the Global South or in the Global North, to see a third world war happen, as such
a war would have catastrophic consequences for everyone -- in fact, it could potentially
destroy all of humanity. Building a new and revitalized anti-war movement in the imperialist
nations is a given, but it also requires a more sophisticated understanding of U.S. foreign
policy. Without historical context, Western mass media will continue to go unchallenged,
weaning audiences on a steady diet of "moderate rebels" propaganda and effectively silencing
the victims of imperialism. It is necessary to unite workers across the whole world according
to their shared interests in order to effectively fight and defeat imperialism and to establish
a just, egalitarian, and sustainable world under socialism. Teaching the working class
everywhere the real history of such conflicts as the one in Afghanistan is an important part of
developing the revolutionary consciousness necessary to build a strong global revolutionary
movement against imperialism.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email
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Originally published by LLCO.org on March 30, 2019. For the full-length article and
bibliography, click here .
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction or SIGAR just released the
third edition of its High-Risk List to the 116th Congress of the United States and the
Secretaries of both State and Defense. In this report, SIGAR identifies the most serious
threats to the American government's $132 billion reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. This
information is of particular interest and importance given that negotiations are currently
underway to end the United States' involvement in Afghanistan, involvement that began on
October 7, 2001, making this the longest military engagement in American history.
The report opens with this rather sobering summary of the past, present and future in
Afghanistan:
" The $132 billion appropriated since 2002 for Afghanistan's reconstruction has been used to
train and equip Afghan security forces, strengthen government institutions, promote the rule of
law, protect women's rights, improve health and education, and stimulate economic development,
among other objectives. Yet the gains from our nation's investment in Afghanistan's reconstruction face multiple
threats: continued insecurity, endemic corruption, weak Afghan institutions, the insidious
impact of the narcotics trade, and inadequate coordination and oversight by donors. While an equitable and sustainable peace agreement in Afghanistan could end much of the
violence that presents the greatest threat to the reconstruction effort, a peace agreement may
bring its own set of challenges to sustaining the gains that the United States, its Coalition
partners, and the Afghan government have achieved over that time." (my bold)
Here is a listing of the eight current high risk areas: 1.) Widespread Insecurity - whether a peace plan is put into place or not, Afghanistan
is likely to continue to experience multiple violent extremist organizations. The Afghan
National Defense and Security Forces require annual funding of between $4 billion and $5
billion to remain viable. 2.) Underdeveloped Civil Policing Capability - The United States has spent more effort
reconstructing the Afghan National Army than on the Afghan National Police meaning that there
is no strategy for a competent civil police force backed by rule of law. Sustaining a national
police force will require significant foreign funding. 3.) Endemic Corruption - Corruption is endemic and forms a significant threat to the
Afghan government. This means that reconstruction programs will continue to be subverted and
are likely to fail. Here is a graphic from Transparency International showing where Afghanistan
lies on the global spectrum when it comes to corruption:
Afghanistan has the world's 9th lowest corruption score as shown on this list: 4.) Sluggish Economic Growth - Afghanistan's legal economy is sluggish and there are
numerous barriers to further economic growth. 5.) Illicit Narcotics Trade - Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of opium
poppies and had the two highest years of cultivation in 2017 and 2018. Funds from the illicit
drug trade fund the Taliban, corrupt members of the Afghan government, military and police and
also employ 600,000 Afghanis. 6.) Threats to Women's Rights - More than $1 billion has been spent since 2002 to
advance the status of women in Afghanistan but gains made so far are fragile, particularly in
rural areas, and are likely to be unprotected should the Taliban be part of a peace
settlement. 7.) Challenge of Reintegration - The social, economic and political reintegration of
tens of thousands of former fighters back into Afghan society will be difficult, particularly
in light of the nation's weak economy and political uncertainty and distrust. 8.) Restricted Oversight - If a peace settlement includes reductions in foreign
personnel providing oversight on foreign funded programs, problems in the nation will only
increase thanks to high levels of corruption.
Let's look at some examples of where U.S. tax dollars have been spent in Afghanistan. Since
2001, an estimated $780 billion has been appropriated for Afghanistan including war funding,
diplomatic and consular programs, military and embassy construction projects etcetera. Of this
$738 billion or 95 percent of the total was obligated by the Department of Defense.
Reconstruction costs make up 15 percent of total U.S. funds obligated for Afghanistan since
2001 and are broken down as follows: 1.) Security - $83.1 billion (63 percent of the total) to build up Afghan military and
police. In fiscal 2019, 82 percent of the funds appropriated for Afghanistan reconstruction
were spent on assisting the security sector. The "success" of this program can be put into
perspective with
this map showing the areas of Afghanistan that are under control of the Taliban, the
original target of Operation Enduring Freedom: 2.) Governance and Economic Development - $33.9 billion (26 percent of the total). In
fiscal 2018, only 12 percent of the funds appropriated for Afghanistan reconstruction were
spent on improving the nation's economy. 3.) Counternarcotics Programs - $8.9 billion (7 percent of the total).
The remaining 4 percent of reconstruction funds have been spent to support civilian operations,
humanitarian initiatives and in combating society-wide corruption.
Let's close by looking at a few quotes from the report that show just how dire the situation in
Afghanistan still is nearly 18 years after Operation Enduring Freedom began and how unlikely a
peace settlement is likely to change the situation on the ground: 1.)Failure to successfully reintegrate an estimated 60,000 Taliban fighters and
their families, and other illegal armed groups, could undermine the successful implementation
of any peace agreement.
2.) The opium trade plays a significant role in the Afghan economy and it is difficult to
seehow a peace accord between the Afghan government and the insurgency would translate
into the collapse or contraction of the illicit drug trade. The country requires a growing
economy or favorable economic conditions to provide farmers and former insurgents with
legitimate employment and a reliable income to replace opium poppy cultivation. The Afghan
government also needs to pursue major drug traffickers, which it has not done consistently or
successfully. According to the Department of Justice, "certain influential people are above the
law."
3.) Effective policing will require a force that gives citizens the presumption of innocence
rather than anticipating and taking preemptive offensive operations against perceived threats.
U.S. agencies, such as the Justice Department, currently lack the personnel numbers and
para-military strength to accompany Afghan National Police trainees into high-threat
districts.
4.) In a post-settlement environment, depending on the terms of an agreement, there may also
be the challenge of integrating former Taliban fighters into the national security forces and
society. These issues could become more acute should international financial and military
support decline sharply before, during, or after peace talks between the Afghan government and
the Taliban.
Let's close this sobering view of Afghanistan's future with an excerpt from the prepared
remarks given by
the the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, John F. Sopko that
accompanied the release of the report:
" If the U.S. reduces its presence in Afghanistan but feels compelled to provide significant
financial support for reconstruction, there may be little choice but to provide a greater
proportion of funding as on-budget assistance. But if that road is taken, assistance should be
conditioned on an independent finding that adequate monitoring mechanisms and internal controls
for the Afghan ministry or multilateral trust fund in question are in place. If those conditions are lacking and assistance is provided anyway, we may as well set the
cash ablaze on the streets of Kabul for all the good it will do. I urge Congress to not just think about how much money should be given, but also to think
about how that money will be provided and monitored. If the need for oversight is ignored or
sidelined, both the American taxpayer and the Afghan people will suffer, even with a successful
peace agreement." (my bold)
At the very least, it appears that 18 years of war has accomplished almost nothing when it
comes to meaningful and permanent changes in Afghanistan despite the spending of hundreds of
billions of hard-earned taxpayers' dollars.
So the USA helped to re-install medieval treatment of woman in Afghanistan and then called it progress toward human rights...
Notable quotes:
"... But, yes, 'somebody did something'. You don't need a conspiracy theory, because a conspiracy is a secret agreement to commit a crime, and this crime is right out in the open. Millions of people killed for fun and profit. Not that there weren't other conspiracies as well. ..."
Trump's demagogic ploy with the freshman lawmaker raises the more serious question of who
and what led to the "Day of Planes," writes Max Blumenthal.
... ... ...
To effectively puncture Trump's demagogic ploys, the
discussion of 9/11 must move beyond a superficial defense of Omar and into an exploration of a
critical history that has been suppressed. This history begins at least 20 years before the
attacks occurred, when "some people did something." Many of those people served at the highest
levels of U.S. government, and the things they did led to the establishment of Al Qaeda as an
international network – and ultimately, to 9/11 itself.
Taliban 'Unimportant'
Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert operation to trap the
Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft underbelly. They put heavy
weapons in the hands of Islamist warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, dispatched Salafi
clerics such as "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman to the battlefield, and printed millions of
dollars worth of textbooks for Afghan children that contained math equations encouraging them
to commit acts of violent martyrdom against Soviet soldiers. They did anything they could to
wreak havoc on the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.
These people were so hellbent on smashing the Soviet Union that they made common cause
with the Islamist dictatorship of Pakistan's Zia-ul-Haq and the House of Saud. With direct
assistance from the intelligence services of these U.S. allies, Osama bin Laden, the scion of
Saudi wealth, set up his Services Bureau on the Afghan border as a waystation for foreign
Islamist fighters.
These people even channeled funding to bin Laden so he could build training camps along the
Afghan-Pakistan border for the so-called freedom fighters of the mujahideen. And they kept
watch over a ratline that shepherded young Muslim men from the West to the front lines of the
Afghan proxy war, using them as cannon fodder for a cold-blooded, imperial operation marketed
by the Wahhabi clergy in Saudi Arabia as a holy obligation.
These people were in the CIA, USAID, and the National Security Council. Others, with names
like Charlie Wilson, Jesse Helms, Jack Murtha, and Joe Biden, held seats on both sides of the
aisle in Congress.
When they finally got what they wanted, dislodging a secular government that had provided
Afghan women with unprecedented access to education, their proxies plunged Afghanistan into a
war of the warlords that saw half of Kabul turned to rubble, paving the way for the rise of the
Taliban. And these people remained totally unrepentant about the monster they had created.
"Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?"
remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski, the former NSC director who sold President Jimmy Carter on the
Afghan proxy war. "So yes, compared to the Soviet Union, and to its collapse, the Taliban were
unimportant."
To some in Washington, the Taliban were a historical footnote. To others, they were allies
of convenience. As a top State Department diplomat commented to journalist Ahmed Rashid in
February 1997, "The Taliban will probably develop like Saudi Arabia. There be [the Saudi-owned
oil company] Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with
that."
CIA Cover-ups and Blowback
Back in the U.S., some people fueled the blowback from the Afghan proxy war. The Blind
Sheikh was given a special entry visa by the CIA as payback for the services he provided in
Afghanistan, allowing him to take over the al-Kifah Center in New York City, which had
functioned as the de facto U.S. arm of Al Qaeda's Services Bureau. Under his watch and with
help from bin Laden, some people and lots of aid were shuttled to the front lines of U.S. proxy
wars in Bosnia and Chechnya while the Clinton administration generally looked the other
way.
Though the Blind Sheikh was eventually convicted in a terror plot contrived by a paid
informant for the FBI, some people in federal law enforcement had been reluctant to indict him.
"There was a whole issue about [Abdel-Rahman] being given a visa to come into this country and
what the circumstances were around that," one of his defense lawyers, Abdeed Jabara told me.
"The issue related to how much the government was involved with the jihadist enterprise when it
suited their purposes in Afghanistan and whether or not they were afraid there would be
exposure of that. Because there's no question that the jihadists were using the Americans and
the Americans were using the jihadists. There's a symbiotic relationship."
During the 1995 trial of members of the Blind Sheikh's New York-based cell, another defense
lawyer, Roger Stavis, referred to his clients before the jury as "Team America," emphasizing
the role they had played as proxy fighters for the U.S. in Afghanistan. When Stavis attempted
to summon to the witness stand a jihadist operative named Ali Abdelsauod Mohammed who had
trained his clients in firearms and combat, some people ordered Mohammed to refuse his
subpoena. Those people, according to journalist Peter Lance, were federal prosecutors Andrew
McCarthy and Patrick Fitzgerald.
The government lawyers were apparently fretting that Mohammed would be exposed as an active
asset of both the CIA and FBI, and as a former Army sergeant who had spirited training manuals
out of Fort Bragg while stationed there during the 1980s. So Mohammed remained a free man,
helping Al Qaeda plan attacks on American consular facilities in Tanzania and Kenya while the
"Day of the Planes" plot began to take form.
In early 2000, some people gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to prepare the most daring Al
Qaeda operation to date. Two figures at the meeting, Saudi citizens named Nawaf al-Hazmi and
Khalid al-Midhar, were on their way to the United States. While in Kuala Lumpur, the duo's
hotel room was broken into by CIA agents, their passports were photographed, and their
communications were recorded. And yet the pair of Al Qaeda operatives was able to travel
together with multiple-entry visas on a direct flight from Kuala Lumpur to Los Angeles. That's
because for some reason, some people from the CIA failed to notify any people at the FBI about
the terror summit that had just taken place. The "Day of Planes" plot was moving forward
without a kink.
In Los Angeles, some people met Hazmi and Midhar at the airport, provided the two
non-English speakers with a personal caretaker and rented them apartments, where neighbors said
they were routinely visited each night by unknown figures in expensive cars with darkened
windows. Those people were Saudi Arabian intelligence agents named Omar Bayoumi and Khaled
al-Thumairy.
Crawford , Texas
It was not until August 2001 that Midhar was placed on a terrorist watch list. That month,
some people met at a ranch in Crawford, Texas, and reviewed a classified document headlined,
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US." The bulletin was a page-and-a-half long, with
detailed intelligence on the "Day of Planes" plot provided by Ali Mohammed, the Al
Qaeda-FBI-CIA triple agent now registered as "John Doe" and disappeared somewhere in the
federal prison system. Those people reviewed the document for a few minutes before their boss,
President George W. Bush, moved on to other matters.
According to The Washington Post , Bush exhibited an "expansive mood" that day,
taking in a round of golf. "We are going to be struck soon, many Americans are going to die,
and it could be in the U.S.," CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black warned days later. Bush
did not meet with his cabinet heads again to discuss terrorism until Sept. 4.
A week later, on Sept. 11, some people did something.
They hijacked four civilian airliners and changed the course of American history with little
more than box cutter blades in their hands. Fifteen of those 19 people, including Hazmi and
Midhar, were citizens of Saudi Arabia. They were products of a Wahhabi school system and a
politically stultifying society that had thrived under the protection of a special relationship
with the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. had showered theocratic allies like Saudi Arabia with aid and
weapons while threatening secular Arab states that resisted its hegemony with sanctions and
invasion. The Saudis were the favorite Muslims of America's national security elite not because
they were moderate, which they absolutely were not, but because they were useful.
In the days after 9/11, the FBI
organized several flights to evacuate prominent Saudi families from the U.S., including
relatives of Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, Islamophobia erupted across the country, with even
mainstream personalities such as TV news anchor Dan Rather taking to the airwaves to claim
without evidence that Arab-Americans had celebrated the 9/11 attacks.
Unable to find a single operational Al Qaeda cell in the country, the FBI turned to an army
of paid snitches to haul in mentally unstable Muslims, dupes and idlers like the Lackawanna 6
in manufactured plots. Desperate for a high-profile bust to reinforce the "war on terror"
narrative, the bureau hounded Palestinian Muslim activists and persecuted prominent Islamic
charities like the Holy Land Foundation, sending its directors to prison for decades for the
crime of sending aid to NGOs in the occupied Gaza Strip.
As America's national security state cracked down on Muslim civil society at home, it turned
to fanatical Islamist proxies abroad to bring down secular and politically independent Arab
states. In Libya, the U.S. and UK helped arm the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a longtime
affiliate of Al Qaeda, using it as a proxy to depose and murder Muammar Gaddafi. As that
country transformed from a stable, prosperous state into an Afghanistan-style playground for
rival militias, including a chapter of the Islamic State, the Obama administration moved to do
the same to Damascus.
In Syria, the CIA armed an outfit of supposedly "moderate rebels" called the Free Syrian
Army that turned out to be nothing more than a political front and weapons farm for an array of
extremist insurgent factions including Al Qaeda's local affiliate and the Islamic State. The
latter two groups were, of course, products of the sectarian chaos of Iraq, which had been
ruled by a secular government until the U.S. came knocking after 9/11.
The blowback from Iraq, Libya and Syria arrived in the form of the worst refugee crises the
world has experienced since World War II. And then came the bloodiest terror attack to hit the
UK in history – in Manchester. There, the son of a Libyan Islamic Fighting Group member,
who traveled to Libya and Syria on an MI6 ratline, slaughtered concert-goers with a nail
bomb.
Cataclysmic social disruptions like these were like steroids for right-wing Islamophobes,
electrifying Trump's victorious 2016 presidential campaign, a wing of the Brexit "Leave"
campaign in the UK, and far-right parties across Europe. But as I explain in "The Management of
Savagery," these terrifying trends were byproducts of decisions undertaken by national security
elites more closely aligned with the political center – figures who today attempt to
position themselves as leaders of the anti-Trump resistance.
Which people did which things to drag us into the political nightmare we're living through?
For those willing to cut through the campaign season bluster, Ilhan Omar's comments dare us to
name names.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling
" Republican
Gomorrah ," " Goliath ," "
The
Fifty One Day War " and " The Management of
Savagery ," published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles
for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including "
Killing Gaza " and "
Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie ." Blumenthal founded the
Grayzone in 2015 to shine a
journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic
repercussions. 36 comments for "Behind the Omar Outrage: Suppressed History of 9/11"
Jeff Harrison , April 19, 2019 at 11:24
The US doesn't seem to have the ability to see ourselves as others see us. This explains
why we don't understand why other countries/peoples react badly towards us. This will get
worse as we move into a more imperialistic mode. We continue to use the anachronistic phrase
"leader of the free world" all the while missing out on the fact that the rest of the world
has, in essence, become free and they, for the most part, don't want us leading them.
bill haymes , April 19, 2019 at 05:20
everyone who has not examined ALL THE EVIDENCE of 9/11 WITH AN OPEN MIND is imo simply
whistling in the wind
Anarcissie , April 19, 2019 at 11:12
I suppose, then, that that would mean going back to the earliest days of the 20th century,
when the British leadership, considering that its future navy, a main pillar of its empire,
would have to be fueled with oil instead of coal, and that there was a lot of oil in the
Middle East, began its imperial projects there, which of course involved wars, police, spies,
economic blackmail, and other tools of empire. The US seized or wangled or inherited the
imperial system from the British and thus acquired the associated regional, ethnic, and
religious hostilities as well. Since the Arabs and other Muslims were weak compared with the
Great Powers, resistance meant terrorism and guerrilla warfare on one side and massive
intervention and the support of local strongmen, Mafia bosses, dictators, and so on on the
other.
After 9/11. mentioning this important fact became 'justifying bin Laden' or 'spitting on
the graves of the dead' so you couldn't talk about it.
But, yes, 'somebody did something'. You don't need a conspiracy theory, because a
conspiracy is a secret agreement to commit a crime, and this crime is right out in the open.
Millions of people killed for fun and profit. Not that there weren't other conspiracies as
well.
Abe , April 18, 2019 at 23:23
Behind the Omar Outrage: Suppressed History of the pro-Israel Lobby
Max Blumenthal's article and his 2019 book, The Management of Savagery: How America's
National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump (2019), is an
impressive exercise in burying the leads.
Blumenthal does chronicle a decades-long panoply of active measures by numerous pro-Israel
Lobby figures, groups and think tanks. Yet he fails to explicitly recognize the connection
between pro-Israel Lobby efforts and the covert operations and overt invasions of America's
national security state.
Julian Assange of Wikileaks was more explicit. Assange named the "country that has
interfered in U.S. elections, has endangered Americans living or working overseas and has
corrupted America's legislative and executive branches. It has exploited that corruption to
initiate legislation favorable to itself, has promoted unnecessary and unwinnable wars and
has stolen American technology and military secrets. Its ready access to the mainstream media
to spread its own propaganda provides it with cover for its actions and it accomplishes all
that and more through the agency of a powerful and well-funded domestic lobby [ ] That
country is, of course, Israel."
i really like her and support her but if she just had the good sense to have simply said
"some people did something terrible" none of the present chapter of "islamophobia" would be
acted out..no matter how much we think we know about the real truth(?) what happened that day
did not blow up the white house, congress or the ruling class of america but nearly three
thousand pretty ordinary folks yes, just like what "we" do repeatedly, but nevertheless, and
considering the overwhelming mind fuck that went on with replaying the tragedy on tv for days
so that millions across the nation were put in shock, we need to be just a little more
considerate and possibly understanding both about how many people might feel and how some
people might use any opportunity to perform this second rate islamophobia, which is a tiny
fractional form of the original monstrous behavior that has destroyed nations, governments
and millions of people in the islamic world..that is islamophobia, not the reactionary crap
that passes for it which should be as understandable – under the circumstances –
as terrorism!
Zhu , April 18, 2019 at 22:32
It should have been obvious that our government had made enemies around the world &
that some would attempt revenge some day. Instead, we all thought that what we did to other
people could never happen to us.
Joe Tedesky , April 18, 2019 at 21:41
This is a must read for the skeptics who doubt any questioning of the official 9/11
Commission Report. This investigative reporting by Max Blumenthal is another good reason to
read the Consortium.
hetro , April 18, 2019 at 17:18
Max Blumenthal's emphasis on "somebody did something" in echo to Ilhan Omar's comments,
plus his emphasis on what has been "suppressed," will hopefully lead on to further
disclosures of what took place for the 9/11 event.
Anyone who watches the Omar video will see she is mainly emphasizing a disgraceful
demonizing of Muslims in general. Additionally, what has brought on all the hatred to her,
she did not speak with the "quasi-theological understanding" that demands the official
narrative, with hushed tones, while speaking of the event:
Max Blumenthal above:
". . . by reinforcing the quasi-theological understanding of 9/11 that leaves anti-Muslim
narratives unchallenged. "The memory of 9/11 is sacred ground, and any discussion of it must
be done with reverence," insisted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi."
It would be a fine thing for CN, despite Mr. Parry's former reservations, to open up
enquiry into further discussion of what has been "suppressed"–or at the very least to
the very serious questions that have not yet been answered on that horrible day.
OlyaPola , April 18, 2019 at 14:17
"Trump's demagogic ploy with the freshman lawmaker raises the more serious question of who
and what led to the "Day of Planes," writes Max Blumenthal."
All processes of suppression tend to spread that which is being suppresed facilitating
de-suppression of much that is being suppressed leaving a residual.
Framing and access to sources may continue the lack of perception of this residual and
hence facilitate misrepresentation through ommission.
"Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert operation to trap the
Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft underbelly."
Restriction of frame is a tool of obfuscation and choice of point of initiation a tool of
misrepresentation.
During the early 1970's due to internal factors primarily but not wholly in the period of
1964 to 1970, the Politburo of the Soviet Union agreed detente on the bases of spheres of
influence with the United States of America facilitating the creation of a greater assay of
and reliance upon the US dollar fiat currency, further butressed by commodity arrangements
including but not restricted to the petro-dollar, in part to underpin the United States of
America economic recovery including recovering their control over their perceived threats
within their sphere of influence, particularly but not exclusively Japan.
In reaction/attempt at circumvention in 1973 Mitsui-Mitsubishi representing the zaibatsu
sought to jointly develop the Trans-Siberian railway, the port of Nahodka and other
industrial options including in Japan primarily in Northern Honshu and in Hokkaido with the
Soviet Union but this project was terminated by the Politburo, the reason given being
potential threats from China after confrontation including on the Amur and the need to build
BAM (Baikal-Amur Railway) to the north of the Trans-Siberian Railway – the projects
rejected were ancestor of the present OBOR project with differing participants re-explored
from 1993 onwards.
These opportunities and trajectories in the 1970's were explained to the Politburo in the
1970's but rejected by the Politburo.
The Soviet Union was invited into Afghanistan by the Afghani government and hence never
"invaded" Afghanistan.
The Politburo accepted the invitation of the Afghani government despite the advice of
those practiced in strategic evaluation – the illusion that the Politburo was practiced
in strategic evaluation endured in an ideological half-life post August 1968 but increasingly
was ignored in practice.
During the 1970's there was an oscillating aspect of contrariness and attempt to regain
perceived control in many of the decision of the Politburo led by the man who loved medals
and awards Mr. Brezhnev.
Consequently the Politburo and the Soviet Union was complicit in facilitating
opportunities for " Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert
operation to trap the Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft
underbelly."
However the targets of these operations were not restricted to the Soviet Union but
included as part of an ongoing "strategy" "to underpin the United States of America economic
recovery/maintainence including recovering/maintaining their control over their perceived
threats within their sphere of influence, particularly but not exclusively Japan." and the
location of these efforts were chosen the middle of Central Asia in reaction to experiences
in Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Israel post 1973.
The above are necessarily thumbnails in confirmation and extension of the not widely
perceived causation/facilitation/ history/trajectories/time horizons which may aid
perception, as may testing the hypotheses that Ms. Omar is being attacked for challenging
myth irrespective of which myth she attempts to challenge.
"... But, yes, 'somebody did something'. You don't need a conspiracy theory, because a conspiracy is a secret agreement to commit a crime, and this crime is right out in the open. Millions of people killed for fun and profit. Not that there weren't other conspiracies as well. ..."
Trump's demagogic ploy with the freshman lawmaker raises the more serious question of who
and what led to the "Day of Planes," writes Max Blumenthal.
... ... ...
To effectively puncture Trump's demagogic ploys, the
discussion of 9/11 must move beyond a superficial defense of Omar and into an exploration of a
critical history that has been suppressed. This history begins at least 20 years before the
attacks occurred, when "some people did something." Many of those people served at the highest
levels of U.S. government, and the things they did led to the establishment of Al Qaeda as an
international network – and ultimately, to 9/11 itself.
Taliban 'Unimportant'
Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert operation to trap the
Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft underbelly. They put heavy
weapons in the hands of Islamist warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, dispatched Salafi
clerics such as "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman to the battlefield, and printed millions of
dollars worth of textbooks for Afghan children that contained math equations encouraging them
to commit acts of violent martyrdom against Soviet soldiers. They did anything they could to
wreak havoc on the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.
These people were so hellbent on smashing the Soviet Union that they made common cause
with the Islamist dictatorship of Pakistan's Zia-ul-Haq and the House of Saud. With direct
assistance from the intelligence services of these U.S. allies, Osama bin Laden, the scion of
Saudi wealth, set up his Services Bureau on the Afghan border as a waystation for foreign
Islamist fighters.
These people even channeled funding to bin Laden so he could build training camps along the
Afghan-Pakistan border for the so-called freedom fighters of the mujahideen. And they kept
watch over a ratline that shepherded young Muslim men from the West to the front lines of the
Afghan proxy war, using them as cannon fodder for a cold-blooded, imperial operation marketed
by the Wahhabi clergy in Saudi Arabia as a holy obligation.
These people were in the CIA, USAID, and the National Security Council. Others, with names
like Charlie Wilson, Jesse Helms, Jack Murtha, and Joe Biden, held seats on both sides of the
aisle in Congress.
When they finally got what they wanted, dislodging a secular government that had provided
Afghan women with unprecedented access to education, their proxies plunged Afghanistan into a
war of the warlords that saw half of Kabul turned to rubble, paving the way for the rise of the
Taliban. And these people remained totally unrepentant about the monster they had created.
"Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?"
remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski, the former NSC director who sold President Jimmy Carter on the
Afghan proxy war. "So yes, compared to the Soviet Union, and to its collapse, the Taliban were
unimportant."
To some in Washington, the Taliban were a historical footnote. To others, they were allies
of convenience. As a top State Department diplomat commented to journalist Ahmed Rashid in
February 1997, "The Taliban will probably develop like Saudi Arabia. There be [the Saudi-owned
oil company] Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with
that."
CIA Cover-ups and Blowback
Back in the U.S., some people fueled the blowback from the Afghan proxy war. The Blind
Sheikh was given a special entry visa by the CIA as payback for the services he provided in
Afghanistan, allowing him to take over the al-Kifah Center in New York City, which had
functioned as the de facto U.S. arm of Al Qaeda's Services Bureau. Under his watch and with
help from bin Laden, some people and lots of aid were shuttled to the front lines of U.S. proxy
wars in Bosnia and Chechnya while the Clinton administration generally looked the other
way.
Though the Blind Sheikh was eventually convicted in a terror plot contrived by a paid
informant for the FBI, some people in federal law enforcement had been reluctant to indict him.
"There was a whole issue about [Abdel-Rahman] being given a visa to come into this country and
what the circumstances were around that," one of his defense lawyers, Abdeed Jabara told me.
"The issue related to how much the government was involved with the jihadist enterprise when it
suited their purposes in Afghanistan and whether or not they were afraid there would be
exposure of that. Because there's no question that the jihadists were using the Americans and
the Americans were using the jihadists. There's a symbiotic relationship."
During the 1995 trial of members of the Blind Sheikh's New York-based cell, another defense
lawyer, Roger Stavis, referred to his clients before the jury as "Team America," emphasizing
the role they had played as proxy fighters for the U.S. in Afghanistan. When Stavis attempted
to summon to the witness stand a jihadist operative named Ali Abdelsauod Mohammed who had
trained his clients in firearms and combat, some people ordered Mohammed to refuse his
subpoena. Those people, according to journalist Peter Lance, were federal prosecutors Andrew
McCarthy and Patrick Fitzgerald.
The government lawyers were apparently fretting that Mohammed would be exposed as an active
asset of both the CIA and FBI, and as a former Army sergeant who had spirited training manuals
out of Fort Bragg while stationed there during the 1980s. So Mohammed remained a free man,
helping Al Qaeda plan attacks on American consular facilities in Tanzania and Kenya while the
"Day of the Planes" plot began to take form.
In early 2000, some people gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to prepare the most daring Al
Qaeda operation to date. Two figures at the meeting, Saudi citizens named Nawaf al-Hazmi and
Khalid al-Midhar, were on their way to the United States. While in Kuala Lumpur, the duo's
hotel room was broken into by CIA agents, their passports were photographed, and their
communications were recorded. And yet the pair of Al Qaeda operatives was able to travel
together with multiple-entry visas on a direct flight from Kuala Lumpur to Los Angeles. That's
because for some reason, some people from the CIA failed to notify any people at the FBI about
the terror summit that had just taken place. The "Day of Planes" plot was moving forward
without a kink.
In Los Angeles, some people met Hazmi and Midhar at the airport, provided the two
non-English speakers with a personal caretaker and rented them apartments, where neighbors said
they were routinely visited each night by unknown figures in expensive cars with darkened
windows. Those people were Saudi Arabian intelligence agents named Omar Bayoumi and Khaled
al-Thumairy.
Crawford , Texas
It was not until August 2001 that Midhar was placed on a terrorist watch list. That month,
some people met at a ranch in Crawford, Texas, and reviewed a classified document headlined,
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US." The bulletin was a page-and-a-half long, with
detailed intelligence on the "Day of Planes" plot provided by Ali Mohammed, the Al
Qaeda-FBI-CIA triple agent now registered as "John Doe" and disappeared somewhere in the
federal prison system. Those people reviewed the document for a few minutes before their boss,
President George W. Bush, moved on to other matters.
According to The Washington Post , Bush exhibited an "expansive mood" that day,
taking in a round of golf. "We are going to be struck soon, many Americans are going to die,
and it could be in the U.S.," CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black warned days later. Bush
did not meet with his cabinet heads again to discuss terrorism until Sept. 4.
A week later, on Sept. 11, some people did something.
They hijacked four civilian airliners and changed the course of American history with little
more than box cutter blades in their hands. Fifteen of those 19 people, including Hazmi and
Midhar, were citizens of Saudi Arabia. They were products of a Wahhabi school system and a
politically stultifying society that had thrived under the protection of a special relationship
with the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. had showered theocratic allies like Saudi Arabia with aid and
weapons while threatening secular Arab states that resisted its hegemony with sanctions and
invasion. The Saudis were the favorite Muslims of America's national security elite not because
they were moderate, which they absolutely were not, but because they were useful.
In the days after 9/11, the FBI
organized several flights to evacuate prominent Saudi families from the U.S., including
relatives of Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, Islamophobia erupted across the country, with even
mainstream personalities such as TV news anchor Dan Rather taking to the airwaves to claim
without evidence that Arab-Americans had celebrated the 9/11 attacks.
Unable to find a single operational Al Qaeda cell in the country, the FBI turned to an army
of paid snitches to haul in mentally unstable Muslims, dupes and idlers like the Lackawanna 6
in manufactured plots. Desperate for a high-profile bust to reinforce the "war on terror"
narrative, the bureau hounded Palestinian Muslim activists and persecuted prominent Islamic
charities like the Holy Land Foundation, sending its directors to prison for decades for the
crime of sending aid to NGOs in the occupied Gaza Strip.
As America's national security state cracked down on Muslim civil society at home, it turned
to fanatical Islamist proxies abroad to bring down secular and politically independent Arab
states. In Libya, the U.S. and UK helped arm the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a longtime
affiliate of Al Qaeda, using it as a proxy to depose and murder Muammar Gaddafi. As that
country transformed from a stable, prosperous state into an Afghanistan-style playground for
rival militias, including a chapter of the Islamic State, the Obama administration moved to do
the same to Damascus.
In Syria, the CIA armed an outfit of supposedly "moderate rebels" called the Free Syrian
Army that turned out to be nothing more than a political front and weapons farm for an array of
extremist insurgent factions including Al Qaeda's local affiliate and the Islamic State. The
latter two groups were, of course, products of the sectarian chaos of Iraq, which had been
ruled by a secular government until the U.S. came knocking after 9/11.
The blowback from Iraq, Libya and Syria arrived in the form of the worst refugee crises the
world has experienced since World War II. And then came the bloodiest terror attack to hit the
UK in history – in Manchester. There, the son of a Libyan Islamic Fighting Group member,
who traveled to Libya and Syria on an MI6 ratline, slaughtered concert-goers with a nail
bomb.
Cataclysmic social disruptions like these were like steroids for right-wing Islamophobes,
electrifying Trump's victorious 2016 presidential campaign, a wing of the Brexit "Leave"
campaign in the UK, and far-right parties across Europe. But as I explain in "The Management of
Savagery," these terrifying trends were byproducts of decisions undertaken by national security
elites more closely aligned with the political center – figures who today attempt to
position themselves as leaders of the anti-Trump resistance.
Which people did which things to drag us into the political nightmare we're living through?
For those willing to cut through the campaign season bluster, Ilhan Omar's comments dare us to
name names.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling
" Republican
Gomorrah ," " Goliath ," "
The
Fifty One Day War " and " The Management of
Savagery ," published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles
for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including "
Killing Gaza " and "
Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie ." Blumenthal founded the
Grayzone in 2015 to shine a
journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic
repercussions. 36 comments for "Behind the Omar Outrage: Suppressed History of 9/11"
Jeff Harrison , April 19, 2019 at 11:24
The US doesn't seem to have the ability to see ourselves as others see us. This explains
why we don't understand why other countries/peoples react badly towards us. This will get
worse as we move into a more imperialistic mode. We continue to use the anachronistic phrase
"leader of the free world" all the while missing out on the fact that the rest of the world
has, in essence, become free and they, for the most part, don't want us leading them.
bill haymes , April 19, 2019 at 05:20
everyone who has not examined ALL THE EVIDENCE of 9/11 WITH AN OPEN MIND is imo simply
whistling in the wind
Anarcissie , April 19, 2019 at 11:12
I suppose, then, that that would mean going back to the earliest days of the 20th century,
when the British leadership, considering that its future navy, a main pillar of its empire,
would have to be fueled with oil instead of coal, and that there was a lot of oil in the
Middle East, began its imperial projects there, which of course involved wars, police, spies,
economic blackmail, and other tools of empire. The US seized or wangled or inherited the
imperial system from the British and thus acquired the associated regional, ethnic, and
religious hostilities as well. Since the Arabs and other Muslims were weak compared with the
Great Powers, resistance meant terrorism and guerrilla warfare on one side and massive
intervention and the support of local strongmen, Mafia bosses, dictators, and so on on the
other.
After 9/11. mentioning this important fact became 'justifying bin Laden' or 'spitting on
the graves of the dead' so you couldn't talk about it.
But, yes, 'somebody did something'. You don't need a conspiracy theory, because a
conspiracy is a secret agreement to commit a crime, and this crime is right out in the open.
Millions of people killed for fun and profit. Not that there weren't other conspiracies as
well.
Abe , April 18, 2019 at 23:23
Behind the Omar Outrage: Suppressed History of the pro-Israel Lobby
Max Blumenthal's article and his 2019 book, The Management of Savagery: How America's
National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump (2019), is an
impressive exercise in burying the leads.
Blumenthal does chronicle a decades-long panoply of active measures by numerous pro-Israel
Lobby figures, groups and think tanks. Yet he fails to explicitly recognize the connection
between pro-Israel Lobby efforts and the covert operations and overt invasions of America's
national security state.
Julian Assange of Wikileaks was more explicit. Assange named the "country that has
interfered in U.S. elections, has endangered Americans living or working overseas and has
corrupted America's legislative and executive branches. It has exploited that corruption to
initiate legislation favorable to itself, has promoted unnecessary and unwinnable wars and
has stolen American technology and military secrets. Its ready access to the mainstream media
to spread its own propaganda provides it with cover for its actions and it accomplishes all
that and more through the agency of a powerful and well-funded domestic lobby [ ] That
country is, of course, Israel."
i really like her and support her but if she just had the good sense to have simply said
"some people did something terrible" none of the present chapter of "islamophobia" would be
acted out..no matter how much we think we know about the real truth(?) what happened that day
did not blow up the white house, congress or the ruling class of america but nearly three
thousand pretty ordinary folks yes, just like what "we" do repeatedly, but nevertheless, and
considering the overwhelming mind fuck that went on with replaying the tragedy on tv for days
so that millions across the nation were put in shock, we need to be just a little more
considerate and possibly understanding both about how many people might feel and how some
people might use any opportunity to perform this second rate islamophobia, which is a tiny
fractional form of the original monstrous behavior that has destroyed nations, governments
and millions of people in the islamic world..that is islamophobia, not the reactionary crap
that passes for it which should be as understandable – under the circumstances –
as terrorism!
Zhu , April 18, 2019 at 22:32
It should have been obvious that our government had made enemies around the world &
that some would attempt revenge some day. Instead, we all thought that what we did to other
people could never happen to us.
Joe Tedesky , April 18, 2019 at 21:41
This is a must read for the skeptics who doubt any questioning of the official 9/11
Commission Report. This investigative reporting by Max Blumenthal is another good reason to
read the Consortium.
hetro , April 18, 2019 at 17:18
Max Blumenthal's emphasis on "somebody did something" in echo to Ilhan Omar's comments,
plus his emphasis on what has been "suppressed," will hopefully lead on to further
disclosures of what took place for the 9/11 event.
Anyone who watches the Omar video will see she is mainly emphasizing a disgraceful
demonizing of Muslims in general. Additionally, what has brought on all the hatred to her,
she did not speak with the "quasi-theological understanding" that demands the official
narrative, with hushed tones, while speaking of the event:
Max Blumenthal above:
". . . by reinforcing the quasi-theological understanding of 9/11 that leaves anti-Muslim
narratives unchallenged. "The memory of 9/11 is sacred ground, and any discussion of it must
be done with reverence," insisted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi."
It would be a fine thing for CN, despite Mr. Parry's former reservations, to open up
enquiry into further discussion of what has been "suppressed"–or at the very least to
the very serious questions that have not yet been answered on that horrible day.
OlyaPola , April 18, 2019 at 14:17
"Trump's demagogic ploy with the freshman lawmaker raises the more serious question of who
and what led to the "Day of Planes," writes Max Blumenthal."
All processes of suppression tend to spread that which is being suppresed facilitating
de-suppression of much that is being suppressed leaving a residual.
Framing and access to sources may continue the lack of perception of this residual and
hence facilitate misrepresentation through ommission.
"Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert operation to trap the
Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft underbelly."
Restriction of frame is a tool of obfuscation and choice of point of initiation a tool of
misrepresentation.
During the early 1970's due to internal factors primarily but not wholly in the period of
1964 to 1970, the Politburo of the Soviet Union agreed detente on the bases of spheres of
influence with the United States of America facilitating the creation of a greater assay of
and reliance upon the US dollar fiat currency, further butressed by commodity arrangements
including but not restricted to the petro-dollar, in part to underpin the United States of
America economic recovery including recovering their control over their perceived threats
within their sphere of influence, particularly but not exclusively Japan.
In reaction/attempt at circumvention in 1973 Mitsui-Mitsubishi representing the zaibatsu
sought to jointly develop the Trans-Siberian railway, the port of Nahodka and other
industrial options including in Japan primarily in Northern Honshu and in Hokkaido with the
Soviet Union but this project was terminated by the Politburo, the reason given being
potential threats from China after confrontation including on the Amur and the need to build
BAM (Baikal-Amur Railway) to the north of the Trans-Siberian Railway – the projects
rejected were ancestor of the present OBOR project with differing participants re-explored
from 1993 onwards.
These opportunities and trajectories in the 1970's were explained to the Politburo in the
1970's but rejected by the Politburo.
The Soviet Union was invited into Afghanistan by the Afghani government and hence never
"invaded" Afghanistan.
The Politburo accepted the invitation of the Afghani government despite the advice of
those practiced in strategic evaluation – the illusion that the Politburo was practiced
in strategic evaluation endured in an ideological half-life post August 1968 but increasingly
was ignored in practice.
During the 1970's there was an oscillating aspect of contrariness and attempt to regain
perceived control in many of the decision of the Politburo led by the man who loved medals
and awards Mr. Brezhnev.
Consequently the Politburo and the Soviet Union was complicit in facilitating
opportunities for " Back in 1979, some people initiated a multi-billion-dollar covert
operation to trap the Red Army in Afghanistan and bleed the Soviet Union at its soft
underbelly."
However the targets of these operations were not restricted to the Soviet Union but
included as part of an ongoing "strategy" "to underpin the United States of America economic
recovery/maintainence including recovering/maintaining their control over their perceived
threats within their sphere of influence, particularly but not exclusively Japan." and the
location of these efforts were chosen the middle of Central Asia in reaction to experiences
in Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Israel post 1973.
The above are necessarily thumbnails in confirmation and extension of the not widely
perceived causation/facilitation/ history/trajectories/time horizons which may aid
perception, as may testing the hypotheses that Ms. Omar is being attacked for challenging
myth irrespective of which myth she attempts to challenge.
Just a cynical take, but implying that there are lessons to be learned from previous or present wars that should keep us from
engaging in future wars presumes that the goal is to, where possible, actually avoid war.
It also suggests a convenient, simplistic narrative that the military/DOD is incompetent and stupid, and unable to learn from
previous engagements.
I wonder if the Middle East is nothing more than a live-fire laboratory for the military; if it seems as though there is no
plan, no objective, no victory for these engagements, maybe that is because the only objectives and victory are to provide practical
war training for our troops, test equipment and tactics, keep defense contractors employed and the Pentagon's budget inflated,
and to project power and provide a convenient excuse for proximity to our 'real' enemies.
Draping these actions under a pretense of spreading 'peace and democracy' is just a pretense and, as we can see by our track
record, has nothing to do with actual victory. "Victory", depending on who you ask, is measured in years of engagement and dollars
spent, period.
And because it is primarily taking place in the far away and poorly understood Middle East, it is never going to be enough
of an issue with voters for politicians to have to seriously contend with.
This person is a crybaby. At 49 he went to a war that most rational people knew already, was an immoral, illegal waste of people,
time and money. But now he wants to whine about PTSD. I have the same opinion about most soldiers who fought there also. Nobody
made them volunteer for that junk war so quit whining when things get a little hard
"... That 93% of all personnel that are employed by the CIA are paper pushers in Langley and just 7% are in the field, of which I read sometime ago, has a ring of truth to me. ..."
Anyone remember Mullah Omar, the deceased leader of the Taliban? The U.S. military and intelligence services claimed over and
over again that he was hiding in Pakistan. Bette Dam
finds (pdf) that he wasn't:
After 2001, Mullah Omar never stepped foot in Pakistan, instead opting to hide in his native land -- and for eight years,
lived just a few miles from a major U.S. Forward Operating Base that housed thousands of soldiers.
In late 2001, after the U.S. invasion, Mullah Omar resigned as leader of the Taliban and the movement officially surrendered
to Hamid Karzai who promised them reconciliation. The U.S. did not like that and launched a vengeful campaign against all former
Taliban member. Eighteen years later the U.S. is suing for peace.
Mullah Omar lived quietly, meditated and studied religious text. Allah remarked on his death:
On April 23, 2013, Mullah Omar passed away. That day, Jabbar Omari told me, the hot, dry lands of southern Afghanistan experienced
something he'd never seen before: a hail storm. I assumed it was hagiographic bluster, but later I found a U.S. army publication
referring to that day: "More than 80 Task Force Falcon helicopters were damaged when a sudden unprecedented hailstorm hit
Kandahar Airfield April 23, where nearly half of the brigade's helicopters were parked."
The fact that Mullah Omar's death was suppressed for two years even from high-level official sources, indicates to me that the
theory bin Laden died in 2001 is very plausible. We even have a similar progression of statements regarding their respective health,
doubts of whether they were alive at the respective time, etc.
Of course, both terror leaders were kept "alive" for geopolitical reasons. Once ISIS (and later Russia/China) took over as
a serious threat in the corporate media narrative, they no longer had to cling to those old phantoms.
The story on Omar is astonishing, but to me not surprising. If the US spends billions on finding one guy, and at the end of the
day, he is literally just down the road, it shows how incompetent and useless our intelligence gathering has become.
That 93% of all personnel that are employed by the CIA are paper pushers in Langley and just 7% are in the field, of which
I read sometime ago, has a ring of truth to me.
Stupidity has a firm grip on our rulers, and they are getting, not only us but many others, killed for absolutely no reason.
And the dunces called the American voter, keep re-electing them. It leaves me breathless.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee members Rand Paul
(R-KY) and Tom Udall (D-NM) introduced the 2019 American Forces Going Home After Noble (AFGHAN)
Service Act to end America's longest war, honor the volunteers who bravely serve our nation by
providing bonuses to those who have deployed in support of the Global War on Terrorism, and
redirect the savings from ending nation-building in Afghanistan to America's needs at home.
Though American troops achieved what they were sent to carry out in October 2001, the
mission shift to nation-building has kept our forces in Afghanistan over 17 years later. Over
2,300 military members have sacrificed their lives in the war, with another 20,000 wounded in
action. In addition, the Afghanistan war has cost the United States $2 trillion, with the war
currently costing over $51 billion a year.
"Endless war weakens our national security, robs this and future generations through
skyrocketing debt, and creates more enemies to threaten us. For over 17 years, our soldiers
have gone above and beyond what has been asked of them in Afghanistan. It is time to declare
the victory we achieved long ago, bring them home, and put America's needs first," said Sen.
Paul .
"Soon, U.S. service members will begin deploying to Afghanistan to fight in a war that began
before they were born. As we face this watershed moment, it's past time to change our approach
to the longest war in our country's history," said Sen. Udall . "Our armed forces in
Afghanistan, including many from New Mexico, have served with exceptional valor and
effectiveness in the face of extraordinary challenges. After expelling the Taliban from power
and dismantling Al Qaeda's base of power in Afghanistan, they enabled a new Afghan government
to be formed while also eliminating Osama Bin Laden. But it is Congress that has failed to
conduct the proper oversight of this nearly 18-year war. Now, we must step up, and listen to
the American people -- who rightly question the wisdom of such endless wars. This bipartisan
resolution would bring our troops home at long last, while implementing a framework for
reconciliation."
The 2019 AFGHAN Service Act
• Declares victory in Afghanistan. The masterminds of the 9/11 attack are no longer
capable of carrying out such an attack from Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011,
and Al Qaeda has been all but eliminated from Afghanistan.
• Pays, within one year, a $2,500 bonus to all members of the military who have served
in the Global War on Terrorism. Since 2001, more than 3,002,635 men and women have deployed
overseas in support of this effort. This would be a one-time cost of approximately $7 billion
and an immediate savings of over 83% when compared to the current yearly costs. The $51 billion
a year can be redirected to domestic priorities.
• Additionally, there is precedent for service bonuses going back to the Revolutionary
War.
• Sets guidelines for withdrawal. Within 45 days, a plan will be formulated for an orderly
withdrawal and turnover of facilities to the Afghan Government, while also setting a framework
for political reconciliation to be implemented by Afghans in accordance with the Afghan
Constitution. Within a year, all U.S. forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan.
• At the completion of withdrawal, the 2001 AUMF will be repealed.
You can read the entire 2019 AFGHAN Service Act below:
Never believe the CIA. Ever! January 26, 2019 CIA Was Aiding Jihadists Before Soviets
Invaded Afghanistan
According to recently declassified documents of the White House, CIA and State Department
as reported by Tim Weiner for The Washington Post, the CIA was aiding Afghan jihadists before
the Soviets invaded in 1979. The then American President Jimmy Carter signed the CIA
directive to arm the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the former Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan in December the same year.
Author Originally, there were four parties involved in the Afghan conflict which are
mainly responsible for the debacle in the Af-Pak region. Firstly, the former Soviet Union
which invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Secondly, Pakistan's security agencies which
nurtured the Afghan so-called "mujahideen" (freedom fighters) on the behest of
Washington.
what you say is true and correct. Fast forward to 2019. I never thought I would have to
believe those "authorities" or organizations to stop our own president. How far down the
rabbit hole we are. Keep it up . I should mention that consortium news was one of the sites
that was hit by a barrage of not true things. Do you remember KIllary Shillary, world war 3
on this website? That is when I stopped. No defence of Ms Clinton, but the attacks were
relentless. I do believe consortium news was hijacked by some really partisan people.
OlyaPola , February 22, 2019 at 3:12 am
"Before Soviets Invaded Afghanistan"
The Soviet forces were invited to Afghanistan by the Afghani Government – they never
invaded Afghanistan or Syria.
"... Now the Times acknowledges: "The price tag, which includes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and increased spending on veterans' care, will reach $5.9 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2019, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University. Since nearly all of that money has been borrowed, the total cost with interest will be substantially higher More than 2.7 million Americans have fought in the war since 2001. Nearly 7,000 service members-and nearly 8,000 private contractors-have been killed. More than 53,700 people returned home bearing physical wounds, and numberless more carry psychological injuries. More than one million Americans who served in a theater of the war on terror receive some level of disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs." ..."
"... Kagan has a great deal invested in the Afghanistan war. He and his wife Kimberly served as civilian advisers to top generals who directed the war and elaborated the failed strategies of counterinsurgency (COIN). He has been a vociferous supporter of every US war and every escalation, arguing most recently for the US military to confront Russian- and Iranian-backed forces in Syria. ..."
"... A leading figure in the Democratic Party, Smeal is no Jane-come-lately to the filthy campaign to promote the war in Afghanistan as a "humanitarian" exercise in promoting the rights of women ..."
"... Aside from costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Afghan women, the US war has left women, like the entire population, under worse conditions than when it began. Two-thirds of Afghan girls do not attend school, 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate, and 70-80 percent face forced marriage, many before the age of 16. ..."
"... The attempt by the likes of Smeal and leading elements within the Democratic Party to cloak the bloodbath in Afghanistan as a crusade to "liberate" women and promote "democracy" is itself a criminal act. ..."
"... Afghanistan is a shitshow due to elite meddling. This editorial was nothing more than virtue-signaling to those that still hate war. But the anti-war movement is effectively dead anyway. There are anti-war people, but no anti-war movement. That's the crowd that the New York Times was appealing to. This is a stunt; nothing more. ..."
"... It was USA imperialism (under Carter and Brzezinski) which first had made Afghanistan a hell for women, but colonial feminists do not care for the facts. ..."
"... That is very true. "Death by a thousand cuts" was Brzezinski's scheme to destroy the Soviet Union in Central Asia. A few years ago, he was interviewed by a journalist from PRC who asked if he had any regrets with all the destruction and death it caused. Brzezinski said, "None". ..."
An editorial published by the New York Times on February 4 titled "End the War in Afghanistan" has provoked a backlash from prominent
supporters of the decades-long US "war on terrorism" and the fraud of "humanitarian intervention."
The Times editorial was a damning
self-indictment by the US political establishment's newspaper of record, which has supported every US act of military aggression,
from the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the US wars for regime change in Libya
and Syria beginning in 2011.
The editorial presents the "war on terror" as an unmitigated fiasco, dating it from September 14, 2001, when "Congress wrote what
would prove to be one of the largest blank checks in the country's history," i.e., the Authorization for Use of Military Force against
Al Qaeda and its affiliates, which is still invoked to legitimize US interventions from Syria to Somalia, Yemen and, of course, Afghanistan.
On the day that this "blank check" was written, the Times published a column titled "No Middle Ground," which stated "the Bush
administration today gave the nations of the world a stark choice: stand with us against terrorism, deny safe havens to terrorists
or face the certain prospect of death and destruction. The marble halls of Washington resounded with talk of war."
It continued, "The nation is rallying around its young, largely untried leader-as his rising approval ratings and the proliferation
of flags across the country vividly demonstrate "
This war propaganda was sustained by the Times, which sold the invasion of Afghanistan as retribution for 9/11 and then promoted
the illegal and unprovoked war against Iraq by legitimizing and embellishing the lies about "weapons of mass destruction."
With the first deployment of US ground troops in Afghanistan, the Times editorialized on October 20, 2001: "Now the nation's soldiers
are going into battle in a distant and treacherous land, facing a determined and resourceful enemy. As they go, they should know
that the nation supports their cause and yearns for their success."
Now the Times acknowledges: "The price tag, which includes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and increased spending on veterans'
care, will reach $5.9 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2019, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University. Since nearly
all of that money has been borrowed, the total cost with interest will be substantially higher More than 2.7 million Americans have
fought in the war since 2001. Nearly 7,000 service members-and nearly 8,000 private contractors-have been killed. More than 53,700
people returned home bearing physical wounds, and numberless more carry psychological injuries. More than one million Americans who
served in a theater of the war on terror receive some level of disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs."
The massive loss of life, destruction of social infrastructure and vast human suffering inflicted by these wars on civilian populations
are at best an afterthought for the Times. Conservative estimates place the number killed by the US war in Afghanistan at 175,000.
With the number of indirect fatalities caused by the war, the toll likely rises to a million. In Iraq, the death toll was even higher.
What does the Times conclude from this bloody record? "The failure of American leaders-civilians and generals through three administrations,
from the Pentagon to the State Department to Congress and the White House-to develop and pursue a strategy to end the war ought to
be studied for generations. Likewise, all Americans-the news media included-need to be prepared to examine the national credulity
or passivity that's led to the longest conflict in modern American history."
What a cowardly and cynical evasion! Three administrations, those of Bush, Obama and Trump, have committed war crimes over the
course of more than 17 years, including launching wars of aggression-the principal charge leveled against the Nazis at Nuremberg-the
slaughter of civilians and torture. These crimes should not be "studied for generations," but punished.
As for the attempt to lump the news media together with "all Americans" as being guilty of "credulity" and "passivity," this is
a slander against the American people and a deliberate cover-up of the crimes carried out by the corporate media, with the Times
at their head, in disseminating outright lies and war propaganda. The Times editors should be "prepared to examine" the fact that
journalistic agents of the Nazi regime who carried out a similar function in Germany were tried and punished at Nuremberg.
The Times editorial supporting a US withdrawal reflects the conclusions being drawn by increasing sections of the ruling establishment,
including the Trump administration, which has opened up negotiations with the Taliban. It is bound up with the shift in strategy
by US imperialism and the Pentagon toward the preparation for "great power" confrontations with nuclear-armed Russia and China.
The Times ' call for an Afghanistan withdrawal has provoked a heated rebuke by defenders of the "war on terrorism" and "humanitarian
intervention," who have denounced the newspaper for defeatism. Such a withdrawal, a letter published by the Times on February 8 argued,
would "accelerate and expand the war," "allow another extremist-terrorist phenomenon to emerge," and "result in the deaths and abuse
of thousands of women."
The signatories of the letter include Frederick Kagan, David Sedney and Eleanor Smeal.
Kagan has a great deal invested in the Afghanistan war. He and his wife Kimberly served as civilian advisers to top generals
who directed the war and elaborated the failed strategies of counterinsurgency (COIN). He has been a vociferous supporter of every
US war and every escalation, arguing most recently for the US military to confront Russian- and Iranian-backed forces in Syria.
Likewise Sedney, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense responsible for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, now working
at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Married to a top lobbyist for Chevron who worked extensively
in Central Asia, he has his own interests in the continuation of US military operations in the region.
Smeal is the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMD) and a former president of the National Organization for Women
(NOW), who is widely described as one of "the major leaders of the modern-day American feminist movement."
A leading figure in the Democratic Party, Smeal is no Jane-come-lately to the filthy campaign to promote the war in Afghanistan
as a "humanitarian" exercise in promoting the rights of women. In 2001, Smeal and her FMD circulated a petition thanking the Bush
administration for its commitment to promoting the rights of women in Afghanistan. After the bombing began on October 7, she declared,
"We have real momentum now in the drive to restore the rights of women." A few days later, she and representatives of other feminist
organizations showed up at the White House to solidarize themselves with the US war.
Urging on the conquest of Afghanistan, she wrote, "I should hope our government doesn't retreat. We'll help rip those burqas off,
I hope. This is a unique time in history. If you're going to end terrorism, you've got to end the ideology of gender apartheid."
Aside from costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Afghan women, the US war has left women, like the entire population,
under worse conditions than when it began. Two-thirds of Afghan girls do not attend school, 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate,
and 70-80 percent face forced marriage, many before the age of 16.
Recent reports suggest that the maternal death rate may be higher than it was before the war began, surpassed only by South Sudan.
While USAID has poured some $280 million into its Promote program, supposedly to advance the conditions of Afghan women, it has done
nothing but line the pockets of corrupt officials of the US-backed puppet regime in Kabul.
The attempt by the likes of Smeal and leading elements within the Democratic Party to cloak the bloodbath in Afghanistan as a
crusade to "liberate" women and promote "democracy" is itself a criminal act.
On October 9, two days after Washington launched its now 17-year-long war on Afghanistan and amid a furor of jingoistic and militarist
propaganda from the US government and the corporate media, the World Socialist Web Site editorial board posted a column titled "Why
we oppose the war in Afghanistan." It rejected the claim that this was a "war for justice and the security of the American people
against terrorism" and insisted that "the present action by the United States is an imperialist war" in which Washington aimed to
"establish a new political framework within which it will exert hegemonic control" over not only Afghanistan, but over the broader
region of Central Asia, "home to the second largest deposit of proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world."
The WSWS stated at the time: "Despite a relentless media campaign to whip up chauvinism and militarism, the mood of the American
people is not one of gung-ho support for the war. At most, it is a passive acceptance that war is the only means to fight terrorism,
a mood that owes a great deal to the efforts of a thoroughly dishonest media which serves as an arm of the state. Beneath the reluctant
endorsement of military action is a profound sense of unease and skepticism. Tens of millions sense that nothing good can come of
this latest eruption of American militarism.
"The United States stands at a turning point. The government admits it has embarked on a war of indefinite scale and duration.
What is taking place is the militarization of American society under conditions of a deepening social crisis.
"The war will profoundly affect the conditions of the American and international working class. Imperialism threatens mankind
at the beginning of the twenty-first century with a repetition on a more horrific scale of the tragedies of the twentieth. More than
ever, imperialism and its depredations raise the necessity for the international unity of the working class and the struggle for
socialism."
These warnings and this perspective have been borne out entirely by the criminal and tragic events of the last 17 years, even
as the likes of the New York Times find themselves compelled to admit the bankruptcy of their entire record on Afghanistan, and their
erstwhile "liberal" allies struggle to salvage some shred of the filthy banner of "human rights imperialism."
"The failure of American leaders -- civilians and generals through three administrations, from the Pentagon to the State Department
to Congress and the White House -- to develop and pursue a strategy to end the war ought to be studied for generations. Likewise,
all Americans -- the news media included -- need to be prepared to examine the national credulity or passivity that's led to the
longest conflict in modern American history."
What the New York Times should propose is a Nuremberg-style trial for the war criminals responsible for the genocide of millions,
the devastation of of the Middle East and Africa, and the looting of the US Treasury by war profiteers and the political duopoly.
If these criminals are NOT held accountable for their actions NOTHING will be learned and the violence, death and destruction
will continue.
"The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law, acted as Head of State or responsible
government official, does not relieve him from responsibility under international law."
Gore Vidal rightly named America as the United States of Amnesia. They NEVER learn from their own history and they are never told
about what their terrorist government does in their name.
Eleanor Smeal's comment about "ripping off those burqas" in Afghanistan reminds me of Louisiana congressman John Cooksey's post-9/11
suggestion that police should pull over and question anyone with ''a diaper on his head''. Both use religious intolerance to increase
the power of the state.
"A leading figure in the Democratic Party, Smeal is no Jane-come-lately to the filthy campaign to promote the war in Afghanistan
as a "humanitarian" exercise in promoting the rights of women."
wouldn't it be more correctly "Janey comes lately" ..as in "Johnny come lately"..?
The completely insane fraud of waging imperialist war for "women rights" has been , unfortunately, extensively documented..the
US occupation has strengthened not weakened the Taliban
"The WSWS stated at the time: "Despite a relentless media campaign to whip up chauvinism and militarism, the mood of the American
people is not one of gung-ho support for the war. "
Not really in agreement with this statement although, everything has changed in almost 20 years.....
There are always elements that are gung ho for war. And I'll agree that the number was abnormally high for Afghanistan. But I
do think the majority still reluctantly agreed to the war as a necessary measure to fight "terrorism" as the more-than-likely-to-be-a-false-flag
9/11 event was very fresh in everyone's mind.
Afghanistan is a shitshow due to elite meddling. This editorial was nothing more than virtue-signaling to those that still
hate war. But the anti-war movement is effectively dead anyway. There are anti-war people, but no anti-war movement. That's the
crowd that the New York Times was appealing to. This is a stunt; nothing more.
What's more interesting is that the liberal elites will probably do their best to continue on with the war. But either way,
the USA will likely lose. In fact, it's already lost the war. The Taliban have won this one. That the elitists can't see that
shows just how far gone they are.
It was USA imperialism (under Carter and Brzezinski) which first had made Afghanistan a hell for women, but colonial feminists
do not care for the facts.
That is very true. "Death by a thousand cuts" was Brzezinski's scheme to destroy the Soviet Union in Central Asia. A few years
ago, he was interviewed by a journalist from PRC who asked if he had any regrets with all the destruction and death it caused.
Brzezinski said, "None".
"I take it as a given that President Trump is an incompetent nitwit, precisely as his critics
charge. Yet his oft-repeated characterization of those wars as profoundly misguided has more than
a little merit." As many have said, Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
Notable quotes:
"... Still, I find myself wondering: If a proposed troop drawdown in Afghanistan qualifies as a "mistake," as O'Hanlon contends, then what term best describes a war that has cost something like a trillion dollars, killed and maimed tens of thousands, and produced a protracted stalemate? ..."
"... And, if recent press reports prove true, with U.S. government officials accepting Taliban promises of good behavior as a basis for calling it quits, then this longest war in our history will not have provided much of a return on investment. Given the disparity between the U.S. aims announced back in 2001 and the results actually achieved, defeat might be an apt characterization. ..."
I don't wish to imply that political leaders and media outlets ignore our wars altogether.
That would be unfair. Yet in TrumpWorld, while the president's performance in office receives
intensive and persistent coverage day in, day out, the attention given to America's wars has
been sparse and perfunctory, when not positively bizarre.
As a case in point, consider the op-ed
that recently appeared in the New York Times (just as actual peace talks between the
U.S. and the Taliban seemed to be progressing
), making the case for prolonging the U.S. war in Afghanistan, while chiding President Trump
for considering a reduction in the number of U.S. troops currently stationed there. Any such
move, warned Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, would be a "mistake" of the first
order.
The ongoing Afghan War dates from a time when some of today's recruits were still in
diapers. Yet O'Hanlon counsels patience: a bit more time and things just might work out. This
is more or less comparable to those who suggested back in the 1950s that African Americans
might show a bit more patience in their struggle for equality: Hey, what's the rush?
I don't pretend to know what persuaded the editors of the Times that O'Hanlon's
call to make America's longest war even longer qualifies as something readers of the nation's
most influential newspaper just now need to ponder. Yet I do know this: the dearth of critical
attention to the costs and
consequences of our various post-9/11 wars is nothing short of shameful, a charge to which
politicians and journalists alike should plead equally guilty.
I take it as a given that President Trump is an incompetent nitwit, precisely as his critics
charge. Yet his oft-repeated characterization of those wars as profoundly misguided has more
than a little merit. Even more striking than Trump's critique is the fact that so few members
of the national security establishment are willing to examine it seriously. As a consequence,
the wars persist, devoid of purpose.
Still, I find myself wondering: If a proposed troop drawdown in Afghanistan qualifies as
a "mistake," as O'Hanlon contends, then what term best describes a war that has cost something
like a trillion dollars, killed and maimed tens of thousands, and produced a protracted
stalemate?
Disaster? Debacle? Catastrophe? Humiliation?
And, if recent press reports prove true, with U.S. government officials accepting
Taliban promises of good behavior as a basis for calling it quits, then this longest war in our
history will not have provided much of a return on investment. Given the disparity between the
U.S. aims announced back in 2001 and the results actually achieved, defeat might be an apt
characterization.
Yet the fault is not Trump's. The fault belongs to those who have allowed their immersion in
the dank precincts of TrumpWorld to preclude serious reexamination of misguided and reckless
policies that predate the president by at least 15 years.
You have to compare Trump with the alternative. The D's /progs make war on free speech,
attack the presumption of innocence, want essentially uncontrolled mass immigration and
relentlessly push in the direction of war with Russia. Add their cynical Russiagate
hoax-witch hunt for further illustration
of the danger they present. As many have said, Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
"I take it as a given that President Trump is an incompetent nitwit, precisely as his critics
charge. Yet his oft-repeated characterization of those wars as profoundly misguided has more
than a little merit."
I'm with Bacevich on the insanity of Endless War, but I question why he has to denigrate
Trump in his lead in. The cynical side of me believes that Bacevich thinks he has to be a
Trump-hater if he is to be listened to.
Hey Andrew sir Democracy is messy. But DJT is on your team and the MSM/Liberal
progs/Neocons aren't. Worth reflecting on
@fnn "As many have said,
Trump is the symptom, not the disease"
Actually, Trump is the microbe not the virus. He's the opportunistic microbe that attaches
itself to a sick and diseased body-politic. As to symptoms, they are borne by society
at-large and now manifest themselves in the majority of Americans who one way or the other
are "Lost in TrumpWorld"
CIA Was Aiding Afghan Jihadists Before the Soviet Invasion
by Nauman
Sadiq Posted on
February 05, 2019 February 1, 2019 Originally, there were four parties involved in the
Afghan conflict which are mainly responsible for the debacle in the Af-Pak region. Firstly,
the former Soviet Union which invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Secondly, Pakistan's
security agencies which nurtured the Afghan jihadists on the behest of Washington.
Thirdly, Saudi Arabia and the rest of oil-rich Gulf states which generously funded the
jihadists to promote their Wahhabi-Salafi ideology. And last but not the least, the Western
capitals which funded, provided weapons and internationally legitimized the erstwhile
"freedom fighters" to use them against a competing ideology, global communism, which posed a
threat to the Western corporate interests all over the world.
Regarding the objectives of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the then
American envoy to Kabul, Adolph "Spike" Dubs, was assassinated on Feb. 14, 1979, the same day
that Iranian revolutionaries stormed the US embassy in Tehran.
According to recently
declassified documents of the White House, CIA and State Department, as reported by Tim
Weiner for The Washington Post , the CIA was aiding Afghan jihadists before the
Soviets invaded in 1979.
President Jimmy Carter signed the CIA directive to arm the Afghan jihadists in July 1979,
whereas the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December the same year. That the CIA
was arming the Afghan jihadists six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan has been
proven by the State Department's declassified documents; fact of the matter, however, is that
the nexus between the CIA, Pakistan's security agencies and the Gulf states to train and arm
the Afghan jihadists against the former Soviet Union was formed several years before the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Historically, Pakistan's military first used the Islamists of Jamaat-e-Islami during the
Bangladesh war of liberation in the late 1960s against the Bangladeshi nationalist Mukti
Bahini liberation movement of Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman – the father of current prime
minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, and the founder of Bangladesh, which was then a
province of Pakistan and known as East Pakistan before the independence of Bangladesh in
1971.
Jamaat-e-Islami is a far-right Islamist movement in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh –
analogous to the Muslim Brotherhood political party in Egypt and Turkey – several of
whose leaders have recently been hanged by the Bangladeshi nationalist government of Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed for committing massacres of Bangladeshi civilians on behalf of
Pakistan's military during the late 1960s.
Then, during the 1970s, Pakistan's then-Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto began aiding
the Afghan Islamists against Sardar Daud's government, who had toppled his first cousin King
Zahir Shah in a palace coup in 1973 and had proclaimed himself the president of
Afghanistan.
Sardar Daud was a Pashtun nationalist and laid claim to Pakistan's northwestern
Pashtun-majority province. Pakistan's security establishment was wary of his irredentist
claims and used Islamists to weaken his rule in Afghanistan. He was eventually assassinated
in 1978 as a result of the Saur Revolution led by the Afghan communists.
Pakistan's support to the Islamists with the Saudi petrodollars and Washington's
blessings, however, kindled the fires of Islamic insurgencies in the entire region comprising
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Soviet Central Asian States.
The former Soviet Union was wary that its forty-million Muslims were susceptible to
radicalism, because Islamic radicalism was infiltrating across the border into the Central
Asian States from Afghanistan. Therefore, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December
1979 in support of the Afghan communists to forestall the likelihood of Islamic insurgencies
spreading to the Central Asian States bordering Afghanistan.
Even the American President Donald Trump
recently admitted : "The reason Russia invaded Afghanistan was because terrorists were
going into Russia; they were right to be there." Incidentally, Trump also implied the reason
why Soviet Union collapsed was due to the economic burden of the Soviet-Afghan War, as he was
making a point about the withdrawal of American forces from Syria and Afghanistan.
Notwithstanding, in the Soviet-Afghan War between the capitalist and communist blocs,
Saudi Arabia and the rest of Gulf's petro-monarchies took the side of the capitalist bloc
because the former Soviet Union and Central Asian states produce more energy and consume
less. Thus, the Soviet-led bloc was a net exporter of energy whereas the Western capitalist
bloc was a net importer.
It suited the economic interests of the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries
to maintain and strengthen a supplier-consumer relationship with the Western capitalist bloc.
Now, the BRICS countries are equally hungry for the Middle East's energy, but it's a recent
development. During the Cold War, an alliance with the industrialized Western nations suited
the economic interests of the Gulf countries.
Regarding the motives of the belligerents involved, the Americans wanted to take revenge
for their defeat at the hands of communists in Vietnam, the Gulf countries had forged close
economic ties with the Western bloc and Pakistan was dependent on the Western military aid,
hence it didn't have a choice but to toe Washington's policy in Afghanistan.
In the end, the Soviet-Afghan War proved to be a "bear trap" and the former Soviet Union
was eventually defeated and was subsequently dissolved in December 1991. It did not collapse
because of the Afghan Jihad but that was an important factor contributing to the dissolution
of the Soviet Union.
Regardless, more than twenty years before the declassification of the State Department
documents as mentioned in the aforementioned Washington Post report, in the 1998
interview to the alternative news outlet The CounterPunch Magazine , former
National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, confessed that the
president signed the directive to provide secret aid to the Afghan jihadists in July 1979,
whereas the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan six months later in December 1979.
Here is a poignant excerpt from the interview: The interviewer puts the question: "And
neither do you regret having supported the Islamic jihadists, having given arms and advice to
future terrorists?" Brzezinski replies: "What is most important to the history of the world?
The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation
of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"
Despite the crass insensitivity, one must give credit to Zbigniew Brzezinski that at least
he had the courage to speak the unembellished truth. It's worth noting, however, that the
aforementioned interview was recorded in 1998. After the 9/11 terror attack, no Western
policymaker can now dare to be as blunt and forthright as Brzezinski.
Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused
on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and
petro-imperialism.
ISLAMABAD -- U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said on Saturday that Washington was ready
to "address legitimate concerns" of all Afghan sides in order to restore peace in
Afghanistan. Since being appointed in September, Khalilzad has met with all sides, including
the Taliban, Afghan officials and Pakistan's political and military leadership in efforts
aimed at finding a negotiated end to America's longest war in neighboring Afghanistan.//
The US managed the overthrow of the Afghanistan government seventeen years ago, then
creating a puppet government with a feckless army to fight the Afghan resistance while
assassinating many of the Afghan leaders who fought to regain their country, and now the US
is ready to "address legitimate concerns" of all Afghan sides?
Well the Afghan officials are US puppets, so rule them out of legitimate concerns (as the
Taliban has done). Pakistan? They fully support the Taliban's return to government, so that's
a "legitimate concern" as is the Taliban's return to power.
Anything less ain't gonna work, that's obvious. Khalilzad was appointed in September to
achieve results in six months, which is soon. So get with it, Zalmay. Get the US troops out
of there as the Taliban demands in your "peace" talks.
[T]he units have also operated unconstrained by battlefield rules designed to protect
civilians, conducting night raids, torture and killings with near impunity, in a covert
campaign that some Afghan and American officials say is undermining the wider American
effort to strengthen Afghan institutions.
The "special forces" and the people trained by them don't follow rules. This has been
going on for a long time.
The Clinton administration has enforced a near-total ban on the supply and sale of U.S.
military equipment and training for the Colombian military because of its deep involvement
in drug-related corruption and its record of killing politicians, human rights activists
and civilians living in areas controlled by guerrilla groups.
The piece goes on to say that Special Forces were immune from this ban on training a
foreign military to kill politicians, human rights activists and civilians" . It names
dozens of nations where this was happening.
Of course not all US Special Forces are wild and lawless. Unfortunately the ones who do
behave are at risk of being killed themselves.
Whenever you have a combination of lousy leadership and "Special Forces", there is going
to be a problem. Australia has recently made the news in that regard.
Individually, each claim is staggering: apparent execution of detainees; reported use of
so-called drop weapons, planted to cover up unlawful killings; confirmed reports of
commandos flying a Nazi flag on a combat patrol; alleged "blooding" of rookies, initiation
rites in which newcomers were pressured to execute unarmed men. In one particularly
sadistic case, a prosthetic limb was allegedly pilfered from the corpse of a dead Afghan,
only to be repatriated and repurposed as a novelty binge-drinking implement.
At some point a Special Forces person is going to shrug and say "so what?" He or she knows
they can double or triple their pay with Blackwater-type mercenary forces. So except for
taking minimal precautions against going on trial, they can do as they please.
The base attack took place in Maidan Wardak Province, where US Special Forces troops were
evicted five years ago for atrocities.
In 2013 President Hamid Karzai demanded the withdrawal of all U.S. Special Operations
Forces (SOF) from Wardak province after charges that U.S. special forces stationed in Wardak
province engaged in harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people.
A Memorandum of Understanding signed May 12, 2012 between the U.S. military and the Afghan
Defence Ministry was trumpeted by the Obama administration as giving the Afghan government
control over such operations.
But a little-noticed provision of the agreement defined the "special operations" covered
by the agreement as those operations that are "approved by the Afghan Operational
Coordination Group (OCG) and conducted by Afghan Forces with support from U.S. Forces in
accordance with Afghan laws."
That meant that the SOF was still free to carry out other raids without consultation with
the Afghan government, until Karzai threw them out. But not the CIA.
The idea that the US isn't REALLY trying to win wars strikes me as more of a
rationalization of failure than a real explanation. The US is an economically declining power
that is trying to use its military dominance to maintain, and ideally increase its power. So
wouldn't it be in the US's best interests if Afghanistan or Iraq (for example) were
completely controlled by US controlled puppet governments, and US controlled corporations
were making huge profits by exploiting those countries mineral and human resources? Wouldn't
that be far more profitable than the mere creation of chaos?
Part of the reason I tend to find your ideas less than plausible, Pft, is that you always
seem to vastly exaggerate the competence and power of the US or transnational elites you
suspect are controlling everything. So I don't think the US's wars are either "fake" or
"forever". Instead they are failures. And they can't last forever, because the corrupt system
that generates them needs some successes, and soon, in order to continue to survive.
The Soviet war in Afghanistan lasted nine years. But it was largely successful in building
a stable government and the Soviets left a mostly competent Afghan military behind. Three
years later Russia ended its financial support for the Afghan government. Only that gave the
guerrilla the chance to destroy the state.
After 18 years in Afghanistan the U.S. military seems still unable to create and train
competent local forces.
The $8 billion spent on the
Afghan airforce have resulted in a mostly incapable force that depends on U.S. contractors to
keep its birds flying. This was the result of unreasonable decisions:
Aviation experts have criticized a decision to phase out the old workhorses of the Afghan
forces -- Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters -- for American-made UH-60 Black Hawks.
Mr. Michel, the retired general, said the Mi-17 was "the perfect helicopter" for
Afghanistan because it can carry more troops and supplies than the Black Hawk and is less
complicated to fly.
"Let's be candid," he said of the switch. "That was largely done for political
reasons."
The U.S. military built an Afghan force in its own image:
American trainers have built an Afghan Army that relies heavily on air power that the air
force might not be able to provide for years, said John F. Sopko, the special inspector
general for Afghan reconstruction.
Why the U.S. military, which since Vietnam proved inept at fighting local guerrilla,
believed that its ways of fighting suits an Afghan force is inexplicable. If the Taliban
manage to win without an airforce why should the Afghan military need one?
As Mr. Khan was driven away for questioning, he watched his home go up in flames. Within
were the bodies of two of his brothers and of his sister-in-law Khanzari, who was shot
three times in the head. Villagers who rushed to the home found the burned body of her
3-year-old daughter, Marina, in a corner of a torched bedroom.
The men who raided the family's home that March night, in the district of Nader Shah
Kot, were members of an Afghan strike force trained and overseen by the Central
Intelligence Agency in a parallel mission to the United States military's, but with looser
rules of engagement.
... ... ...
that the two most effective and ruthless forces, in Khost and Nangarhar Provinces, are
still sponsored mainly by the C.I.A.
This conflict between militarized CIA proxy forces and forces trained by the U.S. military
played out in every recent war the U.S. waged. In Iraq CIA sponsored Shia units clashed with
Pentagon sponsored Sunni militia. In Syria this CIA trained 'rebels' ended up shooting at
U.S. military trained 'rebels' and vice versa. In Afghanistan the rogue force under CIA
control is some 3.000 to 10,000 strong. It large alienates the same population the Afghan
military tries to protect.
Unity of command is an important condition for successful military campaigns. As the
military works in one direction while the CIA pulls in another one, the campaign in
Afghanistan continues to fail.
A similar split can be seen in Afghanistan's political field. The CIA is notorious for
bribing Afghan politicians, while the military launches anti-corruption campaigns. The
political system installed by such competing forces is unsustainable.
The last Afghan election with the top candidates being the Pashto Ashraf Ghani and the
Tajik Abdullah Abdullah, was marred in irregularities. The uncertain outcome led the U.S. to
fudge the results by making Ghani president and Abudullah his 'chief executive'. Both are now
again
competing against each other in the elections that are to be held later this year. They
will be as irregular as all elections in Afghanistan are. The disputed outcome might well
lead to new clashes between ethnic groups.
This upcoming conflict will further weaken the Afghan state. Why hasn't anything be done
to prevent it?
@1 @3
While appearing weak, incompetent and clueless the US implements chaos exactly as
intended. It works in Congo, it works in Libya, it works in South America and it works in
Afghanistan. Chaos is very profitable for extracting resources and supplying and controlling
the world narcotic business.
The USA goal is an incompetent state, a permanent war and the destruction of any stable
Afghan government that could make relations with neighboring states. Permanent conflict
prevents unity and transnational trade through the region. Same goes for the Baluchistan
rebels in the south.
Isolate Iran is all and no strategic care or thinking about anything else.
The USA will fight until the last Afghani civilian is killed.
After the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) took power in 1978,
the Pentagon began arming the Islamist opposition to the PDPA. US officials, reeling from their
defeat in Vietnam, devised a policy of "sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire" in
Afghanistan, as CIA official Robert Gates wrote in his 1996 memoir From the Shadows .
When the Kremlin invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, in a reactionary attempt to strengthen
the PDPA regime in Kabul and stabilize the PDPA's relations with the Afghan rural elites,
Washington used Afghanistan as a battleground to bleed the Soviet army.
One of the CIA's main allies in carrying out this policy, recruiting tens of thousands of
Islamist fighters worldwide to go and fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, was a young Saudi
billionaire, Osama bin Laden, the future leader of Al Qaeda. Hensman endorses the US policy in
Afghanistan, while remaining silent on the CIA-Al Qaeda alliance, and presents it as part of a
liberation struggle against Soviet imperialism.
She writes, "A PDPA coup in 1978 faced tribal revolts that developed into a full-scale
uprising by December 1979, when the Russians invaded and occupied Afghanistan. The military
campaign that followed resembled the US campaign in Vietnam in its brutality to civilians The
war had reached a stalemate in the mid-1980s when Reagan, who was already supporting the
mujahideen, agreed to supply them with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. These weapons turned the
tide against the Russians..."
Hensman's defense of the US role in the Soviet-Afghan war, and her silence on CIA-backed
Islamist terror networks, are reactionary. She hides the bloody character of the CIA-backed
Islamist proxy wars, both in 1979–1992 in Afghanistan and in 1979–1982 in Syria. It
is the descendants of these same forces, who are fighting today's Syrian war, that Hensman
hails as a "democratic revolution."
And then there's Brzezinski, with his murderous legacy that contains a curious thread linking
the Mujahideen "freedom fighters" to 9/11. As was written in the recently republished article
on the Bush family fortune and the Holocaust, "the only constant is the defense of the power
and privilege of the ruling oligarchy by whatever means are required."
--- Brzezinski acknowledged in an interview with the French news magazine Le Nouvel
Observateur in January 1998 that he initiated a policy in which the CIA covertly began arming
the mujahedeen in July 1978 -- six months before Soviet troops intervened in Afghanistan --
with the explicit aim of dragging the Soviet Union into a debilitating war.
Asked, given the catastrophe unleashed upon Afghanistan and the subsequent growth of
Islamist terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, whether he regretted the policy he championed in
Afghanistan, Brzezinski replied:
"Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing
the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets
officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of
giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war
unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally
the breakup of the Soviet empire."
Asked specifically whether he regretted the CIA's collaboration with and arming of
Islamist extremists, including Al Qaeda, in fomenting the war in Afghanistan, Brzezinski
responded contemptuously: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or
the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central
Europe and the end of the cold war?"
Kind of a funny aside: to find the Z-bigz quote I wanted, I put "Brzezinski on
Afghanistan" into duckduckgo, and the wsws obituary was third from the top.
"... Enough Afghans either support the Taliban or hate the occupation, and managed, through assorted conventional and unconventional operations, to fight on the ground. And "on the ground" is all that really matters. This war may well have been ill-advised and unwinnable from the start. ..."
"... There's no shame in defeat. But there is shame, and perfidy, in avoiding or covering up the truth. It's what the whole military-political establishment did after Vietnam, and, I fear, it's what they're doing again. ..."
America Is Headed For Military Defeat in
AfghanistanIt is time to acknowledge this is more than political. We can lose on the
battlefield, and it's happening right now. By Danny Sjursen •
November 30, 2018
Marines
with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, sprint across a field to load onto a
CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter during a mission in Helmand province, Afghanistan, July 4,
2014. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Joseph Scanlan / released) There's a prevailing maxim,
both inside the armed forces and around the Beltway, that goes something like this: "The U.S.
can never be militarily defeated in any war," certainly not by some third world country.
Heck, I used to believe that myself. That's why, in regard to Afghanistan, we've been told that
while America could lose the war due to political factors (such as the lack of grit
among "soft" liberals or defeatists), the military could never and will never lose on the
battlefield.
That entire maxim is about to be turned on its head. Get ready, because we're about to lose
this war militarily.
Consider this: the U.S. military has advised, assisted, battled, and bombed in Afghanistan
for 17-plus years. Ground troop levels have fluctuated from lows of some 10,000 to upwards of
100,000 servicemen and women. None of that has
achieved more than a tie, a bloody stalemate. Now, in the 18th year of this conflict, the
Kabul-Washington coalition's military is outright losing.
Let's begin with the broader measures. The Taliban controls or contests more districts --
some 44 percent -- than at any time since the 2001 invasion. Total combatant and civilian
casualties are forecasted to
top 20,000 this year -- another dreadful broken record. What's more, Afghan military casualties
are frankly unsustainable: the Taliban are killing more than the government can recruit. The
death rates are staggering, numbering 5,500 fatalities in 2015, 6,700 in 2016, and an estimate (the number is newly
classified) of "about 10,000" in 2017. Well, some might ask, what about American airpower --
can't that help stem the Taliban tide? Hardly. In 2018, as security deteriorated and the
Taliban made substantial gains, the U.S. actually
droppedmore bombs than in anyother year of the war . It
appears that nothing stands in the way of impending military defeat.
Then there are the very recent events on the ground -- and these are telling. Insider
attacks in which Afghan "allies" turn their guns on American advisors are back on the rise,
most recently in an attack that wounded a
U.S. Army general and threatened the top U.S. commander in the country. And while troop numbers
are way down from the high in 2011, American troops deaths are rising. Over the Thanksgiving
season alone, a U.S. Army Ranger was
killed in a friendly fire incident and three other troopers
died in a roadside bomb attack. And in what was perhaps only a (still disturbing) case of
misunderstood optics, the top U.S. commander, General Miller, was filmed carrying his own M4
rifle around Afghanistan. That's a long way from the days when then-General Petraeus (well
protected by soldiers, of course) walked around the markets of Baghdad in a soft cap and
without body armor.
More importantly, the Afghan army and police are getting hammered in larger and larger
attacks and taking unsustainable casualties. Some 26 Afghan security forces were killed on
Thanksgiving, 22 policemen
died in an attack on Sunday, and on Tuesday 30 civilians were
killed in Helmand province. And these were only the high-profile attacks, dwarfed by the
countless other countrywide incidents. All this proves that no matter how hard the U.S.
military worked, or how many years it committed to building an Afghan army in its own image,
and no matter how much air and logistical support that army received, the Afghan Security
Forces cannot win. The sooner Washington accepts this truth over the more comforting lie, the
fewer of our adulated American soldiers will have to die. Who is honestly ready to be the last
to die for a mistake, or at least a hopeless cause?
Now, admittedly, this author is asking for trouble -- and fierce rebuttals -- from both
peers and superiors still serving on active duty. And that's understandable. The old maxim of
military invincibility soothes these men, mollifies their sense of personal loss, whether of
personal friends or years away from home, in wars to which they've now dedicated their entire
adult lives. Questioning whether there even is a military solution in Afghanistan, or, more
specifically, predicting a military defeat, serves only to upend their mental framework
surrounding the war.
Still, sober strategy and basic honesty demands a true assessment of the military situation
in America's longest war. The Pentagon loves metrics, data, and stats. Well, as demonstrated
daily on the ground in Afghanistan, all the security (read: military) metrics point towards
impending defeat. At best, the Afghan army, with ample U.S. advisory detachments and air
support, can hold on to the northernmost and westernmost provinces of the country, while a
Taliban coalition overruns the south and east. This will be messy, ugly, and discomfiting for
military and civilian leaders alike. But unless Washington is prepared to redeploy 100,000
soldiers to Afghanistan (again) -- and still only manage a tie, by the way -- it is also all
but inevitable.
The United States military did all it was asked during more than 17 years of warfare in
Afghanistan. It raided, it bombed, it built, it surged, it advised, it everything. Still, none
of that was sufficient. Enough Afghans either support the Taliban or hate the occupation,
and managed, through assorted conventional and unconventional operations, to fight on the
ground. And "on the ground" is all that really matters. This war may well have been ill-advised
and unwinnable from the start.
There's no shame in defeat. But there is shame, and perfidy, in avoiding or
covering up the truth. It's what the whole military-political establishment did after Vietnam,
and, I fear, it's what they're doing again.
Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army officer and a regular contributor to Unz. He served
combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his
alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War,
Ghostriders of
Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge . Follow him on Twitter @SkepticalVet .
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an
unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of
the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
Historians of the now seventeen-year old U.S. war in Afghanistan will take note of this past week
when the newly-appointed American general in charge of US and NATO operations in the country made a
bombshell, historic admission.
He conceded that
the United States cannot win in
Afghanistan
.
Speaking to NBC News last week, Gen. Austin Scott Miller made his
first public statements after taking charge of American operations, and shocked with his frank
assessment that that
the Afghan war cannot be won militarily and peace will only be
achieved through direct engagement and negotiations with the Taliban
--
the very
terror group which US forces sought to defeat when it first invaded in 2001.
"This is not going to be won militarily,"
Gen. Miller said.
"This is going to a political solution."
Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the U.S. commander of resolute support, via EPA/NBC
My assessment is the Taliban also realizes they cannot win militarily.
So if you
realize you can't win militarily at some point, fighting is just, people start asking why.
So you do not necessarily wait us out, but I think now is the time to start working through the
political piece of this conflict.
He gave the interview from the Resolute Support headquarters building in Kabul. "We are more in
an offensive mindset and don't wait for the Taliban to come and hit [us]," he said. "So that was an
adjustment that we made early on. We needed to because of the amount of casualties that were being
absorbed."
Starting
last summer it was revealed
that
US State Department officials began meeting with
Taliban leaders in Qatar to discuss local and regional ceasefires and an end to the war
. It
was reported at the time that the request of the Taliban, the US-backed Afghan government was not
invited; however, there doesn't appear to have been any significant fruit out of the talks as
the Taliban now controls more territory than ever before in recent years
.
Such controversial and shaky negotiations come as in total the United States has spent well
over $840 billion fighting the Taliban insurgency
while also paying for relief and
reconstruction in a seventeen-year long war that
has become more expensive, in current
dollars, than the Marshall Plan
, which was the reconstruction effort to rebuild Europe
after World War II.
Even the
New
York Times
recently chronicled the
flat out deception of official Pentagon
statements vs. the reality
in terms of the massive spending that has gone into the
now-approaching two decade long "endless war" which began in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Via NYT report
As of September of this year the situation was as bleak as it's ever been after over a
decade-and-a-half of America's longest running war, per
the NYT's numbers
:
But since 2017, the Taliban have held more Afghan territory than at any time since
the American invasion
. In just one week last month, the insurgents killed 200 Afghan
police officers and soldiers, overrunning two major Afghan bases and the city of Ghazni.
The American military
says
the
Afghan government effectively "controls or influences" 56 percent of the country. But that
assessment relies on
statistical sleight of hand
. In many districts,
the
Afghan government controls only the district headquarters and military barracks, while the
Taliban control the rest
.
For this reason Gen. Miller spoke to NBC of
an optimal "political outcome" instead of
"winning"
--
the latter being a term rarely if ever used by Pentagon and officials
and congressional leaders over the past years.
Miller
told NBC
: "I naturally feel compelled to try to set the conditions for a political outcome. So,
pressure from that standpoint, yes. I don't want everyone to think this is forever."
And ending on a bleak note in terms of the "save face" and "cut and run" nature of the U.S.
future engagement in Afghanistan, Gen. Miller concluded,
"This is my last assignment as
a soldier in Afghanistan. I don't think they'll send me back here in another grade. When I leave
this time I'd like to see peace and some level of unity as we go forward."
Interestingly, the top US and NATO commander can now only speak in remotely hopeful terms of
"some level of unity"
--
perhaps just enough to make a swift exit at least.
Tags
War Conflict
Politics
There not going to come out as say, where here because we want
BOMB IRAN a few years down the track and maintain US Military
deployment for Israel's long-term interests. Israel are suspected
of committing 9/11 attacks, if you think about it long term policy
of expansion, getting ride of its surrounding threats it's all
makes sense. scraficing 3000 americans for Israel's longterm
policy's seems to be the pill they were willing to swallow.
US is trying to shift the blame on Russia, as the Talibans went
to Moscow for peace talks.
And with Pakistan aligning with Russia/China and Iran (
Pakistan being the main supply route for the US army in
Afghanistan), the US army is practically f*cked.
Good to know that Trump is not prepared to continue to protect
Deep State opium production at the taxpayers' expense. I hope he's
planning to withdraw US armed forces from all foreign soil.
Based on what? What did he stop? Which wars did he pull out out
of?
Military was a huge contributor to his votes. He's not
going to lift a finger. He would have started by pardoning
Snowden, or closing Gitmo - something Obama lied about when
making campaign promises. Where, here is your chance, Donald.
Do at least one single thing that shows you as anything other
that a MIC puppet. Just one thing! Anything!
Bombing Syria? Yep. Blind eye to Saudi crimes in Yemen? Yep.
Dancing to Zionist demands? Yep.
Trade wars? Oh sure, those things never lead to military
conflict either!
The only reason we were in Afghanistan in the first place was to
protect the heroin trade from acquisition by the Taliban. It's
time to pull out and let the British protect their poppy fields if
they want em that badly.
Notice that Rivera says the Marines just had a visit from
Prince Charles. If you want to know more about why we have
so much heroin in America now and who benefits.. read Dope
Inc.
Trump may have his own views, but he has no own foreign policy. He is a neocon's
marionette.
Notable quotes:
"... Instead Bush, and later Obama, transitioned the military mission -- without consultation from Congress -- into a nation-building effort that was doomed from the start. Candidate Donald Trump spoke of a different approach to the Middle East and railed against nation-building abroad. His instincts on Afghanistan have been consistent and correct from very early on. Had it not been for the relentless pressure of several key officials, the war might already have come to end. ..."
"... Woodward wrote ..."
"... Trump defers to the Pentagon because he doesn't really care. He says he wants to get out of Afghanistan (and I support that) but getting out isn't going to make him any money, or get him any votes. So why bother with it, especially when he can lie to his base and tell them we are already out, and they'll believe him? ..."
"... Trump is the kind of person who likes to "talk the talk" but when comes right down to it, he going to sadly, "walk the walk" that the Washington establishment tells him to walk. ..."
"... The treasonous MIC and those top generals do not care about the nation and ordinary Americans. They care only about their profits, careers and their own egos. ..."
"... There is no war they don't like – Middle East, checked, Ukraine, yes, South China Sea, sure, Korea, definitely. It is so sad that Trump turns out to be such a weak and impotent president, contrary to what the supporters claim. ..."
In a routine dating back to 2004, U.S. officials
regularly claim that the latest strategy in Afghanistan is working -- or as General David
Petraeus said in
2012 , the war had "turned a corner." It hadn't and it still hasn't. In fact, evidence
overwhelmingly affirms that the newest "new" strategy will be no more effective than those that
came before it. It is time to stop losing U.S. lives while pretending that victory is just
around the corner. It is time to end the war in Afghanistan.
Last week, one of the most brazen insider attacks of the war took place in Kandahar when one
of the Afghanistan governor's bodyguards turned rogue,
killingthree high-profile
Afghan leaders and
wounding the senior U.S. field commander, Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley. Miraculously,
the new commander, General Scott Miller, escaped harm. But in 2018,
eight Americans have been killed in Afghanistan, bringing the American death toll to
2,351 .
On October 7, 2001, President George W. Bush
addressed the nation as combat operations in Afghanistan began. He emphasized that the
American "mission is defined. The objectives are clear. [Our] goal is just." Those objectives,
he explained , were "targeted actions" that were "designed to disrupt the use of
Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the
Taliban regime."
By the summer of 2002, those objectives were fully met as the Taliban organization was
wholly destroyed and al-Qaeda severely degraded. As of 2009, there were reportedly
as few as 100 stragglers scattered impotently throughout Afghanistan. The military mission
should therefore have ended and combat forces redeployed.
Instead Bush, and later Obama, transitioned the military mission -- without consultation
from Congress -- into a nation-building effort that was doomed from the start. Candidate Donald
Trump spoke of a different approach to the Middle East and railed against nation-building
abroad. His instincts on Afghanistan have been consistent and correct from very early on. Had
it not been for the relentless pressure of several key officials, the war might already have
come to end.
After a December 2015 insider attack, Trump tweeted : "A suicide
bomber has just killed U.S. troops in Afghanistan. When will our leaders get tough and smart.
We are being led to slaughter!" According to Bob Woodward's book Fear , Trump brought
that same passion against the futility of the Afghan war into the White House.
Woodward
wrote that at an August 2017 meeting on Afghanistan, Trump told his generals that the
war had been "a disaster," and chided them for "wanting to add even more troops to something I
don't believe in."
Woodward claims that Trump then told the top brass, "I was against this from the beginning.
He folded his arms. 'I want to get out,' the president said. 'And you're telling me the answer
is to get deeper in.'" Under pressure -- from the likes of Secretary of Defense James Mattis
and Senator Lindsey Graham -- Trump eventually gave in.
Events have since proven that Trump would have done the country a favor by resisting that
pressure and sticking to his instincts to end the war. The violence
keeps up at a record pace, civilian casualties continue to set
all-time highs , and Afghan troops struggle
mightily with battle losses. The president was right in August 2017 and his instincts
remain solid today.
The longer Trump continues to defer to the establishment thinking that produced 17
consecutive years of military failure, the longer that failure will afflict us, the more
casualties we will suffer unnecessarily, and the more money we will pour down the drain.
It is time for Trump to remember that it is futile to try to win the unwinnable and finally
end America's longest war.
Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lieutenant
Colonel in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments,
two of which were in Afghanistan.
Trump defers to the Pentagon because he doesn't really care. He says he wants to get out of
Afghanistan (and I support that) but getting out isn't going to make him any money, or get
him any votes. So why bother with it, especially when he can lie to his base and tell them we
are already out, and they'll believe him?
Trump is the kind of person who likes to "talk the talk" but when comes right down to it, he
going to sadly, "walk the walk" that the Washington establishment tells him to walk.
The treasonous MIC and those top generals do not care about the nation and ordinary
Americans. They care only about their profits, careers and their own egos.
There is no war they don't like – Middle East, checked, Ukraine, yes, South China
Sea, sure, Korea, definitely. It is so sad that Trump turns out to be such a weak and impotent president, contrary to
what the supporters claim.
I think a lot of us could have tolerated the asinine antics if he had stuck to his campaign
positions on this and other things .
God; what might have been .
SDS, you are correct. I've often thought that Trump could have forged a majority coalition by
doing things the People really wanted, or at least didn't hate: nominating another Gorsuch,
cutting the size of government, appointing competent people, getting out of the Middle East,
no tariffs, less racism, getting concession from businesses that benefited from the tax cut,
following emoluments rules, etc. etc.
"I think a lot of us could have tolerated the asinine antics if he had stuck to his
campaign positions on this and other things . God; what might have been ."
First, sorry you fell for The Con. I understand. Maybe. Second, the real question is, "What are you going to do about it?". Vote Republican Nov 6? Why would you do that? Hope against all hope? Dementia? Gluttony
for punishment? BTW. HRC is not on the ballot this time, and will never be again.
Unless we intend to invade en mass, and scour the country from one end to the other to defeat
any and all opponents, the mission in Afghanistan will remain what it is. "new wine (of
sorts) in old wineskins.
If we are going to remake a country -- we had better remake it. I am not sure i have ever
said this before but the entire affair
We hear Pakistan is now desperate for IMF aid. That the One belt One Road initiative there by
China has already put the country in the position of having to stand down its creditor,
China. Partly with the help of Japanese finance, Iran and India are out to squeeze Islamabad
out of world trade.
The Pakis are headed into a new dark age, so don't expect the Russians to bark wildly and
chase down this car. With any luck, they and China will revive the Northern Alliance, make a
garrison of Kabul, and eventually Xi and Vladi will have their own escalating civil war over
control over Central Asia.
I'd say January 2019 is a good time to begin a quick US withdrawal, just as long as we
pull out of the IMF and not give another red American cent to the region, save a green zone
around Kabul with economically productive areas.
I would argue that although this would seem like an American loss, it will put our
Progressive yappers to shame. What human values would they stand up and defend now, among the
IndoPak Caravan? Maybe then we'll really focus on our own border and wage the good fight
where it is needed -- the Culture War.
Obama had intended to leave. The military insisted on vict'ry and another Surge. He gave them
their Surge and their time to do it. They failed, made things worse and prevented Obama from
leaving. They're still playing. Trump's just the latest Oval Office 'sucker'.
The governor General Abdul Raziq, the police chief and the intelligence chief of Kandahar
have all been killed today. Bodyguards turned their guns on them. Two U.S. soldiers were
wounded. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan was present but not hurt.
Raziq was a brut, thief, killer, drug baron and the CIA's man in Kandahar.
In 2011 Matthieu Atkins portrait him:
Our Man in Kandahar Abdul Raziq and his men have received millions of dollars' worth of U.S. training and
equipment to help in the fight against the Taliban. But is our ally -- long alleged to be
involved in corruption and drug smuggling -- also guilty of mass murder?
The United States, specifically Cheney and Petraeus and Rodham, imposed the Imperial
Executor form of Federalist government upon a people who were a well-organized heirarchical
society while William the Conqueror was still head chopping Anglo-Saxons in bear skins.
Cheny wrote the Afghan petroleum and strategic resources laws *in English* at the
beginning of the 2001 invasion. The US imposed a new flag, a new pledge of allegiance, a new
national song and even a new national currency on the Afghan people, then imposed the first
imperial caesar, Karzai.
You break it, you own it!
For the $TRILLIONS hoovered up by Deep State and their war profiteering minions, we could
have put every Afghan male of military age through Harvard Business School.
Cheney, Petraeus and Rodham ALSO created the Federal Republican Guard ANA and ANP,
goombahs, renegade hijackers and shakedown artists who, like those same ANA/ANP 'personal
guards' mentioned in b's article, assassinated the governor and the others. And umm, yes,
I've been on the muzzle end of those ANA/ANP thugs in an attempted kidnapping, so been there,
done that.
AFA Russ' defense of William the Conqueror as some 'high point' of a Western Civilization
of Red Haired Yettis, they were still head-chopping each other in England while Afghanistan
ruled from East Persia to Western India, an advanced civilization far more ancient than
Anglo-Saxon bearskin cave dwelling knuckle draggers, at the time.
Of course, now today we have the White Scientocratic Triumphal Exceptionalist Civilization
and its Miracle of the Two Planes and Three Towers to prove it, even if Johnny and Jillian
can't read, write or do their ciphers.
"... According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, [on] 24 December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. ..."
"... We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. ..."
"... What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War? ..."
The alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorists attacks, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, was
recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war, "ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight
Soviet invaders".(Hugh Davies, "`Informers' point the finger at bin Laden; Washington on alert
for suicide bombers." The Daily Telegraph, London, 24 August 1998).
In 1979 the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA was launched in
Afghanistan:
"With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI, who wanted to turn the
Afghan Jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some
35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and
1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually, more than
100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad." (Ahmed Rashid,
"The Taliban: Exporting Extremism", Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999).
This project of the US intelligence apparatus was conducted with the active support of
Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which was entrusted in channelling covert
military aid to the Islamic brigades and financing, in liason with the CIA, the madrassahs and
Mujahideen training camps.
U.S. government support to the Mujahideen was presented to world public opinion as a
"necessary response" to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist
government of Babrak Kamal.
The CIA's military-intelligence operation in Afghanistan, which consisted in creating the
"Islamic brigades", was launched prior rather than in response to the entry of Soviet troops
into Afghanistan. In fact, Washington's intent was to deliberately trigger a civil war, which
has lasted for more than 25 years. (photo: CIA and ISI agents)
The CIA's role in laying the foundations of Al Qaeda is confirmed in an 1998 interview with
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who at the time was National Security Adviser to President Jimmy
Carter:
Brzezinski: According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen
began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, [on] 24
December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed,
it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the
opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the
President in which I explained to him that in my opinion, this aid was going to induce a
Soviet military intervention.
Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you
yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we
knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Question:When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to
fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe
them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of
drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the
Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the
opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to
carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the
demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Question: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having
given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the
collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe
and the end of the Cold War? ( "The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan, Interview with
Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser", Le Nouvel
Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998, published in English, Centre for Research on
Globalisation, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
, 5 October 2001, italics added.)
Consistent with Brzezinski's account, a "Militant Islamic Network" was created by the
CIA.
The "Islamic Jihad" (or holy war against the Soviets) became an integral part of the CIA's
intelligence ploy. It was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia, with a significant
part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:
"In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166 [which]
authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen, and it made clear that the
secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert
action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a
dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987 as well
as a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who travelled to the secret
headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There, the CIA
specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan
rebels."(Steve Coll, The Washington Post, July 19, 1992.)
The Taliban says that in order to end "this long war" the "lone option is to end the
occupation of Afghanistan and nothing more."
In June, the
17th American nominated to take command of the war, Lieutenant General Scott Miller,
appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee where Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) grilled him
on what he would do differently in order to bring the conflict to a conclusion. "I cannot
guarantee you a timeline or an end date," was Miller's confident reply .
Did the senators then send him packing? Hardly. He was, in fact, easily confirmed and starts
work this month. Nor is there any chance Congress will use its power of the purse to end the
war. The 2019 budget request for U.S. operations in Afghanistan -- topping out at
$46.3 billion -- will certainly be approved.
#Winning
All of this seeming futility brings us back to the Vietnam War, Kissinger, and that magic
number, 4,000,000,029,057 -- as well as the question of what an American military victory would
look like today. It might surprise you, but it turns out that winning wars is still
possible and, perhaps even more surprising, the U.S. military seems to be doing just that.
Let me explain.
In Vietnam, that military aimed to "
out-guerrilla the guerrilla ." It never did and the United States suffered a crushing
defeat. Henry Kissinger -- who presided over the last years of that conflict as national
security advisor and then secretary of state -- provided his own
concise take on one of the core tenets of asymmetric warfare: "The conventional army loses
if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose." Perhaps because that eternally
well-regarded but hapless statesman articulated it, that formula was bound -- like so
much else he
touched -- to crash
and burn .
In this century, the United States has found a way to turn Kissinger's martial maxim on its
head and so rewrite the axioms of armed conflict. This redefinition can be proved by a simple
equation:
Expressed differently, the United States has not won a major conflict since 1945; has a
trillion-dollar national security budget; has had 17 military commanders in the last 17
years in Afghanistan, a country plagued by 23,744 "
security incidents " (the most ever recorded) in 2017 alone; has spent around
$3 trillion , primarily on that war and the rest of the war on terror, including the
ongoing conflict in Iraq, which then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld swore , in 2002, would be
over in only "five days or five weeks or five months," but where approximately
5,000 U.S. troops remain today; and yet 74% of the American people still express high
confidence in the U.S. military.
Let the math and the implications wash over you for a moment. Such a calculus definitively
disproves the notion that "the conventional army loses if it does not win." It also helps
answer the question of victory in the war on terror. It turns out that the U.S. military, whose
budget and influence in Washington have only grown in these years, now wins simply by not
losing -- a multi-trillion-dollar conventional army held to the standards of success once
applied only to under-armed, under-funded guerilla groups.
Unlike in the Vietnam War years, three presidents and the Pentagon, unbothered by fiscal
constraints, substantive congressional opposition, or a significant antiwar movement, have been
effectively pursuing this strategy, which requires nothing more than a steady supply of troops,
contractors, and other assorted camp followers; an endless parade of Senate-sanctioned
commanders; and an annual outlay of hundreds of billions of dollars. By these standards, Donald
Trump's open-ended, timetable-free "Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia" may prove to be the
winningest war plan ever. As he described it:
"From now on, victory will have a clear definition: attacking our enemies, obliterating
ISIS, crushing al-Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, and stopping mass
terror attacks against America before they emerge."
Think about that for a moment. Victory's definition begins with "attacking our enemies" and
ends with the prevention of possible terror attacks. Let me reiterate: "victory" is defined as
"attacking our enemies." Under President Trump's strategy, it seems, every time the U.S. bombs
or shells or shoots at a member of one of those 20-plus terror groups in Afghanistan, the U.S.
is winning or, perhaps, has won. And this strategy is not specifically Afghan-centric. It can
easily be applied to American warzones in the Middle East and Africa -- anywhere, really.
Decades after the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military has finally solved the conundrum
of how to "out-guerrilla the guerrilla." And it couldn't have been simpler. You just adopt the
same definition of victory. As a result, a conventional army -- at least the U.S. military --
now loses only if it stops fighting. So long as unaccountable commanders wage benchmark-free
wars without congressional constraint, the United States simply cannot lose. You can't argue
with the math. Call it the rule of 4,000,000,029,057.
That calculus and that sum also prove, quite clearly, that America's beleaguered
commander-in-chief has gotten a raw deal on his victory parade. With apologies to the American
Legion, the U.S. military is now -- under the new rules of warfare -- triumphant and deserves
the type of celebration proposed by President Trump. After almost two decades of warfare, the
armed forces have lowered the bar for victory to the level of their enemy, the Taliban. What
was once the mark of failure for a conventional army is now the benchmark for success. It's a
remarkable feat and deserving, at the very least, of furious flag-waving, ticker
tape , and all the age-old trappings of victory.
Military conquests are the most ephemeral. Colonisation lasts longer. A mere century or two
in the case of Europeans. But even 900 years was not sufficient for Greeks to remove the
military n cultural threat posed by the Semites n Iranians of Southwest Asia, from
Alexander's conquest in 323 BC till the Muslim "reconquista" of 632 AD. Only demographic
"conquest" works in the end. If your women are not out-reproducing their women, then your
military will fail spectacularly n quickly, as what had once been your population transforms
into theirs. At that point, far from victory parades, you get to see statues to your former
heros torn down, n the highest "patriotism" becomes enthusiastically opening the gates to
what had once been your people's deadliest enemies.
1. keep Israhell on the map.
2. keep oil-producers taking dollars and only dollars for their oil
3. keep the CIA's poppy fields in Afghanistan in full production
on 1: ongoing victory, Israhell is still there
on2: Iraq and Libya back on the petrodollar, Iran pending
on3: ongoing victory, CIA drug ops proceeding normally
in ZOG-ruled 'Murka, every day is a day of new victories.
Mr. Turse is a comic. What a beautiful summary of the situation.
See a group, Imagine a possible threat, if both occur, bingo group =converts to
=>terrorist
and each member converts to a subliminal threat. Imagine the psychology that can be applied
to that bit of information to produce next day propaganda. Let us not forget the real media
that displays the propaganda is owned by just 6 entities; global access to knowledge and real
truth is gated and directed by search engine magic these two facts are IMO a real global
threat to humanity.
Win by not losing/ In such a scenario increasing numbers in a terror group or increasing
numbers of, or broadening the global distribution of terror groups produces more terror
fodder. The competent imagination derives its threats from terror fodder ( fodder fits any
size imagination).
When ever it is needed, proof of any non self-inflicted terrorism can be conjured from the
imagination. As Mr Turse says proof of terrorism can be found in the definition, proof of
victory can be found in the attack (as Mr. Turse so adequately expressed), and both are
recorded in the history of terrorism, which can be found in the daily media presentations and
the MSM annual report "Dollars Spent Chasing Terrorist from the Imagination". a joint
publication of the Internationally linked intelligence services and the global college of
paranoia producing propaganda.
victory is found in the attack because dollars start to flow; the more dollars the greater
the victory.
But how much of this would be possible if the reserve currency were no longer the dollar?
What will happen when Russia, China, Iran and others produce a new reserve currency or
displace existing reserve currencies by assigning exchange value to the currency of each
nation? The issuer of reserve currency measures its money supply by the checks he writes
[their checks never bounce], everyone else measures their currency by the amount of the
reserve currency they are able to keep in the bank ( to prevent their checks from
bouncing].
@Sean
Because although Health and Education Keynesianisn would work as well as the Military
variant, it also leads to an organised population mobilising for social change. And while
wars do end eventually, social spending seems to increase over time without limit. I was
almost sold on that explanation to my honest question, until the phrase
wars do end eventually
Would wars "ending eventually", not render the MIC obsolete? Is it not the MIC that
thrives on perpetual wars with seemingly endless supplies of cash to fund their wars? Even in
periods of relative calm (if ever, since WWII that is), is it not the constant threat of war
that keeps the military monstrosity grinding away?
74% of Americans express high confidence in their military? I wonder if 74% of Americans are
even aware that we're at war. I read somewhere that U.S. generals now define victory as
getting the Taliban to the bargaining table.
"out-guerrilla the guerrilla." was coined by Col. David Hackworth as out "G" ing the G and
was shown to work in the Delta. Read his book "About Face" or "Steel my soldiers hearts"
Elites, read Bolsheviks or Freemasons win no war, they do not win over diseases, crime, idiot
bla, bla. They are making money on them and they always turn to both sides. To the criminal
gangsters, to the associations of the sick, to the losers in war, they can win in 20 years,
etc. etc. This article is foam, foam. The Elites are trying to do everything and nobody
understands anything, so the elite wins – the banker always has his blood money.
the United States has not won a major conflict since 1945; has a trillion-dollar
national security budget; has had 17 military commanders in the last 17 years in
Afghanistan, a country plagued by 23,744 "security incidents" (the most ever recorded) in
2017 alone; has spent around $3 trillion, primarily on that war and the rest of the war on
terror, including the ongoing conflict in Iraq, which then-defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld swore, in 2002, would be over in only "five days or five weeks or five months,"
but where approximately 5,000 U.S. troops remain today; and yet 74% of the American people
still express high confidence in the U.S. military.
Let me correct that 1st sentence for you: the United States has not REPEATED THE MISTAKE
OF WINNING a major conflict since 1945.
Why? Because as they quickly discovered, WW2 was the best thing that ever happened to the
US economy, and that lots more money is made fighting wars than winning one, as proven by the
above quoted figures.
December 24, 2013 The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases
The US Military has bases in *63* countries. According to Gelman, who examined 2005
official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of *737* bases in foreign lands.
Hi Nick Turse,
Given OBL and Afghanistan Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11 terror attacks, it appears
likely that the W. Bush regime launched war upon the Taliban exclusively for geopolitical
interests, minerals, i.e., lithium, and construction of natural gas pipelines directed
southeast to the subcontinent, India.
Fyi, approximately seven years ago, I saw a U.S. Veterans informational map which identified
the Neo-"Grunts" military bases as within close proximity to pipeline construction.
Consequently, for me, I see US military's incessant stay in "the graveyard of Empires" as a
stilted profit & loss (P&L) "'victory," but of course there's no (!) dividend for
dumb goyim American citizens, but voila, oodles for global energy companies, untouchable
Military-Industrial-$ecurity Complex, & killing "Poppy Fields," including Moneychanger
pharmaceutical-opioid trade!
In short, the incredible cost for U.S. military's GWOT & advanced targeting of Russia is
diabolically placed upon future generations of American taxpayers who, at the moment-of-their
birth, are in debt, & the Mom and Pop' "victory" is incarnate in a 'guvmint CHIP
card.
ZUSA wars "victory" is in the pockets of P&L-benefactors, and on Sunday afternoons, one
can feel the "bern" when fighter jets flyover NFL stadiums!
Thanks for the education, Mr. Turse!
@jilles
dykstra It did not in the civilised societies of north and western Europe. The nordic "
model " is dead , and it has been a bad example to the world . Sweden has 10 million people ,
Norway 4 , Danmark 6 . These little countries can not be a valid model for anyone .
Like Toynbee said nordics are kind of a failed egoistic subcivilization of the germans ,
english of russians , with which they never had the courage to integrate . They seem to be
happy in their autistic cold world , pretending to be a showroom for the UN perverts .
As to Vietnam the author is just clueless. Where was the so called crushing defeat? When we
Americans pulled out in 1971 to 1972 the NVA was still stymied and impotent. Our so called
allies hated us totally and the feeling was mutual. We actually had no allies in Vietnam
except the savage yard tribes. But yes after we pulled out the South collapsed fast as we
knew they would. They got exactly what they deserved. But it was a South Vietnamese defeat.
By 1975 our armies were long gone. Repeat, there were no American divisions, battallions or
platoons to lose. We were gone.
We still do not know exactly what Kissinger got from the Chinese at Paris in 1971-2, but
he and Nixon seemed happy enough, and we pulled out and ceded Vietnam. We do know this was
the exact time China began to cooperate with us in the Cold War against the Bolsheviks.
Specifically, we know the Chinese allowed our B-52′s, loaded with nukes, to overfly,
all along the Soviet border, and this continued to 1987, when the game was already up.
"... Here, for instance, is what I wrote about our Afghan War in 2008, almost seven years after it began, when the U.S. Air Force took out a bridal party, including the bride herself and at least 26 other women and children en route to an Afghan wedding. And that would be just one of eight U.S. wedding strikes I toted up by the end of 2013 in three countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen, that killed almost 300 potential revelers. "We have become a nation of wedding crashers," I wrote, "the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses, tore up the place, offered nary an apology, and refused to go home." ..."
"... Thought of another way, the U.S. military is now heading into record territory in Afghanistan. In the mid-1970s, the rare American who had heard of that country knew it only as a stop on the hippie trail . If you had then told anyone here that, by 2018, the U.S. would have been at war there for 27 years ( 1979-1989 and 2001-2018), he or she would have laughed in your face. And yet here we are, approaching the mark for one of Europe's longest, most brutal struggles, the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century. Imagine that. ..."
"... raison d'être ..."
"... Afganistan is the graveyard of poor empires. It's the playground of the rich American empire, a place to test weapons, test men, gain battle experience, get promotions, and generally keep the military-industrial complex in top health. If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. ..."
"... As shown in this article there is a very interesting connection between growing wealth inequality in the United States and American wars: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/07/how-american-wars-lead-to-increased.html ..."
"... it's not a war; it's an occupation. More cops get killed/wounded in USA proper then military personnel in that "war". 2017, 46 U.S. police officers were killed by felons in the line of duty; 17 military personnel in Afghanistan. ..."
"... Yes , the US military industrial complex is rich and in top health as you say , but what I see is that the health of the US as a whole , physical and mental , is going down in the last 50 years . Maybe the metastasis of the " healthy " military cancer are killing the American host . ..."
Fair warning. Stop reading right now if you want, because I'm going to repeat
myself. What choice do I have, since my subject is the Afghan War (America's
second Afghan War, no less)? I
began writing about that war in October 2001, almost 17 years ago, just
after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. That was how I inadvertently launched
the unnamed listserv that would, a year later, become TomDispatch .
Given the website's continuing focus on America's forever wars (a phrase I first
used in
2010 ), what choice have I had but to write about Afghanistan ever since?
So think of this as the war piece to end all war pieces. And let the repetition
begin!
Here, for instance, is what I
wrote about our Afghan War in 2008, almost seven years after it began, when
the U.S. Air Force took out a bridal party, including the bride herself and
at least 26 other women and children en route to an Afghan wedding. And that
would be just one of eight U.S. wedding strikes I
toted up by the end of 2013 in three countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen,
that killed almost 300 potential revelers. "We have become a nation of wedding
crashers," I wrote, "the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses,
tore up the place, offered nary an apology, and refused to go home."
Here's what I
wrote about Afghanistan in 2009, while considering the metrics of "a war
gone to hell": "While Americans argue feverishly and angrily over what kind
of money, if any, to put into health care, or decaying infrastructure, or other
key places of need, until recently just about no one in the mainstream raised
a peep about the fact that, for nearly eight years (not to say much of the last
three decades), we've been pouring billions of dollars, American military know-how,
and American lives into a black hole in Afghanistan that is, at least in significant
part, of our own creation."
Here's what I
wrote in 2010, thinking about how "forever war" had entered the bloodstream
of the twenty-first-century U.S. military (in a passage in which you'll notice
a name that became more familiar in the Trump era): "And let's not leave out
the Army's incessant planning for the distant future embodied in a recently
published report, 'Operating Concept, 2016-2028,' overseen by Brigadier General
H.R. McMaster, a senior adviser to Gen. David Petraeus. It opts to ditch 'Buck
Rogers' visions of futuristic war, and instead to imagine counterinsurgency
operations, grimly referred to as 'wars of exhaustion,' in one, two, many Afghanistans
to the distant horizon."
Here's what I
wrote in 2012, when Afghanistan had superseded Vietnam as the longest war
in American history: "Washington has gotten itself into a situation on the Eurasian
mainland so vexing and perplexing that Vietnam has finally been left in the
dust. In fact, if you hadn't noticed -- and weirdly enough no one has -- that
former war finally seems to have all but vanished."
Here's what I
wrote in 2015, thinking about the American taxpayer dollars that had, in
the preceding years, gone into Afghan "roads to nowhere, ghost soldiers, and
a $43 million gas station" built in the middle of nowhere, rather than into
this country: "Clearly, Washington had gone to war like a drunk on a bender,
while the domestic infrastructure began to fray. At $109 billion by 2014, the
American reconstruction program in Afghanistan was already, in today's dollars,
larger than the Marshall Plan (which helped put all of devastated Western Europe
back on its feet after World War II) and still the country was a shambles."
And here's what I
wrote last year thinking about the nature of our never-ending war there:
"Right now, Washington is whistling past the graveyard. In Afghanistan and Pakistan
the question is no longer whether the U.S. is in command, but whether it can
get out in time. If not, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Indians,
who exactly will ride to our rescue? Perhaps it would be more prudent to stop
hanging out in graveyards. They are, after all, meant for burials, not resurrections."
And that's just to dip a toe into my writings on America's all-time most
never-ending war.
What Happened After History Ended
... ... ...
In reality, when it comes to America's
spreading wars , especially the one in Afghanistan, history didn't end at
all. It just stumbled onto some graveyard version of a Möbius strip. In contrast
to the past empires that found they ultimately couldn't defeat Afghanistan's
insurgent tribal warriors, the U.S. has -- as Bush administration officials
suspected at the time -- proven unique. Just not in the way they imagined.
Their dreams couldn't have been more ambitious. As they launched the invasion
of Afghanistan, they were already looking past the triumph to come to Saddam
Hussein's Iraq and the glories that would follow once his regime had been "decapitated,"
once U.S. forces, the most technologically advanced ever, were
stationed for an eternity in the heart of the oil heartlands of the Greater
Middle East. Not that anyone remembers anymore, but Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and the rest of that crew of geopolitical dreamers
wanted it all.
What they got was no less unique in history: a great power at the seeming
height of its strength and glory, with destructive capabilities beyond imagining
and a military unmatched on the planet, unable to score a single decisive victory
across an increasingly large swath of the planet or impose its will, however
brutally, on seemingly far weaker, less well-armed opponents. They could not
conquer, subdue, control, pacify, or win the hearts and minds or anything else
of enemies who often fought their
trillion-dollar foe using weaponry valued at the
price
of a pizza . Talk about bleeding wounds!
A War of Abysmal Repetition
Thought of another way, the U.S. military is now heading into record
territory in Afghanistan. In the mid-1970s, the rare American who had heard
of that country knew it only as a stop on the
hippie trail . If you had then told anyone here that, by 2018, the U.S.
would have been at war there for 27 years (
1979-1989 and 2001-2018), he or she would have laughed in your face. And
yet here we are, approaching the mark for one of Europe's longest, most brutal
struggles, the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century. Imagine that.
... ... ...
Almost 17 years and, coincidentally enough,
17 U.S. commanders later, think of it as a war of abysmal repetition. Just
about everything in the U.S. manual of military tactics has evidently been tried
(including dropping "the mother of all bombs," the
largest non-nuclear munition in that military's arsenal), often time and
again, and nothing has even faintly done the trick -- to which the Pentagon's
response is invariably a version of the classic
misquoted
movie line, "Play it again, Sam."
And yet, amid all that repetition,
people are
still dying ; Afghans and others are being
uprooted and
displaced across Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and deep into Africa;
wars and terror outfits are spreading. And here's a simple enough fact that's
worth repeating: the endless, painfully ignored failure of the U.S. military
(and civilian) effort in Afghanistan is where it all began and where it seems
never to end.
A Victory for Whom?
Every now and then, there's the odd bit of news that reminds you we don't
have to be in a world of repetition. Every now and then, you see something and
wonder whether it might not represent a new development, one that possibly could
lead out of (or far deeper into) the graveyard of empires.
As a start, though it's been easy to forget in these years, other countries
are affected by the ongoing disaster of a war in Afghanistan. Think, for instance,
of Pakistan (with a newly elected, somewhat
Trumpian president who has been a
critic of America's Afghan War and of U.S. drone strikes in his country),
Iran, China, and Russia. So here's something I can't remember seeing in the
news before: the military intelligence chiefs of those four countries all
met recently in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, officially to discuss
the growth of Islamic State-branded insurgents in Afghanistan. But who knows
what was really being discussed? And the same applies to the
visit of Iran's armed forces chief of staff to Pakistan in July and the
return visit of that country's chief of staff to Iran in early August. I
can't tell you what's going on, only that these are not the typically repetitive
stories of the last 17 years.
And hard as it might be to believe, even when it comes to U.S. policy, there's
been the odd headline that might pass for new. Take the recent private, direct
talks with the Taliban in Qatar's capital, Doha,
initiated by the Trump administration and seemingly ongoing. They might
-- or
might not -- represent
something new , as might President Trump himself, who, as far as anyone
can tell, doesn't think that Afghanistan is "
the right war ." He has, from time to time, even indicated that he might
be in favor of ending the American role, of "
getting the hell out of there," as he reportedly told Senator Rand Paul,
and that's unique in itself (though he and his advisers seem to be raring to
go when it comes to what could be the next Afghanistan:
Iran ).
But should the man who would never want to be known as the president who
lost the longest war in American history try to follow through on a withdrawal
plan, he's likely to have a few problems on his hands. Above all, the Pentagon
and the country's field commanders seem to be hooked on America's "
infinite " wars. They exhibit not the slightest urge to stop them. The Afghan
War and the others that have flowed from it represent both their raison
d'être and their meal ticket. They represent the only thing the U.S. military
knows how to do in this century. And one thing is guaranteed: if they don't
agree with the president on a withdrawal strategy, they have the power and ability
to make a man who would do anything to avoid marring his own image as a winnner
look worse than you could possibly imagine. Despite that military's supposedly
apolitical role in this country's affairs, its leaders are uniquely capable
of blocking any attempt to end the Afghan War.
And with that in mind, almost 17 years later, don't think that victory is
out of the question either. Every day that the U.S. military stays in Afghanistan
is indeed a victory for well, not George W. Bush, or Barack Obama, and certainly
not Donald Trump, but the now long-dead Osama bin Laden. The calculation couldn't
be simpler. Thanks to his "
precision" weaponry -- those 19 suicidal hijackers in commercial jets --
the nearly 17 years of wars he's sparked across much of the Muslim world cost
a man from one of Saudi Arabia's
wealthiest families a mere
$400,000 to $500,000 . They've cost American taxpayers, minimally,
$5.6 trillion dollars with no end in sight. And every day the Afghan War
and the others that have followed from it continue is but another triumphant
day for him and his followers.
A sad footnote to this history of extreme repetition: I wish this essay,
as its title suggests, were indeed the war piece to end all war pieces. Unfortunately,
it's a reasonable bet that, in August 2019, or August 2020, not to speak of
August 2021, I'll be repeating all of this yet again.
Afganistan is the graveyard of poor empires. It's the playground
of the rich American empire, a place to test weapons, test men, gain
battle experience, get promotions, and generally keep the military-industrial
complex in top health. If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it.
All very human. If America wasn't doing it, somebody else would.
Its all about pipelines, rare-earth elements and drug money for CIA black
ops.
15 years of American efforts to suppress opium growing and the heroin
trade in that country (at historic lows, by the way, when the U.S. invaded
in 2001).
And many record harvests after the US invasion.
' In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can
bet it was planned that way ' Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Unless Washington shifts from a program of funding wars by deficit financing
to funding wars through direct taxation, wars being fought by the United
States will continue to contribute to America's growing income inequality.
About the only thing I take away from this insufferably droll, repetitive
piece on America at war forever, is how powerless the both the writer and
the reader are. All we can do is read these depressing articles which remind
us of a war we can do absolutely nothing about. Very shitty and depressing,
just like USA!
Pretty much. Besides, it's not a war; it's an occupation. More cops
get killed/wounded in USA proper then military personnel in that "war".
2017, 46 U.S. police officers were killed by felons in the line of duty;
17 military personnel in Afghanistan.
The article's point/issue is simply overblown. That's why people don't
pay attention to it.
BS; it's an alien invasion = Nuremberg-class war crime.
More cops get killed/wounded in USA proper
This looks very much like the "tu quoque" or the appeal to hypocrisy
fallacy plus 'oranges vs. apples.' What the good US-burghers do in their
own country is entirely their business, and IF it looks like they act like
antediluvian neanderthal savages [a direct result of their risible 'education'
+ night & day TV, perhaps] THEN tough luck for the cops. It probably doesn't
help that the US-cops are just as much free with the lead as their oppressed
subjects. And don't think that the same sort of savagery won't impact someone
near you; a quick glance into abc.net.au/news/justin reveals horrendous
'social situations,' like bodies in barrels, say, or aggravated home invasions,
etc., also caused by defective education plus importing 'cheap' labour.
That's why people don't pay attention to it
More BS; the sheeple ignore US/Z aggression everywhere it occurs because
the corrupt&venal MSM+PFBCs [= publicly financed broadcasters, like the
AusBC] sell the powerless population pups = the sheeple get actively, deliberately
brainwashed [cf. Lügenpresse ]. Apologists for [here terrorist] criminals
make themselves accessories = assign themselves guilt and should be punished
after being tried & found so guilty.
" The U.S. has spent 25 trillion since the Vietnam War, what do they
have to show for it? " Jack Ma Ali Baba
" The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept the majority of people
from ever questioning the inequity of a private for profit fraudulent banking
system where most people drudge along, paying heavey taxes for which they
get nothing in return." Gore Vidal
(War) "It's something we do all the time because we're good at it. And
we're good at it because we're used to it. And we're used to it because
we do it all the time." Sergeant Michael Dunne played by Paul Gross in Passchendaele
the Movie
I'm not sure, but I don't think we are good at it anymore. But it appears
to me that the Russians, Iranians, Syrians and Houthi's are and that really
scares us. But it does make a lot of money for some people, careers for
others and the MSM loves it for the ratings and avoiding telling the truth.
Your opening photo is of two of the dumbest son-of-a-bitches to ever
hold the office of President of The United States. Indicative of the shit
slide this country is on.
"Afghans and others are being uprooted and displaced across Asia,
South Asia, the Middle East, and deep into Africa ."
So the strategy is to depopulate the country of its indigenous peoples
until "we" outnumber them? Never mind the damage these re-settled folks
are doing to Western Europe, not to mention other places.
.generally keep the military-industrial complex in top health
Yes , the US military industrial complex is rich and in top health
as you say , but what I see is that the health of the US as a whole , physical
and mental , is going down in the last 50 years . Maybe the metastasis of
the " healthy " military cancer are killing the American host .
The same happened to most of the empires , got drunk on blood and fell
.
A new excerpt
from a book by
C.J. Chivers, a former U.S. infantry captain and New York Times war correspondent,
tells the story of a young man from New York City who joined the U.S. army and was send to the
Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. While the man, one Robert Soto, makes it out alive, several of
his comrades and many Afghans die during his time in Afghanistan to no avail.
The piece includes remarkably strong words about the strategic (in)abilities of U.S.
politicians, high ranking officers and pundits:
On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and women abroad,
with their emphasis on military action and their visions of reordering nations and cultures,
have not succeeded. It is beyond honest dispute that the wars did not achieve what their
organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly
expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and
politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under
different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center
in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost
as if distant war is a presumed government action.
That description is right but it does not touche the underlying causes. The story of the
attempted U.S. occupation of the Korengal valley, which Civers again describes, has been the
theme of several books and movies. It demonstrates the futility of fighting a population that
does not welcome occupiers. But most of the authors, including Chivers, get one fact wrong. The
war with the people of the Korengal valley was started out of shear stupidity and
ignorance.
The main military outpost in the valley was build on a former sawmill. Chivers writes:
On a social level, it could not have been much worse. It was an unforced error of occupation,
a set of foreign military bunkers built on the grounds of a sawmill and lumber yard formerly
operated by Haji Mateen, a local timber baron. The American foothold put some of the valley's
toughest men out of work, the same Afghans who knew the mountain trails. Haji Mateen now
commanded many of the valley's fighters, under the banner of the Taliban.
Unfortunately Chivers does not explain why the saw mill was closed. Ten years ago a piece by
Elizabeth Rubin touched on this:
As the Afghans tell the story, from the moment the Americans arrived in 2001, the Pech Valley
timber lords and warlords had their ear. Early on, they led the Americans to drop bombs on
the mansion of their biggest rival -- Haji Matin. The air strikes killed several members of
his family, according to local residents, and the Americans arrested others and sent them to
the prison at Bagram Air Base. The Pech Valley fighters working alongside the Americans then
pillaged the mansion. And that was that. Haji Matin, already deeply religious, became
ideological and joined with Abu Ikhlas, a local Arab linked to the foreign jihadis.
Years before October 2004, before regular U.S. soldiers came into the Korengal valley, U.S.
special forces combed through the region looking for 'al-Qaeda'. They made friends with a
timber baron in Pech valley, a Pashtun of the Safi tribe, who claimed that his main competitor
in the (illegal) timber trade who lived in the nearby Korengal river valley was a Taliban and
'al-Qaeda'. That was not true. Haji Matin was a member of a Nuristani tribe that spoke
Pashai . These were a
distinct people with their own language who
were and are traditional hostile to any centralized government (pdf), even to the Taliban's
Islamic Emirate.
The U.S. special forces lacked any knowledge of the local society. But even worse was that
they lacked the curiosity to research and investigate the social terrain. They simply trusted
their new 'friend', the smooth talking Pashtun timber baron, and called in jets to destroy his
competitor's sawmill and home. This started a local war of attrition which defeated the U.S.
military. In 2010 the U.S. military, having achieved nothing, retreated from Korengal. (The
sawmill episode was described in detail in a 2005(?) blog post by a former special force
soldier who took part in it. It since seems to have been removed from the web.)
Back to Chivers' otherwise well written piece. He looks at the results two recent (and
ongoing) U.S. wars:
The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, each of which the United States spent hundreds of
billions of dollars to build and support, are fragile, brutal and uncertain. The nations they
struggle to rule harbor large contingents of irregular fighters and terrorists who have been
hardened and made savvy, trained by the experience of fighting the American military
machine.
...
Billions of dollars spent creating security partners also deputized pedophiles, torturers and
thieves. National police or army units that the Pentagon proclaimed essential to their
countries' futures have disbanded. The Islamic State has sponsored or encouraged terrorist
attacks across much of the world -- exactly the species of crime the global "war on terror"
was supposed to prevent.
The wars fail because they no reasonable strategic aim or achievable purpose. They are
planned by incompetent people. The most recent Pentagon ideas for the U.S. war on Afghanistan
depend on less restricted bombing rules. Yesterday one predictable and self defeating
consequence
was again visible:
An American airstrike killed at least a dozen Afghan security forces during intense fighting
with the Taliban near the Afghan capital, officials said Tuesday.
...
Shamshad Larawi, a spokesman for the governor, said that American airstrikes had been called
in for support, but that because of a misunderstanding, the planes mistakenly targeted an
Afghan police outpost.
...
Haji Abdul Satar, a tribal elder from Azra, said he counted 19 dead, among them 17 Afghan
police officers and pro-government militia members and two civilians.
...
In the first six months of this year, United States forces dropped nearly 3,000 bombs across
Afghanistan, nearly double the number for the same period last year and more than five times
the number for the first half of 2016. ... Civilian casualties from aerial bombardments have
increased considerably as a result, the United Nations says.
One argument made by the Pentagon generals when they pushed Trump to allow more airstrikes
was that these would cripple the Taliban's alleged opium trade and its financial resources.
But, as the Wall Street Journalreports
, that plan, like all others before it, did not work at all:
Nine months of targeted airstrikes on opium production sites across Afghanistan have failed
to put a significant dent in the illegal drug trade that provides the Taliban with hundreds
of millions of dollars, according to figures provided by the U.S. military.
...
So far, the air campaign has wiped out about $46 million in Taliban revenue, less than a
quarter of the money the U.S. estimates the insurgents get from the illegal drug trade. U.S.
military officials estimate the drug trade provides the Taliban with 60% of its revenue.
...
Poppy production hit record highs in Afghanistan last year , where they are the country's
largest cash crop, valued at between $1.5 billion and $3 billion.
More than 200 airstrikes on "drug-related targets" have hardly made a dent in the Taliban's
war chest. The military war planners again failed.
At the end of the Chivers piece its protagonist, Robert Soto, rightfully vents about the
unaccountability of such military 'leaders':
Still he wondered: Was there no accountability for the senior officer class? The war was
turning 17, and the services and the Pentagon seemed to have been given passes on all the
failures and the drift. Even if the Taliban were to sign a peace deal tomorrow, there would
be no rousing sense of victory, no parade. In Iraq, the Islamic State metastasized in the
wreckage of the war to spread terror around the world. The human costs were past counting,
and the whitewash was both institutional and personal, extended to one general after another,
including many of the same officers whose plans and orders had either fizzled or failed to
create lasting success, and yet who kept rising . Soto watched some of them as they were
revered and celebrated in Washington and by members of the press, even after past plans were
discredited and enemies retrenched.
Since World War II, during which the Soviets, not the U.S., defeated the Nazis, the U.S. won
no war. The only exception is the turkey shooting of the first Gulf war. But even that war
failed in its larger political aim of dethroning Saddam Hussein.
The U.S. population and its 'leaders' simply know too little about the world to prevail in
an international military campaign. They lack curiosity. The origin of the Korengal failure is
a good example for that.
U.S. wars
are rackets , run on the back of lowly soldiers and foreign civil populations. They enriche
few at the cost of everyone else.
Wars should not be 'a presumed government action', but the last resort to defend ones
country. We should do our utmost to end all of them.
you know, it is just as easy to influence a foreign society by making movies (Bollywood in
this case) with a certain bent, the one you want people to follow. After a few years of
seeing the Taliban as villains, there would be no fresh recruits and mass desertion. But, the
weapons manufacturers wouldn't be making their enormous profits. This same effect can be seen
in American society, where the movies coming out of Hollywood started becoming very
aggressive in tone around the time that Ronald Reagan became president. Movies went from The
Deer Hunter to Rambo and Wall Street. Is it any wonder that even the progressive Left in the
USA thinks it is ok to attack their political adversaries and that violence is justified?
This is the power of movies and the media.
Thank you 'b' this post as always is a true in depth education !
If you run for president of the United States of America enytime soon you'v got my vote !
bjd @1 highlights an important truth similar to that exposed by Joseph Heller in
Cache-22 and by Hudson's Balance-of-Payments revelation he revealed yet again
at
this link I posted yesterday . Most know the aggressive war against Afghanistan was
already planned and on the schedule prior to 911 and would have occurred regardless since
after Serbia the Outlaw US Empire felt it could do and get away with anything. 911 simply
provided BushCo with Carte-Blache, but it wasn't enough of a window to fulfill their desired
destruction of 7 nations in 5 years for their Zionist Patron.
IMO, as part of its plan to control the Heartland, those running the Outlaw US Empire
never had any plan to leave Afghanistan; rather once there, they'd stay and occupy it just as
the Empire's done everywhere since WW2. The Empire's very much like a leech; its occupations
are parasitic as Hudson demonstrated, and work at the behest of corporate interests as Smedly
Butler so eloquently illustrated.
As with Vietnam, the only way to get NATO forces to leave is for Afghanis to force them
out with their rifles. Hopefully, they will be assisted by SCO nations and Afghanistan will
cease being a broken nation by 2030.
The Wall Street Journal article on the Taliban's ties to the local drug trade also the
reveals deliberate omission practiced by the MSM, which keeps its readers actively
misinformed. Estimating illegal drug revenues contribute as much as $200 million to the
Taliban, the article fails to put that in proper context: that figure represents merely
7%-13% of total production receipts (estimated at 1.5 to 3 billion dollars). Most informed
persons know exactly who reaps the rewards of more than 80% of the Afghan drug products, and
why this much larger effort is not the focus of "targeted airstrikes."
1. "The wars fail because they no reasonable strategic aim or achievable purpose........
Since World War II, during which the Soviets, not the U.S., defeated the Nazis, the U.S. won
no war. The only exception is the turkey shooting of the first Gulf war."
2 "U.S. wars are rackets, run on the back of lowly soldiers and foreign civil populations.
They enriche few at the cost of everyone else"
Your points in 1 ignore the reality expressed by 2. The real strategic aims and purposes
are not those provided for public consumption. Winning wars is not the objective, the length
and cost of wars is far more important than results. Enriching and empowering the few over
the many is the entire point of it all
And lets put an end to "US " responsibility for all evils. Its a shared responsibility.
None of this is possible without the cooperation of Uk and its commonwealth nations, EU,
Japan and the various international organizations that allow the dollar to be weaponized such
as IMF/World Bank and BIS not to mention the various tax havens which support covert
operations and looting of assets obtained in these wars (military or economic).
Until the rest of the world is prepared to do something about it they are willing
accomplices in all of this.
The global elites are globalists, they dont think in national terms. Its a global elitist
cabal at work that is hiding behind the cover of US hegemony.
karlof1 @ 4 said:"The Empire's very much like a leech; its occupations are parasitic as
Hudson demonstrated, and work at the behest of corporate interests as Smedly Butler so
eloquently illustrated."
You bet.. The operative words being " work at the behest of corporate interests "
And so it goes around the globe. Question is; How to get this information to the herded
bovines the general public has become?
Without a major network to disseminate such info, we're all just spinning our wheels. Oh,
but, the therapy is good..
Very interesting stories - especially re: the timber mill warlord competition.
Defoliants are still used in warfare - especially "by accident". Carpet bombing is still
legal. If NATO wanted to wipe out the poppies, it surely could do so.
Pft at 6, reminded me of this zinger:
The nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the
principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and
planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. -
The Brzez
jayc @5 implies it, and I'll say it more directly: US soldiers guard poppy fields in
Afghanistan. I'm also reminded of Alfred C McCoy's famous 1972 work The Politics of Heroin in
Southeast Asia.
The nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal
creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in
terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. - The Brzez
Posted by: fast freddy | Aug 8, 2018 6:18:02 PM | 9
This gem hides a deep truth. One has to replace "creative" and "far in advance", instead,
we have power relationships. And those power relationships resemble central planning of the
Communist states, concept that is attractive in abstraction, but centralization cannot cope
with complexities of societies and economies, in part because the central institutions are
inevitably beset by negative selection: people rise due to their adroit infighting skills
rather than superior understanding of what those institutions are supposed to control.
Ultimately, this proces leads to decay and fall. "Nation states" themselves are not immune to
such cycles and are at different stages of the cycle creative-decadent-falling. However,
international finance lacks observable "refreshing" mechanisms of nation states.
War as always is financial racket, $trillion stolen, MIC thrives, took over with CIA all
prerogatives of power and has million agents in US alone in every institution government and
corporate.
I call it success of ruling elite. B war would stop tomorrow if it was unsuccessful read
unprofitable for those who wage it. Nazi death camps were most profitable enterprises in
third Reich.
For some reason, when the US wars are admitted to be civil wars, no one questions whose side
did the US take until it is too late and so very few tune in. Incompetence is the excuse. It
reminds me of that adage to not blame on malice that which can be explained by stupidity but
stupidity has been used to excuse a lot of malice. It's one reason why "military
intelligence" resides at the top of oxymorons along with "congressional ethics" and
"humanitarian intervention."
It is amazing to think that the US has been in Afghanistan for 17 years and supposedly
knows where the opium and its processors are and yet could not take it out. (The pix of
soldiers patrolling poppy fields is rich.) The initial excuse years ago was that the US
needed to support the warlords who grew/sold it. What is the excuse now? Incompetence,
corruption, laziness?
The US likes the idea of opium products going into Iran and Russia ... who have protested
to no avail. A bit of indirect subversion.
The US likes opium products going into the US. It makes for broken citizens who lack zeal for
knowledge, and therefore, comprehension; and the will to organize against the PTB.
Importantly, being illegal, opiate use feeds the pigs who own the prison-industrial complex.
Given the current, longstanding dynamics within the Outlaw US Empire, I don't see any
possibility of the required reforms ever having an opportunity to get enacted. The
situation's very similar to Nazi Germany's internal dynamic--the coercive forces of the State
and its allies will not allow any diminution of their power. Within the Empire, thousands of
Hydra heads would need to be rapidly severed for any revolt to succeed, and that requires a
large, easily infiltrated organization to accomplish. Invasion by an allied group of nations
invites a nuclear holocaust I can't condone. I think the best the world can do is force the
Empire to retreat from its 800+ bases and sequester it behind the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
until it self-destructs or drastically reforms itself--Containment. But for that to work,
almost every comprador government would need to be changed and their personages imprisoned,
exiled or executed--another close to impossible task. Ideally, the ballot box would
work--ideally--but that requires deeply informed voters and highly idealistic, strongly
principled, creative, and fearless candidates, along with an honest media.
Yeah, writing can be good therapy. But I'm no more cheery than when I began. Must be time
for intoxicants.
The world does not need to force the Evil Empire to retreat from its 1,000 (and counting)
military bases around the planet.
All the world needs to do is trade with Iran, Venezuela or some other outsider nation. The
Evil Empire will be so busy trying to punish everyone who trades with these countries by
extending sanctions against the outsiders to their trading partners that the Empire
effectively ends up having sanctioned everyone away and it becomes the victim of its
sanctioning.
The 1,000+ military bases around the globe are then effectively on their own and the
soldiers and administrators inside can either stay there and starve, throw in their lot with
the host nation's citizenry or beg to be allowed to return home.
thanks b... as long as the americans support the troops, lol - all will be well apparently...
jesus.. meanwhile - the support for the 1% bomb makers and etc continues... maybe it is the
mutual fund money that folks are concerned about maintaining..
"In the first six months of this year, United States forces dropped nearly 3,000 bombs
across Afghanistan." what is that? about 17 or 18 bombs a day or something? what about the
drones? they have to be put to use too... best to get someone who is involved in their own
turf war in afgan to give out the targets.. brilliant... usa war planning is mostly destroy
and destroy and honour the troops and wave their stupid american flag and that is about it...
sorry, but that is what it looks like to me..
its not so much they want to end the war on terror or the war on drugs.........they just want
to say one thing to cover their asses and do another thing completely..
no matter what there should of been one general who got it right.....but we see it was
never about peace .... it was always about war and its profits. anyone who didn't take orders
or even had a hint of the right strategy would be Hung like dirty boots to dry.
what is the right strategy? leave. just as other empires did. before you call on your
faces
to be even more frank....its not even about the money as that is not as important than
having a nation of 300m regurgitate the news that they are there for 17 years to be the
police of the world. because USA are the good ones... that they need to buy the biggest
trucks which can't even fit in normal parking spaces because they have land mines(I mean
ieds...) to avoid and need to haul 5tons of cargo to their construction job all while
watching out for terrorists and trump Hillary divisions. is disorienting and it is
deliberate. just as having a war last without a reason is deliberate while they entertain the
masses with games..
@23dh... same deal here in canuckle head ville... people remain ignorant of what there money
is ''''invested'''' in... could be saudi arabia for all the canucks think... btw - thanks for
the laugh on the other thread... you made a couple of good jokes somewhere the past few days!
i don't have much free time to comment at the moment..
McCoy, in "The Politics of Heroin" gives a more complete picture:
In 1996, following four years of civil war among rival resistance factions, the Taliban's
victory caused further expansion of opium cultivation. After capturing Kabul in September,
the Taliban drove the Uzbek and Tajik warlords into the country's northeast, where they
formed the Northern Alliance and clung to some 10 percent of Afghanistan's territory. Over
the next three years, a seesaw battle for the Shamali plain north of Kabul raged until the
Taliban finally won control in 1999 by destroying the orchards and irrigation in a prime
food-producing region, generating over 100,000 refugees and increasing the country's
dependence on opium.
Once in power, the Taliban made opium its largest source of taxation. To raise revenues
estimated at $20-$25 million in 1997, the Taliban collected a 5 to 10 percent tax in kind on
all opium harvested, a share that they then sold to heroin laboratories; a flat tax of $70
per kilogram on heroin refiners; and a transport tax of $250 on every kilogram exported. The
head of the regime's anti-drug operations in Kandahar, Abdul Rashid, enforced a rigid ban on
hashish "because it is consumed by Afghans, Muslims." But, he explained, "Opium is
permissible because it is consumed by kafirs [unbelievers] in the West and not by Muslims or
Afghans." A Taliban governor, Mohammed Hassan, added: "Drugs are evil and we would like to
substitute poppies with another cash crop, but it's not possible at the moment because we do
not have international recognition."
More broadly, the Taliban's policies provided stimulus, both direct and indirect, for a
nationwide expansion of opium cultivation. . . Significantly, the regime's ban on the
employment and education of women created a vast pool of low-cost labor to sustain an
accelerated expansion of opium production. . . . In northern and eastern Afghanistan, women
of all ages played " a fundamental role in the cultivation of the opium poppy"---planting,
weeding, harvesting, cooking for laborers, and processing by-products such as oil. The
Taliban not only taxed and encouraged opium cultivation, they protected and promoted exports
to international markets.
In retrospect, however, the Taliban's most important contribution to the illicit traffic
was its support for large-scale heroin refining.
. . .
Instead of eradication, the UN's annual opium surveys showed that Taliban rule had doubled
Afghanistan's opium production from 2,250 tons in 1996 to 4,600 tons in 1999--equivalent to
75 percent of world illicit production. (508-509)
. . .
War on the Taliban
All this [heroin] traffic across Central Asia depended on high-volume heroin production in
politically volatile Afghanistan. In July 2000, as a devastating drought entered its second
year and mass starvation spread across Afghanistan, the Taliban's leader Mullah Omar ordered
a sudden ban on opium cultivation in a bid for international recognition. (p.517)
B's article assumes that the operative purpose of the US military is to win wars. This isn't
the case. The US military largely a business enterprise whose objective is to make money for
the plutocracy that largely controls them. That being the case, the Afghanistan war has been
a great success. If the US 'won' it, it would cease; if the Taliban conquered, it would
cease. In this form of military stagnation it continues, and the money roles in making the
ammunition, equipment, etc.
The military budget is largely an institution for transferring the tax money of the
population from the people to the plutocracy. Military stagnation serves this purpose better
than winning or losing.
If there is one standout factor which makes makes all this profitable mayhem possible then
it's the successful campaign by the Elites to persuade the Public that Secrecy is a
legitimate variation of Privacy.
It is not.
Impregnable Government Secrecy is ALWAYS a cover for erroneous interpretations of an
inconvenient Law - or straight-out cover for criminal activity.
It's preposterous to believe that a government elected by The People has a legitimate right
to create schemes which must be kept Secret from The People.
This is especially true in the case of Military/Defense. There wouldn't be a CIC on earth who
doesn't have up-to-date and regularly updated info on the hardware and capabilities of every
ally and every potential foe. The People have a legitimate right to know what the CIC, and
the rest of the world, already knows.
And that's just the most glaring example of the childish deception being perpetrated in
the name of Secrecy. If governments were to be stripped of the power to conduct Our affairs
in Secret then the scrutiny would oblige them to behave more competently. And we could weed
out the drones and nitwits before they did too much damage.
@30 Right. I notice they avoid mentioning the Badawis who are central to the issue. I guess
helping Justin out isn't very high on Donald's list of priorities.
i forget who said it and the exact phrasing, but the best explanation i've seen is
"why is the US there? it answers itself: to be there".
vast opium money for the deep state vermin.
profits for the bomb makers (you know, the respectable corporate ones as opposed to the
quaint do-it-yourselfers).
lithium deposits that probably rival those in bolivia as well as other untapped
profitable resources (probably, anyway; i could see oil and gas coming out of those ancient
valleys).
it's also an occupation as opposed to a "win and get out" war. these military welfare
queens think they can win a staring contest with the descendants of people who bitchslapped
every would-be conqueror since alexander the great. ask the russians how well that went for
them.
the west supports israel's 70+ years of colonizing palestine (plus the 3 or 4 decades of
dumbness before it with balfour and such) and still has troops in south goddamn korea. as
long as the tap flows they'll keep drinking that sweet tasty tax welfare.
Last week, US State Department officials met with Taliban leaders in
Qatar. At the request of the Taliban, the US-backed Afghan government was not invited. The
officials discussed ceasefires and an end to the war. Meanwhile, the US inspector general
charged with monitoring US spending on Afghanistan reconstruction has reported that since
2008, the US has completely wasted at the least $15.5 billion. He believes that's just the
tip of the iceberg, though. Will President Trump do the smart thing and negotiate peace and
leave? Tune in to today's Ron Paul Liberty Report:
"... I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true fighters as well as stronger economic planning. ..."
The United States seems ready to give up on Afghanistan.
After the World Trade Center came down the U.S. accused al-Qaeda, parts of which were hosted
in Afghanistan. The Taliban government offered the U.S. to extradite al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin
Laden to an Islamic country to be judged under Islamic law. The U.S. rejected that and decided
instead to destroy the Afghan government.
Taliban units, supported by Pakistani officers, were at that time still fighting against the
Northern Alliance which held onto a few areas in the north of the country. Under threats from
the U.S. Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as its natural depth hinterland, was pressed into
service. In exchange for its cooperation with the U.S. operation it was allowed to extradite
its forces and main figures of the Taliban.
U.S. special forces were dropped into north Afghanistan. They came with huge amounts of cash
and the ability to call in B-52 bombers. Together with the Northern Alliance they move towards
Kabul bombing any place where some feeble resistance came from. The Taliban forces dissolved.
Many resettled in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda also vanished.
A conference with Afghan notables was held in Germany's once capital Bonn. The Afghans
wanted to reestablish the former Kingdom but were pressed into accepting a western style
democracy. Fed with large amounts of western money the norther warlords, all well known
mass-murderers, and various greedy exiles were appointed as a government. To them it was all
about money. There was little capability and interest to govern.
All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country.
For a few years the Taliban went quiet. But continued U.S. operations, which included random
bombing of weddings, torture and abduction of assumed al-Qaeda followers, alienated the people.
Pakistan feared that it would be suffocated between a permanently U.S. occupied Afghanistan and
a hostile India. Four years after being ousted the Taliban were reactivated and found regrown
local support.
Busy with fighting an insurgency in Iraq the U.S. reacted slowly. It then surged troops into
Afghanistan, pulled back, surged again and is now again pulling back. The U.S. military aptly
demonstrated its excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence. The
longer it fought the more Afghan people stood up against it. The immense amount of money spent
to 'rebuild' Afghanistan
went to U.S. contractors and Afghan warlords but had little effect on the ground. Now half
the country is back under Taliban control while the other half is more or less contested.
Before his election campaign Donald Trump spoke out
against the war on Afghanistan. During his campaign he was more cautious pointing to the danger
of a nuclear Pakistan as a reason for staying in Afghanistan. But Pakistan is where the U.S.
supply line is coming through and there are no reasonable alternatives. Staying in Afghanistan
to confront Pakistan while depending on Pakistan for logistics does not make sense.
Early this year the U.S. stopped all aid to Pakistan. Even the old Pakistani government was
already talking
about blocking the logistic line. The incoming prime minister Imran Khan has campaigned for
years against the U.S. war on Afghanistan. He very much prefers an alliance with China over any U.S.
rapprochement. The U.S. hope is that Pakistan will have to ask the IMF for another bailout and
thus come back under Washington's control. But it is
more likely that Imran Khan will ask China for financial help.
Under pressure from the military Trump had agreed to raise the force in Afghanistan to some
15,000 troops. But these were way to few to hold more than some urban areas. Eighty percent of
the Afghan people live in the countryside. Afghan troops and police forces are incapable or
unwilling to fight their Taliban brethren. It was obvious that this mini-surge
would fail :
By most objective measures, President Donald Trump's year-old strategy for ending the war in
Afghanistan has produced few positive results.
Afghanistan's beleaguered soldiers have failed to recapture significant new ground from
the Taliban. Civilian deaths have hit historic highs. The Afghan military is struggling to
build a reliable air force and expand the number of elite fighters. Efforts to cripple
lucrative insurgent drug smuggling operations have fallen short of expectations. And U.S.
intelligence officials say the president's strategy has halted Taliban gains but not reversed
their momentum, according to people familiar with the latest assessments.
To blame Pakistan for its support for some Taliban is convenient, but makes little sense. In
a recent
talk John Sopko, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
made a crucial point:
"We keep referring to Pakistan as being the key problem. But the problem also was that the
Afghan government at times was viewed very negatively by their local people and what you
really need is to insert a government that the people support, a government that is not
predatory, a government that is not a bunch of lawless warlords," observed Sopko.
He went on to say that the U.S. policy of pouring in billions of dollars in these unstable
environments contributed to the problem of creating more warlords and powerful people who
took the law into their own hands.
"In essence, the government we introduced, particularly some of the Afghan local police
forces, which were nothing other than warlord militias with some uniforms on, were just as
bad as the terrorists before them," said Sopko ...
This was the problem from the very beginning. The U.S. bribed itself into Afghanistan. It
spent tons of money but did not gain real support. It bombed and shot aimlessly at 'Taliban'
that were more often than not just the local population. It incompetently fought 17
one-year-long wars instead of a consistently planned and sustained political, economic and
military campaign.
After a year of another useless surge the Trump administration decided to pull back from
most active operations and to bet
on negotiations with the Taliban:
The shift to prioritize initial American talks with the Taliban over what has proved a futile
"Afghan-led, Afghan-owned" process stems from a realization by both Afghan and American
officials that President Trump's new Afghanistan strategy is not making a fundamental
difference in rolling back Taliban gains.
While no date for any talks has been set, and the effort could still be derailed, the
willingness of the United States to pursue direct talks is an indication of the sense of
urgency in the administration to break the stalemate in Afghanistan.
...
Afghan officials and political leaders said direct American talks with the Taliban would
probably then grow into negotiations that would include the Taliban, the Afghan government,
the United States and Pakistan.
Afghans have continued to burn for the last four decades in the fire of imposed wars. They
are longing for peace and a just system but they will never tire from their just cause of
defending their creed, country and nation against the invading forces of your
warmongering government because they have rendered all the previous and present historic
sacrifices to safeguard their religious values and national sovereignty. If they make a deal
on their sovereignty now, it would be unforgettable infidelity with their proud history and
ancestors.
Last weeks talks between the Taliban and U.S. diplomats took place in Doha, Qatar.
Remarkably the Afghan government was excluded. Despite the rousing tone of the Reuters
report below the positions that were exchanged
do not point to a successful conclusion:
According to one Taliban official, who said he was part of a four-member delegation, there
were "very positive signals" from the meeting, which he said was conducted in a "friendly
atmosphere" in a Doha hotel.
"You can't call it peace talks," he said. "These are a series of meetings for initiating
formal and purposeful talks. We agreed to meet again soon and resolve the Afghan conflict
through dialogue."
...
The two sides had discussed proposals to allow the Taliban free movement in two provinces
where they would not be attacked, an idea that President Ashraf Ghani has already rejected .
They also discussed Taliban participation in the Afghan government.
"The only demand they made was to allow their military bases in Afghanistan ," said the
Taliban official.
...
"We have held three meetings with the U.S. and we reached a conclusion to continue talks for
meaningful negotiations," said a second Taliban official.
...
"However, our delegation made it clear to them that peace can only be restored to Afghanistan
when all foreign forces are withdrawn ," he said.
This does not sound promising:
In a first step the Taliban want to officially rule parts of the country and use it as a
safe haven. The Afghan government naturally rejects that.
Participation of the Taliban in the Afghan government is an idea of the Afghan president
Ghani. It is doubtful that this could be successfully arranged. Norther Alliance elements in
the Afghan government, like the 'chief executive' Abdullah Abdullah, are unlikely to ever
agree to it. The Taliban also have no interest to be 'part of the government' and to then get
blamed for its failures. Their February letter makes clear that they want to be the
government.
The U.S. wants bases in Afghanistan. The Taliban, and Pakistan behind them, reject that
and will continue to do so.
It is difficult to see how especially the last mutually exclusive positions can ever be
reconciled.
The Taliban are ready to accept a peaceful retreat of the U.S. forces. That is their only
offer. They may agree to keep foreign Islamist fighters out of their country. The U.S. has no
choice but to accept. It is currently retreating to the cities and large bases. The outlying
areas will fall to the Taliban. Sooner or later the U.S. supply lines will be cut. Its bases
will come under fire.
There is no staying in Afghanistan. A retreat is the only issue the U.S. can negotiate
about. It is not a question of "if" but of "when".
The Soviet war in Afghanistan took nine years. The time was used to build up a halfway
competent government and army that managed to hold off the insurgents for three more years
after the Soviet withdrawal. The government only fell when the Soviets cut the money line. The
seventeen year long U.S. occupation did not even succeed in that. The Afghan army is corrupt
and its leaders are incompetent. The U.S. supplied it with expensive and complicate equipment
that
does not fit Afghan needs . As soon as the U.S. withdraws the whole south, the east and
Kabul will immediately fall back into Taliban hands. Only the north may take a bit longer. They
will probably ask China to help them in developing their country.
The erratic
empire failed in another of its crazy endeavors. That will not hinder it to look for a new
ones. The immense increase
of the U.S. military budget, which includes 15,000 more troops, points to a new large war.
Which country will be its next target?
thanks b.. it would be good if the exceptional warmongering nation could go home, but i am
not fully counting on it.. i liked your quote here "The U.S. military aptly demonstrated its
excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence." that is ongoing..
unless the usa leaves, i think the madness continues.. i suspect the madness will continue..
the only other alternative is the usa, with the help of their good buddies - uk, ksa, qatar,
uae and israel - will keep on relocating isis to afgan for future destabilization.. i watched
a video peter au left from al jazzera 2017 with isis embedded in the kush mtns... until the
funding for them ceases - i think the usa will have a hand in the continued madness... if the
usa was serious about ending terrorism they would shut down the same middle east countries
they are in bed with.. until that happens, i suspect not much will change.. i hope i am
wrong..
I dont believe it for a second. Especially with Iran looming as a potential target. US is
staying in Afghanistan also to counter China , keep opium production high and of course there
is the TAPI pipeline to "protect" that is backed by US as an alternative to the
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline that would have tapped Iran's South Pars gas field. A hostile or
unfriendly Pakistan is just one more reason to stay
Just like US will never leave Iraq or Syria, they will stay in Afghanistan. There will be
ebbs and flows, and talk of disengagement from time to time primarily for domestic
consumption, but thats all it is IMO.
This is a fine recap of the situation. It's much too optimistic. The classic method of
American negotiation and warfare like the Roman before them is to divide and conquer. It was
very successful against the American Indians.
If the Taliban get free movement in two provinces, the Americans will demand an end to
attacks on their bases, their soldiers and their agents elsewhere in Afghanistan. Just as the
Iroquois Confederation enjoyed special privileges in what is now Upper New York for their
help against the French, the Taliban will have special privileges in their two provinces
while the Americans consolidate in the rest of Afghanistan. When the Americans feel strong
enough, just as with the Iroquois, they will break the previous treaties.
After the Revolutionary War, the ancient central fireplace of the League was re-established
at Buffalo Creek. The United States and the Iroquois signed the treaty of Fort Stanwix in
1784 under which the Iroquois ceded much of their historical homeland to the Americans,
which was followed by another treaty in 1794 at Canandaigua which they ceded even more land
to the Americans./b
(...continuation of the comment above, somehow got posted when I pressed the return
key)
Even the Soviet Union and Russians were unable to make the American respect their
commitments. The United States reneged on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as soon as it
could in 2001 (Russia was on its knees), reneged on its commitments not to expand NATO east
and has built ballistic missile bases all around Russia which seem to be preparation for a
pre-emptive nuclear strike/war against Russia.
The Afghanis (foolish to call them the Taliban, they are traditional Afghani patriots)
have always been wise enough to annihilate any invader to the last man. This salutary policy
keeps invaders out for decades at a time. The Taliban have a long row to hoe. It took almost
a hundred years and several massacres to finally curb British ambitions on Afghanistan (1838
to 1919). Afghanis' best hopes rely on forging tight alliances with Pakistan and China,
squeezing the Americans out completely right now.
The Americans burnt their bridges with the Russian already and are in the process of
burning their bridges with Pakistan while losing influence with China. The US is very short
of options right now. It's the ideal time for Afghanis to reclaim the whole territory, not
leaving a single American soldier or airbase operational. They'll need a technically
sophisticated ally to help them clear their skies of US drones. This role might appeal to
either the Russians or the Chinese. As a training exercise, extended anti-drone warfare could
be very useful.
What a great success the US achieved in destroying Yugoslavia. Murdering thousands went
almost unnoticed. It was able to break up the country into a number of tiny, impoverished
nations and got to put a US MIC Base in most of them.
You did not mention isis-k in your analysis. Its active mostly in eastern afghanistan in
areas close to or adjacent to Pakistan (it is also controlls a small area in Jawzjan, in
northern afghanistan). Many fighters are formerly pakistani taliban(not to be confused with
afghan taliban who are simply called taliban). Before isis-k appeared in afghanistan, the
areas which it now controls had pakistani taliban presence. TTP, or tehreek e taliban
pakistan was facilitated by afghan ggovernment to settle down in these areas after they fled
pakistan when its military launched a large scale offensive, Operation Zarb e Azb. The afghan
government planned to use them to pressurize Pakistan, basically to use them as a bargaining
chip. They operate openly in eastern afghanistan, but many of them joined isis-k.
Russians estimate isis-k's strength to be between 10k to 12k, although it might be a bit
inflated number. From here they plan attacks against afghanistan and pakistan alike, mostly
suicide bombings as of now. They have had fierce clashes with afghan taliban in eastern
Afghanistan but have held their territory for now. Afghan army simply doesn't have the
capacity in those areas to confront them. It was here that MOAB was dropped but as expected
against a guerrilla force, it was ineffective in every way. But it did make headlines and has
helped US in giving an impression its seriously fighting ISIS. The reports of unmarked
helicopters dropping god-knows-what have also been coming from these areas. Hamid karzai
mentioned that and also maria zakharova asked afghan gov. and US to investigate that which
shows these are not just rumors. Recently intelligence chiefs of Pakistan, russia, iran and
china as well(if i remember correctly) met in islamabad to discuss isis-k in afghanistan, no
details other than this of this meeting are available.
In Northern afghanistan, in Jawzjan, fierce clashes broke out between taliban and isis-k
after taliban commander in thiae areas was beheaded. ISIS-k has been beaten up pretty badly
there but clashes are ongoing. Many areas have been cleared but fighting is still ongoing. An
interesting aspect is taliban sources claiming that whenever they come close to a decisive
victory, they have to stop operations becauae of heavy bombardment by US planes. They made
similar claims when fighting daesh in eastern afghanistan. Anyway in a few days isis presence
will probably be finished in Jawzjan. ISIS fighters who have survived have done so by
surrendering to afghan forces. They will probably end up back in eastern afghanistan.
Africa. US AFRICOM has a huge playground, tactics won't change and logistics is far
easier.
There also will be a long Hybrid wr against Iran, but that will be much like the early
days of Syria. Proxies as "moderates". Insurgents, not US troops. ISIS and AQ crazies will be
on the ground.
The big money will go into Africa. You want to see Trillions "spent"? It will be
Africa.
The decision to invade Afghanistan had been taken before the 9/11 false flag coup. Had
nothing much to do with the CIA's al-Qaeda mercenaries.
As I understood it, there were many agendas at work: testing weapons and making money for
the MIC; controlling the lucrative (how many hundreds of billions of dollars ?) opium/ heroin
production/profiteering; military bases relating to Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and other
...stans, etc; control of oil and gas pipelines; access to increasingly valuable and sought
rare earth minerals; proximity to oil and gas actual and potential.
More generally, subjugating Afghanistan was a necessary part of the 'full spectrum
dominance' 'we will rule the earth' doctrine, dear til recently to too many mad hatters, and
still evoking a misty eyed longing in some, no doubt.
Ahhh...the US produces some of the lamest euphemisms approved for all audiences; such as
"Afgahn Security Forces." So sterile, innocuous. And benign. How could anyone question their
plight? (We did pick up the game a little bit in Syria with "Free Syrian Army..." Can I get a
hell yeah?) All the people hearing this in the US could do was shrug their shoulders and
speak, "I guess I should support them." That is, of course, after we took out OBL and the
mission in Afghanistan was a little more opaque. Just a little bit. Anyways...Hell, yeah! Get
some!
Thanks b for the brief history. Really invaluable.
Afghani patriots, resisting invaders since 330 BCE... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan
The US military, the planet's costliest losingest military since 1946. The US military, like
its munitions manufacturers, doesn't win but it does get paid and is why we can have nice
things like oh, decent health care. Lack of health insurance kills more Americans than the
Russians ever will. The Russians aren't the enemy, Trump is. Lobbyists are too.
I haven't read anything about Blackwater wanting to replace the U.S. Military in Afghanistan.
Of course, the U.S. Treasury would continue to shovel those pallet loads of newly printed
$100.00 bills down the Blackwater hole. Any odds this might go forward from anyone's opinion?
robin cook before he was murdered stated that alqueda was a cia data base.
i believe bresinski knew obl as tim osman who was later killed by cia mi6 man omar blah blah
sheikh bhutto of pakisyan was assasinated after spilling the beans about sheikh.
christopher bolleyn on you tube will give you the sp on what 9 and 11 was shirley we are
past the point of the offecal theory.
the turd burger that is the official theory is clearly the worst and lowest grade of all the
conspiracy theories.
the taliban where in barbera bushes texas talking lithium opium and oil pipelines with the
paedo bush crime syndicate before 9 and 11
marvin bush ran security at the twin towers
christopher bollyn is the go to man in these regardings
The US wants peace talks but wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. US under Trump has built
new bases in Syria, Iraq, Kuwait.
SDF have been talking with Syrian government, and US in Talks with Taliban. Are these just
moves to buy the US a little time until it launches the war Trump has been building the US
military up for.
isis is israeli counter gang with support of usa usa and the city of
london,ukrainian,polish,uk sas,cia,kiwi,aussie,jordanian and donmeh satanic house of
saud.
talking of isis as if it is real entity rather than a frank kitson gang counter gang and
pseudo gang is polluting the well.
who has been providing extraction helicopters from syriana for the last 14 months.
who has been washing these bearded devils operating on them in kosher field hospitals making
them well shiny and new
who?
scchhhhh you know who
We are concerned about reports regarding the use of helicopters without any identification
marks in many parts of Afghanistan that are delivering terrorists and arms to the Afghan
branch of this terrorist organisation. We believe that reports to this effect made by Afghan
officials should be thoroughly investigated."
- Of course. The US wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. Surprise, surprise.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village
Hajji, the writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit.
The only question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous
it will be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam
War (1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and
the Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village Hajji, the
writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit. The only
question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous it will
be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam War
(1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and the
Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
@uncoy.. i basically see it like you, however another proxy war involving usa-russia-china
sounds like a running theme now...
@13 bilal.. good post.. i agree about the analysis missing much on isis presence in afgan
as @6 jr also points out.. i think it is a critical bit of the puzzle.. it appears the usa is
using isis as a proxy force, as obama previously stated with regard to syria... the usa just
can't seem to help themselves with their divide and conquer strategy using isis as part of
it's methodology... it's exact opposite of what they profess..
@18 eugene.. isn't blackwater or whatever they're called now - headquartered in uae?
perfect place for them, lol... right on top of yemen, afgan, and etc. etc.. if isis can't do
the job for the west thru their good friends ksa, uae - well, then maybe they can pay a bit
more and get blackwater directly involved too..
Trump is serious when he said he would talk to anybody. The CIA is alleged to have been
stirring the pot with Islamic militants prior to the Soviet invasion when the country went
full socialist. I would suspect the Russians had a hand in that in 1978. US intelligence was
said to be helping along the backlash to socialism by Islamic militants back then in 1978.
The CIA station chief was promptly assassinated the next year.
Obviously you could dump 600,000 NATO and US soldiers into the country and not control it
short of executing every Muslim. What a foolish endeavor but what would you expect from these
buffoons and their death cult? These human sacrifices are holy to them. They worship blood,
death, power and money.
With their loss in Syria the NEOCONS can now make peace with the Taliban and use them and
ISIS to push into old Soviet Central Asia in an attempt to deny them what the Anglo American
Zionist alliance cannot have at this time, control of the commodities.
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
Even the Brits knew when it was time to leave India and their Middle Eastern holdings. They
realized the costs of containment would wipe out their country.
No he doesnt, along with Israel and neocons. There was already nuclear deal, and US was
out of "all this crap", so why introduce Gordian Knot if he doesnt want it?
What Trump demands is Iran's surrender. 'b discussed it at length some time ago, the list
of Trump's demands is completely ridiculous and the goal is Iran as a client state.
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to
meet, it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt
worth a toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even
endeavor to negotiate dead from the get go.
Congress went along with the Pentagon's 7 countries in 5 years plan. No investigation of 9/11
or even consideration of Ron Paul's bringing in an old idea of Letters of Marque and
Reprisal.
As to the US leaving the warlords in power to continue opium production, etc, Van Buren (We
Meant Well book) said some of the same happened in Iraq with some sheikhs still holding power
in local areas. General Garner looked forward to going in to rebuild (and was promising quick
elections) but was shocked to see no protection of ministries (except oil) which were looted
and burned. And then Bremer was put in charge. Complete mismanagement of the war, the
aftermath, etc. Like someone once said, if they were doing these things at random you would
expect them to get it right once in a while.
The Kunduz Airlift which allowed Pakistan a corridor to fly out Pak officials, Taliban,
and possibly al Qaeda was yet another snafu like paying Pakistan to supposedly block any
escape from their side of Tora Bora only to have a long convoy leave at night. It made one
wonder about the US supposed air superiority/domination. Again, complete mismanagement.
A comparison to the end situation in VietNam 1975 is apt.
Trump meeting Rouhani. Trump saays he wants a better deal. The nuke agreement took years to
negotiate and Iran accepted far more stringent inspections than any other country signed up
NPT. There is nothing more for Iran to negotiate other than to give away their
sovereignty.
The offer of a meeting by Trump is more along the line of "we tried to avoid war".
The US under Trump have scrapped the nuke agreement and made demands that are impossible for
Iran to meet without giving away its sovereignty.
Erik Prince's plan for fighting in Afghanistan.
He presented it to the WH. Military rejected it.
He is no longer Blackwater-connected.
Frontier Services Group Ltd. is his new military-security services corp.
He has extensive contracts with the Chinese government and their SOEs overseas.
did you see General Souleimani answer's to Trump rabid tweet
it went like this
Our president doesnt lower himself to answer someone like.I, a soldier answer someone like
you, you re someone who speaks in the vocabulary of a cabaret owner and a gambling house
dealer.(paraphrasing saker has the video on his site)
and then he went on to describe how your cowad troops wore adult diapers in Afghanistan
and Iraq
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
dltravers @28
No. China, being development-oriented rather than imperialist, will leave Afghanistan
alone. China and Russia, but especially China, requires an Afghanistan that is not a
U.S.-controlled terrorist base. Because China needs the oil/gas link that it is building
through Pakistan to access Gulf energy resources, and that energy corridor would be the
primary target of U.S.-hired mercenaries ('terrorists').
How Afghanistan manages itself in the post-U.S. era is Afghan business, but it will almost
certainly involve the Pashtun majority (in the form of the 'Taliban') retaking power in Kabul
but with the traditional huge amounts of autonomy for the provinces. That arrangement reduces
pressure by Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan against Pakistan's government, and in general
seems to be the long-term stable set up, and stability is what China has to have in
Afghanistan.
Now is the time with perfect China partner Khan and the Pakistan military firmly in power.
Not instant, but over the next two years I think we'll see the Taliban's fighting capacity
hugely improve, with transfers of supplies, weapons and intelligence from Pakistan. It would
be very smart for Trump to get out in 2019. History is going to accelerate in that
region.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I worry a lot about Venezuela. See, it's a perfect
fit for the U.S. economy. U.S. shale oil is way too light to be useful, while Venezuelan oil
is way too heavy to be useful. They are destined for each other, i.e. to be mixed into a
blend that would be a good fit U.S. refineries. Plus, Venezuela is very import-dependent and
thus would make for a good vassal. It also has a rabid capitalist class that will do anything
-- any kind of atrocity or false flag -- to return to the good old days of exploitation. "But
Venezuela has a lot of arms!", I hear you counter. True, but the people are severely
demoralized because of the extreme economic hardship. Think of the USSR in late 80s/early
90s. It had the most powerful military in the world, and yet people were so demoralized and
disillusioned with the old system that they simply chose not to defend it. Same thing may
happen in Venezuela. After Colombia has signed peace accords with FARC, U.S. has been
steadily increasing its military presence in Colombia. I think there is a very real
possibility of a naval blockade combined with supply lines/air raids from Colombia supporting
the "Free Venezuelan Army" assembled from Venezuelan gangs and revanchist capitalists and
foreign mercenaries. It would be logistically impossible for Russia or China to provide
military help to far-away Venezuela. Neighbors will not come to the aid of Venezuela either
as there is a surge of pro-U.S. right-wing governments in the region.
Any moves the U$A makes will have to be approved according to which natural resources their
corporate masters covet at any particular moment. Lithium and other rare earth minerals,
strategic importance, whatever the corporate form needs to stay on top globally, will dictate
what the empire does.
Leave Afghanistan? I very much doubt it.
DJT will do what the "puppet masters" desire. Just like all his predecessors.
'Correction': No reliable census has been done in decades, but I don't think the Pashtun are
the majority in Afghanistan. They
are by far the largest minority however. British 'divide and rule' stategists long ago
deliberately separated them into Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Venezuela and Iran have two things in common. Both have large oil reserves and neither
recognize Israel.
Trump's wars will be about destroying enemies of Israel, and at the same time, achieving
global energy dominance.
I've posted this before. I met a Taliban leader and his two guards in a brutal area during
the Hearts and Minds Schtick, preparatory to Cheney getting all the oil and gas, and copper
and iron and coming coal lease awards.
He was a nice guy, the Taliban leader. His guards looked at me with absolute death in
their eyes. Not wanting them to hear him, as we finished our tea, the Taliban leader leaned
close, then whispered, 'I love your Jesus, but I hate your Crusaders.'
And I take issue with the US 'incompetence' meme. Ever since Cheney hosted the Taliban in
Texas in 1998, trying to get a TAPI pipeline, the US has deliberately and cunningly taken
over the country, assassinated the local-level leadership, and installed their foreign Shah,
first Karzai, then Ghani.
In that time of occupation, 18 years, Pentagon MIC disappeared TRILLIONS in shrink-wrapped
pallets of $100s, and ballooned from $340B a year, to now Trump is saying $840B a year.
That's not incompetence. Just the opposite.
Now, to honor my Afghan friends, who love to joke even after 35+ years of machine warfare,
a joke I wrote in their honor:
Ring ring ring ring
"Office of the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan!"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Hold please."
President Reagan, it's the Iranian ambassador!"
"Well hello Mr. Assinabindstani, what can I do for you?"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Well I'll get my staff right on it."
[Intercomm clicks]
"Hey Ollie, the Ayatollah wants more guns! Step on it!"
Actually, the British paid an annual tithe-tribute the the Afghan king to stop raiding
their India holdings, and agreed to a neutral zone between them. Then when the British pulled
out, they declared the neutral zone as Pakistan and shrunk India away from Pashtun territory
to create a bigger divide. The Afghan leaders had no say in the matter. I believe Baluchistan
was also carved away. At one time, Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.
There is no way to defeat a nation of warriors who created a kingdom that vast, while William
the Conqueror was still running around in bear skin diapers.
@41 'Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.'
You are probably referring to the Khalji Dynasty, a brutal bunch, who ruled India from
1290 to 1320 by which time William the Conqueror was long dead. You would be a lot more
credible if you got your history right.
IMHO the military Budget increase, and what an increase it is!
is part of worsening an already outrageous situation to reach a caricatural point. Typical of
trump repeated special "art".
Of course Nobody in USA, no President can go against the MIC and Pentagon.
But money is cheap when you print it.
It is sugaring the intended shrinking of foreign deployments (as in NATO), closure of
"facilities" and replacing them officially with total deterrence capacities (Space Forces
anybody ?).
While keeping classical projection capacities for demonstration against backward
tribes.
...
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to meet,
it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt worth a
toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even endeavor
to negotiate dead from the get go.
Posted by: Harry | Jul 30, 2018 7:53:57 PM | 29
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if you
feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what Iran
wants it to mean.
Trump jumped into the NK and Putin talks first because both were eager to talk. Iran will
be a good test of Trump's seduction skills. All he's got to do is persuade the Iranians that
talking is more useful than swapping long-distance insults. Iranians are rusted onto logical
principles and Trump will find a way to appeal to that trait, imo.
It's too late for the afghanis who have been driven into the urban areas during the regulaar
'Afghanistanisation' campaigns. Most of them will have become hooked on consumerism and the
necessity of dollars.
That leaves only two options for the Taliban when they take over as they undoubtedly will
altho that is likely to mean having to tolerate clutches of obese amerikans lurking in some
Px strewn green zone, the inhabitants of which are likely to have less contact with people
from Afghanistan than any regular user of a Californian shopping mall. The new government can
ignore the consumerists even when these rejects insist on getting lured into some nonsense
green revolution - the danger with this isn't the vapid protests which can easily be dealt
with by fetching a few mobs of staunch citizens from rural Afghanistan who will quickly teach
them that neither cheeseburgers nor close captioned episodes of daytime television provide
sufficient nutrition to handle compatriots raised on traditional food and Islam. Or the new
administration can do as other traditional regimes have done many times over the last 80
years or so, purge the consumerists by disappearing the leadership and strewing empty lots in
the urban areas with mutilated corpses of a few of the shitkicker class consumerists. That
option can cause a bit of a fuss but it (the fuss) generally only lasts as long as the purge.
I suspect the Afghan government will favour the latter approach but they may try to hold
off until the North has been brought back into line. OTH, consumerism is a highly contagious
condition so, unless the North can be pacified speedily which seems unlikely, initially at
least the Taliban adminsitration may have to fight on two fronts, agin the North while they
nip urban consumerists in the bud before those confused fools can cause any highly publicised
in the west but in actuality, low key, attempted insurrection.
My advice to the gaming, TV or cheeseburger addicted inhabitants of Kabul would be to
volunteer your services to the amerikan military as a 'translator' asap and join yer cobbers
in California.
It is unlikely that you will bump into Roman Brady especially not when he is in one
of his avuncular moods, but if you stay outta Texas, Florida or any other part of flyover
amerika chocka with alcohol induced blowhardism, you will discover than amerikan racism isn't
as lethal as it once was.
Apart from having to ignore being jostled in the line at fast food joints and being loudly
and incorrectly termed a motherf**in sand n***er mid-jostle. Certainly a whole lot less
lethal than trying to cover your Fortnite jones by waving a badly copywritten sign in front
of the al-Jazeera cameras for a one month
battle pass .
What was happening in Kabul, Afghanistan less than 8 hours after the WTC Towers turned into
dust in midair? Who here remembers the massive bombing/cruise missile attack?
Here is CNN's transcript:
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "Well, Joie, it's about 2:30 in the morning here in
Kabul. We've been hearing explosions around the perimeter of the city. We're in a position
here which gives us a view over the whole city. We just had an impact, perhaps a few miles
away.
"If I listen, you can hear the ripple of explosions around the city. Perhaps you heard
there. The fifth explosion -- sixth explosion, I think. Gun bursts and star bursts in the
air. Tracer fire is coming up out of the city. I hear aircraft flying above the city of
Kabul. Perhaps we've heard half a dozen to 10 detonations on the perimeter of the city,
some coming from the area close to the airport. I see on the horizon what could be a fire
on the horizon, close, perhaps, to where the airport might be. A flash came up then from
the airport. Some ground fire coming up here in Kabul."
"I've been in Belgrade and I've been in Baghdad and seen cruise missiles arrive in both
those cities. The detonations we're hearing in Kabul right now certainly sound like the
detonations of loud missiles that are coming in. "
"Certainly -- certainly it would appear that the Afghan defense systems have detected a
threat in the air. They are launching what appears to be anti-aircraft defense systems at
the moment. Certainly, I can see that fire that was blazing on the horizon. It was a faint
yellow; it's now a bright orange blazing. Several other detonations going off around the
city, multiple areas. Rockets appear to be taking off from one end of the airport. I can
see that perhaps located about 8 or 9 miles away from where we stand, Joie."
The bombing/explosions continue for 10+ minutes of this broadcast.
Then, they cut to WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: who says the US is only
collecting intelligence. He says what we're seeing must be part of the "Civil War" (despite
the fact that neither side had an air force or cruise missiles). The Pentagon later denies
knowing anything about it.
Then, CNN returns to Nic Robertson, who- within 15 minutes of his first report - begins to
change his tune. Suddenly, the jet sounds are not mentioned. The cruise missiles (jet
engines) have transformed into possible rockets. The airport fire is now an ammunition
dump.
And voila! They lose their connection and Nic will not be heard from again. And this
little bit of history will essentially disappear.
Dear Mr. B,
"All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country."
These mistakes are by design. To cause and keep causing destabilisation.
I like to refer to it as the 3-letter Scrabble method of doing things.
Me living in the Netherlands as I do, let me take the example of Greece.
Greece had its regime changed in 1948 (Wiki says 46-49).
And how is Greece doing these days? ...
@37 yep, gotta agree with the more passimistic outlook here. Personally i'll eat my shoes if
US leaves Afghanistan within any reasonable time frame. In addition to plentiful natural
resources, there are very influential vested interests in Afghanistans booming opium
industry.
Off topic: Andrei Nekrasov's 'Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes' can be viewed in full on You
Tube at this moment (31 July, 08:15 Amsterdam time). Can it also be seen in the USA, I
wonder? How long will it take before Google take it down ? Watch it and learn about one of
the main drivers of the Russia obsession.
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if
you feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what
Iran wants it to mean.
White House just explained what Trump's "no preconditions" means: 1) Iran should at the
core change how it deals with its own people. 2) Change its evil stance in foreign policy. 3)
Agree on nuclear agreement which would REALLY prevent them making a nuke.
In other words, Iran should capitulate and become a client state, thats what Trump means
by "no preconditions."
At this advanced stage of American insanity, I don't see why the devil should have all the
best tunes. I'm sick of the yanks doing this shit in over people's county's ! While they
stuff there fat faces with burgers and donuts! The dirty games they play on over country's,
should now be played in America with all the brutality that they have used on others. Until
that happens things world wide will continue to detriate. Natural justice is all that
remains. They'v curupted all else.
@19 "The US already started to plan an invasion of Afghanistan in januari & february of
2001."
Well, to be fair the USA probably has plans to invade lots of countries.
Indeed, it would be more interesting to consider how many countries there are that the USA
*doesn't* have invasion plans gathering dust on the shelves.
It's just been reported on the bbc news---- the man responsible for the Manchester bombing
had been 'rescued from Lybia when Gadafi was overthrown and tracked ever since. Even in
Britain up to the day of the bombing ! And now on this post we discuss America uk
transporting terrorists from Syria to Afghanistan . Not to mention the white helmet bunch and
where Ther going! The Manchester bombing, Westminster bridge and London Bridge atacks were
done by the Tory party to win a general election ! This is the reality of the world we live
in.full on oppression !!!
Indeed, I agree with the sentiments here. But missing a big part of the picture.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have sky-high fertility rates. Forget the rubbish peddled by
economist-whores like Milton Friedman, under these conditions no country without an open
frontier has ever developed into anything other than a larger mass of poverty. In Pakistan
something like half the children are so malnourished that they grow up stunted, and it is
this misery that is starting slow population growth. Pakistan is yet another example of the
Malthusian holocaust, which is not a global catastrophe: it is slow grinding poverty that
results when people have more children than they can support.
Bottom line: these places will remain poor and unstable no matter what lunacy the United
States does or does not do. The traditional approach to such places is to leave them alone,
and only keep them from escaping. Bottled up, the Afghanis and Pakistanis will kill only each
other. 9/11 is a consequence of allowing people from these places free access to the Untied
States.
The 'war on terror' is a consequence of 'there shall be open borders.' It's a big and
messy world, and even if the government of the United States was not criminally incompetent,
there would be a lot of misery and hatred in it. Open borders means that now the Untied
States has to intervene in every country all over the world to ensure that nowhere can there
develop terrorist cells. An impossible task.
Charles Michael @ 44
I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next
target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true
fighters as well as stronger economic planning.
The US still has some resources and some use but needs to continue to make friends in the
pattern of Kim and Putin and give up on its self defeating economic and military sabotage
planning which has been exposed as morally bankrupt as well.
The United States seems ready to give up on Afghanistan.
After the World Trade Center came down the U.S. accused al-Qaeda, parts of which were hosted
in Afghanistan. The Taliban government offered the U.S. to extradite al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin
Laden to an Islamic country to be judged under Islamic law. The U.S. rejected that and decided
instead to destroy the Afghan government.
Taliban units, supported by Pakistani officers, were at that time still fighting against the
Northern Alliance which held onto a few areas in the north of the country. Under threats from
the U.S. Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as its natural depth hinterland, was pressed into
service. In exchange for its cooperation with the U.S. operation it was allowed to extradite
its forces and main figures of the Taliban.
U.S. special forces were dropped into north Afghanistan. They came with huge amounts of cash
and the ability to call in B-52 bombers. Together with the Northern Alliance they move towards
Kabul bombing any place where some feeble resistance came from. The Taliban forces dissolved.
Many resettled in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda also vanished.
A conference with Afghan notables was held in Germany's once capital Bonn. The Afghans
wanted to reestablish the former Kingdom but were pressed into accepting a western style
democracy. Fed with large amounts of western money the norther warlords, all well known
mass-murderers, and various greedy exiles were appointed as a government. To them it was all
about money. There was little capability and interest to govern.
All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country.
For a few years the Taliban went quiet. But continued U.S. operations, which included random
bombing of weddings, torture and abduction of assumed al-Qaeda followers, alienated the people.
Pakistan feared that it would be suffocated between a permanently U.S. occupied Afghanistan and
a hostile India. Four years after being ousted the Taliban were reactivated and found regrown
local support.
Busy with fighting an insurgency in Iraq the U.S. reacted slowly. It then surged troops into
Afghanistan, pulled back, surged again and is now again pulling back. The U.S. military aptly
demonstrated its excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence. The
longer it fought the more Afghan people stood up against it. The immense amount of money spent
to 'rebuild' Afghanistan
went to U.S. contractors and Afghan warlords but had little effect on the ground. Now half
the country is back under Taliban control while the other half is more or less contested.
Before his election campaign Donald Trump spoke out
against the war on Afghanistan. During his campaign he was more cautious pointing to the danger
of a nuclear Pakistan as a reason for staying in Afghanistan. But Pakistan is where the U.S.
supply line is coming through and there are no reasonable alternatives. Staying in Afghanistan
to confront Pakistan while depending on Pakistan for logistics does not make sense.
Early this year the U.S. stopped all aid to Pakistan. Even the old Pakistani government was
already talking
about blocking the logistic line. The incoming prime minister Imran Khan has campaigned for
years against the U.S. war on Afghanistan. He very much prefers an alliance with China over any U.S.
rapprochement. The U.S. hope is that Pakistan will have to ask the IMF for another bailout and
thus come back under Washington's control. But it is
more likely that Imran Khan will ask China for financial help.
Under pressure from the military Trump had agreed to raise the force in Afghanistan to some
15,000 troops. But these were way to few to hold more than some urban areas. Eighty percent of
the Afghan people live in the countryside. Afghan troops and police forces are incapable or
unwilling to fight their Taliban brethren. It was obvious that this mini-surge
would fail :
By most objective measures, President Donald Trump's year-old strategy for ending the war in
Afghanistan has produced few positive results.
Afghanistan's beleaguered soldiers have failed to recapture significant new ground from
the Taliban. Civilian deaths have hit historic highs. The Afghan military is struggling to
build a reliable air force and expand the number of elite fighters. Efforts to cripple
lucrative insurgent drug smuggling operations have fallen short of expectations. And U.S.
intelligence officials say the president's strategy has halted Taliban gains but not reversed
their momentum, according to people familiar with the latest assessments.
To blame Pakistan for its support for some Taliban is convenient, but makes little sense. In
a recent
talk John Sopko, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
made a crucial point:
"We keep referring to Pakistan as being the key problem. But the problem also was that the
Afghan government at times was viewed very negatively by their local people and what you
really need is to insert a government that the people support, a government that is not
predatory, a government that is not a bunch of lawless warlords," observed Sopko.
He went on to say that the U.S. policy of pouring in billions of dollars in these unstable
environments contributed to the problem of creating more warlords and powerful people who
took the law into their own hands.
"In essence, the government we introduced, particularly some of the Afghan local police
forces, which were nothing other than warlord militias with some uniforms on, were just as
bad as the terrorists before them," said Sopko ...
This was the problem from the very beginning. The U.S. bribed itself into Afghanistan. It
spent tons of money but did not gain real support. It bombed and shot aimlessly at 'Taliban'
that were more often than not just the local population. It incompetently fought 17
one-year-long wars instead of a consistently planned and sustained political, economic and
military campaign.
After a year of another useless surge the Trump administration decided to pull back from
most active operations and to bet
on negotiations with the Taliban:
The shift to prioritize initial American talks with the Taliban over what has proved a futile
"Afghan-led, Afghan-owned" process stems from a realization by both Afghan and American
officials that President Trump's new Afghanistan strategy is not making a fundamental
difference in rolling back Taliban gains.
While no date for any talks has been set, and the effort could still be derailed, the
willingness of the United States to pursue direct talks is an indication of the sense of
urgency in the administration to break the stalemate in Afghanistan.
...
Afghan officials and political leaders said direct American talks with the Taliban would
probably then grow into negotiations that would include the Taliban, the Afghan government,
the United States and Pakistan.
Afghans have continued to burn for the last four decades in the fire of imposed wars. They
are longing for peace and a just system but they will never tire from their just cause of
defending their creed, country and nation against the invading forces of your
warmongering government because they have rendered all the previous and present historic
sacrifices to safeguard their religious values and national sovereignty. If they make a deal
on their sovereignty now, it would be unforgettable infidelity with their proud history and
ancestors.
Last weeks talks between the Taliban and U.S. diplomats took place in Doha, Qatar.
Remarkably the Afghan government was excluded. Despite the rousing tone of the Reuters
report below the positions that were exchanged
do not point to a successful conclusion:
According to one Taliban official, who said he was part of a four-member delegation, there
were "very positive signals" from the meeting, which he said was conducted in a "friendly
atmosphere" in a Doha hotel.
"You can't call it peace talks," he said. "These are a series of meetings for initiating
formal and purposeful talks. We agreed to meet again soon and resolve the Afghan conflict
through dialogue."
...
The two sides had discussed proposals to allow the Taliban free movement in two provinces
where they would not be attacked, an idea that President Ashraf Ghani has already rejected .
They also discussed Taliban participation in the Afghan government.
"The only demand they made was to allow their military bases in Afghanistan ," said the
Taliban official.
...
"We have held three meetings with the U.S. and we reached a conclusion to continue talks for
meaningful negotiations," said a second Taliban official.
...
"However, our delegation made it clear to them that peace can only be restored to Afghanistan
when all foreign forces are withdrawn ," he said.
This does not sound promising:
In a first step the Taliban want to officially rule parts of the country and use it as a
safe haven. The Afghan government naturally rejects that.
Participation of the Taliban in the Afghan government is an idea of the Afghan president
Ghani. It is doubtful that this could be successfully arranged. Norther Alliance elements in
the Afghan government, like the 'chief executive' Abdullah Abdullah, are unlikely to ever
agree to it. The Taliban also have no interest to be 'part of the government' and to then get
blamed for its failures. Their February letter makes clear that they want to be the
government.
The U.S. wants bases in Afghanistan. The Taliban, and Pakistan behind them, reject that
and will continue to do so.
It is difficult to see how especially the last mutually exclusive positions can ever be
reconciled.
The Taliban are ready to accept a peaceful retreat of the U.S. forces. That is their only
offer. They may agree to keep foreign Islamist fighters out of their country. The U.S. has no
choice but to accept. It is currently retreating to the cities and large bases. The outlying
areas will fall to the Taliban. Sooner or later the U.S. supply lines will be cut. Its bases
will come under fire.
There is no staying in Afghanistan. A retreat is the only issue the U.S. can negotiate
about. It is not a question of "if" but of "when".
The Soviet war in Afghanistan took nine years. The time was used to build up a halfway
competent government and army that managed to hold off the insurgents for three more years
after the Soviet withdrawal. The government only fell when the Soviets cut the money line. The
seventeen year long U.S. occupation did not even succeed in that. The Afghan army is corrupt
and its leaders are incompetent. The U.S. supplied it with expensive and complicate equipment
that
does not fit Afghan needs . As soon as the U.S. withdraws the whole south, the east and
Kabul will immediately fall back into Taliban hands. Only the north may take a bit longer. They
will probably ask China to help them in developing their country.
The erratic
empire failed in another of its crazy endeavors. That will not hinder it to look for a new
ones. The immense increase
of the U.S. military budget, which includes 15,000 more troops, points to a new large war.
Which country will be its next target?
thanks b.. it would be good if the exceptional warmongering nation could go home, but i am
not fully counting on it.. i liked your quote here "The U.S. military aptly demonstrated its
excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence." that is ongoing..
unless the usa leaves, i think the madness continues.. i suspect the madness will continue..
the only other alternative is the usa, with the help of their good buddies - uk, ksa, qatar,
uae and israel - will keep on relocating isis to afgan for future destabilization.. i watched
a video peter au left from al jazzera 2017 with isis embedded in the kush mtns... until the
funding for them ceases - i think the usa will have a hand in the continued madness... if the
usa was serious about ending terrorism they would shut down the same middle east countries
they are in bed with.. until that happens, i suspect not much will change.. i hope i am
wrong..
I dont believe it for a second. Especially with Iran looming as a potential target. US is
staying in Afghanistan also to counter China , keep opium production high and of course there
is the TAPI pipeline to "protect" that is backed by US as an alternative to the
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline that would have tapped Iran's South Pars gas field. A hostile or
unfriendly Pakistan is just one more reason to stay
Just like US will never leave Iraq or Syria, they will stay in Afghanistan. There will be
ebbs and flows, and talk of disengagement from time to time primarily for domestic
consumption, but thats all it is IMO.
This is a fine recap of the situation. It's much too optimistic. The classic method of
American negotiation and warfare like the Roman before them is to divide and conquer. It was
very successful against the American Indians.
If the Taliban get free movement in two provinces, the Americans will demand an end to
attacks on their bases, their soldiers and their agents elsewhere in Afghanistan. Just as the
Iroquois Confederation enjoyed special privileges in what is now Upper New York for their
help against the French, the Taliban will have special privileges in their two provinces
while the Americans consolidate in the rest of Afghanistan. When the Americans feel strong
enough, just as with the Iroquois, they will break the previous treaties.
After the Revolutionary War, the ancient central fireplace of the League was re-established
at Buffalo Creek. The United States and the Iroquois signed the treaty of Fort Stanwix in
1784 under which the Iroquois ceded much of their historical homeland to the Americans,
which was followed by another treaty in 1794 at Canandaigua which they ceded even more land
to the Americans./b
(...continuation of the comment above, somehow got posted when I pressed the return
key)
Even the Soviet Union and Russians were unable to make the American respect their
commitments. The United States reneged on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as soon as it
could in 2001 (Russia was on its knees), reneged on its commitments not to expand NATO east
and has built ballistic missile bases all around Russia which seem to be preparation for a
pre-emptive nuclear strike/war against Russia.
The Afghanis (foolish to call them the Taliban, they are traditional Afghani patriots)
have always been wise enough to annihilate any invader to the last man. This salutary policy
keeps invaders out for decades at a time. The Taliban have a long row to hoe. It took almost
a hundred years and several massacres to finally curb British ambitions on Afghanistan (1838
to 1919). Afghanis' best hopes rely on forging tight alliances with Pakistan and China,
squeezing the Americans out completely right now.
The Americans burnt their bridges with the Russian already and are in the process of
burning their bridges with Pakistan while losing influence with China. The US is very short
of options right now. It's the ideal time for Afghanis to reclaim the whole territory, not
leaving a single American soldier or airbase operational. They'll need a technically
sophisticated ally to help them clear their skies of US drones. This role might appeal to
either the Russians or the Chinese. As a training exercise, extended anti-drone warfare could
be very useful.
What a great success the US achieved in destroying Yugoslavia. Murdering thousands went
almost unnoticed. It was able to break up the country into a number of tiny, impoverished
nations and got to put a US MIC Base in most of them.
You did not mention isis-k in your analysis. Its active mostly in eastern afghanistan in
areas close to or adjacent to Pakistan (it is also controlls a small area in Jawzjan, in
northern afghanistan). Many fighters are formerly pakistani taliban(not to be confused with
afghan taliban who are simply called taliban). Before isis-k appeared in afghanistan, the
areas which it now controls had pakistani taliban presence. TTP, or tehreek e taliban
pakistan was facilitated by afghan ggovernment to settle down in these areas after they fled
pakistan when its military launched a large scale offensive, Operation Zarb e Azb. The afghan
government planned to use them to pressurize Pakistan, basically to use them as a bargaining
chip. They operate openly in eastern afghanistan, but many of them joined isis-k.
Russians estimate isis-k's strength to be between 10k to 12k, although it might be a bit
inflated number. From here they plan attacks against afghanistan and pakistan alike, mostly
suicide bombings as of now. They have had fierce clashes with afghan taliban in eastern
Afghanistan but have held their territory for now. Afghan army simply doesn't have the
capacity in those areas to confront them. It was here that MOAB was dropped but as expected
against a guerrilla force, it was ineffective in every way. But it did make headlines and has
helped US in giving an impression its seriously fighting ISIS. The reports of unmarked
helicopters dropping god-knows-what have also been coming from these areas. Hamid karzai
mentioned that and also maria zakharova asked afghan gov. and US to investigate that which
shows these are not just rumors. Recently intelligence chiefs of Pakistan, russia, iran and
china as well(if i remember correctly) met in islamabad to discuss isis-k in afghanistan, no
details other than this of this meeting are available.
In Northern afghanistan, in Jawzjan, fierce clashes broke out between taliban and isis-k
after taliban commander in thiae areas was beheaded. ISIS-k has been beaten up pretty badly
there but clashes are ongoing. Many areas have been cleared but fighting is still ongoing. An
interesting aspect is taliban sources claiming that whenever they come close to a decisive
victory, they have to stop operations becauae of heavy bombardment by US planes. They made
similar claims when fighting daesh in eastern afghanistan. Anyway in a few days isis presence
will probably be finished in Jawzjan. ISIS fighters who have survived have done so by
surrendering to afghan forces. They will probably end up back in eastern afghanistan.
Africa. US AFRICOM has a huge playground, tactics won't change and logistics is far
easier.
There also will be a long Hybrid wr against Iran, but that will be much like the early
days of Syria. Proxies as "moderates". Insurgents, not US troops. ISIS and AQ crazies will be
on the ground.
The big money will go into Africa. You want to see Trillions "spent"? It will be
Africa.
The decision to invade Afghanistan had been taken before the 9/11 false flag coup. Had
nothing much to do with the CIA's al-Qaeda mercenaries.
As I understood it, there were many agendas at work: testing weapons and making money for
the MIC; controlling the lucrative (how many hundreds of billions of dollars ?) opium/ heroin
production/profiteering; military bases relating to Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and other
...stans, etc; control of oil and gas pipelines; access to increasingly valuable and sought
rare earth minerals; proximity to oil and gas actual and potential.
More generally, subjugating Afghanistan was a necessary part of the 'full spectrum
dominance' 'we will rule the earth' doctrine, dear til recently to too many mad hatters, and
still evoking a misty eyed longing in some, no doubt.
Ahhh...the US produces some of the lamest euphemisms approved for all audiences; such as
"Afgahn Security Forces." So sterile, innocuous. And benign. How could anyone question their
plight? (We did pick up the game a little bit in Syria with "Free Syrian Army..." Can I get a
hell yeah?) All the people hearing this in the US could do was shrug their shoulders and
speak, "I guess I should support them." That is, of course, after we took out OBL and the
mission in Afghanistan was a little more opaque. Just a little bit. Anyways...Hell, yeah! Get
some!
Thanks b for the brief history. Really invaluable.
Afghani patriots, resisting invaders since 330 BCE... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan
The US military, the planet's costliest losingest military since 1946. The US military, like
its munitions manufacturers, doesn't win but it does get paid and is why we can have nice
things like oh, decent health care. Lack of health insurance kills more Americans than the
Russians ever will. The Russians aren't the enemy, Trump is. Lobbyists are too.
I haven't read anything about Blackwater wanting to replace the U.S. Military in Afghanistan.
Of course, the U.S. Treasury would continue to shovel those pallet loads of newly printed
$100.00 bills down the Blackwater hole. Any odds this might go forward from anyone's opinion?
robin cook before he was murdered stated that alqueda was a cia data base.
i believe bresinski knew obl as tim osman who was later killed by cia mi6 man omar blah blah
sheikh bhutto of pakisyan was assasinated after spilling the beans about sheikh.
christopher bolleyn on you tube will give you the sp on what 9 and 11 was shirley we are
past the point of the offecal theory.
the turd burger that is the official theory is clearly the worst and lowest grade of all the
conspiracy theories.
the taliban where in barbera bushes texas talking lithium opium and oil pipelines with the
paedo bush crime syndicate before 9 and 11
marvin bush ran security at the twin towers
christopher bollyn is the go to man in these regardings
The US wants peace talks but wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. US under Trump has built
new bases in Syria, Iraq, Kuwait.
SDF have been talking with Syrian government, and US in Talks with Taliban. Are these just
moves to buy the US a little time until it launches the war Trump has been building the US
military up for.
isis is israeli counter gang with support of usa usa and the city of
london,ukrainian,polish,uk sas,cia,kiwi,aussie,jordanian and donmeh satanic house of
saud.
talking of isis as if it is real entity rather than a frank kitson gang counter gang and
pseudo gang is polluting the well.
who has been providing extraction helicopters from syriana for the last 14 months.
who has been washing these bearded devils operating on them in kosher field hospitals making
them well shiny and new
who?
scchhhhh you know who
We are concerned about reports regarding the use of helicopters without any identification
marks in many parts of Afghanistan that are delivering terrorists and arms to the Afghan
branch of this terrorist organisation. We believe that reports to this effect made by Afghan
officials should be thoroughly investigated."
- Of course. The US wants to keep its bases in Afghanistan. Surprise, surprise.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village
Hajji, the writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit.
The only question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous
it will be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam
War (1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and
the Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
In 2002 when ABC corporate propaganda showed Special Forces rounding up village Hajji, the
writing was on the wall. Afghanistan is a Holy War run by incompetents for a profit. The only
question is when will the Westerners withdraw from the Hindu Kush and how disastrous it will
be. Americans cannot afford the unwinnable war's blood and treasure. The US's Vietnam War
(1956 to 1975) ended for the same reasons. That war ushered in the Reagan Revolution and the
Triumph of the Oligarchy. The consequences of the breakup of the Atlantic Alliance will be
even more severe.
@uncoy.. i basically see it like you, however another proxy war involving usa-russia-china
sounds like a running theme now...
@13 bilal.. good post.. i agree about the analysis missing much on isis presence in afgan
as @6 jr also points out.. i think it is a critical bit of the puzzle.. it appears the usa is
using isis as a proxy force, as obama previously stated with regard to syria... the usa just
can't seem to help themselves with their divide and conquer strategy using isis as part of
it's methodology... it's exact opposite of what they profess..
@18 eugene.. isn't blackwater or whatever they're called now - headquartered in uae?
perfect place for them, lol... right on top of yemen, afgan, and etc. etc.. if isis can't do
the job for the west thru their good friends ksa, uae - well, then maybe they can pay a bit
more and get blackwater directly involved too..
Trump is serious when he said he would talk to anybody. The CIA is alleged to have been
stirring the pot with Islamic militants prior to the Soviet invasion when the country went
full socialist. I would suspect the Russians had a hand in that in 1978. US intelligence was
said to be helping along the backlash to socialism by Islamic militants back then in 1978.
The CIA station chief was promptly assassinated the next year.
Obviously you could dump 600,000 NATO and US soldiers into the country and not control it
short of executing every Muslim. What a foolish endeavor but what would you expect from these
buffoons and their death cult? These human sacrifices are holy to them. They worship blood,
death, power and money.
With their loss in Syria the NEOCONS can now make peace with the Taliban and use them and
ISIS to push into old Soviet Central Asia in an attempt to deny them what the Anglo American
Zionist alliance cannot have at this time, control of the commodities.
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
Even the Brits knew when it was time to leave India and their Middle Eastern holdings. They
realized the costs of containment would wipe out their country.
No he doesnt, along with Israel and neocons. There was already nuclear deal, and US was
out of "all this crap", so why introduce Gordian Knot if he doesnt want it?
What Trump demands is Iran's surrender. 'b discussed it at length some time ago, the list
of Trump's demands is completely ridiculous and the goal is Iran as a client state.
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to
meet, it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt
worth a toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even
endeavor to negotiate dead from the get go.
Congress went along with the Pentagon's 7 countries in 5 years plan. No investigation of 9/11
or even consideration of Ron Paul's bringing in an old idea of Letters of Marque and
Reprisal.
As to the US leaving the warlords in power to continue opium production, etc, Van Buren (We
Meant Well book) said some of the same happened in Iraq with some sheikhs still holding power
in local areas. General Garner looked forward to going in to rebuild (and was promising quick
elections) but was shocked to see no protection of ministries (except oil) which were looted
and burned. And then Bremer was put in charge. Complete mismanagement of the war, the
aftermath, etc. Like someone once said, if they were doing these things at random you would
expect them to get it right once in a while.
The Kunduz Airlift which allowed Pakistan a corridor to fly out Pak officials, Taliban,
and possibly al Qaeda was yet another snafu like paying Pakistan to supposedly block any
escape from their side of Tora Bora only to have a long convoy leave at night. It made one
wonder about the US supposed air superiority/domination. Again, complete mismanagement.
A comparison to the end situation in VietNam 1975 is apt.
Trump meeting Rouhani. Trump saays he wants a better deal. The nuke agreement took years to
negotiate and Iran accepted far more stringent inspections than any other country signed up
NPT. There is nothing more for Iran to negotiate other than to give away their
sovereignty.
The offer of a meeting by Trump is more along the line of "we tried to avoid war".
The US under Trump have scrapped the nuke agreement and made demands that are impossible for
Iran to meet without giving away its sovereignty.
Erik Prince's plan for fighting in Afghanistan.
He presented it to the WH. Military rejected it.
He is no longer Blackwater-connected.
Frontier Services Group Ltd. is his new military-security services corp.
He has extensive contracts with the Chinese government and their SOEs overseas.
did you see General Souleimani answer's to Trump rabid tweet
it went like this
Our president doesnt lower himself to answer someone like.I, a soldier answer someone like
you, you re someone who speaks in the vocabulary of a cabaret owner and a gambling house
dealer.(paraphrasing saker has the video on his site)
and then he went on to describe how your cowad troops wore adult diapers in Afghanistan
and Iraq
China will slide right in and take it all at some point once exhaustion sets into place.
dltravers @28
No. China, being development-oriented rather than imperialist, will leave Afghanistan
alone. China and Russia, but especially China, requires an Afghanistan that is not a
U.S.-controlled terrorist base. Because China needs the oil/gas link that it is building
through Pakistan to access Gulf energy resources, and that energy corridor would be the
primary target of U.S.-hired mercenaries ('terrorists').
How Afghanistan manages itself in the post-U.S. era is Afghan business, but it will almost
certainly involve the Pashtun majority (in the form of the 'Taliban') retaking power in Kabul
but with the traditional huge amounts of autonomy for the provinces. That arrangement reduces
pressure by Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan against Pakistan's government, and in general
seems to be the long-term stable set up, and stability is what China has to have in
Afghanistan.
Now is the time with perfect China partner Khan and the Pakistan military firmly in power.
Not instant, but over the next two years I think we'll see the Taliban's fighting capacity
hugely improve, with transfers of supplies, weapons and intelligence from Pakistan. It would
be very smart for Trump to get out in 2019. History is going to accelerate in that
region.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I worry a lot about Venezuela. See, it's a perfect
fit for the U.S. economy. U.S. shale oil is way too light to be useful, while Venezuelan oil
is way too heavy to be useful. They are destined for each other, i.e. to be mixed into a
blend that would be a good fit U.S. refineries. Plus, Venezuela is very import-dependent and
thus would make for a good vassal. It also has a rabid capitalist class that will do anything
-- any kind of atrocity or false flag -- to return to the good old days of exploitation. "But
Venezuela has a lot of arms!", I hear you counter. True, but the people are severely
demoralized because of the extreme economic hardship. Think of the USSR in late 80s/early
90s. It had the most powerful military in the world, and yet people were so demoralized and
disillusioned with the old system that they simply chose not to defend it. Same thing may
happen in Venezuela. After Colombia has signed peace accords with FARC, U.S. has been
steadily increasing its military presence in Colombia. I think there is a very real
possibility of a naval blockade combined with supply lines/air raids from Colombia supporting
the "Free Venezuelan Army" assembled from Venezuelan gangs and revanchist capitalists and
foreign mercenaries. It would be logistically impossible for Russia or China to provide
military help to far-away Venezuela. Neighbors will not come to the aid of Venezuela either
as there is a surge of pro-U.S. right-wing governments in the region.
Any moves the U$A makes will have to be approved according to which natural resources their
corporate masters covet at any particular moment. Lithium and other rare earth minerals,
strategic importance, whatever the corporate form needs to stay on top globally, will dictate
what the empire does.
Leave Afghanistan? I very much doubt it.
DJT will do what the "puppet masters" desire. Just like all his predecessors.
'Correction': No reliable census has been done in decades, but I don't think the Pashtun are
the majority in Afghanistan. They
are by far the largest minority however. British 'divide and rule' stategists long ago
deliberately separated them into Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Venezuela and Iran have two things in common. Both have large oil reserves and neither
recognize Israel.
Trump's wars will be about destroying enemies of Israel, and at the same time, achieving
global energy dominance.
I've posted this before. I met a Taliban leader and his two guards in a brutal area during
the Hearts and Minds Schtick, preparatory to Cheney getting all the oil and gas, and copper
and iron and coming coal lease awards.
He was a nice guy, the Taliban leader. His guards looked at me with absolute death in
their eyes. Not wanting them to hear him, as we finished our tea, the Taliban leader leaned
close, then whispered, 'I love your Jesus, but I hate your Crusaders.'
And I take issue with the US 'incompetence' meme. Ever since Cheney hosted the Taliban in
Texas in 1998, trying to get a TAPI pipeline, the US has deliberately and cunningly taken
over the country, assassinated the local-level leadership, and installed their foreign Shah,
first Karzai, then Ghani.
In that time of occupation, 18 years, Pentagon MIC disappeared TRILLIONS in shrink-wrapped
pallets of $100s, and ballooned from $340B a year, to now Trump is saying $840B a year.
That's not incompetence. Just the opposite.
Now, to honor my Afghan friends, who love to joke even after 35+ years of machine warfare,
a joke I wrote in their honor:
Ring ring ring ring
"Office of the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan!"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Hold please."
President Reagan, it's the Iranian ambassador!"
"Well hello Mr. Assinabindstani, what can I do for you?"
"BRRZZZBRRZZZV..."
"Well I'll get my staff right on it."
[Intercomm clicks]
"Hey Ollie, the Ayatollah wants more guns! Step on it!"
Actually, the British paid an annual tithe-tribute the the Afghan king to stop raiding
their India holdings, and agreed to a neutral zone between them. Then when the British pulled
out, they declared the neutral zone as Pakistan and shrunk India away from Pashtun territory
to create a bigger divide. The Afghan leaders had no say in the matter. I believe Baluchistan
was also carved away. At one time, Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.
There is no way to defeat a nation of warriors who created a kingdom that vast, while William
the Conqueror was still running around in bear skin diapers.
@41 'Afghan control extended from Persia to the Indus Valley.'
You are probably referring to the Khalji Dynasty, a brutal bunch, who ruled India from
1290 to 1320 by which time William the Conqueror was long dead. You would be a lot more
credible if you got your history right.
IMHO the military Budget increase, and what an increase it is!
is part of worsening an already outrageous situation to reach a caricatural point. Typical of
trump repeated special "art".
Of course Nobody in USA, no President can go against the MIC and Pentagon.
But money is cheap when you print it.
It is sugaring the intended shrinking of foreign deployments (as in NATO), closure of
"facilities" and replacing them officially with total deterrence capacities (Space Forces
anybody ?).
While keeping classical projection capacities for demonstration against backward
tribes.
...
From its side, Iran is refusing to even meet Trump, two reasons: 1) If Iran agrees to meet,
it would mean they agree to renegotiate the deal, which they dont. 2) US word isnt worth a
toilet paper, so any negotiations is meaningless. Plus US list of demands makes even endeavor
to negotiate dead from the get go.
Posted by: Harry | Jul 30, 2018 7:53:57 PM | 29
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if you
feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what Iran
wants it to mean.
Trump jumped into the NK and Putin talks first because both were eager to talk. Iran will
be a good test of Trump's seduction skills. All he's got to do is persuade the Iranians that
talking is more useful than swapping long-distance insults. Iranians are rusted onto logical
principles and Trump will find a way to appeal to that trait, imo.
It's too late for the afghanis who have been driven into the urban areas during the regulaar
'Afghanistanisation' campaigns. Most of them will have become hooked on consumerism and the
necessity of dollars.
That leaves only two options for the Taliban when they take over as they undoubtedly will
altho that is likely to mean having to tolerate clutches of obese amerikans lurking in some
Px strewn green zone, the inhabitants of which are likely to have less contact with people
from Afghanistan than any regular user of a Californian shopping mall. The new government can
ignore the consumerists even when these rejects insist on getting lured into some nonsense
green revolution - the danger with this isn't the vapid protests which can easily be dealt
with by fetching a few mobs of staunch citizens from rural Afghanistan who will quickly teach
them that neither cheeseburgers nor close captioned episodes of daytime television provide
sufficient nutrition to handle compatriots raised on traditional food and Islam. Or the new
administration can do as other traditional regimes have done many times over the last 80
years or so, purge the consumerists by disappearing the leadership and strewing empty lots in
the urban areas with mutilated corpses of a few of the shitkicker class consumerists. That
option can cause a bit of a fuss but it (the fuss) generally only lasts as long as the purge.
I suspect the Afghan government will favour the latter approach but they may try to hold
off until the North has been brought back into line. OTH, consumerism is a highly contagious
condition so, unless the North can be pacified speedily which seems unlikely, initially at
least the Taliban adminsitration may have to fight on two fronts, agin the North while they
nip urban consumerists in the bud before those confused fools can cause any highly publicised
in the west but in actuality, low key, attempted insurrection.
My advice to the gaming, TV or cheeseburger addicted inhabitants of Kabul would be to
volunteer your services to the amerikan military as a 'translator' asap and join yer cobbers
in California.
It is unlikely that you will bump into Roman Brady especially not when he is in one
of his avuncular moods, but if you stay outta Texas, Florida or any other part of flyover
amerika chocka with alcohol induced blowhardism, you will discover than amerikan racism isn't
as lethal as it once was.
Apart from having to ignore being jostled in the line at fast food joints and being loudly
and incorrectly termed a motherf**in sand n***er mid-jostle. Certainly a whole lot less
lethal than trying to cover your Fortnite jones by waving a badly copywritten sign in front
of the al-Jazeera cameras for a one month
battle pass .
What was happening in Kabul, Afghanistan less than 8 hours after the WTC Towers turned into
dust in midair? Who here remembers the massive bombing/cruise missile attack?
Here is CNN's transcript:
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "Well, Joie, it's about 2:30 in the morning here in
Kabul. We've been hearing explosions around the perimeter of the city. We're in a position
here which gives us a view over the whole city. We just had an impact, perhaps a few miles
away.
"If I listen, you can hear the ripple of explosions around the city. Perhaps you heard
there. The fifth explosion -- sixth explosion, I think. Gun bursts and star bursts in the
air. Tracer fire is coming up out of the city. I hear aircraft flying above the city of
Kabul. Perhaps we've heard half a dozen to 10 detonations on the perimeter of the city,
some coming from the area close to the airport. I see on the horizon what could be a fire
on the horizon, close, perhaps, to where the airport might be. A flash came up then from
the airport. Some ground fire coming up here in Kabul."
"I've been in Belgrade and I've been in Baghdad and seen cruise missiles arrive in both
those cities. The detonations we're hearing in Kabul right now certainly sound like the
detonations of loud missiles that are coming in. "
"Certainly -- certainly it would appear that the Afghan defense systems have detected a
threat in the air. They are launching what appears to be anti-aircraft defense systems at
the moment. Certainly, I can see that fire that was blazing on the horizon. It was a faint
yellow; it's now a bright orange blazing. Several other detonations going off around the
city, multiple areas. Rockets appear to be taking off from one end of the airport. I can
see that perhaps located about 8 or 9 miles away from where we stand, Joie."
The bombing/explosions continue for 10+ minutes of this broadcast.
Then, they cut to WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: who says the US is only
collecting intelligence. He says what we're seeing must be part of the "Civil War" (despite
the fact that neither side had an air force or cruise missiles). The Pentagon later denies
knowing anything about it.
Then, CNN returns to Nic Robertson, who- within 15 minutes of his first report - begins to
change his tune. Suddenly, the jet sounds are not mentioned. The cruise missiles (jet
engines) have transformed into possible rockets. The airport fire is now an ammunition
dump.
And voila! They lose their connection and Nic will not be heard from again. And this
little bit of history will essentially disappear.
Dear Mr. B,
"All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country."
These mistakes are by design. To cause and keep causing destabilisation.
I like to refer to it as the 3-letter Scrabble method of doing things.
Me living in the Netherlands as I do, let me take the example of Greece.
Greece had its regime changed in 1948 (Wiki says 46-49).
And how is Greece doing these days? ...
@37 yep, gotta agree with the more passimistic outlook here. Personally i'll eat my shoes if
US leaves Afghanistan within any reasonable time frame. In addition to plentiful natural
resources, there are very influential vested interests in Afghanistans booming opium
industry.
Off topic: Andrei Nekrasov's 'Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes' can be viewed in full on You
Tube at this moment (31 July, 08:15 Amsterdam time). Can it also be seen in the USA, I
wonder? How long will it take before Google take it down ? Watch it and learn about one of
the main drivers of the Russia obsession.
Tru-ish but Trump's latest offer is, according to the MSM, "no pre-conditions." It's quite
likely that Iran's allies have advised the Iranians to tell Trump to Go F*ck yourself (if
you feel you must), but then satisfy yourselves that Trump's No Preconditions means what
Iran wants it to mean.
White House just explained what Trump's "no preconditions" means: 1) Iran should at the
core change how it deals with its own people. 2) Change its evil stance in foreign policy. 3)
Agree on nuclear agreement which would REALLY prevent them making a nuke.
In other words, Iran should capitulate and become a client state, thats what Trump means
by "no preconditions."
At this advanced stage of American insanity, I don't see why the devil should have all the
best tunes. I'm sick of the yanks doing this shit in over people's county's ! While they
stuff there fat faces with burgers and donuts! The dirty games they play on over country's,
should now be played in America with all the brutality that they have used on others. Until
that happens things world wide will continue to detriate. Natural justice is all that
remains. They'v curupted all else.
@19 "The US already started to plan an invasion of Afghanistan in januari & february of
2001."
Well, to be fair the USA probably has plans to invade lots of countries.
Indeed, it would be more interesting to consider how many countries there are that the USA
*doesn't* have invasion plans gathering dust on the shelves.
It's just been reported on the bbc news---- the man responsible for the Manchester bombing
had been 'rescued from Lybia when Gadafi was overthrown and tracked ever since. Even in
Britain up to the day of the bombing ! And now on this post we discuss America uk
transporting terrorists from Syria to Afganistan . Not to mention the white helmet bunch and
where Ther going! The Manchester bombing, Westminster bridge and London Bridge atacks were
done by the Tory party to win a general election ! This is the reality of the world we live
in.full on oppression !!!
Indeed, I agree with the sentiments here. But missing a big part of the picture.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have sky-high fertility rates. Forget the rubbish peddled by
economist-whores like Milton Friedman, under these conditions no country without an open
frontier has ever developed into anything other than a larger mass of poverty. In Pakistan
something like half the children are so malnourished that they grow up stunted, and it is
this misery that is starting slow population growth. Pakistan is yet another example of the
Malthusian holocaust, which is not a global catastrophe: it is slow grinding poverty that
results when people have more children than they can support.
Bottom line: these places will remain poor and unstable no matter what lunacy the United
States does or does not do. The traditional approach to such places is to leave them alone,
and only keep them from escaping. Bottled up, the Afghanis and Pakistanis will kill only each
other. 9/11 is a consequence of allowing people from these places free access to the Untied
States.
The 'war on terror' is a consequence of 'there shall be open borders.' It's a big and
messy world, and even if the government of the United States was not criminally incompetent,
there would be a lot of misery and hatred in it. Open borders means that now the Untied
States has to intervene in every country all over the world to ensure that nowhere can there
develop terrorist cells. An impossible task.
Charles Michael @ 44
I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next
target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true
fighters as well as stronger economic planning.
div
Charles Michael @ 44
I agree with the caricature nature of much of this. I don't think there will be a next
target. The MIC has become bloated while Iran, Syria, Russia, China are turning out true
fighters as well as stronger economic planning.
The US still has some resources and some use but needs to continue to make friends in the
pattern of Kim and Putin and give up on its self defeating economic and military sabotage
planning which has been exposed as morally bankrupt as well.
"... While agree totally with what Col. Davis says here about ending America's involvement in the Afghanistan War. Way to many are profiting from this long-term misadventure. ..."
"... Eminently sensible advice, except that Trump can't take it without being greeted with a hysterical chorus of "we're losing Afghanistan ZOMG!" (as if we ever had it) and "Putin puppet!" ..."
"... "Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these wars and how it impacts money necessary to re-build our country infrastructures." ..."
"... Completely disagree. I don't know a single individual who supports the war in Afghanistan or misunderstands its costs. The American people just have no say in the matter. ..."
"... Finally, they realise what St Ronnie knew in the 1980s. He created the Taliban we know today via Operation Cyclone. Maybe Ollie North can lead the negotiations? He seems to have a good channel to the Iranians ..."
"... Putting together Sid_finster's and spite's comments paints an interesting picture. Aside from war profiteering (Fran Macadam) there is no real purpose served by our occupation except to be there. ..."
"... I'll go a step further and say that the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary too. We were not attacked by Afghanistan. We were not even attacked by the Taliban. We were attacked by al Quaida, by teams comprised mostly of Saudi Arabians. ..."
"... It cannot be repeated too often that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Let the Taliban have it. ..."
"... What the Army could not do, and still cannot do, is transform a tribal society in isolated mountainous terrain into a liberal democracy. As LTC Davis observes: "The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and Miller will likewise fail -- is that these objectives can't be militarily accomplished." ..."
"... The conclusion of this simple argument is that the war in Afghanistan actually has almost nothing to do with that country and almost entirely to do with the political and economic demands arising from the US .nothing to do with Afghanistan other than the destruction of the place and its people. ..."
We have no choice. The 17-year war in Afghanistan has failed at every level, while the violence is only
getting worse.
Reports have surfaced recently that the White House is
instructing
its senior diplomats
to begin seeking "direct talks with the Taliban." It's a
measure that would have been unthinkable at the start of the Afghanistan war yet today it's long overdue. Despite the
criticism it's elicited, such talks offer the best chance of ending America's longest and most futile war.
While there is broad agreement that American leaders were justified in launching military
operations in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, it's painfully evident after 17 years that no one has any idea how
to end the fighting on military terms.
Possibly the biggest impediment to ending the war has been the definition of the word
"win." General
Stanley McChrystal
said in 2009 that winning in
Afghanistan meant "reversing the perceived momentum" of the Taliban, "seek[ing] rapid growth of Afghan national security
forces," and "tackl[ing] the issue of predatory corruption by some" Afghan officials.
Nine full years and zero successes later, however, Lieutenant General Austin S.
Miller, latest in line to command U.S. troops in Afghanistan, defined as America's "core goal" at his
confirmation hearing
that "terrorists can never again use Afghanistan as a
safe haven to threaten the United States."
The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and Miller will likewise fail -- is that
these objectives
can't be militarily accomplished.
Predicating an end to the war on such is to guarantee perpetual failure. A major course correction is therefore in
order.
Keeping 15,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan does not,
in any way
, prevent terror attacks against the
United States from originating there -- and for this lack of success we will pay at least
$45 billion
this year alone. The real solution
is therefore to withdraw our troops as quickly as can be safely accomplished rather than throw more of them into a
fruitless conflict.
I personally observed in 2011 during my second combat deployment in Afghanistan that
even with 140,000 U.S. and NATO boots on the ground, there were still vast swaths of the country that were ungoverned
and off-limits to allied troops.
Meaning, at no point since October 2001 has American military power prevented
Afghanistan from having ungoverned spaces. What
has
kept us safe, however -- and will continue to keep us safe -- has been our robust, globally
focused
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that work in concert with the CIA, FBI, and local law
enforcement to defend our borders from external attack.
Many pundits claim that if the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan then chaos
will reign there -- and that is almost certainly true. But that's how we found Afghanistan, that's how it is today,
and -- wholly irrespective of when or under what conditions the U.S. leaves -- that's how it will be long into the future
until Afghans themselves come to an accommodation.
The question U.S. policymakers need to ask is which is more important to American
interests: the maintenance of a perpetually costly war that fails to prevent any future attacks, or ending America's
participation in that war?
Continuing to fight for a country that can't be won cements a policy that has drained
the U.S. of vital resources, spilled the blood of American service members to no effect, and dissipated the Armed Forces'
ability to defend against potentially existential threats later on -- while in the meantime not diminishing the threat of
international terrorism. To strengthen our national security, we must end the enduring policy of failure by prudently
and effectively ending our military mission.
While the fundamentals of a withdrawal plan are relatively straightforward, they would
still be met by considerable opposition. One of the arguments against leaving was voiced by McChrystal nine years ago
when
he pleaded
with the American public to "show resolve" because "uncertainty
disheartens our allies [and] emboldens our foe." Yet the facts can't be denied any longer: for all eight years of the
Obama administration and the first 500 days of Trump's tenure, we maintained that "resolve" and were rewarded with an
unequivocal deterioration of the war.
Since McChrystal's admonition to maintain the status quo, the Taliban have exploded in
strength to
reportedly 77,000
, more territory is now in the
hands of the insurgents than at
any point since 2001
, the Afghan government
remains one of the
most corrupt regimes
on the planet, and
civilian casualties in the first half of 2018 are the
highest ever recorded
.
The only way this permanent failure ends is if President Trump shows the courage he
has sometimes demonstrated to push back against the Washington establishment. That means ignoring the status quo that
holds our security hostage, ending the war, and redeploying our troops. Without that resolve, we can count on continued
failure in Afghanistan. With it, American security will be strengthened and readiness improved.
Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow at Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant
colonel in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments. Follow him on Twitter
@DanielLDavis1
.
While agree totally with what Col. Davis says here about ending America's involvement in the Afghanistan War.
Way to many are profiting from this long-term misadventure. The only way these wars of choice will ever end is
when Congress has the balls to cut off funding. Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these
wars and how it impacts money necessary to re-build our country infrastructures. Military madness indeed.
Eminently sensible advice, except that Trump can't take it without being greeted with a hysterical chorus of
"we're losing Afghanistan ZOMG!" (as if we ever had it) and "Putin puppet!"
If Trump were going to leave, he
should have done so soon after taking office. At least then he could blame his predecessors.
The financial security of the National Security State and its suppliers now depends on no war ever ending or
being won. The new definition of defeat is having any war end. As long as it continues, that war is being won.
"Of course most Americans are clueless about the cost of these wars and how it impacts money necessary to
re-build our country infrastructures."
Completely disagree. I don't know a single individual who supports the
war in Afghanistan or misunderstands its costs.
The American people just have no say in the matter.
There is only one reason why the USA is still in Afghanistan that makes sense (all the official reasons are an
insult to ones intelligence), it borders on Iran and thus serves as a means to open a new front against Iran.
The more the US pushes for war against Iran, the more this seems correct.
"Reports have surfaced recently that the White House is instructing its senior diplomats to begin seeking
"direct talks with the Taliban."
I have to give my Jr High response here:
"Well, duh."
__________________
"While there is broad agreement that American leaders were justified in launching military operations in
Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks . . ."
Yeah . . . no.
1. They manipulated the game to make what was a crime an act of war to justify the an unnecessary,
unethical, and strategically unwise invasion. I remain now where I was 14 years ago -- bad decision in every
way.
2. It was even a poor decision based on reason for war. To utterly bend the will of the opponent to conform
to the will of the US. it is possible to win. But to do so would require such massive force, brutality and
will.
3. 9/11 was a simple criminal act, despite the damage. As a crime we should have sought extradition, and or
small team FBI and special forces operations to a small footprint in either capturing, and or if need be
killing Osama bin Laden and company.
Nothing that has occurred since 9/11 provides evidence that the invasion was either justified or effective.
It will if the end game is to quit be one of three losses suffered by the US.
They are: War of 1812
Iraq
Afghanistan
" . . . it's painfully evident after 17 years that no one has any idea how to end the fighting on military
terms."
Sure leave. Though talking so as to avert whole slaughter of those that aided the US is the decent thing to
do.
Finally, they realise what St Ronnie knew in the 1980s. He created the Taliban we know today via Operation
Cyclone. Maybe Ollie North can lead the negotiations? He seems to have a good channel to the Iranians
Solving USA problems in Afghanistan an at the same time pushing for war with Iran is by definition classic
oxymoron. Afghanistan's problems can only be solved with cooperation and understanding with Iran. Conflict of
the USA with Iran will extend indefinitely the suffering of the Afghanis and the eventual lose of the
Afghanistan and Iran to the Russia. Always reigniting and keeping on the front burner the conflict with Iran by
the USA is exactly what Russia and V. Putin want. I can't see any other politicians except D. Trump, B.
Netanyahu and American 'conservatives' for the advancement of the Russia's goals in the Middle East and in the
globalistan. These are the new XXI century 'useful (adjective)'.
Putting together Sid_finster's and spite's comments paints an interesting picture. Aside from war profiteering
(Fran Macadam) there is no real purpose served by our occupation except to be there.
I'll go a step further
and say that the invasion of Afghanistan was unnecessary too. We were not attacked by Afghanistan. We were not
even attacked by the Taliban. We were attacked by al Quaida, by teams comprised mostly of Saudi Arabians. This
should have been a dirty knife fight in all the back alleys of the world, but we responded to the sucker punch
as our attackers intended; getting into a brawl with somebody else in the same bar; eventually, with more than
one somebody else.
It cannot be repeated too often that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Let the Taliban have it.
Indeed, but as others have commented, the entire point of the Afghanistan war is that it is pointless. It can
suck up enormous amounts of money, and generate incredible profits for politically connected defense
contractors – and because Afghanistan is in fact pointless, it doesn't matter if all of that money is wasted or
stolen, how could you tell? The vested interest in these winless pointless foreign wars means that they will
continue until the American economy finally collapses – and anyone who opposes these wars is a fascist, a
Russian stooge, "literally Hitler." Because money.
Thank you for this. I am very surprised to learn that Trump is pursuing this, given his pugilistic nature. I
hope he does in fact, get us the hell out of there. He may be, like Nixon, the one who is politically able to
make this smart move. Can you imagine the Republican outrage if Obama had tried a diplomatic exit from this
sand trap?
We can still be proud of what we attempted to do there. A few years post-9/11, an Afghan colleague of mine
who had come to the US as a boy said, "9/11 is the best thing to ever happen to Afghanistan." He meant that
rather than carpet bombing Afghanistan "back to the Stone Age," as the left predicted the US would do, we
poured billions of dollars in aide to build schools, hospitals, sewage and water plants, roads, etc.
"He meant that rather than carpet bombing Afghanistan "back to the Stone Age," as the left predicted the US
would do, we poured billions of dollars in aide to build schools, hospitals, sewage and water plants, roads,
etc."
And we could have done a lot more if we had not invaded. The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11.
The achievable operational level Military objectives in the Afghan war were accomplished in the first year; The
Taliban were out of power and hiding in Pakistan and the Afghans had a somewhat benevolent government that
wanted to guarantee security an property and a measure of individual liberty.
What the Army could not do, and still cannot do, is transform a tribal society in isolated mountainous
terrain into a liberal democracy. As LTC Davis observes: "The reason McChrystal failed to end the war -- and
Miller will likewise fail -- is that these objectives can't be militarily accomplished."
This has been particularly true with the intense guerrilla actions enabled by the Pakistanis who have a
vested interest in an unstable Afghanistan.
I believe the noble goals 'might' have been doable – but it would have required a level of effort, and more
importantly a 'cultural confidence' on par with the Roman Empire of the 2nd Century to pull it off. That is no
longer us.
"9/11 is the best thing to ever happen to Afghanistan"? I bet none of his family members died or suffered.
Probably they are all living in the US. Are we supposed to feel proud that instead of carpet bombing and
killing millions our war killed only a hundred thousand?
Sadly, Kent, I do know people who still claim that our continued presence in Afghanistan is a good thing. Some
of these are otherwise fairly bright people, so I really can't comprehend why they continue to buy into this
idiocy.
Afghanistan must be Afghanistan and the US must be the US; this is such a simple tautology. If the US leaves,
Afghanistan will become what ever it can for its own reasons and options. If the US stays, it will be for the
US' reasons, not for the Afghans.
The conclusion of this simple argument is that the war in Afghanistan
actually has almost nothing to do with that country and almost entirely to do with the political and economic
demands arising from the US .nothing to do with Afghanistan other than the destruction of the place and its
people.
"... Here's a thought: If the USG was truly interested in controlling opium production in Afghanistan it would simply use the counternarcotics money to buy up the crop directly from the farmers. The price at that level would be incredibly cheap compared to the "street value" of the drug. The farmers would happily sell to such a reliable buyer and not need to fear the risk of military interference. The current Afghan government would likely earn the goodwill of the farmers and it would cut off funding to the Taliban. It will never happen, however; because our military project in Afghanistan is mostly about enriching private military contractors while keeping the the "threat" of terrorism alive and well. War is a racket. ..."
"... b, have you read "Whiteout" by Alexander Cockburn (RIP) and Jeffrey St. Clair? It was written decades ago but is still relevant. I'm sure the CIA DOES make money from drugs although the CIA black books budget is so large they hardly need the cash. But one imagines it's nice to have a few millions completely out of government accountability--for lining their own pockets if nothing else. ..."
"... I highly recommend Doug Valentine's book, "CIA as Organized Crime." CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been involved in the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. Since all those CIA officers/agents had Colby's blessing, they assumed Valentine was on their side. Oops! Bottom line: There is ZERO difference between CIA and the Mafia. They are essentially one and the same, though they generally have different spheres of action. One upon which they overlap is drug production, smuggling and distribution. ..."
"... I would add that there is ZERO difference between supra-national finance and the Mafia. For instance, the bank, HSBC was founded to launder opium money after Great Britain fought the Opium Wars forcing China to permit them to import opium into China. Former FBI Director and on again/off again hero of the partisans, James Comey left his career with the US Government to work for HSBC after they were finally fined for laundering cash from both drug smuggling and terrorist groups. His job was to help them "negotiate" the new "oversight" placed on the bank. ..."
"... John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief admitted back in 1994 that the "War on Drugs" was actually a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people. "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." ..."
"... Mike Ruppert was an associate of Gary Webb's, was a Los Angeles detective and knew a lot about the CIA's involvement in the Crips/Bloods Drug Wars and its massive importation of drugs into the nation. His investigation was used as his website URL , copvcia, although its name was From The Wilderness. Until 911, his investigation was his passion, then he discovered he had another and it was connected to the former. Here's a page many will want to view . It's hard not to reread the entire website. Unfortunately, Mike saved and only released much of the juicier evidence to his subscribers--he had to eke out a living in some manner. ..."
"... Back in 2002, when the poppy production too off, the idea of flooding Russia was in vogue, it may still be in the game. Transit through Iran to Turkey was also in play. Money laundering started out in "Polish Zlotys", through the banks there. ..."
"... I presume much of that counternarcotics money ends up being cash in hand to thousands of foot-soldiers working for local warlords in Afghanistan as farmers, security personnel, soldiers, prostitutes and what-not, in a way similar to how part of Victoria Nuland's $5 billion investment in Ukraine ended up as cash incentives to entice people from as far as Lvov to travel to Kiev to participate in the Maidan demonstrations over the winter of 2013 / 2014. ..."
"... This in addition to the billions being used to buy weapons, train and send jihadists to fight in other parts of western and central Asia, and line people's pockets at every stage of the drug money trail whether in Afghanistan, Wall Street or various tax havens around the planet. ..."
"... And to the east, I remember reading that one of the first things the US did was to build a bridge and highway towards the east; shortly thereafter, heroin flooded into Russia. ..."
"... Alfred W. McCoy is the authority on drugs and CIA. He's still doing great work, publishing books.His first, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is a classic.His latest, In the Shadows of the American Century, is brilliant analysis. Some videos on youtube, also. He has traveled, researched every ratline trail and outpost all over the globe. Read him if you want the real facts. ..."
thanks b... the speculation has always been in my mind anyway - that the money is controlled
by the cia... covert money for covert projects and on and on it goes...
The Taliban curtailed the poppy growing without any problem. Shortly after the US invasion
under the guise of capturing OBL. Almost 18 years later, long after the death of OBL (in
reality and in US military BS) the poppy production has increased exponentially. There are
Pics of US military personnel walking through poppy fields.
Other than drug production there is no need for the US to be in Afghanistan except maybe to
use it as a launching platform to attack Iran. Drugs are an excellent source for funding
black ops.
Not only is the US allowing the production, considering how easy it would be for them to kill
the crops, and IMHO it as also assisting in the transportation of drugs to the West.
If you understand the Afghan government as a narco state, then the fact that opium
production has actually increased –while the U.S. spent billions on counternarcotics
efforts and troop numbers surged – starts to make sense. A completely failed state
– Afghanistan in 2001 – can't really thrive in the drug trade. Traffickers have
no reason to pay off a toothless government or a nonexistent police force. In such a
libertarian paradise, freelance actors – like Saleem, the heroin cook –
flourish.
But as the government builds capacity, officials can start to demand a cut. It's not
that there's a grand conspiracy at the center of government, but rather that, in the
absence of accountability and the rule of law, officials start to orient themselves around
a powerful political economy. Big drug barons with links to the government take over the
trade. People who don't pay, or who fall out with government officials, might find
themselves killed or arrested.
In this light, U.S. counternarcotics programs, which have cost nearly $8 billion to
date, and the Afghan state-building project in general, are perversely part of the
explanation for the growing government involvement in the drug trade. Even the newly
rebuilt Afghan Air Force has been investigated by the U.S. military for alleged
trafficking. In many places, the surge had the effect of wresting opium revenue from the
Taliban and handing it to government officials. For example, in Helmand's Garmsir District,
which sits on key trafficking routes between the rest of the province and Baramcha, a big
Marine offensive in 2011 finally pushed out the Taliban and handed the district back to the
Afghan government. The result? The police began taking a cut from those drug routes. "There
are families, as in Mafia-style, that have the trade carved up between them, and when some
outsider tries to get in on it, they serve him up as a success for drug interdiction," one
Western official who worked in Garmsir told me.
I just luv-ed this next paragraph. Glad I wasn't sipping Coca Cola
while I read it. Would have chortled cola out my nose!
Here is government BS-speak at it's vacuous best (enjoy):
The U.S. government, for its part, acknowledged that there are no quick solutions at hand.
"The U.S. interagency is developing an updated counternarcotics strategy for Afghanistan,"
says Jen Psaki, the State Department's spokeswoman. "These are long-term efforts that build
the foundation for eventual reductions in opium harvests."
Here's a thought: If the USG was truly interested in controlling opium production in
Afghanistan it would simply use the counternarcotics money to buy up the crop directly from
the farmers. The price at that level would be incredibly cheap compared to the "street value"
of the drug. The farmers would happily sell to such a reliable buyer and not need to fear the
risk of military interference. The current Afghan government would likely earn the goodwill
of the farmers and it would cut off funding to the Taliban. It will never happen, however;
because our military project in Afghanistan is mostly about enriching private military
contractors while keeping the the "threat" of terrorism alive and well. War is a racket.
b, have you read "Whiteout" by Alexander Cockburn (RIP) and Jeffrey St. Clair? It was written
decades ago but is still relevant. I'm sure the CIA DOES make money from drugs although the
CIA black books budget is so large they hardly need the cash. But one imagines it's nice to
have a few millions completely out of government accountability--for lining their own pockets
if nothing else.
I highly recommend Doug Valentine's book, "CIA as Organized Crime." CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been
involved in the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. Since all those CIA officers/agents had
Colby's blessing, they assumed Valentine was on their side. Oops! Bottom line: There is ZERO difference between CIA and the Mafia. They are essentially one
and the same, though they generally have different spheres of action. One upon which they
overlap is drug production, smuggling and distribution.
I would add that there is ZERO difference between supra-national finance and the Mafia.
For instance, the bank, HSBC was founded to launder opium money after Great Britain fought
the Opium Wars forcing China to permit them to import opium into China. Former FBI Director
and on again/off again hero of the partisans, James Comey left his career with the US
Government to work for HSBC after they were finally fined for laundering cash from both drug
smuggling and terrorist groups. His job was to help them "negotiate" the new "oversight"
placed on the bank.
John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief admitted back
in 1994 that the "War on Drugs" was actually
a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people.
"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting
the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then
criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their
leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the
evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Mike Ruppert was an associate of Gary Webb's, was a Los Angeles detective and knew a lot
about the CIA's involvement in the Crips/Bloods Drug Wars and its massive importation of
drugs into the nation. His investigation
was used as his website URL , copvcia, although its name was From The Wilderness. Until
911, his investigation was his passion, then he discovered he had another and it was
connected to the former. Here's a page many will want to
view . It's hard not to reread the entire website. Unfortunately, Mike saved and only
released much of the juicier evidence to his subscribers--he had to eke out a living in some
manner.
The CIA is the planet's #1 Terrorist Organization, and it has all 3 types of Weapons of
Mass Destruction. It's often hard to determine which poses a greater threat to humanity: The
CIA or its parent the Outlaw US Empire. If humanity's to have any chance at a viable future,
both the CIA and its Imperial parent must be destroyed for their many crimes.
That CIA was experimenting with narcotics as a tool seemed to have metasticised into
something else during the Air America years, which in turn seems to have morphed via Barry
Seal (& Gary Webb's investigation)and the Cocaine Coyboys onward into Silk Airways (famed
by weapons to Syria scandal) - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/cockburn-white.html
Back in 2002, when the poppy production too off, the idea of flooding Russia was in vogue, it
may still be in the game. Transit through Iran to Turkey was also in play. Money laundering
started out in "Polish Zlotys", through the banks there.
Addicts were given small sums to
deposit in the banks, by the thousands, which didn't draw attention. A lot of the money was
sent to the U.S. to buy "American Muscle Cars", which were then shipped back to the E.U. and
resold again.
Pakistan was also a transit country where the "Labs" were first set up to
process the opium to heroin. How time fly's when having fun. Addiction to "drugs" isn't the
only addiction nor the addicts involved either. Only one leaf in the book of the minds of
those who believe they are doing the right thing.
I presume much of that counternarcotics money ends up being cash in hand to thousands of
foot-soldiers working for local warlords in Afghanistan as farmers, security personnel,
soldiers, prostitutes and what-not, in a way similar to how part of Victoria Nuland's $5
billion investment in Ukraine ended up as cash incentives to entice people from as far as
Lvov to travel to Kiev to participate in the Maidan demonstrations over the winter of 2013 /
2014.
Also a big portion of the counternarcotics dosh must be going to teams of people digging
up and burning opium and also to teams of people planting new opium seeds in the areas where
the first lot of opium was eradicated later on. Similar to stories people used to hear about
what supposedly happened during the 1930s Great Depression, when teams of people were
employed to dig ditches and then other teams of people were employed to fill up the ditches
which would be dug up again at a later time.
This in addition to the billions being used to buy weapons, train and send jihadists to
fight in other parts of western and central Asia, and line people's pockets at every stage of
the drug money trail whether in Afghanistan, Wall Street or various tax havens around the
planet.
reply to:
".. and IMHO it as also assisting in the transportation of drugs to the West."
Posted by: ken | Jun 18, 2018 2:16:06 PM | 5
And to the east, I remember reading that one of the first things the US did was to build a
bridge and highway towards the east; shortly thereafter, heroin flooded into Russia.
The level of US "counter-narcotic" investment seems to be about right to support the GROWTH
of the narcotics industry...not the otherway around...its black and its dirty
Every comment on this post is like a fine champagne of reality. how do people get by with out
wanting to know the truth. keep the comments coming I need more! Brilliant links. The doors
of perception just opened for me. Who the hell runs our TVs stations that they can turn a
blind I to this lot.
-------
I to find great strength in music, to find the truth. For me it is reggae any group in
society that has sufferd what we discuss on this site for 300 years, but have survived got
stronger and put it to music, I feel needs listening to!!!
The "War on Drugs" was conceived to put black people in jail en masse as Jim Crow came to an
end. Nixon's aides admitted this. Read "The New Jim Crow" for the full story. Marijuana laws
were first introduced in the early 20th century as a tool to arrest and deport Mexicans from
the American southwest. Google it.
The bullshit "War on Drugs" is as phony as the bullshit "War on Terror" in the wake of 3
skyscrapers that were demolished and collapsed at freefall speed.
The real money is to be made in the bullshit wars spawned by these 2 hoaxes that boggle
the mind in their scope.
Basically, these two cornerstones of American domestic and foreign policy are frauds of
biblical proportions.
An empire built on these foundations will come crashing down as fast as WTC 7 on the
afternoon of September 11, 2001.
Various Contra-cocaine type operations of un/controlled shipments of drugs existed in the
early 1990s, some of which existed in order to arm Bosnia (local fighters and foreign
mujahideen), thereby undermining the UN's arms embargo of former Yugoslav states.
Between 1988 and 1992, 22 tons of cocaine was brought into the US via Venezuela by a team
consisting of Mark McFarlin (head of the CIA's counter-narcotics center), Jim Campbell (the
CIA's chief of station in Venezuela) and General Guillén (head of the Venezuelan
National Guard in the pre-Chavez era).
Anti-Drug Unit of C.I.A. Sent Ton of Cocaine to U.S. in 1990
At roughly the same time Albanian mobsters had built a heroin smuggling network for the
purpose of illegally supplying arms to the Bosnian mujahideen. Drugs Paying for Conflict
in Europe
In the summer of 1991, Dutch drug lord Klaas Bruinsma, who had connections with members of
the Dutch elite (corporate and royal), the Colombian Cali cartel and the Yugoslav mafia, was
assassinated by either former cop Martin Hoogland (possibly working for intelligence), or the
Yugoslav mobster Branco Marianovic. In that same summer, the UN Security Council passed
Resolution 713 (the Yugoslav arms embargo), and soon after elements within Dutch customs and
police, in cooperation with Bruinsma's business heirs/infiltrators, started the controlled
shipment of large amounts of cocaine (estimated 25,000 kilo) and hashish (estimated 500,000
kilo) under the name "Operation Delta". The customs officials involved in Operation Delta
were most likely protected by their boss Fred Teeven, later rewarded by given the job of
State Secretary for Security and Justice. Mabel Wisse-Smit, daughter of a top banker
(possibly drug money launderer) and future sister-in-law of the current Dutch king, was first
the lover of drug lord Bruinsma (until his assassination, possibly she was sent to spy on
him) and then the lover of Wall St. banker Mohamed Sacirbey (Bosnia's ambassador to UN in
1992, Bosnia's foreign minister in 1995). Wisse-Smit (later a George Soros
protégé) co-founded the Dutch charity foundation War Child, which was used as a
cover for arms lobbying during the Bosnia war, and she is reported by Bosnian media to have
been involved in a specific arms deal with Egypt.
Alfred W. McCoy is the authority on drugs and CIA.
He's still doing great work, publishing books.His first, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is a classic.His latest, In the Shadows of the American Century, is brilliant analysis. Some videos on youtube, also. He has traveled, researched every ratline trail and outpost all over the globe.
Read him if you want the real facts.
It's good to know so many are well informed on this. I've read Rupert/Webb's stuff and have
Dark Alliance. There's a good movie/documentary out there about Webb but I can't recall the
name right now. Levine wrote about his undercover work in South American being thwarted by
the CIA. And Bo Gritz was trying to set up a deal where the US would buy up Khun Sa's opium
before it could be distributed but the USG wasn't interested. The amazing thing about the
Afghan ramp up in supply was seeing pictures of US soldiers patrolling in the middle of poppy
fields. Meanwhile at home, congress takes bribes (lobbying efforts) to help protect the legal
drug pushers from prosecution by the DEA shoving millions of pills across the country. A
friend's term for this kind of thing is "racket science."
Yeah, his updated edition is a must read. They do not handle the money directly, they let
the guerillas/rebels/revolutionaries handle that as a reward and provide protection from
legal authorities and access to markets using various agencies and mafia at both ends of the
supply-distribution chain. The dollars from the drugs pay for the weapons and support. The
profits go into nameless offshore Eurodollar accounts which then flow into London and Wall
Street as eurodollar loans in many multiples of the deposits (not to be confused with the
euro) to speculate in various markets and drive up asset prices. When the Taliban shut down
opium production we had the Dot.com crash (coincidence?). 100 billion a year can generate 1
trillion in dollars for speculators, and that was sorely missed (along with Clinton running a
surplus instead of a deficit)
There is so much evidence that in many places where they were or are engaged that drug flows
in the region increased and production increased in those areas known for growing the stuff.
Like any organization only those with a need to know have an idea and the majority are clean
and without information
While we are discussing history of the War on Drugs another example of a major consumer
organization (at the time of print) being turned into a vacuous shell....
The WIkipedia summary
"
The book describes the effects and risks of psychoactive drugs which were common in
contemporary use for recreational and nonmedical purposes.[2] The New York Times paraphrased
some major arguments from the book, saying "'Drug-free' treatment of heroin addiction almost
never works", "Nicotine can be as tough to beat as heroin", and "Good or bad, marijuana is
here to stay. The billions spent to fight it are wasted dollars."[3] The book identifies
marijuana as the most popular drug after tobacco, alcohol, and nicotine.[4] A reviewer for
the Journal of the American Medical Association summarized it by saying that "Brecher holds
that the division of drugs into licit and illicit categories is medically irrational and
rooted mainly in historical and sociological factors."[5]
"
karlof1. Amazing that you knew Mike. And yes, the willful ignorance is horribly frustrating.
The way I see it, almost all "Westerners" are willfully ignorant. We all must know that
the only way we live to the "standards" we do is because of the plunder of both our colonial
past and neoliberal present. But most choose to look aside.
For those who haven't seen it, please spend 17 minutes to see Mallence Bart-Williams give an incredible
talk.
"... British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called 'national interest' abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including terrorist organizations. They have connived with them, worked alongside them and sometimes trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. Governments have done so in often desperate attempts to maintain Britain's global power in the face of increasing weakness in key regions of the world, being unable to unilaterally impose their will and lacking other local allies. Thus the story is intimately related to that of Britain's imperial decline and the attempt to maintain influence in the world. ..."
"... But whereas Sharif Hussein was a follower of orthodox Sunni Islam, Ibn Saud adhered to the radical doctrine of Wahhabism, which Winston Churchill was moved to describe as " bloodthirsty ..."
"... British support for the mujahideen, married to the huge support provided by Washington, was indispensable in the eventual success of these self-styled 'holy warriors' in taking control of a country that had embraced modernity and turning it into a failed state mired in religious oppression, brutality, backwardness and poverty. ..."
"... Britain, along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supported the resistance to defeat the Soviet occupation of the country. Military, financial and diplomatic backing was given to Islamist forces which, while forcing a Soviet withdrawal, soon organized themselves into terrorist networks ready to strike Western targets. ..."
"... Islamic resistance ..."
"... We trust the Western leaders are prepared for the enormous beneficial possibilities that could just possibly open up if the Afghan rebellion were to succeed. ..."
"... Manchester, England is home to the largest Libyan community in Britain, and there is strong evidence to suggest that when the Libyan uprising broke out MI6 facilitated the ability of Libyan Islamists in Britain to travel to Libya to participate in the fighting. Among them was Salman Abedi, who it is thought received military training in the country before being allowed to return to the UK thereafter. ..."
"... This brings us on to Syria and, as with Libya, the question of how so many British Muslims have been able to travel from the UK to Syria via Turkey to take part in the anti-Assad insurgency since 2011? It also brings into sharp focus a policy that has veered between the ludicrous and the reckless. ..."
"... As for the recklessness of Britain's actions in Syria, look no further than the country's recent participation in the illegal missile strikes that were carried out in conjunction with the US and France, justified on the basis of as yet unproven allegations that Syrian government forces had carried out a chemical weapons attack on Douma, just outside Damascus. The only beneficiaries of such actions by the Western powers are Salafi-jihadist groups such as ISIS (whom it was later reported took advantage of the missile strike to mount a short-lived offensive), Al-Nusra and Jaysh al-Islam. ..."
"... The latter of those groups, Jaysh al-Islam, is a Saudi proxy. It was the dominant group in Douma and throughout Eastern Ghouta until the district's liberation by the Syrian Army and its allies with Russian support. ..."
Britain's strategic relationship with radical Islam goes back decades and continues to this
day. There is no more foul a stench than the stench of hypocrisy, and there is no more foul a
hypocrisy than the British government painting Bashar al-Assad as a monster when in truth he
and the Syrian people have been grappling with a twin-headed monster in the shape of
Salafi-jihadi terror and Western imperialism. Both are committed to destroying Syria as an
independent, non-sectarian state, and both are inextricably linked.
Author and journalist Mark Curtis charts in detail
the contours of this history in his book 'Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical
Islam':
" British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called
'national interest' abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including
terrorist organizations. They have connived with them, worked alongside them and sometimes
trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. Governments
have done so in often desperate attempts to maintain Britain's global power in the face of
increasing weakness in key regions of the world, being unable to unilaterally impose their will
and lacking other local allies. Thus the story is intimately related to that of Britain's
imperial decline and the attempt to maintain influence in the world. "
As far back as the First World War, when the Middle East began to assume strategic
importance in the capitals of Western imperial and colonial powers, the British ruling class
went out of its way to identify and recruit loyal local proxies in pursuit of its regional
objectives. Britain's relationship with the Arab tribal chief, Ibn Saud, who would go on to
establish Saudi Arabia in the early 1930s, began in 1915 with the Darin Pact, demarcating the
territory then controlled by Saud as a British protectorate.
The following year, the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans erupted. Begun and inspired by
Saud's fierce rival, Sharif Hussein, head of the Hashemite Arab tribe, the revolt was heavily
bankrolled and supported by the British – a period immortalized in the exploits of
British military agent T E Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia.
But whereas Sharif Hussein was a follower of orthodox Sunni Islam, Ibn Saud adhered to the
radical doctrine of Wahhabism, which Winston Churchill was moved to describe as "
bloodthirsty " and " intolerant ." Regardless, when it came to its imperial
interests there was no tiger upon whose back the British ruling class was not willing to ride
during this period, and which, as events have proved, it has not been willing to ride
since.
The most egregious example of this policy, one that continues to have ramifications today,
was the support provided by the UK to the Afghan mujahideen in the late 1970s and 1980s. The
insurgency's objective was the overthrow of Kabul's secular and left-leaning government, whose
crime in the eyes of the Islamist insurgency's US and UK sponsors was that it had embraced the
social and economic model of Moscow rather than Washington during the first Cold War.
British support for the mujahideen, married to the huge support provided by Washington, was
indispensable in the eventual success of these self-styled 'holy warriors' in taking control of
a country that had embraced modernity and turning it into a failed state mired in religious
oppression, brutality, backwardness and poverty.
Mark Curtis again:
" Britain, along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supported the
resistance to defeat the Soviet occupation of the country. Military, financial and diplomatic
backing was given to Islamist forces which, while forcing a Soviet withdrawal, soon organized
themselves into terrorist networks ready to strike Western targets. "
While Washington's primary role in channeling military and financial support to the Afghan
mujahideen, known as
Operation Cyclone , may until have succeeded in overshadowing London's role in this dirty
war, declassified British government cabinet papers which were made public in 2010 and
reported in the UK media make grim reading.
They reveal that three weeks after Soviet forces arrived in Afghanistan at the request of
the Afghan government in Kabul, struggling to deal with an insurgency that had broken out in
the countryside, the Thatcher government was planning to supply military aid to the "
Islamic resistance ." A confidential government memo provides a chilling insight into
the insanity that passed for official policy: " We trust the Western leaders are prepared
for the enormous beneficial possibilities that could just possibly open up if the Afghan
rebellion were to succeed. "
It will be recalled that out of the ensuing collapse of Afghanistan emerged the Taliban,
under whose rule the country was turned into a vast militant jihadist school and training camp.
Many of the most notorious Islamist terrorists began their careers there, fighting the Soviets
and then later broadening out their activities to other parts of the region and wider world. In
this regard, Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda loom large.
Other notorious names from the world of Salafi-jihadism for whom Afghanistan proved
indispensable include the Jordanian Abu al-Zarqawi, who founded Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) during
the US-UK occupation, an organization that would over time morph into ISIS.
Abdelhakim Belhaj and other Libyan Islamists cut their jihadist teeth in Afghanistan in the
1980s. Returning to Libya, they formed the Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group (LIFG) in the eastern city of Benghazi. Though the group may have been
disbanded in 2010, having failed to topple Gaddafi despite repeated attempts to assassinate the
Libyan leader with, it's been
claimed , the support of Britain's MI6, former members of the LIFG, including Belhaj, were
important actors in the 2011 Libyan uprising.
By way of a reminder, the uprising in Libya started in Benghazi and would not have succeeded
without the air support it received from NATO. Britain's then prime minister, David Cameron,
was key in pushing for that air support and the sanction of the UN under the auspices of
Security Council Resolution 1973. Though protecting civilians was central in wording of this
UNSC resolution, it was shamefully distorted to justify regime change, culminating in Gaddafi's
murder by the 'rebels.'
Staying with the LIFG, in the wake of the Manchester suicide-bomb attack in May 2017, which
left 23 people dead and 500 injured, the fact that the bomber, a young Libyan by the name of
Salman Abedi, was the son of a former member of the LIFG, did not receive anything like the
media attention it should have at the time.
Manchester, England is home to the largest Libyan community in Britain, and there is strong
evidence to suggest that when the Libyan uprising broke out MI6 facilitated the ability of
Libyan Islamists in Britain to travel to Libya to participate in the fighting. Among them was
Salman Abedi, who it is thought received military training in the country before being allowed
to return to the UK thereafter.
This brings us on to Syria and, as with Libya, the question of how so
many British Muslims have been able to travel from the UK to Syria via Turkey to take part
in the anti-Assad insurgency since 2011? It also brings into sharp focus a policy that has
veered between the ludicrous and the reckless.
Emblematic of the former was ex-prime minister David Cameron's
claim , which he made during a 2015 Commons debate over whether the Royal Air Force should
engage in air strikes against ISIS in Syria, that fighting as part of the Syrian were 70,000
moderates.
As for the recklessness of Britain's actions in Syria, look no further than the country's
recent participation in the illegal missile strikes that were carried out in conjunction with
the US and France, justified on the basis of as yet unproven allegations that Syrian government
forces had carried out a chemical weapons attack on Douma, just outside Damascus. The only
beneficiaries of such actions by the Western powers are Salafi-jihadist groups such as ISIS
(whom it was later
reported took advantage of the missile strike to mount a short-lived offensive), Al-Nusra
and Jaysh al-Islam.
The latter of those groups, Jaysh al-Islam, is a Saudi proxy. It was the dominant group in
Douma and throughout Eastern Ghouta until the district's liberation by the Syrian Army and its
allies with Russian support.
Given the deep and longstanding ties between London and Riyadh; given the fact,
reported towards the end of 2017, that British military personnel were embedded in a
training role with Saudi forces in Yemen; given the news that a British special forces sergeant was
killed in northern Syria at the end of March this year while embedded with the Kurds, revealing
for the first time that British troops were operating in the country on the ground –
given all that, the question of who else British special forces and military personnel may be
embedded with in Syria is legitimate.
In the context of the British state's long and sordid history when it comes to riding the
back of radical Islam in pursuit of its strategic objectives, readers will doubtless draw their
own conclusions.
John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the
Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and
Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. John is currently
working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on
Twitter @JohnWight1
To
borrow from the British definition of an ambassador, United States military leaders are honest soldiers promoted in rank to champion
war with reckless disregard for the truth. This practice persists despite the catastrophic waste of lives and money because the untruths
are never punished. Congress needs to correct this problem forthwith.
General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, exemplifies the phenomenon. As reported in The Washington
Post , Dunford recently voiced optimism about defeating the Afghan Taliban in the seventeenth year of a trillion-dollar war that
has multiplied safe havens for international terrorists, the opposite of the war's original mission. While not under oath, Dunford
insisted, "This is not another year of the same thing we've been doing for 17 years. This is a fundamentally different approach [T]he
right people at the right level with the right training [are in place] "
There, the general recklessly disregarded the truth. He followed the instruction of General William Westmoreland who stated at
the National Press Club on November 21, 1967 that the Vietnam War had come to a point "where the end begins to come into view." The
1968 Tet Offensive was then around the corner, which would provoke Westmoreland to ask for 200,000 more American troops. The Pentagon
Papers and Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster's Dereliction of Duty have meticulously documented the military's reckless disregard
for the truth throughout the Vietnam War.
Any fool can understand that continuing our 17-year-old war in Afghanistan is a fool's errand. The nation is artificial. Among
other things, its disputed border with Pakistan, the Durand Line, was drawn in 1896 between the British Raj and Afghan Amir Abdur
Rahmen Khair. Afghanistan's population splinters along tribal, ethnic, and sectarian lines, including Pushtans, Uzbeks, Hazara, Tajiks,
Turkmen, and Balochi. Its government is riddled with nepotism, corruption, ineptitude, and lawlessness. Election fraud and political
sclerosis are endemic. Opium production and trafficking replenish the Taliban's coffers.
The Afghan National Army (ANA) is a paper tiger. Desertion and attrition rates are alarming. Disloyalty is widespread. American
weapons are sold to the Taliban or captured. ANA soldiers will not risk that last full measure of devotion for an illegitimate, unrepresentative,
decrepit government.
The Taliban also has a safe haven in Pakistan. A staggering portion -- maybe up to 90 percent -- of United States assistance to
Afghanistan is embezzled, diverted, or wasted. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
related to Chatham House in London that "SIGAR was finding waste, fraud, and abuse nearly everywhere we looked in Afghanistan --
from the $488 million worth of aircraft that couldn't fly, to the navy the U.S. bought for a landlocked country, to the buildings
the U.S. paid for that literally melted in the rain ."
"The Taliban are getting stronger, the government is on the retreat, they are losing ground to the Taliban day by day," Abdul
Jabbar Qahraman, a retired Afghan general who was the Afghan government's military envoy to Helmand Province until 2016, told the
New York Times last summer. ISIS has now joined the Taliban and al-Qaeda in fighting the United States. Secretary of Defense
General James Mattis conceded to Congress last June that "we are not winning in Afghanistan right now," but added polyannaishly,
"And we will correct this as soon as possible." Only two months earlier, the Defense Department insisted that dropping the Mother
of All Bombs on Afghanistan would reverse the losing trend.
Upton Sinclair sermonized: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding
it." Thus do military leaders deceive themselves about futile wars to extract more spending, to maintain their professional reputations
and public stature, and to avoid the embarrassment of explaining to Congress and the American people that astronomical sums have
been wasted and tens of thousands of American soldiers have died or were crippled in vain.
To deter such self-deception, Congress should enact a statute requiring the retirement without pension of any general or admiral
who materially misleads legislators or the public about prospective or ongoing wars with reckless disregard for the truth. That sanction
might have prompted General Dunford to acknowledge the grim truth about Afghanistan: that the United States is clueless about how
to win that war.
Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan and is the founding partner of Fein & DelValle PLLC.
Twelve days
after 9/11, on the night of September 23, 2001, the CIA's Islamabad station chief, Robert Grenier, received a telephone
call from his boss, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. "Listen, Bob," Tenet said, "we're meeting tomorrow at
Camp David to discuss our war strategy in Afghanistan. How should we begin? What targets do we hit? How do we sequence our
actions?"
Grenier later wrote in his book,
88 Days to
Kandahar
, that while he was surprised by the call he'd been thinking about these
same questions -- "mulling them over and over and over," as he later told me -- so he was ready. President George Bush's address
to the U.S. Congress just a few days before, Grenier told Tenet, was a good start: demand that Afghanistan's Taliban ruler,
Mullah Omar, turn bin Laden over to the United States. If he refused, the U.S. should launch a campaign to oust him.
Grenier had thought through the plan, but before going into its details with Tenet he abruptly stopped the conversation.
"Mr. Director," he said, "this isn't going to work. I need to write this all down clearly." Tenet agreed.
Grenier set to work, and over the next three hours he laid out the battle for
Afghanistan. Included in the paper was a detailed program of how the CIA could deploy undercover teams to recruit bin
Laden's enemies among Afghanistan's northern Tajik and Uzbek tribes (an uneasy coalition of ethnic militias operating as
the Northern Alliance), supply them with cash and weapons, and use them in a rolling offensive that would oust the Taliban
in Kabul. With U.S. help, which included deploying American Special Forces teams (under CIA leadership) coupled with
American airpower, the Northern Alliance (more properly, the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan) would
start from its Panjshir Valley enclave in Afghanistan's far northeast and, recruiting support from anti-Taliban forces
along the way, roll all the way into Kabul.
Grenier gave the eight-page draft paper to his staff to review, then sent it to Tenet in
Washington, who passed it through the deputies committee (the second-in-command of each of the major national security
agencies), then presented it to Bush. "I regard that cable," Grenier wrote, "as the best three hours of work I ever did in
my twenty-seven-year career."
Three days after the Tenet-Grenier telephone conversation, on September 26, the CIA
landed a covert-operations team in Afghanistan to recruit local allies in the hunt for bin Laden. The quick action was
impressive, but then events slowed to a crawl. It wasn't until October 20 that the first U.S. Special Forces team linked up
with anti-Taliban rebels, and it took another week for U.S. units to land in strength. But by early November al Qaeda was
on the run and the Taliban's grip on the country was slipping away. On November 13, militias of the Northern Alliance
seized Kabul. The Taliban was defeated, its badly mauled units fleeing south and east (its last bastion, in the south, fell
on December 6), and into nearby Pakistan, while what remained of al Qaeda holed up in a series of cave complexes in the
Spin Ghar mountain range of eastern Afghanistan.
By almost any measure, the CIA-led anti-al Qaeda and anti-Taliban offensive (dubbed
Operation Enduring Freedom by George Bush) marked a decisive victory in the war on terror. The U.S. had set out a plan,
marshaled the forces to carry it out, and then seen it to completion.
But this triumph came with problems. The first was that the offensive was hampered by
Washington infighting that pitted the CIA against a puzzlingly recalcitrant U.S. military and a carping Donald Rumsfeld,
who questioned George Tenet's leadership of the effort. This bureaucratic squabbling, focused on just who was responsible
for what (and who exactly was running the Afghanistan war), would remain a hallmark of American efforts well into the Obama
administration. The second problem was that Afghanistan's southern Pashtun tribes were only marginally included in the
effort, and they remained suspicious of their northern non-Pashtun counterparts. The mistrust, CIA officers believed, would
almost certainly plant the seeds of an endless inter-tribal Afghan conflict, embroiling the United States in an effort to
prop up an unpopular Kabul government. The third problem was Pakistan -- or, more precisely, Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence agency, the ISI, and the ISI's "Directorate S," responsible for covertly supplying, training, and arming
Pakistan's Islamist allies, including the Pashtun-dominated Taliban.
♦♦♦
The intractability of these variables, and America's 17-year effort (sometimes focused
but often feckless) to resolve them, form the basis of Steve Coll's
Directorate S
,
a thick but eminently readable account of America's Afghanistan misadventure. While
Directorate S
stands alone as a comprehensive
exposition of the Afghanistan conflict dating from 9/11, it's actually a follow-on of
Ghost Wars
, Coll's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004
narrative of America's efforts to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan following their invasion in December 1979. Given the
breadth of Coll's dual treatments and the depth of his research, it's likely that these books will remain the standard
exposition of the period for years to come.
While the focus of
Directorate S
is on Pakistan and its shady intelligence services, each of the obstacles that confronted the United States in Afghanistan
from the moment the Taliban abandoned Kabul is embraced in detail. These obstacles included America's post-9/11 attention
deficit disorder (the pivot away from al Qaeda to Iraq was being considered in Washington even as the Northern Alliance
cleared the Afghan capital) and the deeply embedded antipathy toward the new Kabul government among Pakistani-supported
southern tribesman. Thus, after the United States ousted al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters, it embarked on a program to
strengthen the new Kabul government, anointing Hamid Karzai as Afghanistan's president and pledging billions in
reconstruction aid. And so, or so it seemed, everything had gone as planned. The Taliban was routed; al Qaeda was on the
run; a new anti-terrorism government was in place in Kabul; and the United States had signed Pakistan on as a willing
accomplice. On May 1, 2003, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld declared an end to major combat operations in Afghanistan. The war
was over. Won.
But of course it wasn't.
Coll's account provides a disturbing catalogue of the U.S. mistakes in the wake of the
Taliban defeat. Almost all of them are well known: Hamid Karzai, the consensus choice of a grand assembly (a loya jirga) as
Afghanistan's interim president, proved to be a weak leader. The monies appropriated for Afghanistan's postwar
reconstruction were woefully inadequate for the task -- "laughable," as one U.S. official put it. American soldiers
responsible for countering the Taliban's return (and hunting al Qaeda terrorist cells) were thinly and poorly deployed
(and, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, of secondary importance in the Pentagon). Tentative Taliban efforts to engage the
United States in political talks were summarily and unwisely spurned. Allegations of prisoner abuse at U.S. detention
facilities consistently undermined U.S. legitimacy. American funds were funneled into Afghan ministries laced with corrupt
officials. Afghani poppy production increased, despite faint-hearted U.S. eradication efforts. And U.S. counter-terrorism
actions proved ham-handed and caused preventable civilian casualties, pushing Afghanis into a resurgent anti-Kabul
resistance.
More crucially, Pakistan's unstinting support for America's Afghanistan efforts proved to
be anything but unstinting. The reason for this was not only entirely predictable but was actually the unintended result of
the American victory. When the Northern Alliance and U.S. airpower pushed what remained of the Taliban (along with the
remnants of al Qaeda) out of Afghanistan, they pushed them into Pakistan, creating conditions that, as Coll tells us,
"deepened resentment among Pakistan's generals, who would come to see their country's rising violence as a price of
American folly . . ." Put simply, for the United States to seal the Operation Enduring Freedom victory, it had to ensure
that its effects did not spill over into the one nation that could ensure that its victory would, in fact, be enduring.
That didn't happen. The result was that the Taliban was able to rebuild and rearm its networks not only in Pakistan, and
under the eyes of the ISI, but also in Afghanistan.
It might have been otherwise. During a series of discussions I had about America's
intervention in Afghanistan in the months immediately following 9/11, a number of currently serving and former senior U.S.
officials told me they believed that, given enough time, the Taliban might well have handed bin Laden over to the
Americans, obviating the need for a full-on invasion. One of these officials was Milton Bearden, a famed CIA officer (his
close friends refer to him as "Uncle Milty") who, during his time as a station chief in Pakistan, had helped to head up the
CIA's war against the Soviets in the mid 1980s.
♦♦♦
After 9/11, Bearden recharged his Pakistan and Afghanistan networks in an effort to
convince the Taliban that turning bin Laden over to the Americans was a better option than the one they were facing. All
the while, Bearden kept senior U.S. officials apprised of what he was doing, even as he was attempting to head off their
rush to war. Bearden told me that, while his efforts had not reached fruition by the time the Bush White House had decided
on a course of action, he believes the United States had not fully explored all of its options -- or thought through the
long-term impact of its intervention. "I don't know what would have happened, I don't know," he says wistfully, "but I
think we have a handhold in history. We should have seen what was coming." He notes that Alexander the Great "took one look
at Afghanistan's mountains and decided against it. He thought his whole army could get swallowed up in there, and he wasn't
going to take that chance. So, well, you tell me if I'm wrong, but Alexander was no slouch, right?"
Not everyone agrees with this, of course. The dissenters include Robert Grenier, the
first drafter of what became the American war plan. Taliban leader Mullah Omar, he told me, was committed to his pledge to
protect Osama bin Laden; he viewed it as a blood oath that could not be broken. Moreover, argues Grenier, "Omar viewed
himself as a kind of world historical figure, a person on whom the axis of history would turn." One result was that he
believed his fight against the Americans would be epochal.
That said, Grenier believes America's foray into Afghanistan, and the mistakes that
followed, might at least have been dampened by a more diligent focus on the inherent divisions of Afghan society. "We [at
the CIA]," he told me several months ago, "were very aware that the march of the Northern Alliance into Kabul would likely
create real difficulties in the south. And we tried to slow it, precisely for this reason. But events overtook us, and it
just wasn't possible. So, yes, things might have been otherwise, but in truth we just don't know."
The value in Coll's
Directorate S
comes not from the elegant telling of a story not fully known, but from the dawning realization that Afghanistan is the
kind of lock for which there is no key. There is no reason to believe that a different outcome would have ensued if other
events had intruded -- for example, more personnel, money, focused diplomacy, or robust and disciplined enemy-defeating and
nation building; or that our war there and the occupation that followed would have yielded the same results that we
realized in, say, Japan after 1945. The real hubris here is not that we tried and failed but that we thought we could
actually succeed. Afghanistan is simply not that kind of place.
There is a term of art for this in the military, which found its first usage in Iraq in
2009, when U.S. commanders adopted it as an appreciation of what could and could not be accomplished. Instead of focusing
on defeating corruption, inefficiency, disunity, and poor leadership, the focus shifted almost exclusively to dampening
violence, to keeping the doors to Iraq open even as its factions battled for its control. More importantly, the adoption of
the phrase marked the abandonment of high expectations and an embrace of realism. The United States would have to yield the
business of replicating a Western-style democracy on the banks of the Euphrates. That goal, if it was going to be
accomplished at all, would have to be realized by the Iraqis.
Analyst Anthony Cordesman, one of America's premier military thinkers, adopted the phrase
and applied to Afghanistan in 2012 in an essay he entitled, "Time to Focus on 'Afghan Good Enough.'" His plan was simply
stated but had all the elegance of actually working: keep the Taliban out of Kabul and the major cities, preserve the
central and provincial government even in the face of endemic corruption, and work to provide security to large numbers of
Afghanis. Cordesman conceded that this was not the kind of victory that Americans had hoped for on September 12. And it was
difficult to describe the outcome as even vaguely passable -- or "good." But it was far better than adopting goals that could
not be realized or embracing an illusion that disappeared even as it was grasped. For the time being at least, it would
have to be "good enough."
Mark Perry is a foreign policy analyst, a contributing editor to
The American Conservative
and the author of
The Pentagon's Wars
.
On a related note, this article by Prof. Niels Harrit claims that a document declassified
in 2008 was the basis for the ongoing war in Afghanstian, and that the document is as
evidence free as the Novichok claims:
Is there any forensic evidence provided in this document to serve as a legal basis for
the invocation of Article 5? Nothing. There is absolutely no forensic evidence in support of
the claim that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated from Afghanistan. Only a small part of the
introductory text deals with 9/11, in the form of summary claims like the citation in Lord
Robertson's press release. The main body of the text deals with the alleged actions of
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the nineties.
On 4 October, NATO officially went to war based on a document that provided only
'talking points' and no evidence to support the key claim.
Sound familiar? Of course, I've no idea if he's right.
The Taliban foreign minister at the time tried to warn the Americans of the attack they
learned about it from a third party that is about as far removed from being behind the attack
as it gets. Didn't help them did it the Americans were after vengeance and wanted to satisfy
their bloodlust by bombing a country which didn't even have a single one of its citizens
involved in the attack. Classic scapegoating.
They had other reasons to want to attack Afghanistan . In fact, they warned the Taliban
that they would if the Taliban did not permit the desired pipeline.
What do you expect from Johnson? A grindingly stupid man who has never got a job on merit
and is now desperately hoping the public don't see through his lies for the Americans. No
wonder the government don't want to bring back grammar schools.
New Viz character; Boris the Bullshitter. Textbook bullshitting:
-- "Let me be clear with you" (though what is to follow is as clear as mud,)
" When I look at the evidence, I mean" (not me, actually, I mean) "the people
from Porton Down, the laboratory So they have the samples They do." (believe me)
"And they were absolutely categorical" (about what?) "and I asked the guy
myself," (what did you ask him, Boris?) "I said, "Are you sure?" And he said there's
no doubt" (no doubt of WHAT, Boris?)
Craig, I have to set you straight on this. Boris is as incapable of lying as he is of
telling the truth. As strange as it may seem to rational minds, the concepts of truth and
falsity simply do not exist in minds such as his. To him, everything is merely an
opportunity for achieving his goals, or a threat to his credibility that needs to be bluffed
over, and to those ends every statement he makes will be as vague as he can get away with
under the circumstances.
After 16 years of war in Afghanistan, experts have stopped asking what victory looks like
and are beginning to consider the spectrum of possible defeats.
All options involve acknowledging the war as failed, American aims as largely unachievable
and Afghanistan's future as only partly salvageable. Their advocates see glimmers of hope
barely worth the stomach-turning trade-offs and slim odds of success.
"I don't think there is any serious analyst of the situation in Afghanistan who believes
that the war is winnable," Laurel Miller, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, said
in a
podcast last summer, after leaving her State Department stint as acting special
representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This may be why, even after thousands have died and over $100 billion has been spent, even
after the past two weeks of shocking bloodshed in
Kabul , few expect the United States to try anything other than the status
quo.
It is a strategy, as Ms. Miller described it, to "prevent the defeat of the Afghan
government and prevent military victory by the Taliban" for as long as possible.
Though far from the most promising option, it is the least humiliating. But sooner or later,
the United States and Afghanistan will find themselves facing one of Afghanistan's endgames --
whether by choice or not.
"... For being "intelligence" agencies who no one is apparently allowed to question or criticize, they sure make a lot of "mistakes", "lose" a lot of documents, and just get a lot of things "wrong". ..."
"... Iraq was invaded and occupied as well. Control resources!! That is the end game...As a Combat Veteran served during 9/11 and tip of the spear in 2003 we found ZERO weapons of mass destruction....So many young Americans impacted and suffered for pure profit at the hands of greedy Men... ..."
His comments came hours after SIGAR said in
a quarterly report on the conflict that the Pentagon prohibited the inclusion of information on the number of districts in Afghanistan,
and the population therein, controlled by the Afghan government or the Taliban or contested by both sides.
"The number of districts controlled or influenced by the Afghan government had been one of the last remaining publicly available
indicators for members of Congress -- many of whose staff do not have access to the classified annexes to SIGAR reports -- and for
the American public of how the 16-year-long U.S. effort to secure Afghanistan is faring," SIGAR said in a statement. "This is the
first time SIGAR has been specifically instructed not to release information marked 'unclassified' to the American taxpayer."
In his emailed statement, Gresback said that, as of October 2017, about 56 percent of the country's 407 districts were under Afghan
government control or influence, 30 percent remained contested, and roughly 14 percent were now under insurgent control or influence.
R Roger47 yesterday
Afghanistan is too big and too poor for their own government and military to ever be able to control. Much of the country is
controlled by tribal leaders associated loosely with the Taliban. They want to continue to live their lives as they have done
for hundreds of years. We can either let them do so, or occupy their country forever. I say make an agreement to leave them alone
as long as they keep terrorists out, and bring our troops home.
e edward yesterday
For being "intelligence" agencies who no one is apparently allowed to question or criticize, they sure make a lot of "mistakes",
"lose" a lot of documents, and just get a lot of things "wrong".
C CBVET2003 yesterday
Iraq was invaded and occupied as well. Control resources!! That is the end game...As a Combat Veteran served during 9/11
and tip of the spear in 2003 we found ZERO weapons of mass destruction....So many young Americans impacted and suffered for pure
profit at the hands of greedy Men...
V Vegasvince 22 hours ago
Several things he promised to work on are traditional Democratic issues. Since they also agree, I'd hope we can see quick
congressional action. Infrastructure, prescription drug costs, terminal patients access to drug trials, Job training investment,
Paid family leave, former prisoner job training, etc... These should be fast tracked through Congress and to the Presidents. We
can agree on things in America and need a productive governement to get thing s done!
"... Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fighting for scores of nations, with troops on every continent and forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. "I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger," said Senator Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing." ..."
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, ..."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
Forward Operating Base Torkham, in Nangahar Province, Afghanistan (army.mil) If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria,
could be under fire by week's end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history.
Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his forces will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded.
Erdogan's foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the United States to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian
border with Turkey east of the Euphrates all the way to Iraq.
If the Turks attack Manbij, America will face a choice: stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon the Kurds.
Should the U.S. let the Turks drive the Kurds out of Manbij and the entire Syrian border area, as Erdogan threatens, American
credibility would suffer a blow from which it would not soon recover.
But to stand with the Kurds and oppose Erdogan's forces could mean a crackup of NATO and a loss of U.S. bases inside Turkey, including
the air base at Incirlik.
Turkey also sits astride the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea. NATO's loss would thus be a triumph for Vladimir Putin, who
gave Ankara the green light to cleanse the Kurds from Afrin.
Yet Syria is but one of many challenges facing U.S. foreign policy.
The Winter Olympics in South Korea may have taken the menace of a North Korean ICBM out of the news, but no one believes that
threat is behind us.
Last week, China charged that the USS Hopper, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal,
a reef in the South China Sea claimed by Beijing, though it is far closer to Luzon in the Philippines. The destroyer, says China,
was chased off by one of her frigates. If we continue to contest China's territorial claims with our warships, a clash is inevitable.
In a similar incident Monday, a Russian military jet came within five feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 Orion surveillance jet in international
airspace over the Black Sea, forcing the Navy plane to end its mission.
U.S. relations with Cold War ally Pakistan are at rock bottom. In his first tweet of 2018, President Trump charged Pakistan with
being a false friend.
"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given
us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools," Trump declared. "They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt
in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"
As for America's longest war in Afghanistan, now in its 17th year, the end is nowhere on the horizon. A week ago, the International
Hotel in Kabul was attacked and held for 13 hours by Taliban gunmen who killed 40. Midweek, a Save the Children facility in Jalalabad
was attacked by ISIS, creating panic among aid workers across the country.
Saturday, an ambulance exploded in Kabul, killing 103 people and wounding 235. Monday, Islamic State militants attacked Afghan
soldiers guarding a military academy in Kabul. With the fighting season two months off, U.S. troops will not soon be departing. If
Pakistan is indeed providing sanctuary for the terrorists of the Haqqani network, how does this war end successfully for the United
States? Last week, in a friendly fire incident, the U.S.-led coalition killed 10 Iraqi soldiers. The Iraq war began 15 years ago.
Yet another war, where the humanitarian crisis rivals Syria, continues on the Arabian Peninsula. There, a Saudi air, sea, and
land blockade that threatens the Yemeni people with starvation has failed to dislodge Houthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa
three years ago. This weekend brought news that secessionist rebels, backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized power in Yemen's
southern port of Aden from the Saudi-backed Hadi regime fighting the Houthis. These rebels seek to split the country, as it was before
1990.
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE appear to be backing different horses in this tribal-civil-sectarian war into which America has
been drawn. There are other wars -- Somalia, Libya, Ukraine -- where the U.S. is taking sides, sending arms, training troops, flying
missions.
Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fighting for scores of nations, with troops on every continent and
forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware. "I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger,"
said Senator Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily,
and what we're doing."
No, we don't, Senator. As in all empires, power is passing to the generals. And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial
city? Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia-gate.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President
and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists,
visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
Okay, the segment with the shooting through the truck window is still only 5 seconds but
I'd argue that the fact that it is part of a 3 minute montage 'our guys are kicking ass in
Afghanistan' actually gives it a much worse context. If this was some innocent procedural,
'we had to reluctantly do it' incident, no one in their right mind would have popped it into
such a sequence.
"... What's puzzling is why that capacity for outrage and demand for accountability doesn't extend to our now well-established penchant for waging war across much of the planet. ..."
"... Compare their culpability to that of the high-ranking officials who have presided over or promoted this country's various military misadventures of the present century. Those wars have, of course, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and will ultimately cost American taxpayers many trillions of dollars. Nor have those costly military efforts eliminated "terrorism," as President George W. Bush promised back when today's G.I.s were still in diapers. ..."
"... Bush told us that, through war, the United States would spread freedom and democracy. Instead, our wars have sown disorder and instability, creating failing or failed states across the Greater Middle East and Africa. In their wake have sprung up ever more, not fewer, jihadist groups, while acts of terror are soaring globally. These are indisputable facts. ..."
"... For starters, there is no "new strategy." Trump's generals, apparently with a nod from their putative boss, are merely modifying the old "strategy," which was itself an outgrowth of previous strategies tried, found wanting, and eventually discarded before being rebranded and eventually recycled. ..."
"... Thus far, Trump's interventionism has been a fragment of what the Hillary campaign promised. ..."
"... This is the center of a world empire. It maintains a gigantic military which virtually never stops fighting wars, none of them having anything to do with defense. It has created an intelligence monstrosity which makes old outfits like Stazi seem almost quaint, and it spies on everyone. Indeed, it maintains seventeen national security establishments, as though you can never have too much of a good thing. And some of these guys, too, are engaged full-time in forms of covert war, from fomenting trouble in other lands and interfering in elections to overthrowing governments. ..."
"... It's unlikely that the USA would be remaining in Afghanistan if its goals were not being attained. So the author has merely shown that the stated goals cannot be the real goals. What then are the real goals? I propose two: 1) establish a permanent military presence on a Russian border; 2) finance it with the heroin trade. Given other actions of the Empire around the globe, the first goal is obvious. The bombing of mud huts containing competitors' drug labs, conjoined with the fact that we do not destroy the actual poppy fields (obvious green targets in an immense ocean of brown) make this goal rather obvious as well. The rest of the article is simply more evidence that the Empire does not include mere human tragedy in its profit calculation. ..."
"... Andrew Bacevich calls for a Weinstein moment without realizing that it already happened more than ten years ago. The 2006 midterm elections were the first Weinstein moment, which saw the American people deliver a huge outpouring of antiwar sentiment that inflicted significant congressional losses on the neocon Republicans of George W. Bush. ..."
What makes a Harvey Weinstein moment? The now-disgraced Hollywood mogul is hardly the first
powerful man to stand accused of having abused women. The Harveys who preceded Harvey himself
are legion, their prominence matching or exceeding his own and the misdeeds with which they
were charged at least as reprehensible.
In the relatively recent past, a roster of prominent offenders would include Bill Clinton,
Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, and, of course, Donald Trump. Throw in various jocks,
maestros, senior military officers, members of the professoriate and you end up with quite a
list. Yet in virtually all such cases, the alleged transgressions were treated as instances of
individual misconduct, egregious perhaps but possessing at best transitory political
resonance.
All that, though, was pre-Harvey. As far as male sexual hijinks are concerned, we might
compare Weinstein's epic fall from grace to the stock market crash of 1929: one week it's the
anything-goes Roaring Twenties, the next we're smack dab in a Great Depression.
How profound is the change? Up here in Massachusetts where I live, we've spent the past year
marking John F. Kennedy's 100th birthday. If Kennedy were still around to join in the
festivities, it would be as a Class A sex offender. Rarely in American history has the cultural
landscape shifted so quickly or so radically.
In our post-Harvey world, men charged with sexual misconduct are guilty until proven
innocent, all crimes are capital offenses, and there exists no statute of limitations. Once a
largely empty corporate slogan, "zero tolerance" has become a battle cry.
All of this serves as a reminder that, on some matters at least, the American people retain
an admirable capacity for outrage. We can distinguish between the tolerable and the
intolerable. And we can demand accountability of powerful individuals and
institutions.
Everything They Need to Win (Again!)
What's puzzling is why that capacity for outrage and demand for accountability doesn't
extend to our now well-established penchant for waging war across much of the planet.
In no way would I wish to minimize the pain, suffering, and humiliation of the women preyed
upon by the various reprobates now getting their belated comeuppance. But to judge from
published accounts, the women (and in some cases, men) abused by Weinstein, Louis C.K., Mark
Halperin, Leon Wieseltier, Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Garrison
Keillor, my West Point classmate Judge Roy Moore, and their compadres at least managed
to survive their encounters. None of the perpetrators are charged with having committed murder.
No one died.
Compare their culpability to that of the high-ranking officials who have presided over or
promoted this country's various military misadventures of the present century. Those wars have,
of course, resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and will
ultimately cost American taxpayers many
trillions of dollars. Nor have those costly military efforts eliminated "terrorism," as
President George W. Bush promised back when today's G.I.s were still in diapers.
Bush told us that, through war, the United States would spread freedom and democracy.
Instead, our wars have sown disorder and instability, creating failing or failed states across
the Greater Middle East and Africa. In their wake have sprung up ever more, not fewer, jihadist
groups, while acts
of terror are soaring globally. These are indisputable facts.
It discomfits me to reiterate this mournful litany of truths. I feel a bit like the doctor
telling the lifelong smoker with stage-four lung cancer that an addiction to cigarettes is
adversely affecting his health. His mute response: I know and I don't care. Nothing the doc
says is going to budge the smoker from his habit. You go through the motions, but wonder
why.
In a similar fashion, war has become a habit to which the United States is addicted. Except
for the terminally distracted, most of us know that. We also know -- wecannot not
know -- that, in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. forces have been unable to
accomplish their assigned mission, despite more than 16 years of fighting in the former and
more than a decade in the latter.
It's not exactly a good news story, to put it mildly. So forgive me for saying it (
yet again ), but most of us simply don't care, which means that we continue to allow a free
hand to those who preside over those wars, while treating with respect the views of pundits and
media personalities who persist in promoting them. What's past doesn't count; we prefer to
sustain the pretense that tomorrow is pregnant with possibilities. Victory lies just around the
corner.
By way of example, consider a
recent article in U.S. News and World Report. The headline: "Victory or Failure in
Afghanistan: 2018 Will Be the Deciding Year." The title suggests a balance absent from the text
that follows, which reads like a Pentagon press release. Here in its entirety is the nut graf
(my own emphasis added):
"Armed with a new strategy and renewed support from old allies, the Trump
administration now believes it has everything it needs to win the war in Afghanistan.
Top military advisers all the way up to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis say they can accomplish
what two previous administrations and multiple troop surges could not: the defeat of the
Taliban by Western-backed local forces, a negotiated peace and the establishment of a
popularly supported government in Kabul capable of keeping the country from once again becoming
a haven to any terrorist group."
Now if you buy this, you'll believe that Harvey Weinstein has learned his lesson and can be
trusted to interview young actresses while wearing his bathrobe.
For starters, there is no "new strategy." Trump's generals, apparently with a nod from their
putative boss, are merely modifying the old "strategy," which was itself an outgrowth of
previous strategies tried, found wanting, and eventually discarded before being rebranded and
eventually recycled.
Short of using nuclear weapons, U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan over the past decade and
a half have experimented with just about every approach imaginable: invasion, regime change,
occupation, nation-building, pacification, decapitation, counterterrorism, and
counterinsurgency, not to mention various surges ,
differing in scope and duration. We have had a big troop presence and a smaller one, more
bombing and less, restrictive rules of engagement and permissive ones. In the military
equivalent of throwing in the kitchen sink, a U.S. Special Operations Command four-engine prop
plane recently deposited the largest non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal on a cave
complex in eastern Afghanistan. Although that MOAB made a big
boom, no offer of enemy surrender materialized.
$65
billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars. And under the circumstances, consider that a mere down
payment.
According to General John Nicholson, our
17th commander in Kabul since 2001, the efforts devised and implemented by his many
predecessors have resulted in a "stalemate" -- a generous interpretation given that the Taliban
presently controls more
territory than it has held since the U.S. invasion. Officers no less capable than Nicholson
himself, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal among them, didn't get it done. Nicholson's
argument: trust me.
In essence, the "new strategy" devised by Trump's generals, Secretary of Defense Mattis and
Nicholson among them, amounts to this: persist a tad longer with a tad more. A modest uptick in
the number of U.S. and allied
troops on the ground will provide more trainers, advisers, and motivators to work with and
accompany their Afghan counterparts in the field. The Mattis/Nicholson plan also envisions an
increasing number of air strikes, signaled by the recent use of B-52s to attack illicit
Taliban "
drug labs ," a scenario that Stanley Kubrick himself would have been hard-pressed to
imagine.
Notwithstanding the novelty of using strategic bombers to destroy mud huts, there's not a
lot new here. Dating back to 2001, coalition forces have already dropped tens of thousands of
bombs in Afghanistan. Almost as soon as the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, coalition efforts
to create effective Afghan security forces commenced. So, too, did attempts to reduce the
production of the opium that has funded the Taliban insurgency, alas with essentially
no effect whatsoever . What Trump's generals want a gullible public (and astonishingly
gullible and inattentive members of Congress) to believe is that this time they've somehow
devised a formula for getting it right.
Turning the Corner
With his trademark capacity to intuit success, President Trump already sees clear evidence
of progress. "We're not fighting anymore to just walk around," he remarked in his
Thanksgiving message to the troops. "We're fighting to win. And you people [have] turned it
around over the last three to four months like nobody has seen." The president, we may note,
has yet to visit Afghanistan.
I'm guessing that the commander-in-chief is oblivious to the fact that, in U.S. military
circles, the term winning has acquired notable elasticity. Trump may think that it
implies vanquishing the enemy -- white flags and surrender ceremonies on the U.S.S. Missouri . General Nicholson knows better. "Winning," the field commander
says , "means delivering a negotiated settlement that reduces the level of violence and
protecting the homeland." (Take that definition at face value and we can belatedly move Vietnam
into the win column!)
Should we be surprised that Trump's generals, unconsciously imitating General William
Westmoreland a half-century ago, claim once again to detect light at the end of the tunnel? Not
at all. Mattis and Nicholson (along with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and National
Security Adviser H.R. McMaster) are following the Harvey Weinstein playbook: keep doing it
until they make you stop. Indeed, with what can only be described as chutzpah, Nicholson
himself recently announced that we have "
turned the corner " in Afghanistan. In doing so, of course, he is counting on Americans not
to recall the various war managers, military and civilian alike, who have made identical claims
going back years now, among them Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in 2012
.
From on high, assurances of progress; in the field, results that, year after year, come
nowhere near what's promised; on the homefront, an astonishingly credulous public. The war in
Afghanistan has long since settled into a melancholy and seemingly permanent rhythm.
The fact is that the individuals entrusted by President Trump to direct U.S. policy believe
with iron certainty that difficult political problems will yield to armed might properly
employed. That proposition is one to which generals like Mattis and Nicholson have devoted a
considerable part of their lives, not just in Afghanistan but across much of the Islamic world.
They are no more likely to question the validity of that proposition than the Pope is to
entertain second thoughts about the divinity of Jesus Christ.
In Afghanistan, their entire worldview -- not to mention the status and clout of the officer
corps they represent -- is at stake. No matter how long the war there lasts, no matter how many
"
generations " it takes, no matter how much blood is shed to no purpose, and no matter how
much money is wasted, they will never admit to failure -- nor will any of the
militarists-in-mufti cheering them on from the sidelines in Washington, Donald Trump not the
least among them.
Meanwhile, the great majority of the American people, their attention directed elsewhere --
it's the season for holiday shopping, after all -- remain studiously indifferent to the charade
being played out before their eyes.
It took a succession of high-profile scandals before Americans truly woke up to the plague
of sexual harassment and assault. How long will it take before the public concludes that they
have had enough of wars that don't work? Here's hoping it's before our president, in a moment
of ill temper, unleashes "
fire and fury " on the world.
It's astonishing to see people make the claim that "victory" is possible in Afghanistan.
Could they actually believe this or are they lying in order to drag this out even longer and
keep the money pit working overtime? These are individuals that are highly placed and so
should know better. It's not really a war but an occupation with the native insurgents
fighting to oust the foreign occupier. The US has tried every trick there is in trying to
tamp down the insurgency. They know what we're trying to do and can thwart us at every step.
The US lost even as it began it's invasion there but didn't know it yet in the wake of it's
initial success in scattering the Taliban, not even a real army and not even a real state.
They live there and we don't; they can resist for the next thirty years or fifty years. When
does the multi-billion bill come due and how will we pay it?
"How long will it take before the public concludes that they have had enough of wars that
don't work?"
It already happened, but Progressives like you failed to note that Republican voters
subbed the Bush clan and their various associates for Trump in the Primary season, precisely
because he called the Iraq and Afghan wars mistakes. The Americans suffer under a two party
establishment that is clearly antagonistic to their interests. As a part of that regime, a
dutiful Progressive toad, you continue to peddle the lie that it was the war-weary White
Americans who celebrated those wars. In reality, any such support was ginned up from tools
like you who wrote puff pieces for their Neocon Progressive masters.
Thus far, Trump's interventionism has been a fragment of what the Hillary campaign
promised. Might you count that among your lucky stars? Fat chance. You cretinous Progressive
filth have no such spine upon which to base an independent thought. You trot out the same old
tiresome tropes week after week fulfilling your designated propagandist duty and then you
skulk back to your den of iniquity to prepare another salvo of agitprop. What a miserable
existence.
This is the center of a world empire. It maintains a gigantic military which virtually never
stops fighting wars, none of them having anything to do with defense. It has created an
intelligence monstrosity which makes old outfits like Stazi seem almost quaint, and it spies
on everyone. Indeed, it maintains seventeen national security establishments, as though you
can never have too much of a good thing. And some of these guys, too, are engaged full-time
in forms of covert war, from fomenting trouble in other lands and interfering in elections to
overthrowing governments.
Obama ended up killing more people than any dictator or demagogue of this generation on
earth you care to name, several hundred thousand of them in his eight years. And he found new
ways to kill, too, as by creating the world's first industrial-scale extrajudicial killing
operation. Here he signs off on "kill lists," placed in his Oval Office in-box, to murder
people he has never seen, people who enjoy no legal rights or protections. His signed orders
are carried out by uniformed thugs working at computer screens in secure basements where they
proceed to play computer games with real live humans as their targets, again killing or
maiming people they have never seen.
If you ever have wondered where all the enabling workers came from in places like Stalin's
Gulag or Hitler's concentration camps, well, here is your answer. American itself produces
platoons of such people. You could find them working at Guantanamo and in the far-flung
string of secret torture facilities the CIA ran for years, and you could find them in places
like Fallujah or Samarra or Abu Ghraib, at the CIA's basement game arcade killing centers,
and even all over the streets of America dressed as police who shoot unarmed people every
day, sometimes in the back.
ZOG has now asserted the right to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason. No trial,
no hearing, no witnesses, no defense, no nothing. Is this actually legal? Any constitutional
lawyers out there care to comment? Has ZOG now achieved the status of an all-powerful
all-knowing deity with the power of life and death over all living things?
It's unlikely that the USA would be remaining in Afghanistan if its goals were not being
attained. So the author has merely shown that the stated goals cannot be the real goals. What
then are the real goals? I propose two: 1) establish a permanent military presence on a
Russian border; 2) finance it with the heroin trade. Given other actions of the Empire around
the globe, the first goal is obvious. The bombing of mud huts containing competitors' drug
labs, conjoined with the fact that we do not destroy the actual poppy fields (obvious green
targets in an immense ocean of brown) make this goal rather obvious as well. The rest of the
article is simply more evidence that the Empire does not include mere human tragedy in its
profit calculation.
The Native Born White American Working Class Teenage Male Population used as CANNON FODDER
for Congressman Steven Solarz's and Donald Trump's very precious Jewish only Israel .
Israel and the deep state did the attack on 911 and thus set the table for the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and Syria and the Zionist neocons who control every facet of
the U.S. gov and the MSM and the MIC and the FED ie the BANKS set in motion the blood
sacrifice for their Zionist god SATAN, that is what they have done.
The Zionist warmongers and Satanists will destroy America.
It's not so much that America is addicted to war as that the American "business model" makes
permanent war inevitable. US global dominance rests on economic domination, in particular,
the dollar as world reserve currency. That has allowed the US economy to survive in spite of
being hollowed out, financialised and burdened with enormous sovereign debt. Economic
dominance derives from political dominance, which, in its turn, flows from military
dominance. For that military dominance to be credible, not only must the US have the biggest
and best military forces on the planet, it must show itself willing to use those forces to
maintain its dominance by actually using them from time to time, in particular, to
unequivocally beat off any challenge to its dominance (Putin!). It also, of course, must win,
or, more correctly, be able to present the outcome credibly as a win. Failure to maintain
military dominance will undermine the position of the dollar, sending its value through the
floor. A low dollar means cheap exports (Boeing will sell more planes than Airbus!), but it
also means that imports (oil, outsourced goods) will be dear. At that point the hollowed out
nature of the US economy will cut in, probably provoking a Soviet-style implosion of the US
economy and society and ruining anyone who has holdings denominated in dollars. I call that
the Gorbachev conundrum. Gorby believed in the Soviet Union and wanted to reform it. But the
Soviet system had become so rigid as to be unreformable. He pulled a threat and the whole
system unravelled. But if he hadn't pulled the thread, the whole system would have unravelled
anyway. It was a choice between hard landing and harder landing. Similarly, US leaders have
to continue down the only road open to them: permanent war. As Thomas Jefferson said of
slavery, it's like holding a wolf by the ears. You don't like it but you don't dare let go!
"How long will it take before the public concludes that they have had enough of wars that
don't work?" Answer: Never.
In Alabama when people would rant about how toxic Roy Moore was, I would politely point
out that his opponent for Senate was OK with spending trillions of dollars fighting pointless
winless wars on the other side of the planet just so politically connected defense
contractors can make a buck, and ask if that should be an issue too? The response,
predictably, was as if I was an alien from the planet Skyron in the galaxy of Andromeda.
We are sheep. We are outraged at these sexual transgressions because the corporate press
tells us to be outraged. We are not outraged at these stupid foreign wars, because the
corporate press does not tell us to be outraged. It's all mass effect, and the comfort of
being in a herd and all expressing the same feelings.
Andrew Bacevich is wrong about a couple of things in this article.
First, he says that the American public is both apathetic and credulous. I agree
that we have largely become apathetic towards these imperial wars, but I disagree that we
have become credulous. In fact, these two states of mind exclude one another; you cannot be
both apathetic and credulous with respect to the same object at the same time. The credulity
charge is easy to dismiss because virtually no one today believes anything that comes out of
Washington or its mouthpieces in the legacy media. The apathy charge is on point but it needs
qualification. The smarter, more informed Americans have seen that their efforts to change
the course of American policy have been to no avail, and they've given up in frustration and
disgust. The less smart, less informed Americans are constrained by the necessity of getting
on with their meager lives; they are an apolitical mass that possesses neither the
understanding nor the capacity to make any difference on the policy front whatsoever.
Second,Andrew Bacevich calls for a Weinstein moment without realizing that it
already happened more than ten years ago. The 2006 midterm elections were the first Weinstein
moment, which saw the American people deliver a huge outpouring of antiwar sentiment that
inflicted significant congressional losses on the neocon Republicans of George W. Bush. An
echo of that groundswell happened again in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected to office on an
explicitly antiwar platform. But Obama turned out to be one of the most pro-war presidents
ever, and thus an angry electorate made one final push in the same direction by attempting to
clean house with Donald Trump. Now that Donald has shown every sign of having cucked out to
the war lobby, we seem to be left with no electoral solutions.
The only thing that's going to work is for the American Imperium to be handed a
much-deserved military and financial defeat. The one encouraging fact is that if the top ten
percent of our political and financial elite were planed off by a foreign power, the American
people would give as few damns about that as they currently do about our imperial wars.
Very good but some little errors. Concerning Russia and China, Russia vent all or
nothing.
China was much smarter. First they allowed self employment, than small business and long time
after they started to sell state enterprises,
If Tom's Dispatch continues to be successful, Americans will continue to be asleep.
Masterful propaganda. War, according to our favorite spooks, is necessary to win, but
otherwise reprehensible.
Sex is otherwise necessary for human life but Harvey Weinstein is ugly. Hold tightly to
your cognitive dissonance, because you're expected to remember John F Kennedy who got it on,
but is the expendable martyr you should care about, not that other guy
Let's review: terror attacks are wins. Superior or effective anti-war propaganda comes
from the military
itself. They really don't want war, but really they do.
We're trying to make Afghanistan not Afghanistan: aka, trying to be a miracle worker. We
can throw as much money as we like at that place, and it isn't going to happen, least of all
with troops on nine month shifts.
Let Iran and Pakistan squabble over it. Good riddance.
1) doesn't really make much sense, given that Poland and the Baltic States would be more
than happy to take all US forces in Europe to give us a presence near Russia in a part of the
world that would be far easier to justify to the American public-and to the international
community. Afghanistan? Who exactly is Russia going to mess with? Iran is their-for now,
longer term, the two have conflicting agendas in the region, but don't expect the geniuses in
the Beltway to pick up on that opportunity-ally, and unlike the USSR, the Russians don't want
to get involved in the India-Pakistan conflict. Russia's current tilt toward China makes a
strategic marriage with India of the kind that you found in the Cold War impossible, but they
obviously don't want to tilt toward the basketcase known as Pakistan. The only reason that
Russia would want to get involved with Afghanistan beyond having a more preferable status
than having American troops there is power projection among ex-Soviet states, and there are
far more effective ways to do than muddle about with Afghanistan.
2, on the other hand, given Iran-Contra who knows? The first generation of the Taliban
pretty much wiped the heroin trade out as offensive to Islamic sensibilities, but the newer
generations have no such qualms.
I think you give America's rulers far too much credit. The truth is probably far scarier:
the morons who work in the Beltway honestly believe their own propaganda-that we can make
Afghanistan into some magical Western democracy if we throw enough money at it-and combine
that with the usual bureaucratic inertia.
According to General John Nicholson, our 17th commander in Kabul since 2001,
We have been killing these people for 17 years. Now our generals say that if we
indiscriminately kill enough men, women, and children who get in the way of our B52s, that
they will see the light and make peace. How totally wonderful.
My solution is to gage the Lindsey Grahams for a year.
What will do more good for peace – B52s or shutting up Graham's elk?
I remember when Trump said he knew more than the generals and was viciously attacked for it.
It turns out he did know more than the generals just by knowing it was a waste. Trump was
pushed by politics to defer to the generals who always have an answer when it comes to a war
– more men, more weapons, more time.
"The less smart, less informed Americans are constrained by the necessity of getting on
with their meager lives; they are an apolitical mass that possesses neither the understanding
nor the capacity to make any difference on the policy front whatsoever."
I wonder if any Abolitionists criticized the slaves for failing to revolt? Probably not;
I'm guessing they were mostly convinced that the negro required intervention from outside,
whether due to their nature or from overwhelming circumstance.
If the enslaved American public is liberated, I hope we'll know what to do with ourselves
afterwards. It'd be a shame to simply end up in another kind of bondage, resentful and
subject to whatever oppressive system replaces the current outrage. Perhaps the next one will
more persuasively convince us that we're important and essential?
We are sheep. We are outraged at these sexual transgressions because the corporate press
tells us to be outraged. We are not outraged at these stupid foreign wars, because the
corporate press does not tell us to be outraged. It's all mass effect, and the comfort of
being in a herd and all expressing the same feelings.
Thank you, Andrew J. Bacevich, for your words of wisdom and thank you, Mr. Unz, for this
post.
This corporation needs to be dissolved. I've read about "the inertia" of Federal Government
that has morphed into a cash cow for a century of wasted tax dollars funding the MIIC, now
the MIIC. Does our existence have to end in financial ruin or, worse yet, some foreign entity
creating havoc on our soil?
The Founders NEVER intended that the US of A become a meddler in other Sovereignty's internal
affairs or the destroyer of Nation States that do not espoused our "doctrine." Anyone without
poop for brains knows that this is about Imperialism and greed, fueled by money and an
insatiable luster for MORE.
This should be easier to change than it appears. Is there no will? After all, it Is our
Master's money that lubricates the machinery. So, we continue to provide the lubrication for
our Masters like a bunch of imbeciles that allow them to survail our words and movements.
Somebody please explain our stupidity.
the folks in the US are sick of the wars, contrary to Bacevich. They simply will vote come
next election accordingly. They register their disgust in all the polls.
This article is not very useful. More punditry puff.
No comments on the Next War for Israel being cooked up by the new crop of neocon
youngsters, I guess, and Trump who will trump, trump, trump into the next War for the
Jews.
How about some political science on Iran, Syria, Hisbollah, Hamas and the US, Arabia,
Judenstaat axis of evil?
Hey Bacevich? When you link to WashPost and NYTimes to make your points, you don't. They
block access if you've already read links to those two papers three times each and can no
longer, for the month, read there. When folks link to papers that won't let you read, it
makes one wonder why.
I believe Americans are damned sick and tired of the stupid, needless war in Afghanistan. But
then they should have been sick and tired of stupid , needless wars like Korea, Vietnam and
Iraq, and probably most of them were. But it's easy to be complacent when someone else's son
is doing the fighting and dying And it's easy to be complacent when your stomach is full and
you have plenty of booze and pain killers available. There will be a day of reckoning when
the next big economic bust arrives and which may make the Great Depression paltry by
comparison. America is a far different place then it was in the 1930s when our population was
140 million. Americans were not so soft and the conveniences we now take for granted not
available. When the supermarkets run out of food, watch out. There may not even be any soup
lines to stand in.
In truth, U.S. commanders have quietly shelved any expectations of achieving an actual
victory -- traditionally defined as "imposing your will on the enemy" -- in favor of a more
modest conception of success.
Your assumptions are wrong about the US goal of the invasion of Afghanistan. Afghanistan and Iraq were not invaded to establish democracy or impose American will
whatever that is. Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded to establish a temporary military staging ground for a
US invasion of Iran, the designated regional enemy of Israel. As long as the current regime in Iran remains, the US will remain in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
And minerals! Eric Prince himself recently tried to sell the idea of having his private
militias do the fighting in Afghanistan for the US and finance it by mining said country's
minerals, thus making himself even richer.
I was onboard with Mr. Bacevich, until I got to this:
Almost as soon as the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, coalition efforts to create
effective Afghan security forces commenced. So, too, did attempts to reduce the production
of the opium that has funded the Taliban insurgency
What utter rubbish! The Taliban was instrumental in shutting down the poppy production
until the CIA came along and restarted it to fund their black ops.
We have the reverse Midas touch. Everything we touch (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.,
etc.) turns to shit. We supposedly attack countries to liberate them from their tyrants who
are supposedly killing their own people, and end up killing more people than all of them put
together. And, oh yes, we have our favorite tyrants (Saudis, Israelis) whom we provide with
horrible weapons (like cluster bombs) to help them kill people we hate.
Mr. Bacevich is right about the lack of outrage about our wars, but the current Weinstein
explosion consists of hordes of mostly American female victims, mostly white, a (very) few
jews, and a few men, who have the stage to complain about their oppressors. What would be the
counterpart of that w.r.t. the wars? Millions of brown victims in far away lands that most of
us couldn't even find on a map? How likely is that to happen?
So yes, no outrage, and none likely. The last 17 years have proven that.
You don't know the American has been paying everything through monopoly money printed
through the thin air since WWI, i.e. a keystroke on the Federal Reserve's computer? No wonder
the Americans have been waging reckless wars all over the world on the fabricated phantom WMD
allegations as humanitarian intervention relentlessly.
Romans did not stop waging reckless wars until their empire collapsed; the British
imitates the Romans and the American is born out of the British, hence the Americans will no
stop waging reckless wars until their empire collapsed like the Romans.
Destroying the Taliban government, yes. Building "democracy" is just stupid, though.
They should've quickly left after the initial victory and let the Afghans to just eat each
other with Stroganoff sauce if they so wished. It's not our business.
In fact destroying the Taliban government was both illegal and foolish (but the latter was
by far the more important). It seems clear now the Taliban were quite willing to hand bin
Laden over for trial in a third party country, and pretty clearly either had had no clue what
he had been planning or were crapping themselves at what he had achieved. Bush declined that
offer because he had an urgent political need to be seen to be kicking some foreign ass in
order to appease American shame.
The illegality is not a particularly big deal in the case of Afghanistan because it's
clear that in the post-9/11 context the US could easily have gotten UNSC authorisation for
the attack and made it legal. Bush II deliberately declined to do so precisely in order to
make the point that the US (in Americans' view) is above petty details of international law
and its own treaty commitments. A rogue state, in other words.
But an attack on Afghanistan was unnecessary and foolish (for genuine American national
interests, that is, not for the self-interested lobbies driving policy obviously), as the
astronomical ongoing costs have demonstrated. A trial of bin Laden would have been highly
informative (and some would argue that was why the US regime was not interested in such a
thing), and would if nothing else have brought him out into the open. Yes, he would have had
the opportunity to grandstand, but if the US were really such an innocent victim of
unprovoked aggression why would the US have anything to fear from that? The whole world,
pretty much, was on the US's side after 9/11.
The US could have treated terrorism as what it is, after 9/11 -- a criminal matter. It
chose instead to make it a military matter, because that suited the various lobbies seeking
to benefit from a more militarised and aggressive US foreign policy. The result of a US
attack on the government of (most of) Afghanistan would always have been either a chaotic
jihadi-riddled anarchy in Afghanistan worse than the Taliban-controlled regime that existed
in 2001, or a US-backed regime trying to hold the lid down on the jihadists, that the US
would have to prop up forever. And so indeed it came to pass.
The problem with the USA is that the USA empire lost legitimacy with the dissolution of
the USSR and has to be reconstructed as a new neoliberal empire. For a while rise of
neoliberalism was a cover for this expansion, but this period is probably over. Now neoliberalism
is also under attack and neoliberal ideology is discredited (Trump and Brexit are just two signs
of it). So now the USA is the empire with decaying ideology, not that dissimilar to the USSR
in 80th, which is still trying to achieve its imperial goals despite rejection of them by most of
of the world population. In such circumstances huge military superiority that the USA enjoys
is not everything.
Notable quotes:
"... The CIA is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants across the country ... ..."
"... This is not going to be a counter-insurgency campaign, even when some will assert that. A counter-insurgency campaign requires political, security, economic, and informational components. It can only be successful in support of a legitimate authority. ..."
"... The current Afghan government has little legitimacy. It was bribed together by the U.S. embassy after wide and open election fraud threatened to devolve into total chaos. ..."
"... A campaign solely centered on "security" will end up as a random torture and killing expedition without the necessary context and with no positive results. ..."
"... The campaign will be a boon for the Taliban. While it will likely kill a some Taliban aligned insurgents here and there, it will also alienate many more Afghan people. Most of the Taliban fighters are locals. Killing them creates new local recruits for the insurgency. It will also give it better population cover for future operations. ..."
"... A similar campaign during the Vietnam war was known as Operation Phoenix . Then some 50,000 South-Vietnamese, all of course 'suspected communists', were killed by the CIA's roving gangs ..."
"... [Phoenix] was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong). The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". ..."
"... The Phoenix program was embedded into a larger civil political and economic development program known as CORDS . The accepted historical judgement is that Phoenix failed to achieve its purpose despite its wider conceptualization. The passive support for the Viet Cong increased due to the campaign. In recent years there have been revisionists efforts by the Pentagon's RAND Corporation to change that view. ..."
"... The now announced campaign looks similar to Phoenix but lacks any political component. It is not designed to pacify insurgents but to eliminate any and all resistance: ..."
"... There are only a few dozen officers in the CIA Special Activities Division that can support such a campaign. The lede to the article suggests that 'contractors' will have a significant role. In August the former head of the mercenary outlet Blackwater, Eric Prince, lobbied the Trump administration for a contractor led war in Afghanistan. We can safely assume that Prince and some Blackwater offspring will be involved in the new CIA campaign. The major intelligence groundwork though will have to be done by the NDS. ..."
"... "Iraq's campaign in the Euphrates and Tigris River valleys, the Kurdish campaign in western Syria and the Saudi and UAE campaign against the Houtis in Yemen have been devastating and vicious assaults on populations, critical infrastructure and housing, that coupled with nighttime commando raids that terrorize entire villages and neighborhoods, look not to bring a political settlement, reconciliation or peace, but rather subjugate, along ethnic and sectarian lines, entire population groups to achieve American political desires in the Muslim world. ..."
"... As I have said previously here - the failure of English policy in South Africa in 1899 showed the myth of the British Empire and contributed to the emboldenment of 'a rising ' Germany, challenging England for 'market' share in 1914 . ..."
"... BTW, in the early days of the British occupation of Helmand Province, the price of wheat was higher than heroin in Afghanistan and many of the farmers asked for help to convert to growing wheat which never happened because American farmers wouldn't allow it. ..."
"... Perhaps you could provide a link to back up your claim, but I expect one from 1979 when the United States started the American War in Afghanistan before the Soviet Union intervened in defense of modernity over medieval headchoppers aka KSA? Or perhaps you can name the empires brought low by Afghanistan but don't bother naming the British Empire. ..."
"... I quite agree that Afghanistan is a narco-state but the trade is not controlled by the CIA, the Pentagon , the so-called American Deep State or even the Rothschilds . At most, the CIA and Pentagon turn a blind eye to its operation, and HSBC probably launder some of the money ..."
"... Published May 22, 2001. ...gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the United States the main sponsor of the Taliban... ..."
"... On reading B's excellent post, I found myself thinking Israel has similar assassination units operating under the name Sayeret Matkal. No doubt those Israeli units would only be too happy to give training and other support to the CIA's covert program of assassination units attached to Afghan forces. ..."
"... There are two US initiatives to counter China's One Belt, One Road (OBOR) strategy which is budgeted at about a trillion dollars, and way out of anything the US could afford. So the US has come up with these two plans, neither one showing any promise except as a reason to continue with the AfPak war. SecState Tillerson is the point man on these initiatives. They both include a new initiative to work closely with India, and one of them requires ownership of Afghanistan. ..."
"... The second initiative is the Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor, still at a very nascent stage. It would focus on the "economic corridors between South and Southeast Asia" which implies working with India and against China. The US naval challenges in the South China Sea are probably one example. Tillerson has talked about challenging Chinese financing -- good luck on that. ..."
"... Finally, the inclusion of India in Afghan affairs is what drives Pakistan to oppose the US strategy. It hasn't matter that the US has given Pakistan billions of dollars, Pakistan still sponsors the Taliban fighters who kill US troops. The current US destruction of Afghanistan and its people is not a choice of Pakistan, but it's less important to Pakistan than having an Indian presence on both flanks. Pakistan does not want to become an Indian sandwich. The two countries are arch-enemies. ..."
Phoenix 2.0 - CIA's Vietnam Terror Unleashed Upon Afghanistan
Last week the new head of the CIA Mike Pompeo publicly
threatened to make the CIA a "much more vicious agency". His first step towards that is to
unleash
CIA sponsored killer gangs onto the people of Afghanistan:
The CIA is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of highly
experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban
militants across the country ...
...
The CIA's expanded role will augment missions carried out by military units, meaning more
of the United States' combat role in Afghanistan will be hidden from public view
This is not going to be a counter-insurgency campaign, even when some will assert that. A
counter-insurgency campaign requires political, security, economic, and informational
components. It can only be successful in support of a legitimate authority.
The current Afghan government has little legitimacy. It was bribed together by the U.S.
embassy after wide and open election fraud threatened to devolve into total chaos. In August
CIA director Pompeo met the Afghan president
Ashraf Ghani and likely discussed the new plan. But the now announced campaign has neither a
political nor an economic component. A campaign solely centered on "security" will end up as a
random torture and killing expedition without the necessary context and with no positive
results.
The campaign will be a boon for the Taliban. While it will likely kill a some Taliban
aligned insurgents here and there, it will also alienate many more Afghan people. Most of the
Taliban fighters are locals. Killing them creates new local recruits for the insurgency. It
will also give it better population cover for future operations.
A similar campaign during the Vietnam war was known as Operation Phoenix . Then some 50,000
South-Vietnamese, all of course 'suspected communists', were killed by the CIA's roving
gangs:
[Phoenix] was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture,
counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National
Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong). The CIA described it as "a set of
programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet
Cong". The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units
(PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected NLF members,
as well as civilians who were thought to have information on NLF activities. Many of these
people were then taken to interrogation centers where many were allegedly tortured in an
attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area. The information extracted at the
centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further
capture and assassination missions.
The Phoenix program was embedded into a larger civil political and economic development
program known as CORDS
. The accepted historical judgement is that Phoenix failed to achieve its
purpose despite its wider conceptualization. The passive support for the Viet Cong increased
due to the campaign. In recent years there have been revisionists
efforts by the Pentagon's RAND Corporation to change that view.
The now announced campaign
looks similar to Phoenix but lacks any political component. It is not designed to pacify
insurgents but to eliminate any and all resistance:
The new effort will be led by small units known as counterterrorism pursuit teams. They are
managed by CIA paramilitary officers from the agency's Special Activities Division and
operatives from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's intelligence arm , and
include elite American troops from the Joint Special Operations Command. The majority of the
forces, however, are Afghan militia members
There are only a few dozen officers in the CIA Special Activities Division that can
support such a campaign. The lede to the article suggests that 'contractors' will have a
significant role. In August the former head of the mercenary outlet Blackwater, Eric Prince,
lobbied the Trump administration for a contractor led war in Afghanistan. We can safely
assume that Prince and some Blackwater offspring will be involved in the new CIA campaign. The
major intelligence groundwork though will have to be done by the NDS.
The Afghan National Directorate of Security was build by the CIA from elements of the former
Northern Alliance, the opponents of the original Taliban. In the late 1990s the Northern
Alliance under Ahmed Shah Massoud was financed by the CIA . Shah Massoud's intelligence
chief Amrullah Saleh, a dual citizen,
received CIA training. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan Saleh headed the new
intelligence service, the NDS. Then President Hamid Karzai fired Saleh in 2010 when he
resisted Karzai's efforts to reconcile with the Taliban. In March 2017 the current
President Ashraf Ghani appointed Saleh as State Minister for Security Reforms. Saleh
resigned(?) in June after Ghani reached a peace agreement with the anti-government warlord and
former Taliban ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Saleh is an ethnic Tajik and an unforgiving hardliner. He is wary of Pashtun who are the
most populous ethnic group in Afghanistan and the base population for the Taliban. Saleh
recently founded his own political party. He obviously has further ambitions. He always had
excellent relations with the CIA and especially its hardline counter-terrorism center. I find
it highly likely that he was involved in the planning of this new campaign.
In the ethnically mixed north of Afghanistan the involvement of NDS led local militia will
probably cause large scale ethnic cleansing. In the Pashtun south and east it will lack all
local support as such militia have terrorized the country for quite some time:
For years, the primary job of the CIA's paramilitary officers in the country has been
training the Afghan militias. The CIA has also used members of these indigenous militias
to develop informant networks and collect intelligence.
...
The American commandos -- part of the Pentagon's Omega program, which lends Special
Operations forces to the CIA -- allow the Afghan militias to work together with
conventional troops by calling in airstrikes and medical evacuations.
...
The units have long had a wide run of the battlefield and have been accused of
indiscriminately killing Afghan civilians in raids and with airstrikes.
It is utterly predictable how this campaign will end up. The CIA itself has few, if any,
independent sources in the country. It will depend on the NDS, stuffed with Saleh's Tajik
kinsmen, as well as on ethnic and tribal militia. Each of these will have their own agenda. A
'security' campaign as the planned one depends on reliable intelligence. Who, in this or that
hamlet, is a member of the Taliban? For lack of trusted local sources the militia, under CIA or
contractor command, will resort to extremely brutal torture. They will squeeze 'informants' and
'suspects' until these come up with names of a new rounds of 'suspects'. Rinse-repeat - in the
end all of the 'suspects' will be killed.
The new plan was intentionally 'leaked' to the New York Times by "two senior American
officials". It is set into a positive light:
[T]he mission is a tacit acknowledgment that to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table --
a key component of Mr. Trump's strategy for the country -- the United States will need to
aggressively fight the insurgents
That claim is of course utter nonsense. The U.S. already has for years "aggressively fought
the insurgents". The Taliban were always willing to negotiate. Their main condition for a peace
agreement is that U.S. forces end their occupation and leave the country. The U.S. is simply
not willing to do so. Killing more 'suspect' Taliban sympathizers will not change the Taliban's
demand nor will it make serious negations more likely.
Five years from now, when the utter brutality and uselessness of the campaign will come into
full light, the NYT will be shocked, SHOCKED, that such a campaign could ever have
happened.
Posted by b on October 24, 2017 at 06:43 AM |
Permalink
I wonder how much of the "OPIUM" production these "killer gangs" will receive. Of course,
it's too late for the top dogs to use the U.S.A. as a dumping ground, but there's still
potential within the 3rd world for expansion. It's just too lucrative to lose, which would
probably happen if the Taliban were to regain control of Afghanistan. Makes one wonder just
who the addicted really are.
I do wish I could express shock, or even surprise, at Phoenix 2.0; but it's been obvious for
decades that the U.S. is an outlaw empire not beholden to any and all laws on planet
earth.
They (the U.S.) now own the planet and will rule as they see fit: End of discusion...
The other things this illustrates are a complete lack of creativity and adaptation by the
CIA They have used the same playbook, passed down for 70 years and never changed anything
but the jerseys the players wear. When a simple analysis like b has done indicates the result
will not be what is desired (apparently), then maybe the CIA desires something else? Like
maybe a big payoff by the mercs they contract out to?
One would think that heading for the hills, bugging out, would be the strategy the Taliban
adopts - because it has worked when the invaders numbers are too low, even in the face of
higher tech weapons and surveillance. This will likely happen once again, and then there will
be a call for "moar, moar!" to finish the 'mission'. Which has no set goal other than to be a
mission to spread the money around among the players.
The Taliban goal hasn't wavered and is simple and uniformly appealing - they want the
Yanks to go home. It's amazing that the same pitfall setup by the CIA entangled Russia, and
then the CIA and US military walked into their own old pit. Next they still stand about,
unable to concede the mission is impossible?
So this looks to me like an OP to spend money and hide it by spreading it around yet
again. Very similar to Iraq, only without any spoils to spread around. Unless, of course,
opium production rises again, and the protection racket baksheesh rises with it for the mercs
we send.
The 3rd par of your commentary on the NYT text spells out the obvious flaw in this (same old)
Full Spectrum Depravity scheme, b...
"The campaign will be a boon for the Taliban. While it will likely kill a some Taliban
aligned insurgents here and there, it will also alienate many more Afghan people. Most of the
Taliban fighters are locals. Killing them creates new local recruits for the insurgency. It
will also give it better population cover for future operations."
One of the arguments for having permanent bureaucracies as opposed to political appointments
is to maintain a collective memory but we are in a cycle where we keep trying failed ideas
over and over again. To add insult to injury, our 'watchdog' press never calls them out on
this.
I know, let's use our air power to bomb ...
I know, let's have a counter-insurgency operation ...
I know, let's fund rebels in a foreign country ...
I know, let's have assassination teams ...
I know, let's have a surge ...
@4 -- "They have used the same playbook, passed down for 70 years and never changed anything
but the jerseys the players wear."
Hopefully they aren't using Monsanto's "Agent Orange" on the poppy fields this time round
like they did in Vietnam and Cambodia etc -- that would really undermine the Black Budget and
criminal opioid supply system.
The result was the US ran for its life, in disgrace, General Giap's tanks chasing them out
of his country.
As for the Taliban negotiating. Something is going on with Russia and the Taliban. So the
US is determined to disrupt it as severely as possible. This will make Putin and Lavrov's job
easier.
This Afghan war will end when the Taliban hoist half a dozen dead SOF up on a bridge or
overpass for the flies and buzzards to feast while the photos go viral.
Then America will stand down. And only then, when it is a PR nightmare and historical
iconic image. Fallujah, Somalia, etc.
The Pentagon and CIA won't care. The American citizens will be the ones shocked by the
denouement. They are already being primed for AFRICOM adventures. Niger Ambush. Those damn
Frenchies didn't save our boys. Those Mirages (an apt name for imperial aircraft in the
deserts of N.Africa) never opened fire. 'Twasn't our fault. Blame the Frenchies.
b, that was a lot of information presented in an excellent piece of writing. As
always, I admire your economy of words. Thanks for the take.
Posted by: Grieved | Oct 24, 2017 10:34:47 AM |
11
b, that was a lot of information presented in an excellent piece of writing. As always, I
admire your economy of words. Thanks for the take.
Posted by: Grieved | Oct 24, 2017 10:34:47 AM |
11 /div
This is not a continuation of the Afghan war by other means. This is a colonial occupation.
We now have a forward base in the Far East that borders both China and Russia that we will
never abandon. Defeating the Taliban is a non-issue in the broader strategic sense. In fact,
engaging the Taliban justifies the long-term occupation under the banner of defeating
terrorism. Death squads are the perfect way to keep a restive population restive. Since every
place on earth is a sanctuary for terrorism, every place is now deserving of American
occupation, and none more so than Afghanistan. Stirring up the locals is small price to pay
to distract the American people and Congress from the long term goal of maintaining a
military and prison colony in the path of the Great Silk Road for at least 1,000 years.
Appointing an American Viceroy to rule the colony has already been publicly discussed. With
sufficient CIA success, we may achieve enough cover to allow for resource extraction to
benefit our strategic stockpile without any consideration for environmental standards. Only
then, will Afghanistan achieve full 19th Century colony status.
And which empires did?
British Empire? Nope.
Mongol Empire? Nope.
Russian Empire? Nope.
Qing dynasty? Nope.
Spanish Empire? Nope.
Second French colonial empire? Nope.
Abbasid Caliphate? Nope.
Umayyad Caliphate? Nope.
Yuan dynasty? Nope.
Portuguese Empire? Nope.
(Top ten empires of all time according to Wikipedia)
Looking through the entire list of fifty empires that controlled more than 2% of the earth's
land surface, I couldn't identify one that had been destroyed by Afghanistan. However,
Montgomery's Rules of War should be amended to include "Don't go anywhere near Afghanistan
because the fly-infested shithole ain't worth anything".
It didn't even come close to defeating the Soviet Empire which wisely got out of the
stalemate created by American and Saudi support of the jihadists. Americans need to get it
into their pea-sized brains that the Soviet Union was not defeated in Afghanistan or anywhere
else for that matter but broke up because its leaders had woken up to the fact that
Bolshevism doesn't really work in the long term. Once Americans understand this, they should
be capable of understanding that realising they are in a stalemate and just getting the fuck
out doesn't mean that the Taliban have defeated them because any time it wants the US can go
back, kick the Taliban out at minimal cost and the Taliban knows that. Anybody who knows
about the First Anglo-Afghan War should understand what I'm saying
The US has also greatly increased the aerial bombing. This will be further increased. The
additional troops being dispatched will be used by the Afghan Army at battalion level to call
in air strikes.
news report excerpt:
The second R, "realignment," will push U.S. advisors and trainers down to Afghan forces'
battalions, and the third, "reinforce," means adding 3,000 or so U.S. troops to help do so,
Mattis said. In recent years, U.S. advisors have been embedded only at the senior levels of
the conventional Afghan military and with the Afghan special forces.
"Two levels down below is where the decisive action is taking place, and we didn't have any
advisors," Dunford said. "So even though we had some aviation capabilities, some
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, it wasn't being delivered to
those Afghan units who were perhaps most relevant to the fight."
That means more Afghan forces -- there's 300,000 all told today, both officials said --
will have U.S. troops with them capable of requesting air strikes around the country.
And the targets they'll be able to strike have expanded as well.
"At one time, sir, we could not help Afghan forces unless they were in extremis" -- that
is, under direct, urgent threat, Mattis said. "And then eventually that was rescinded, but
they still had to be in proximity. They had to be in contact. Today, wherever we find them,
the terrorists -- anyone trying to throw the NATO plan off, trying to attack the Afghan
people and the Afghan government -- then we can go after them."
President Trump has told us that the real policy change in Afghanistan is no longer to build
needed infrastructure, but to destroy it. The US must destroy Afghanistan to save it.
Excerpts from his August speech remarks:
> have the necessary tools and rules of engagement to make this strategy work
> I have already lifted restrictions
> we are already seeing dramatic results in the campaign to defeat ISIS, including the
liberation of Mosul in Iraq. (Mosul has been completely destroyed.)
> apply swift, decisive, and overwhelming force.
These american overseas missions seem to have several goals one of which is for criminal
government representatives and their corporate masters to set up rat lines and pay to play
schemes. Of course perpetuating "boogey man" propaganda for the american public's benefit has
so far kept citizens quiet and deluded.
The USG has ceased having any accountability to american citizens.
CIA further grasping at straws. Eventually, the collective action of the SCO, of which
Afghanistan will eventually become a full member, will finally drive the Yanks and their NATO
lackeys out of South Asia, but it won't happen anytime soon. Adam Garrie at The Duran points
out the "dissonance" in the Outlaw US Empire's policy (which is directly related to the
reasons for Tillerson's ineffectiveness I wrote about yesterday) and well described in this
excerpt:
"Making matters all the more awkward for the US, while the US continues to attempt and
fight the Taliban while treating the group as a kind of terrorist organisation, in reality,
the Taliban are in fact the 'moderate rebel' which the US once spoke about in Syria, even
though in Syria, moderate rebels objectively do not exist. Yet in a country, where there is a
'moderate rebellion', the US continues to take a generally hard-line approach. This attitude
goes against the grain of world opinion including that of Russia, Pakistan and China who each
favour military de-escalation and a peace process that, once certain conditions are met,
would include the more amiable factions of the Taliban."
Still lacking is sufficient rationale for why all this expensive destructive killing behavior
is necessary in this landlocked illiterate tribal country on the other side of the planet.
The old tired explanations didn't work sixteen years ago and they are less worthy now.
> eliminate safe haven
> disallow planning for future 9/11
Of course they can't use the real reasons:
> Prevent "losing" Afghanistan, maintenance of the empire
> Set the example for other countries thinking of slipping the reins (or US reign)
The only long-term interest the US has in Afghanistan is the TAPI pipeline route. Gotta get
those stranded Central Asia oil & gas assets to global markets without going through
Russian or Iranian pipeline routes. Chevron & Exxon just dumped another $37 billion into
the Tengiz. And they're still flogging TAPI:
(2013) In a major development, the four countries that are part of the Turkmenistan,
Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI) gas pipeline project have selected two US-based
energy giants for financing and operating the multi-billion-dollar pipeline.
So the CIA has been tasked with making this possible. So they'll let one group of ethnic
warlords run all the criminal drug rackets they like, in exchange for their cooperation with
CIA and contractors, as in Laos with the Hmong and the opium cartel in Southeast Asia.
It's a broken record and has been for decades. First it was buy off the Taliban, open
TAPI. Then it was defeat the Taliban, open TAPI. This is just another tired repeat of the
same stupid imperial pet tricks. If you look back at the past decade in Afghanistan, it's
obvious that every single U.S. military action has been focused on controlling the TAPI route
- and this is obvious to the Afghan people, too. So they'll keep blowing up any pipeline
effort. And Exxon and Chevron and the CIA and US military will keep trying to push it
through.
b said:"The campaign will be a boon for the Taliban."
Absolutely true. Historical context proves this over and over again, but, the corporate
empire will have their resources, no matter the cost in blood and treasure.
Ghostship @ 14: good post, nothing like reality to sober up thought.
Until the reserve currency problem is solved by the world, this BS will continue..
regardless of the reason - none of them are valid reasons on the world stage and everyone
knows this, including the contractors, corporations and profiteers off any or all of it..
the usa is a rogue nation that got taken over some time ago.. that much is obvious.. when
will other countries step up and put a stop to this madness?
FFS Ghostship. You are the one sporting Bollocks.. Ask the boys who manage the processing
labs; load the coffins and the routing of said coffins. They are not ghosts but carriers,
like pigeons. Pentagon vs. see aye a.
No? Why is production up since the "occupation"
At the start of the US Afghani war, NYT's cartoon posted the list of empires defeated in
Afghanistan. You may remain in denial, revising history. It's your choice. Some of us are
closer to the facts on the ground - first hand accounts.
Also, within the R S link above, read the related article written Feb 10, 2012 by Michael
Hastings' "The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn't Want You to Read" – that
Michael Hastings whose Benz, with Michael at the wheel, had a fiery end in a single vehicle
accident on June 18, 2013.
It is the perfect platform to use against all those nations.
As long as they can fly in what they need to supply their proxies and the small numbers of
special forces and some CIA guys, it works like a massive aircraft carrier.
The other thing is the trillions in minerals. Not so much to rape and take, but to deny
them to China.
This is part of containment and strangulation of China and destabilization of CSTO/SCO
nations.
The USA is out of tricks on Afghanistan. It now thinks that a CIA covert operations will be
less deadly on US military.
Pompeo has been pressed by Trump to find something that would make the Taliban small.
History shows that CIA intervention blows back years after in a worse situation.
Neither Trump nor Pompeo will be there to feel the blow back...
Ghostship@14 - The costs of Iraq/Afghanistan are now estimated to be about $4.7 trillion in
constant dollars. Most of that was on credit - we created IOU's and sold them to the highest
bidder. Those $4.7 trillion of IOUs also have interest that will total $7.9 trillion (if
rates remain low), and that's just from IOUs created up until 2013 and payable through 2053.
None of the Syria/Iraq anti-ISIS operations after 2013 nor the cost of Afghanistan since 2013
have been counted in those numbers.
Unmanageable future national debt use to be controlled in the US by inflating it away. The
Fed no longer has the power to do that anymore, and US inflation will just drive more US
businesses and jobs out of the country. We might actually be the first empire to fall
because of (at least in part) Afghanistan.
James @ 21 said:"3 choices - could be 1, 2 or all 3.."
feeding the war machine.
opium
pipelines.
No doubt, there there are a myriad of reasons, all involve they making of profits. And
that, is why some people refer to this current empire as a corporate driven one. But then,
weren't they all?
I very strongly recommend that everyone read Douglas Valentine's newest book, "The CIA as
Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World." More than fulfilling
its ambitious title, this book documents how the goals and tactics of Phoenix have been
deployed in the US, and also makes clear the foundational funding of CIA from narcotics.
It builds on his excellent 2014 book, "The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in
Vietnam" in which he documents Phoenix through the eyes of the CIA, military and private
contractors who designed and implemented it. He won the trust of former CIA Director William
Colby, who gave him access to - and the trust of - these terrorists. So they not only
admitted, but bragged about the program that became the blueprint for the modernization of
COINTELPRO we see today.
Paveway 26
I suspect Syria is the trigger for the fall of the US empire. Russia's entry into Syria
opened many peoples eyes, and countries, to what the US is about. Now, US actions in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and anywhere else will be veiwed with Syria in mind.
Difficult to agree with much that is being said, no one really knows the exact numbers of
vietnamese murdered by amerika during operation phoenix but it was many tens of thousands of
citizens and neither them, their families, nor Vietnamese people as whole regarded this
sociopathic slaughter as some minor or peripheral easily dismissed event.
I think I've already posted here about meeting, getting to know and narrowly avoiding
getting into a business relationship with an operation Phoenix 'manager' in Asia about a
decade after the amerikan defeat. This guy was one of the crummiest blokes I have ever met.
He had a big coke habit at a time when coke wasn't readily available in the country he was
deployed into. In addition to using coke pretty much continuously (AFAIK by way of amerikan
diplomatic pouches) the guy was a bully who regularly used intelligence he accessed via his
station, to bully the local police if they had the gall to try and protect the local children
from his raping. Although mostly this was done by remote control via CIA connections with the
national police who regarded local cops as little more than parking wardens - they actually
performed the most vital role in law enforcement one that amerikan policing methods appear to
have long despised - that is as a community based service trying to protect people within
their local community but that's another story.
How did I learn all this? From the arsehole's alcohol fuelled, coke crazed tirades that is
how.
I was fairly unsurprised by it as what I heard just confirmed what I had already concluded
about Operation Phoenix which up until that time was the subject of hushed horror stories,
but unfortunately my business partner back then had bought into that 1980's greed is good
nonsense and it took entirely too much work to persuade him to get as far away from the deal
as poss - to just gtfo out until the arsehole came unstuck. That happened not long after but
there was no great sense of schadenfreude cos he was just moved to another station still in
South East Asia.
Anyway the point I wanted to make was that altho it is unlikely that cia bosses can be
blind to boozing & snorting any more, the game remains the same, so they will be using
contemporaneously acceptable sociopaths, as always.
The result will be devastating for afghans. As former State Department official Matthew
Hoh puts
it:
"Iraq's campaign in the Euphrates and Tigris River valleys, the Kurdish campaign in western
Syria and the Saudi and UAE campaign against the Houtis in Yemen have been devastating and
vicious assaults on populations, critical infrastructure and housing, that coupled with
nighttime commando raids that terrorize entire villages and neighborhoods, look not to
bring a political settlement, reconciliation or peace, but rather subjugate, along ethnic
and sectarian lines, entire population groups to achieve American political desires in the
Muslim world.
This CIA program of using Afghan militias to conduct commando raids, the vast majority
of which will be used against civilians despite what the CIA states, falls in line with
American plans to escalate the use of air and artillery strikes against the Afghan people
in Taliban-held areas, almost all of whom are Pashtuns.
Again, the purpose of this campaign is not to achieve a political settlement or
reconciliation, but to brutally subjugate and punish the people, mostly rural Pashtuns, who
support the Taliban and will not give in to the corrupt American run government in
Kabul."
As I have said previously here - the failure of English policy in South Africa in 1899 showed
the myth of the British Empire and contributed to the emboldenment of 'a rising ' Germany,
challenging England for 'market' share in 1914 .
It is ironic , in the light of present events that the 1890's U S secret service warned
England not to try military solutions against Paul Kruger at the horn of Africa .
I am sure the US / Anglo interests were warned in similar historical terms at this bloody
juncture in the Middle East .
@31 Not saying your Phoenix guy wasn't the real thing but I've spent quite a bit of time in
SE Asia and Central America, some of it in bars. Just about every American I met was some
kind of CIA agent either active or retired. The Brits tended to be mostly ex-SAS.
Frankly, we're in the last days of the US occupation of Afghanistan. There's nowhere for them
to go now, to improve their position. They're just waiting for the next Taliban attack.
Sooner or later one will succeed.
Because the Taliban decided to suppress production and when the Taliban were kicked out
the Afghan farmers needed to make an income so they went back to doing what they did best,
growing opium poppies and paying off the American-backed warlords. Then the Taliban decided
they needed a source of income so they moved into the opium trade to raise about 60% of their
income. BTW, in the early days of the British occupation of Helmand Province, the price of
wheat was higher than heroin in Afghanistan and many of the farmers asked for help to convert
to growing wheat which never happened because American farmers wouldn't allow it.
At the start of the US Afghani war, NYT's cartoon posted the list of empires defeated in
Afghanistan. You may remain in denial, revising history. It's your choice. Some of us are
closer to the facts on the ground - first hand accounts.
A cartoon??????? Perhaps you could provide a link to back up your claim, but I expect one
from 1979 when the United States started the American War in Afghanistan before the Soviet
Union intervened in defense of modernity over medieval headchoppers aka KSA? Or perhaps you
can name the empires brought low by Afghanistan but don't bother naming the British
Empire.
As for the rest, I quite agree that Afghanistan is a narco-state but the trade is not
controlled by the CIA, the Pentagon , the so-called American Deep State or even the
Rothschilds . At most, the CIA and Pentagon turn a blind eye to its operation, and
HSBC probably launder some of the money
>>>> PavewayIV | Oct 24, 2017 2:19:14 PM | 26
We might actually be the first empire to fall because of (at least in part) Afghanistan.
You could very well be right but I really hope it happens peacefully.
Anyway off to get my weekly dose of opium provided by the state to calm me down a
bit.
Afghanistan is another backyard to Iran. From Kabul, head west and slaughter lots of shia up
to the border of Iran. That's what Israel has requested and that's what the Yankees will do.
On the side they will grossly enrich the military industrial complex and all will be well in
the world.
The kurdistan game has been foiled and the Iraq government will not play ball on the
mindless Israeli hatred for shia and passion for divisive politics. So lets try
Afghanistan.
@33 I forgot to mention....you can usually tell the real ones from their collection of dried
Gook ears. They like to keep a couple in their pockets for show and tell.
Published May 22, 2001. ...gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the gift, announced last
Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the
United States the main sponsor of the Taliban...
On reading B's excellent post, I found myself thinking Israel has similar assassination units
operating under the name Sayeret Matkal. No doubt those Israeli units would only be too happy to give training and other support to
the CIA's covert program of assassination units attached to Afghan forces.
How much respect and loyalty the Afghan government will have left among its people when
the CIA starts its program of police state terror in earnest is another question.
There are two US initiatives to counter China's One Belt, One Road (OBOR) strategy which is
budgeted at about a trillion dollars, and way out of anything the US could afford. So the US
has come up with these two plans, neither one showing any promise except as a reason to
continue with the AfPak war. SecState Tillerson is the point man on these initiatives. They
both include a new initiative to work closely with India, and one of them requires ownership
of Afghanistan.
The US has revived two major infrastructure projects in South and Southeast Asia in which
India would be a vital player, the 'New Silk Road" initiative and the Indo-Pacific Economic
Corridor linking South and Southeast Asia. The US New Silk Road Strategy is based upon the
Silk Road Strategy Acts of 1999 and 2006. What port(s) would be used to get to Afghanistan at
the doorstep of the -Stans? The US Silk Road products would have to come through the Iran
port of Chabahar. That would be off limits to the US. India is supposed to be doing some
development there, but it's slow. India has built a highway from Chabahar to Afghanistan. The
nearby Pakistan port of Gwadar is now being developed by China and so is also off limits to
the US. The US has put a major diplomatic and economic effort into the -Stans, including
using USAID funds to train the locals to take over US jobs in conjunction with US companies
in the International Chamber of Commerce, an offshoot of the US Chamber.
The second initiative is the Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor, still at a very nascent
stage. It would focus on the "economic corridors between South and Southeast Asia" which
implies working with India and against China. The US naval challenges in the South China Sea
are probably one example. Tillerson has talked about challenging Chinese financing -- good
luck on that. Tillerson: "It is important that those emerging democracies and economies (in
Asa-Pacific) have alternative means of developing both the infrastructure they need but also
developing the economies. We have watched the activities and actions of others in the region
. . .It is important that those emerging democracies and economies (in Asa-Pacific) have
alternative means of developing both the infrastructure they need but also developing the
economies. We have watched the activities and actions of others in the region" . .
here
Finally, the inclusion of India in Afghan affairs is what drives Pakistan to oppose the US
strategy. It hasn't matter that the US has given Pakistan billions of dollars, Pakistan still
sponsors the Taliban fighters who kill US troops. The current US destruction of Afghanistan
and its people is not a choice of Pakistan, but it's less important to Pakistan than having
an Indian presence on both flanks. Pakistan does not want to become an Indian sandwich. The
two countries are arch-enemies.
"... The US military understands it has long ago lost the Afghan War but cannot bear the humiliation of admitting it was defeated by lightly-armed mountain tribesmen fighting for their independence. ..."
"... Vietnam was not a 'tragedy,' as the PBS series asserts, but the product of imperial geopolitics. The same holds true for today's Mideast wars. To paraphrase a famous slogan from Vietnam, we destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria to make them safe for 'freedom.' ..."
"... The war became aimless and often surreal. We soldiers all knew our senior officers and political leaders were lying. Many soldiers were at the edge of mutiny, like the French Army in 1917. Back in those ancient days, we had expected our political leaders to be men of rectitude who told us the truth. Thanks to Vietnam, the politicians were exposed as liars and heartless cynics with no honor. ..."
"... This same dark cloud hangs over our political landscape today. We have destroyed large parts of the Mideast, Afghanistan and northern Pakistan without a second thought – yet wonder why peoples from these ravaged nations hate us. Now, North Korea seems next. ..."
"... In spite of all, our imperial impulse till throbs. The nightmare Vietnam War in which over 58,000 American soldiers died for nothing has been largely forgotten. ..."
"... For both Vietnam and Afghanistan, as well as other places, the guiding principle is that they live there and we don't. These are all expeditionary wars for the US. Resistant peoples can't be controlled at a distance ..."
"... So, considering that Viet commies stood for patriotism and national sovereignty, maybe the globalist viewpoint is more favorable to US efforts to turn Vietnam into globo-disneyland. ..."
"... Americans at-large have no power. A small cadre runs things now. Once Americans didn't have a draft to worry over, they vacated the streets and left the dying to the farmers' sons (metaphor for the poor). ..."
"... War after war lost, yet the Generals are still revered, money to the pro-war think tanks is never ending and the revolving door between the Pentagon, White House and defense contractors (and their corporate boards) has never been richer. Doesn't matter the war industry doesn't win wars, the money is just so damned good they can't stop, won't stop. And who is to stop them? These are the folks that kill people, that have a file on each of us. Indeed, it is our only remaining industry, flawed and failed though it may be. It certainly is a rich one. And it IS unstoppable. Completely. Utterly. ..."
"... When the communists gave up and joined the party, our globalist masters realized that they could not only amass further wealth by spreading these things to the former communist bloc and under-exploited non-aligned nations, but they could now squeeze even more profit-margin out of the home territories by wearing down the power of the local workforce at all levels, except, of course, for the very pinnacle, by outsourcing production and even many services to the newly "developing world." ..."
"... Ironically, fighting the communist threat probably kept our leadership more honest than they have been in the new world order since the fall of communism. ..."
"... I know opinions vary on Ken Burns/PBS's "Vietnam" documentary, but what struck me is that we're following the same script in Afghanistan and the Middle East as we were in Vietnam and expecting a different (i.e., more favorable) outcome. The script being "pacification" through providing medicine, foodstuffs, soccer balls and American smiles to the local populations combined with placing massive amounts of ordnance on targets deemed hostile. It didn't win hearts and minds then nor is it now. ..."
"... The monumentally stupid war mismanagement of Pentagon chief Robert McNamara, a know-it-all who knew nothing, ..."
"... We have legions of McNamara's calling the shots today. They are called neoconservatives and liberal interventionists. The big brains of the Ivy league do seem to excel at steering us into icebergs time and again. ..."
"... What don't you understand about Clausewitz's dictum "war is the mere continuation of politics with other means"? War is what you do when you can't achieve your political objectives by other means. The United States' political objective in Vietnam was to prevent the American satrapy in the south being re-united by the nationalists in the north. So, where the f ** k is South Vietnam? The United States might believe it won every battle (slight exaggeration) but it still lost the American war. ..."
"... I bet they didn't cover the mutiny in the ranks which is the main reason the US had to withdraw because of a "broken army." That included fragging, mission refusal, and an overall negative attitude as you suggest. Now we have a volunteer army, a warrior class, which changes that dynamic. ..."
"... Too many of the volunteers are really economic draftees. You can have plenty of discipline problems with volunteers, I've seen it up close and personal, although never reaching the level of mutiny. ..."
The current 17-year old US war in Afghanistan has uncanny resemblances to the Vietnam War. In
Kabul and Saigon, the US installed puppet governments that command no loyalty except from minority
groups. They were steeped in drugs and corruption, and kept in power by intensive use of American
air power. As in Vietnam, the US military and civilian effort in Afghanistan is led by a toxic mixture
of deep ignorance and imperial arrogance.
The US military understands it has long ago lost the Afghan War but cannot bear the humiliation
of admitting it was defeated by lightly-armed mountain tribesmen fighting for their independence.
In Vietnam, Washington could not admit that young Vietnamese guerillas and regulars had bested the
US armed forces thanks to their indomitable courage and intelligent tactics. No one outside Vietnam
cared about the 2-3 million civilians killed in the conflict
Unfortunately, the PBS program fails to convey this imperial arrogance and the ignorance that
impelled Washington into the war – the same foolhardy behavior that sent US forces into Somalia,
Afghanistan and Iraq and perhaps may do so in a second Korean War. The imperial spirit still burns
hot in Washington among those who don't know or understand the outside world. The lessons of all
these past conflicts have been forgotten: Washington's collective memory is only three years long.
Vietnam was not a 'tragedy,' as the PBS series asserts, but the product of imperial geopolitics.
The same holds true for today's Mideast wars. To paraphrase a famous slogan from Vietnam, we destroyed
Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria to make them safe for 'freedom.'
One of the craziest things about the Vietnam War has rarely been acknowledged: even at peak deployment,
the 550,000 US soldiers in Vietnam were outnumbered by North Vietnamese fighting units.
That's because the huge US military had only about 50,000 real combat troops in the field. The
other half million were support troops performing logistical and administrative functions behind
the lines: a vast army of typists, cooks, truck drivers, psychologists, and pizza-makers.
Too much tail to teeth, as the army calls it. For Thanksgiving, everyone got turkey dinner with
cranberry sauce, choppered into the remotest outposts. But there were simply not enough riflemen
to take on the Viet Cong and tough North Vietnamese Army whose Soviet M1954 130mm howitzer with a
27 km range were far superior to the US Army's outdated WWII artillery.
Poor generalship, mediocre officers, and lack of discipline ensured that the US war effort in
Vietnam would become and remain a mess. Stupid, pointless attacks against heavily defended hills
inflicted huge casualties on US troops and eroded morale.
The monumentally stupid war mismanagement of Pentagon chief Robert McNamara, a know-it-all who
knew nothing, turned the war into a macabre joke. This was the dumbest command decision since Louis
XV put his girlfriend Madame de Pompadour in charge of his armies.
We soldiers, both in Vietnam and Stateside, scorned the war and mocked our officers. It didn't
help that much of the US force in 'Nam' were often stoned and rebellious.
The January 30, 1968 Tet Offensive put the kibosh on US plans to pursue the war – and even take
it into south-west China. Tet was a military victory of sorts for the US (and why not, with thousands
of warplanes and B-52 heavy bombers) but a huge political/psychological victory for the Communists
in spite of their heavy losses.
I vividly recall standing with a group of GI's reading a typed report on our company barracks
advising that the Special Forces camp in the Central Highlands to which many of our company had been
assigned for immediate duty had been overrun at Tet, and all its defenders killed. After that, the
US Army's motto was 'stay alive, avoid combat, and smoke another reefer.'
The war became aimless and often surreal. We soldiers all knew our senior officers and political
leaders were lying. Many soldiers were at the edge of mutiny, like the French Army in 1917. Back
in those ancient days, we had expected our political leaders to be men of rectitude who told us the
truth. Thanks to Vietnam, the politicians were exposed as liars and heartless cynics with no honor.
This same dark cloud hangs over our political landscape today. We have destroyed large parts
of the Mideast, Afghanistan and northern Pakistan without a second thought – yet wonder why peoples
from these ravaged nations hate us. Now, North Korea seems next.
Showing defiance to Washington brought B-52 bombers, toxic Agent Orange defoliants and endless
storms of napalm and white phosphorus that would burn through one's body until it hit bone.
In spite of all, our imperial impulse till throbs. The nightmare Vietnam War in which over
58,000 American soldiers died for nothing has been largely forgotten. So we can now repeat the
same fatal errors again without shame, remorse or understanding.
(Republished from
EricMargolis.com
by permission of author or representative)
For both Vietnam and Afghanistan, as well as other places, the guiding principle is that
they live there and we don't. These are all expeditionary wars for the US. Resistant peoples can't
be controlled at a distance. Of course the morale of US soldiers ends up being bad when they
realize there's nothing for them to fight for. No one wants to die to help some politician save
face. Insofar as the current much publicized Vietnam documentary goes there doesn't seem to be
anything that's new or original. All of it has been known for many years to anyone who would bother
to brush up on the subject. The question is whether Americans are capable of learning from the
past and the answer seems to be no for the vast majority.
For both Vietnam and Afghanistan, as well as other places, the guiding principle is that they
live there and we don't. These are all expeditionary wars for the US. Resistant peoples can't
be controlled at a distance. Of course the morale of US soldiers ends up being bad when they realize
there's nothing for them to fight for. No one wants to die to help some politician save face.
Insofar as the current much publicized Vietnam documentary goes there doesn't seem to be anything
that's new or original. All of it has been known for many years to anyone who would bother to
brush up on the subject. The question is whether Americans are capable of learning from the past
and the answer seems to be no for the vast majority.
So whose name gets to be the last American killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc? Dying for
a place on the memorial, boys. "The war was being run by a bunch of four-star clowns who were
going to end up giving the whole circus away."
Some things don't change- I wonder if Rand has a new copy of the Pentagon Papers regarding
post 9/11. And a new Nixon in office .he vowed to get out too -- and yet pushed more into it simply
amazing.
@Sam McGowan First, I was heavily involved in Vietnam from 1965 to 1970. Second, I have written
extensively about the war and read the books. The fact is that the US didn't "lose" the war, the
left-wing presidents that got us into it, JFK and LBJ, has no intention of defeating the communist
insurgency, they just wanted "to contain it". Cam Ranh Bay and made a speech in which he commented
to the troops present that he wanted them to "nail the coonskin to the wall." Richard Nixon began
withdrawing troops immediately after his inauguration and gave Abrams an edict to "reduce American
casualties" shortly afterwards. In fact, Vietnam as well as Korea - as well as other wars around
the world - were continuations of World War II, which Americans thought ended when the Japanese
surrendered. By the way, I am not watching Ken Burn's latest left-wing propaganda piece nor do
I intend to. I don't need him to tell me what happened in Southeast Asia, I was there. Save your
senile hot air for the other menopausal drunks drooling in the VFW lounge. The conscript US military
completely collapsed fragging, rampant drug usage, desertion, abject morale, chain of command
disintegration, and the usual commissioned officer cowardice. Any western country stupid enough
to pursue a land war in Asia deserves what it gets .inevitable defeat and humiliation.
I don't think CucKen Burns is entirely wrong in empathizing with those who got involved. Sure,
there were warmongers. Sure, they were profiteers. Sure, there were power-maniacs. Sure, there
were paranoids.
But Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon were not particularly sadistic or cruel men. Eisenhower
could be aloof and mean. Kennedy could be vain. Johnson was plenty corrupt. Nixon could be nasty.
But were not psychos or radicals like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, or Mao.
As for military men, well, whaddya expect? They were trained to think of the world in terms
of military power. As for CIA, we are talking of more sinister elements, but let's keep in mind
that Soviets had their intelligence organizations and methods of subversion. Let's remember Soviets
had infiltrated FDR's government and pulled dirty trick. Even got the Bomb during Truman era.
Also, Soviets could be utterly ruthless in their own empire.
Now, would the US have intervened in Vietnam if the nation was to be united by a non-communist
nationalist? Probably not. US didn't intervene in Indonesia when it gained independence under
Sukarno. The only reason US got involved was because Ho was a Soviet-leaning communist. And even
though Domino theory has been 'debunked', it made sense at the time. Even Soviets believed in
it. Mao believed in it. Soviets believed that sign of US weakness could spread the revolution
all around. Che Guevara believed in the Domino Theory. Communist victory over Cuba, he thought,
would herald spread of communism all over Latin America, and then it would spread into US itself.
Che really believed this, which is why he died in Bolivia trying to start an insurgency.
Also, in a way, Domino Theory did come true, at least for awhile. Not so much in Southeast
Asia, though Laos and Cambodia also fell to communism. And keep in mind Indonesia almost could
have become communist if the Peking-backed coup had succeeded. And keep in mind it took lots of
British brutality and ruthlessness to stem the communist movement in Malaysia. Brits built huge
hamlets and concentration camps. They took extreme measures.
At any rate, communism did continue to spread after the fall of Vietnam. US power seemed to
be declining. And not only communists were emboldened by US defeat in Vietnam. Vietnam became
a metaphor for anti-Americanism all over the world. May 68 movement that almost brought down the
French government was fired up partly by Vietnam(though it began as some silly stuff about dorms
and sex). Vietnam was bigger than Algeria because US was seen as the Great Power. French defeat
wasn't all that surprising in Algeria. So, after US left from Vietnam, there was a sense that
David could beat American Goliath. Iran regime fell and Islamists came to power. Afghanistan turned
communist, and Soviets felt emboldened in rolling in tanks. Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Angola turned
communist. Communists won in Nicaragua and almost won in El Salvador. There was a raging Maoist
insurgency in Peru. Allende came to power through elections, and he was pro-Soviet and pro-Cuba.
He was removed only by US-backed coup that did as much harm as good. It blackened US reputation
around the world. So, in a way, the Domino Theory wasn't all wrong. Vietnam did signal a sea-change
in world politics at least for awhile.
In the end, communism wasn't defeated by the US. It defeated itself. Soviet economics just
couldn't sustain the empire. Its subsidies to Cuba were costly. Its support of Marxist regimes
in Africa drained Soviet economy. USSR had to prop up Iron Curtain nations economically. And Vietnamese
communism was a disaster. Maoism was hell on earth. Some might say communism failed cuz Capitalist
West froze the communists out of world trade. But considering that the communist world encompassed
resource-rich Soviet Empire, people-rich China, and lots of nations willing to do business with
communist nations -- India and Arab nations had good relations with Soviets -- , the real reason
for failure of communism was it was its own worst enemy.
And when we look at the aftermath of communist victory in Indochina -- brutal repression in
Vietnam and Laos and psychotic democide in Cambodia -- and when we consider how even communist
nations like China and Vietnam switched to market economics, it's clear that US was on the right
side of history on many issues.
Also, the conflict was complicated because both sides were aggressors. US was the aggressor
in working with the French to divide Vietnam in half, in occupying the southern half, and dropping
bombs and using Viet women as whores. But the communists were also aggressors because they tried
to impose a form of Stalinism on people in the South, most of whom didn't want communism. After
all, many more people fled the north to the south than vice versa. Why? There is something prison-like
about communism. The commissars never leave you alone. Also, North Vietnamese leaders, though
inspired and patriotic, were utterly ruthless in their own way, willing to sacrifice any number
of people for victory just like Japanese militarists were willing to Go All the Way instead of
calling it quits to save lives.
Still, in retrospect, Ho Chi Minh was a genuine patriot, a legendary figure much beloved by
many Viets. And for that reason, US shouldn't have intervened, and the whole mess could have been
avoided.
CucKen Burns makes my skin crawl, but at his best, he can look at both sides of the issue instead
of going for b/w version of history with good guys vs bad guys.
That said, maybe his position reflects globalism. As Proglobalists now control the US, the
neo-Pax-Americana is about the spread of agendas favored by the likes of CucKen Burns, like homomania,
Jewish Power, anti-nationalism, and Afromania. Today's progs want the world to become neo-Americanized.
And in Vietnam, as Linh Dinh reported, there is now homo parades and Afromania and Vietcuckery.
So, considering that Viet commies stood for patriotism and national sovereignty, maybe the
globalist viewpoint is more favorable to US efforts to turn Vietnam into globo-disneyland.
After all, where was CucKen Burns when Obama and Hillary were destroying Libya, Ukraine, Syria,
and etc. Where were he and his ilk when Jews were cooking up New Cold War with Russia with hysteria
that would make McCarthy blush?
"The question is whether Americans are capable of learning from the past and the answer
seems to be no for the vast majority."
Americans at-large have no power. A small cadre runs things now. Once Americans didn't
have a draft to worry over, they vacated the streets and left the dying to the farmers' sons (metaphor
for the poor). That's all it is. The damage done to the economy, the sheer quantities of
cash vacuumed up from the rest of the country and showered over the Washington DC region escapes
the imagination of us out here in the country with our local issues and problems. These, rooted
in the sheer theft of our taxes and handed over to the war-mongers of DC because there simply
isn't enough left over after feeding The Beast in Washington. We have aircraft carriers that can't
launch aircraft, planes that won't fly, weapons that won't work and wrong strategies followed
in war-fighting and procurement, yet still, the theft goes on.
War after war lost, yet the Generals are still revered, money to the pro-war think tanks
is never ending and the revolving door between the Pentagon, White House and defense contractors
(and their corporate boards) has never been richer. Doesn't matter the war industry doesn't win
wars, the money is just so damned good they can't stop, won't stop. And who is to stop them? These
are the folks that kill people, that have a file on each of us. Indeed, it is our only remaining
industry, flawed and failed though it may be. It certainly is a rich one. And it IS unstoppable.
Completely. Utterly.
@Sam McGowan Concur all, McGowan, good takes. Yeah, my Pop was into Naval spook communications
and messaging, he'd pick up the WashPost off the driveway and see various and sundry in the paper
lying and white-washing the effort and just be wild by the time he left for work. He knew the
carriers were having no success, he knew the air-war was a mess, he knew the Marines were getting
killed all over the country. People that knew the truth from the inside hadda keep their traps
shut.
By the time I joined up for a 6 year dose of USN carrier decks in 1976 I got the scoop from
a few of our officers, almost all of whom had flown with VA35 over Vietnam in A-6′s. Clusterfuck,
they could then acknowledge just those few years later, only the most junior officers hadn't served
in the air war over Vietnam. And they had good stories that pointed out the folly throughout.
Now? The military is just a revenue-stream, nothing produced, much destroyed to the enrichment
of a few insiders.
Sir
Recently came across some startling statistics about men who served in Vietnam like you and me.
Of the 2.7 million who served only 850,000 are still alive at last census!!!!!! 700,500 died prematurely
between 1995 census and 2000 census. No country for old men .
"And in Vietnam, as Linh Dinh reported, there is now homo parades and Afromania and Vietcuckery.
So, considering that Viet commies stood for patriotism and national sovereignty, maybe the
globalist viewpoint is more favorable to US efforts to turn Vietnam into globo-disneyland."
Bingo! The only problem is that the globalists are now using the opportunity to also wear down
the populations of the home territories as well. The only reason our national economic imperialism
wasn't enough of a raging success (don't get me wrong by any rational measure it was) was that
it was kept in check by the opposing communist bloc, and still America managed to conquer the
so-called free world with Coca Cola, McDonalds, Hollywood Inc., etc.
When the communists gave up and joined the party, our globalist masters realized that they
could not only amass further wealth by spreading these things to the former communist bloc and
under-exploited non-aligned nations, but they could now squeeze even more profit-margin out of
the home territories by wearing down the power of the local workforce at all levels, except, of
course, for the very pinnacle, by outsourcing production and even many services to the newly "developing
world."
Ironically, fighting the communist threat probably kept our leadership more honest than
they have been in the new world order since the fall of communism.
"No one in Washington seemed to know that China and the Soviet Union had split and become
bitter enemies. As ever, our foreign human intelligence was lousy."
They knew of the rift that had grown since 1960 or so, but they didn't believe it until the
short border war in 1969. The same way that a number of indicators suggested as early as 1983
that the USSR was imploding, but the menace of the USSR was used to keep justifying a buildup
and procurement of new systems until and even beyond its actual implosion a few years later.
I know opinions vary on Ken Burns/PBS's "Vietnam" documentary, but what struck me is that
we're following the same script in Afghanistan and the Middle East as we were in Vietnam and expecting
a different (i.e., more favorable) outcome. The script being "pacification" through providing
medicine, foodstuffs, soccer balls and American smiles to the local populations combined with
placing massive amounts of ordnance on targets deemed hostile. It didn't win hearts and minds
then nor is it now.
The generals keep telling us that with just a few more antibiotics, soccer balls and troops
victory is around the bend.
Hindsight's always 20/20, but to be fair a military force in Vietnam did seem like the right
thing do at least in the early years. Any de-escalation and/or withdrawals would have been perceived
by a rabidly anti-communist population as surrendering to communist aggression and political suicide
for any president proposing it.
The monumentally stupid war mismanagement of Pentagon chief Robert McNamara, a know-it-all
who knew nothing,
We have legions of McNamara's calling the shots today. They are called neoconservatives
and liberal interventionists. The big brains of the Ivy league do seem to excel at steering us
into icebergs time and again.
As it was former allies Vietnam and China briefly fought each other in 1979 and Vietnam didn't
have the desire or the ability to project power much beyond Cambodia and Laos.
"We really believed that if the US did not make a stand in Vietnam the Soviets and Chinese
would overrun all of South Asia."
India played a big role in shaping this narrative. Just five years ago before 1967 China finally
responded to India's creeping land grab after years of trying to warn New Delhi's to stop its
'Forward Policy' by launching a massive anticipatory strike into India. India was defeated militarily
but India was able to fool the world that India was a hapless victim against an agressive China
when in fact the reverse is true.
@Jim Christian A bit off topic, but, since I know that you had naval experience, any take
on why Navy ships keep colliding with merchantmen? Is it reduced competence because of racial
and sexual preferences, or overworked sailors because deployed ships are short-staffed as a result
of pregnancies? Or is it just a run of bad luck? I've read some different theories but I've seen
you post often enough to know that you'll have an informed opinion.
@Sam McGowanWhat don't you understand about Clausewitz's dictum "war is the mere continuation
of politics with other means"? War is what you do when you can't achieve your political objectives
by other means. The United States' political objective in Vietnam was to prevent the American
satrapy in the south being re-united by the nationalists in the north. So, where the f ** k is
South Vietnam? The United States might believe it won every battle (slight exaggeration) but it
still lost the American war.
@Diversity Heretic The military is off-kilter all over. Navigation? Routine. Ought to be.
Not anymore. Procurement? Driven by inertia and the corruption of planners that know a carrier's
planes are useless if the ship has to stand off 500-1000 miles because of a cruise missile environment
that they KNOW every third-world shitbox has been building for 30 years now, starting with the
Norks. From aircraft to ships, a complete clusterfuck.
Personnel? Ya gotta be shitting me, right? Between the sexism, reverse-racism and the cultural
kookiness from the top of a terrorized Central Command and throughout the military, right down
to the pretty little Blonde Hispanic Black Dwarf tranny just dying to terrorize said command with
a complaint, we really haven't much good to say about our staffing. It's not a meritocracy anymore,
hasn't been since Reagan. The entire thing is sitting there waiting to be taken down and humiliated.
And still? We sprinkle the trillions onto the DC region, make the war planners rich, we still
lionize Generals and Admirals that haven't won shit in 75 years and we cycle them through the
think tanks and corporate boards of the defense contractors and make THEM rich too. Then we even
put them in charge at the White House, having discarded the notion of Congressional approval for
the wars they "fight" in our names. And they start wars. And finally, the notion that we have
civilian control of our military is long gone. We are a Junta. There is a coup ongoing, two or
more in our past and we're no more than a broke but dangerous and heavily armed danger to the
rest of the world run by the thugs of the Pentagon, the think tanks, the defense contractors and
the lazy sloth of Congress, who is supposed to keep this shit straight and Constitutional. Doom.
Yes, the word doom comes to mind.
@anonymous re: "No one wants to die to help some politician save face."
I don't have a teevee, but I bet they didn't cover the mutiny in the ranks which is the
main reason the US had to withdraw because of a "broken army." That included fragging, mission
refusal, and an overall negative attitude as you suggest. Now we have a volunteer army, a warrior
class, which changes that dynamic.
One man's opinion. I do wish someone would show me where I'm wrong, but I spent too many years
down in DC doing their tech stuff after I left the Navy (too many women that couldn't, at that
point in 82, go to sea) and so they only had more sea duty because the shore billets were all
taken in their haste to "integrate" women into the Navy. Even instructor duty for Naval Air Maintenance
was hosted by women that had never served a day in carrier air, training the young mice how to
do business on a flight deck. They did offer me, for variety, another four year hitch in a WestPac
squadron aboard one damned carrier deck or another. Already having done 5, I said no thanks and
went back home to Virginia. And so I got familiar with the workings of the spooks, Booze, Allen,
Heritage, Cato, Brookings, the Pentagon, NSA, FBI, Quantico, there were hundreds of them, most
with two or three names in the chain of title. I did their phones for decades, they're psychos,
they're paranoid, everything classified and spooky and ooga-booga. Worthless ants on a big log
and they each think they're steering it down the river.
Bunch of fucking Frank Burns's is what they are..Cheers.
There never was a communist threat. Not since at least the 1920s, when Stalin defeated Trotsky.
Trotsky wanted world revolution. Stalin, for all his bloodthirsty antics in Russia, realised this
was all nonsense. He just wanted Socialism in One Country, developing the country economically.
He wasn't really interested in the outside world.
In the 1930s he was willing to cooperate with right wing western governments till they did
a deal with Hitler in 1938. He was never interested in invading countries to grab land and resources.
Whenever he did so, Poland in 1939, or Eastern Europe post 1945, it was for security reasons.
The part of Poland he occupied in 1939 had been taken from Russia by force in 1920. It was inhabited
by 1o million White Russians and Ukrainians and no Poles.
Wissing's book "Funding the enemy" details the totally corrupt Afghan government and is a compelling
argument why we should pull out at once and needs to be read by anyone with half a brain. I served
in Vietnam also, in 1967, and its deja vu all over again.
@The Alarmist Having been on – site at the time (North Tonkin Gulf), I can tell you that China
gave U.S.N. units free rein over those waters, including Chinese waters. The fix was in. In 1969
onwards. China and Viet Nam were NEVER friends. Did CIA realize this? I don't know.
Anyways, expect the US to keep on wasting money in Afghanistan (and Pakistan and Tajikistan)
until it gets bankrupted by the next Big War!
Or until all the routes into Afghanistan are blocked. At the moment, the only route still open
passes through Pakistan, and that may close at any time.
Of the 58,220 Americans who were sacrificed by the U.S. Government during the Vietnam War,
270 were Jewish. That's approximately 0.46 percent of the total number of American kids who died,
or less than a half of one-percent.
"Statistical Information About Casualties of the Vietnam War"
@Grandpa Charlie The Japanese trained their naval cadets using a mock Pearl Harbor type exercise
annually for a fair number of years prior to WW2. The Russo-Japanese War of 1905 began with a
Japanese surprise attack. You have the unmitigated gall to attack Margolis as an establishment
mouthpiece when you yourself are whitewashhing the "sainted" FDR. No prudent military planner
would absolutely assume that the attack would come in one particular place, whether the Phillipines,
Pearl, or elsewhere.
@Don BaconToo many of the volunteers are really economic draftees. You can have plenty
of discipline problems with volunteers, I've seen it up close and personal, although never reaching
the level of mutiny.
@Capn Mike That is interesting to me. As is the Margolis artictle, never knew he had been
a USA soldier, very interesting article. Thought he was a Canada person.
I have a question for you, Capn Mike.
If the PRC had allowed the USA free rein in Gulf of Tonkin, where were the supply lines to
the Nth. Viet military and Viet Cong?
Must it not still have been overland from PRC at that time you say (1969)?
I don't for a moment believe that the 'saintly' President John Kennedy planned to end the
war but was assassinated by dark, rightwing forces, as is claimed. This is a charming legend.
Richard Nixon, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all feared that a withdrawal from Vietnam would lose
them the next election. Republicans were still snarling over 'who lost China'.
I didn't like Kennedy either, but go back and reread the newspapers from the early days of
the Kennedy administration. The oval office was bugged, and the information leaked in ways to
embarrass Kennedy and UN Ambassador Adelai Stevenson. There is only one way that could have happened.
Eisenhower installed those bugs before he left. These same bugs brought down Nixon in the Watergate
crisis. The swamp wanted war, and they pulled the rug out from under both presidents as soon as
they brought peace.
And a new Nixon in office .he vowed to get out too- and yet pushed more into it simply amazing.
He promised to get out and he did get us out. The peace treaty was announced just before the
election in 1972. He knew it was his only hope for re-election. The Vietnamese disputed some of
the terms, and that resulted in the Christmas bombing that year. The American withdrawal began
in January 1973.
Trump promised to get us out of the Middle East. We should give him some rope. Maybe he hangs
himself, or just maybe he can pull it off. He will need to be re-elected in three years.
However, the US foreign policy keeps holocausting the 3-rd world and lately the 2 -cond world.
The holocausts keep coming from US foreign policy of "exceptionalism" = "Nazi Übermensch"="the
chosen ones" over this planet, many executed by the CIA-Nazi's:
The Syrian holocaust
The Yemen holocaust
The Ukranïan holocaust (Euromaidan) by Poroshenko/Nuland neo-nazi"s.
The Libyan holocaust
The Irak holocaust
The Afghanistan holocaust
The Belgrad holocaust
The Indonesian holocaust (Kissiger e.a.)
The Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia/Thailand holocaust (Kissinger e.a)
The Korean holocaust
During WWII:
The Jewish/Polish/Russian holocaust by Nazi's funded by Wallstreet/London bankers
The German holocaust (Die Rheinweisen lager) by US army Morgenthau plan.
Before WWII:
The Ukranian and Russain holocausts 1921-22, 1932-33 (holodomor) by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin.
All these, were and are financed by the Wallstreet elite owners, the Billionaires who are mega-fascists,
eugenic and satanic in character. Their credo is GREED.
Thanks to Vietnam, the politicians were exposed as liars and heartless cynics with no honor.
A couple of the biggest lies were exposed, but the myths still live that the US government
is an effective and dependable force for peace and freedom, and that the US military is an institution
of dignity worthy of honor.
And people still put their faith (or is it hope) in the heartless cynics ( eunichs, really)
with no balls, fewer brains, no soul, and even less honor.
It's "yet another surge"... With probably the same results. Military contractors
will became richer. Some US solders will be dead of maimed. A lot of afghans will be killed.
Notable quotes:
"... From now on, our security interests will dictate the length and scope of military operation, not arbitrary benchmarks and timetables set up by politicians. I have also totally changed the rules of engagement in our fight against the Taliban and other terrorist groups. ..."
"... In fact, the US has not had anything remotely resembling a strategy in Afghanistan for years already. If it wasn't so sad, it would be laughable, really. What he really see here is the total absence of any strategy and, again, a total reliance on magical thinking. ..."
"... The amazing reality is that they don't have a goal even defined. How one achieves "victory" when no goal is even defined is anybody's guess. ..."
"... I would say that the only chance to get anything done, any viable result at all, is to negotiate a deal with all the parties that matter: the various Afghan factions, of course, but also with the Taliban, Pakistan, Iran and even Russia. ..."
"... Pakistan and Iran have a de-facto veto power over any outcome for Afghanistan. This may not be what the US would want, but this is the reality. Denying reality is just not a smart approach to these issues, especially if "victory" is the goal ..."
Last month I announced a new strategy for victory in the fight against this evil in
Afghanistan. From now on, our security interests will dictate the length and scope of military
operation, not arbitrary benchmarks and timetables set up by politicians. I have also totally
changed the rules of engagement in our fight against the Taliban and other terrorist
groups.
What we see here is undeniable evidence that far from being "real warriors" or "strategists"
the military gang around Trump (Mattis, McMaster, Kelly, etc.) are either primitive grunts or
folks who owe their rank to political protection. Why do I say that?
Because none of what Trump
describes as a "strategy for victory" is, in fact, a strategy. In fact, the US has not had
anything remotely resembling a strategy in Afghanistan for years already. If it wasn't so sad, it
would be laughable, really. What he really see here is the total absence of any strategy and,
again, a total reliance on magical thinking.
Ask yourself a basic question: have you ever heard from any Trump administration or any US
General anything which would suggest to you that these guys have i) a clear goal in mind ii) an
understanding of what it would take to achieve this goal and iii) a timeframe to achieve this
goal and iv) an exit strategy once this goal is achieved? No? Well, that is not your fault, you
did not miss anything. They really don't have it.
The amazing reality is that they don't have a goal even defined. How one achieves
"victory" when no goal is even defined is anybody's guess.
[Sidebar: without going into a lengthy discussion of Afghanistan, I would say that the only
chance to get anything done, any viable result at all, is to negotiate a deal with all the
parties that matter: the various Afghan factions, of course, but also with the Taliban, Pakistan,
Iran and even Russia.
Pakistan and Iran have a de-facto veto power over any outcome for
Afghanistan. This may not be what the US would want, but this is the reality. Denying reality is
just not a smart approach to these issues, especially if "victory" is the goal]
"... From the press room at NATO command, McCain announced that "none of us could say we are on a course to success here in Afghanistan." The senator should have paused for a reflective moment and then called for an end to the war. Instead, McCain demanded that Trump send more US troops, more bombers and more drones to terrorize a population that has been riven by near constant war since the late 1970s. ..."
"... Most Americans have no idea why we are in Afghanistan; it's the longest running Fake War in American history. Some, as many as 20 percent according to a Gallup Poll, have no idea that we are ..."
"... Nothing better illustrates the eclipse of US global power than the fact that Afghanistan refuses to be subjugated or even managed, despite 16 years of hard-core carnage. ..."
"... Even after Obama's shameful troop surge in 2010, an escalation that went almost unopposed by the US antiwar movement, the Taliban now retains almost as much control of the country as it did in 2001. And for that Afghanistan must be punished. Eternally, it seems. ..."
"... Give Trump some credit. His war plan is refreshingly vacant of moral posturing. Instead he views the war through a greedily focused economic lens: Afghanistan as commodity. Over the course of 16 years, the cratering American operation in Afghanistan has consumed more than $1 trillion, a huge and nearly unchallenged benefaction to military contractors. In 2016, the Pentagon spent $3.6 million for each US soldier stationed in Afghanistan. A surge of 4,000 to 10,000 additional troops, either as "private military units" or GIs, will come as a welcome new infusion of cash to the dozens of defense corporations that invested so heavily in his administration. ..."
"... If that living monument to the Confederacy Jefferson B. Sessions was serious about confronting the rising scourge of opiate addiction in the US, he would start by calling for an immediate end to US military operations in Afghanistan. ..."
"... Forget marijuana, the real gateway to heroin abuse is war. Since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, opium production has swelled, now accounting for more than one-third of the wrecked Afghan economy. In the last two years alone, opium poppy yields have doubled, a narcotic blowback now hitting the streets of American cities from Amarillo to Pensacola. With every drone strike in the Helmond Province, a thousand more poppies bloom. ..."
If it's Independence Day, then you can count on John McCain to be bunkered down in a remote
outpost of the Empire growling for the Pentagon to unleash airstrikes on some unruly nation,
tribe or gang. This July the Fourth found McCain making a return engagement to Kabul, an
arrival that must have prompted many Afghans to scramble for the nearest air raid shelter.
From the press room at NATO command, McCain announced that "none of us could say we are on a
course to success here in Afghanistan." The senator should have paused for a reflective moment
and then called for an end to the war. Instead, McCain demanded that Trump send more US troops,
more bombers and more drones to terrorize a population that has been riven by near constant war
since the late 1970s.
McCain's martial drool is now as familiar as the opening notes to the "Law & Order"
theme song. What may surprise some, however, is the composition of the delegation that signed
up to travel on his frequent flier program, notably the presence of two Democratic Senators
with soaring profiles: Sheldon Whitehouse and Elizabeth Warren. Whitehouse, the former
prosecutor (aren't they all?) from Rhode Island, has lately taken a star turn in the role of
chief inquisitor of suspected Russian witches in the Senate intelligence committee hearings.
Perhaps he finally located one selling AK-47s to the Taliban to replace the guns they'd gotten
from the CIA (We now know that it's the
Saudis –not the Russians–who have been covertly funneling money to the Taliban,
though don't expect the Trump to impose any sanctions on the Kingdom of the Head-choppers.)
For her part, Warren largely echoed McCain's bellicose banter that Trump needs to double
down militarily to finish off the Taliban, the impossible dream. No real surprise here. To the
extent that she's advanced any foreign policy positions during her stint in the senate, Warren
has been a dutiful supplicant to the demands of AIPAC and the Council on Foreign Relations,
rarely diverging from the neocon playbook for the global war on Islam. Warren's Afghan junket
is a sure sign of her swelling presidential ambitions. These days "national security"
experience is measured almost exclusively by how much blood you are willing to spill in
countries you know almost nothing about. It didn't take long for Warren to matriculate to the
company position.
Most Americans have no idea why we are in Afghanistan; it's the longest running Fake War in
American history. Some, as many as 20 percent according to a Gallup Poll, have no idea that we
are still in Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar are both long dead. The
shattered remnants of Al Qaeda have fled to Pakistan and parts unknown. Hamid Karzai has come
and gone. For the last six months, the US hasn't even troubled itself to send an ambassador to
Kabul.
A kind of convenient cultural amnesia has set in, abetted by a compliant press corps that
has largely decamped from the Hindu Kush and now treats Afghanistan as if it is some kind of
interstellar region, where photographers are occasionally dispatched to snap eerie debris
clouds from the detonation of MOAB bombs. It's no wonder that the few Americans who continue to
support the war cling to the delusion that Afghanistan orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. It is the
War that Time Forgot.
Nothing better illustrates the eclipse of US global power than the fact that Afghanistan
refuses to be subjugated or even managed, despite 16 years of hard-core carnage. Since the
first US airstrikes hit Kandahar in October 2001, more than 150,000 Afghan civilians have been
killed. Still Afghanistan resists imperial dictates. Even after Obama's shameful troop surge in
2010, an escalation that went almost unopposed by the US antiwar movement, the Taliban now
retains almost as much control of the country as it did in 2001. And for that Afghanistan must
be punished. Eternally, it seems.
As for Trump, in his quest to privatize as much of the federal government as possible the
president is still apparently entranced with the idea of turning over much of the Afghan
operation to military contractors. As McCain and Warren were issuing their war cries from
Kabul, Trump and Company huddled with Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater Security, and
billionaire financier Stephen Feinberg, owner of DynCorp, on how to replace US troops with
mercenaries from their training camps.
Give Trump some credit. His war plan is refreshingly vacant of moral posturing. Instead he
views the war through a greedily focused economic lens: Afghanistan as commodity. Over the
course of 16 years, the cratering American operation in Afghanistan has consumed more than $1
trillion, a huge and nearly unchallenged benefaction to military contractors. In 2016, the
Pentagon spent $3.6 million for each US soldier stationed in Afghanistan. A surge of 4,000 to
10,000 additional troops, either as "private military units" or GIs, will come as a welcome new
infusion of cash to the dozens of defense corporations that invested so heavily in his
administration.
The New York Time's Maggie Haberman was thrilled by some most blood-curdling lines
in Trump's big speech on the war, Tweeting: "We are not nation-building again. We are killing
terrorists," says POTUS, in one of his more forceful/best lines of address." All you need to do
to earn the love of the "failing New York Times, " Donald, is to kill-kill-kill and
not re-build what you destroy. Trump's new Afghanistan plan replicates worst aspects of Obama's
awful Af-Pak strategy, with India thrown into the mix just to increase risk of nuclear war. If
Trump continues with this neocon drift, HRC may get a 3 AM call from "the creep" asking her to
replace Rexxon as Secretary of State .
If that living monument to the Confederacy Jefferson B. Sessions was serious about
confronting the rising scourge of opiate addiction in the US, he would start by calling for an
immediate end to US military operations in Afghanistan.
Forget marijuana, the real gateway to
heroin abuse is war. Since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, opium production has
swelled, now accounting for more than one-third of the wrecked Afghan economy. In the last two
years alone, opium poppy yields have doubled, a narcotic blowback now hitting the streets of
American cities from Amarillo to Pensacola. With every drone strike in the Helmond Province, a
thousand more poppies bloom.
There has never been progress by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, unless you are asking the
U.S. military contractors or the Afghan drug barons, of whom an extremely large share are our
allies in the Afghan government, militias and security forces, there has only been suffering
and destruction. American politicians, pundits and generals will speak about "progress" made by
the 70,000 American troops put into Afghanistan by President Obama beginning in 2009, along
with an additional 30,000 European troops and 100,000 private contractors, however the hard and
awful true reality is that the war in Afghanistan has only escalated since 2009, never
stabilizing or deescalating; the Taliban has increased in strength by tens of thousands,
despite tens of thousands of casualties and prisoners; and American and Afghan casualties have
continued to grow every year of the conflict, with U.S. casualties declining only when U.S.
forces began to withdraw in mass numbers from parts of Afghanistan in 2011, while Afghan
security forces and civilians have experienced record casualties every year since those numbers
began to be kept by the UN.
Similarly, any progress in reconstructing or developing Afghanistan has been found to be non
existent despite the more than $100 billion spent by the United States on such efforts by the
Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR). $100 billion, by the way, is more
money than was spent on the Marshall Plan when that post-WWII reconstruction plan is put into
inflation adjusted dollars. Oft repeated claims, such as millions of Afghan school girls going
to school, millions of Afghans having access to improved health care and Afghan life expectancy
dramatically increasing, and the construction of an Afghan job building economy have been
exposed as nothing more than public relations lies. Often displayed as modern Potemkin Villages
to visiting journalists and congressional delegations and utilized to justify continued budgets
for the Pentagon and USAID, and, so, to allow for more killing, like America's reconstruction
program in Iraq, the reconstruction program in Afghanistan has proven to be a failure and its
supposed achievements shown to be virtually non-existent, as documented by multiple
investigations by SIGAR, as well as by investigators and researchers from organizations such as
the UN, EU, IMF, World Bank, etc.
Tonight, the American people will hear again the great lie about the progress the American
military once made in Afghanistan after "the Afghan Surge", just as we often hear the lie about
how the American military had "won" in Iraq. In Iraq it was a political compromise that brought
about a cessation of hostilities for a few short years and it was the collapse of the political
balance that had been struck that led to the return to the violence of the last several years.
In Afghanistan there has never even been an attempt at such a political solution and all the
Afghan people have seen in the last eight years, every year, has been a worsening of the
violence.
Americans will also hear tonight how the U.S. military has done great things for the Afghan
people. You would be hard pressed to find many Afghans outside of the incredibly corrupt and
illegitimate government, a better definition of a kleptocracy you will not find, that the U.S.
keeps in power with its soldiers and $35 billion a year, who would agree with the statements of
the American politicians, the American generals and the pundits, the latter of which are mostly
funded, directly or indirectly, by the military companies. It is important to remember that for
three straight elections in Afghanistan the United States government has supported shockingly
fraudulent elections, allowing American soldiers to kill and die while presidential and
parliamentary elections were brazenly stolen. It is also important to remember that many
members of the Afghan government are themselves warlords and drug barons, many of them guilty
of some of the worst human rights abuses and war crimes, the same abuses of which the Taliban
are guilty, while the current Ghani government, and the previous Karzai government, have
allowed egregious crimes to continue against women, including laws that allow men to legally
rape their wives.
Whatever President Trump announces tonight about Afghanistan, a decision he teased on
Twitter, as if the announcement were a new retail product launch or television show episode, as
opposed to the somber and painful reality of war, we can be assured the lies about American
progress in Afghanistan will continue, the lies about America's commitment to human rights and
democratic values will continue, the profits of the military companies and drug barons will
also continue, and of course the suffering of the Afghan people will surely continue.
Matthew Hoh is a member of the advisory boards of Expose Facts, Veterans For Peace and
World Beyond War. In 2009 he resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan in
protest of the escalation of the Afghan War by the Obama Administration. He previously had been
in Iraq with a State Department team and with the U.S. Marines. He is a Senior Fellow with the
Center for International Policy.
"... What is clear is that the US lacks any confidence in the Afghanistan military to defend whatever quasi-democracy we have established and we are not going to set about chasing terrorists, around the country. I would note that the Taliban are not terrorists. Though I suspect that is about to change. ..."
"... More likely is that this crazy contractor idea takes over and we turn Afghanistan into a lackluster version of the East India Company. Where is our Edmund Burke? ..."
"... I teach community college freshman who do not even know who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, nor do they know why we are in Afghanistan. Their top three guesses for who was behind 9/11 were 1. Russia, 2. China, 3. North Korea. ..."
"... Former mining guy checking in here. This mineral resources argument is a fantasy, pure and simple. Mineral resources, with the possible exception of gold, require modern transportation. Get this through your heads, guys, rocks are heavy. Afghanistan is landlocked, extremely mountainous, with horrible roads, no railroads, and limited water resources. ..."
"... This is an unquestionable defeat for Trump's voters ..."
"... The problem with having an empire is that eventually the empire owns you. It must be preserved and defended at any cost. A few thousand troops will not make a difference. Thus the classic dilemma: we can't win and we can't leave. ..."
"... Two things 1st) Trump needs the military's support if he wants to stay in power. He will obey the military. 2nd) You give these deadlines they can't keep so you get rid of the deadline. Typical mismanagement. ..."
"... My guess is that despite what Trump says career US military and diplomatic leaders were more interested in sending a signal to not just Pakistan but also China, Iran and to a lesser extent Russia and other Middle East countries that the US was not going to allow itself to be pushed out of South Asia. ..."
"... One can blame Trump for caving. But the real engine behind this is the sheer inertia of money and career. It turns out to be an unstoppable force: unthinking, blind, and stupid. Welcome to Idiocracy. ..."
Conflict Deaths and the song goes on
Span
Casualties
American Revolutionary War 1775-1783 25,000
Northwest Indian War 1785-1795 ~1,056
Quasi-War 1798-1800 514
War of 1812 1812-1815 ~20,000
1st Seminole War 1817-1818 36
Black Hawk War 1832 305
2nd Seminole War 1835-1842 1,535
Mexican-American War 1846-1848 13,283
3rd Seminole War 1855-1858 26 American Civil War 1861-1865 ~625,000
Indian Wars 1865-1898 919
Great Sioux War 1875-1877 314
Spanish-American War 1898 2,446
Philippine-American War 1898-1913 4,196
Boxer Rebellion 1900-1901 131
Mexican Revolution 1914-1919 ~35
Haiti Occupation 1915-1934 148
World War 1 1917-1918 116,516
North Russia Campaign 1918-1920 424
American Expeditionary Force Siberia 1918-1920 328
Nicaragua Occupation 1927-1933 48 World War 2 1941-1945 405,399
Korean War 1950-1953 36,516 Vietnam War 1955-1975 58,209
El Salvador Civil War 1980-1992 37
Beirut 1982-1984 266
Grenada 1983 19
Panama 1989 40
Persian Gulf War 1990-1991 258
Operation Provide Comfort 1991-1996 19
Somalia Intervention 1992-1995 43
Bosnia 1995-2004 12
NATO Air Campaign Yugoslavia 1999 20
Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) 2001-2014 2,356
Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) 2003-2012 4,489
What if Trump's character and his supporters' character (lack thereof) made
it easy for this to come about? I know here at TAC there was an effort to
make Trump_vs_deep_state appear to be non-confrontational but Trump's a good con-man
and those of us who were/are #neverTrump saw that years ago and now that
he's in numerous bad spots, he'll do what humans like him (of such low character)
have always done distract and posture and pick fights that kill other people
in a quest to feel like a winner again God help us through this and maybe
this time we'll learn our lesson.
" . . . accepted a stalemate and armistice with the Chinese-backed North
Koreans, and it was true again in 1975, when the U.S. suffered an ignominious
defeat and 58,000 dead at the hands of pajama-clad guerrillas and the North
Vietnamese army."
Since the US military was not in Vietnam in 1975, I it's going to be
very tough to read through the rest of this. One of these days the self
flagellation about Vietnam will eventually cease. Our departure was premature,
but a defeat it was not.
Good grief. Aside from the US Embassy, the military presence in Vietnam
was minimal. We all but departed in 1973. Had we remained, it most likely
would have modeled the situation between North and South Korea.
What is clear is that the US lacks any confidence in the Afghanistan
military to defend whatever quasi-democracy we have established and we are
not going to set about chasing terrorists, around the country. I would note
that the Taliban are not terrorists. Though I suspect that is about to change.
@George_Patton : "he [Trump] will let those Arabs in Afghanistan know whose
boss. I thought this was the american CONSERVATIVE, not the American Pansy."
You borrowed the honorable name of Patton. But the real George Patton
wouldn't fight a stupid, unnecessary war. The real George Patton was a military
scholar who closely studied his enemy; you can bet your a** he would know
that Afghans aren't Arabs.
Ignorance like this gives American conservatism a bad name. TAC's writers
are trying to fix that. Get out of their way.
Donnie was not ENTIRELY silent on Afghanistan's natural resources. Kevin
Drum heard this tidbit, and confirmed it from the transcript:
"In this struggle, the heaviest burden will continue to be borne by the
good people of Afghanistan and their courageous armed forces. As the prime
minister of Afghanistan has promised, we are going to participate in economic
development to help defray the cost of this war to us."
"'Three yards and a cloud of dusty'" is a reference to a classic of American
football, Woody Hayes. But any true college football enthusiast knows
the sordid way in which Coach Hayes saw his great career end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEVJyf0ft3I
He was too stubborn for his own good. Americans of the post-Vietnam breed,
like football fans, no longer take to three yards and a cloud of dust. Even
if it was worth trying in Afghanistan, this country couldn't do it for long.
More likely is that this crazy contractor idea takes over and we turn
Afghanistan into a lackluster version of the East India Company. Where is
our Edmund Burke?
"how the US can get supplies to Afghanistan without Pakistan?"
This has always been a Pakistan demand: in the main, not so much for
Afghanistan but to retain so-called defenses against India. Pakistan has
steadfastly subsidized interlopers in Afghanistan w/ the dear hope that
they'll aid in any skirmish in the Hindu Kush.
Three yards and a cloud of dust worked well for Ohio State in the 1970s.
They don't play football like that anymore.
We have strategies for containment or for mitigating greater damage not
for winning. Like Donald Rumsfeld, we as a country mostly go about our business
not caring and not even thinking about it because the toll is "an acceptable
death rate."
I teach community college freshman who do not even know who was responsible
for the 9/11 attacks, nor do they know why we are in Afghanistan. Their
top three guesses for who was behind 9/11 were 1. Russia, 2. China, 3. North
Korea.
I think you are in the minority both here and in the country. We who
want to make America Great Again, can only do so if we show how strong we
are. And I admire Patton, he studied the enemy to kill them, thats what
military people do. Not Pansies. At least, EliteCommInc understands this.
We think we lost Vietnam because it was pounded into us by the liberal media.
We won that war, and left because it was time for us to leave.
Former mining guy checking in here. This mineral resources argument
is a fantasy, pure and simple. Mineral resources, with the possible
exception of gold, require modern transportation. Get this through your
heads, guys, rocks are heavy. Afghanistan is landlocked, extremely mountainous,
with horrible roads, no railroads, and limited water resources.
In
the case of gold, artisanal mining (Joe and Bubba with a couple bulldozers
and a heap leach pad) might be able to make a few bucks. Everything else
requires either cheap bulk transportation (trains or ships) or requires
the construction of concentrators and smelters nearby. Those facilities
need water, and a local workforce.
None of that infrastructure exists now, and none will be constructed
realistically within the next 16 years. And if it were, where would all
the goodies go? West through Iran, northeast through to China, so who would
be benefitting from all that expense?
A few more stars for the brass, many more $ for the defense industry. At
the cost of more dead and maimed – ours and theirs. Their dead and maimed
will increase the number of those who "love" us. And we will foot the bill.
I was hoping for something else.
No surprises here. Trump is surrounded by military. When one thinks about
it, we are typically a waring nation always involved in a war or some conflict
we choose to stick our nose in. Obama had zero use for the military brass
and therefore the brass had zero influence for 8 long years.
The problem with having an empire is that eventually the empire owns
you. It must be preserved and defended at any cost. A few thousand troops
will not make a difference. Thus the classic dilemma: we can't win and we
can't leave.
This is the definition of a defeat. We can send as many troops as we
want, we can keep them there as long as we want, we can drop as many bombs
as we want, we can kill as many people as we want, but we can't control
the country.
Two things 1st) Trump needs the military's support if he wants to stay
in power. He will obey the military. 2nd) You give these deadlines they
can't keep so you get rid of the deadline. Typical mismanagement.
@George_Patton – "We who want to make America Great Again, can only do so
if we show how strong we are. "
But Trump's not strong. He's weak! He can't even show his generals who's
boss, like Truman did, or Lincoln. He can't even show Bibi Netanyahu who's
boss! He lets Israel rip us off while we do all the fighting. Hell, Trump
can't even show MITCH MCCONNELL who's boss! We need a strong, conservative
American president, not a weak punk like Trump.
Interesting that this article or any others on the same topic make any mention
of the concerns the US government and/or military have regarding the warming
relationship between Pakistan and China and the recent agreement between
these countries to develop a road/rail link between China and the development
of a new deep sea port on the coast of the Arabian Sea in Pakistan.
My guess is that despite what Trump says career US military and diplomatic
leaders were more interested in sending a signal to not just Pakistan but
also China, Iran and to a lesser extent Russia and other Middle East countries
that the US was not going to allow itself to be pushed out of South Asia.
This is a huge victory for everyone who wants to see the U.S. continue bleeding
itself to death while feeding a bloated 'defense' and imperial bureaucracy.
One can blame Trump for caving. But the real engine behind this is
the sheer inertia of money and career. It turns out to be an unstoppable
force: unthinking, blind, and stupid. Welcome to Idiocracy.
March Hare. When I consider the emergence of China since the death of Mao
I would not rule out the possibility that its engineers and Afghan work
force could create the infrastructure needed to make Afghanistan's mining
profitable in less than 16 years.
"My guess is that despite what Trump says career US military and diplomatic
leaders were more interested in sending a signal to not just Pakistan but
also China, Iran and to a lesser extent Russia and other Middle East countries
that the US was not going to allow itself to be pushed out of South Asia."
Trump is the President. Its his job and duty and responsibility to push
back against those "leaders." Same as it was Obama's. Both failed.
Also, you have hit on the very reason why the US, even if one concedes
that it must play the Great Game, can certainly afford to be "pushed out
of South Asia." Russia and China and Pakistan and India and Iran and Turkey
and the Arabs, and others, all have interests there. There is a natural
balance of power in Mainland Asia. The US simply does not need to be a player
there. Central Asia is far from any vital US interest, any US treaty ally,
any important shipping lane, any important anything. If there is one place
on Earth that the US can reasonably concede to others the task of policing
and controlling it has got to be Central Asia.
I do object to the title of the article, this isn't a losing strategy, this
is a not-winning strategy. You might ask yourself what you are doing playing
a game where winning is impossible?
This has always been a Pakistan demand: in the main, not so much for
Afghanistan but to retain so-called defenses against India. Pakistan has
steadfastly subsidized interlopers in Afghanistan w/ the dear hope that
they'll aid in any skirmish in the Hindu Kush.
To understand Pakistan's role in Afghanistan, you need to look at their
border, which is called the Durand Line, after some Brit who drew it on
the map.
The Durand Line cuts right through the Pashtun homelands, so you have
Pashtuns on both sides. Afghanistan is dominated by Pashtuns, and they have
never recognized the Durand Line – in fact, Afghanistan was the only country
in the world that voted against admitting Pakistan to the UN in 1948 for
this reason, and even the Taliban refused to recognize the Durand Line.
Pakistan is dominated by Punjabis, and their nightmare is that if a strong
Afghan government were to emerge, their Pashtun province of Khyber-Pakhtunkwa
might want to secede and join their fellow Pashtuns in Afghanistan. To prevent
this, they have undermined every government in Afghanistan and kept it weak
by funding rival tribes.
Since it is politically incorrect to say that they are undermining a
fellow Muslim state, the Pakistani government puts out some BS about the
need for "strategic depth" against India. India has fought numerous wars
against Pakistan but they were border skirmishes – neither side advanced
more than 20-30 km inside the other's territory (1971 is another story).
We are already blessed with 200 million Muslims in India – no one in his
right mind wants to occupy Pakistan and take in another 200 million, a lot
of whom are fanatics and jihadis. If there was some way to saw Pakistan
off and float it out into the Indian Ocean, we would do it in a heartbeat.
By the way, the Hindu Kush is part of the border between Afghanistan
and Pakistan, not with India. No Hindus left alive there by the Religion
of Peace for anyone to worry about.
Trump Declares Open-Ended War in Afghanistan Trump Abandons 'Instinct to
Withdraw'
Jason Ditz Posted on
August 21,
2017 Categories News
Tags Afghanistan ,
Trump In his Monday night
speech on the Afghan War, President Trump committed the US to an essentially open-ended
escalation of the conflict without any specific limitations, while granting commanders
broader authority to unilaterally target "the enemy."
What that outcome looks like, or how specifically he plans to get there are anyone's
guess. Fox News reported that White House sources told them before the speech that Trump was
going to announce 4,000 more troops for Afghanistan.
But President Trump said that the US strategy would be secret, saying the US is removing
any timetables for ending the war in Afghanistan. He said that he will not talk publicly
about troop numbers in Afghanistan or plans for ongoing military activity there. While
arguing that "America's enemies must never know our plans."
Trump's secrecy also means the American public will have no idea how the Afghan War is
being prosecuted.
This mirrors the decision to make troop levels in Iraq and Syria officially secret, but is
also a much broader commitment. He set the stage for general escalation of an Afghan war
that, over the past 16 years, has shown itself to endure through more or less any escalation
conceivable. In committing to continue that war until victory, Trump effectively made the war
permanent.
Trump presented continuation as both about 9/11, and about how opposed he is to the 2011
US withdrawal from Iraq, each presented as a reason not to withdraw, but seemingly each an
excuse that's never going to not stand in the way of ending the war.
The broad message of Trump's speech seemed to be that the US wasn't aggressive enough in
Afghanistan so far, criticizing President Obama for "micromanaging" the conflict. Trump said
he believes that US military victories come from "judgement and expertise of wartime
commanders."
Trump gave some lip-service to economic aid for Afghanistan, particularly pushing India to
"do more." But he insisted that the US had abandoned nation-building, declaring "we are not
nation-building again, we're killing terrorists."
This declaration also gives the impression of a permanent war, claiming 20 distinct
terrorist organizations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and vowing to lift restrictions on
"our warfighters." He vowed that "no place is out of the reach of American might."
Ultimately, an escalation of 4,000 troops and a re-commitment to the status quo likely
would've been much milder than what Trump appears to be proposing. Trump's determination to
keep troop levels secret leaves the door open to a series of endless escalations down the
road, which the American public are liable to never hear about.
Afghanistan
- Trump To Announce Four More One-Year Wars
This evening Trump will announce a new "
path forward " in the occupation of Afghanistan. According to the usual leaks it will be
very same path the U.S. has taken for 16 years.
Several thousands soldiers from the U.S. and various NATO countries will (in vane) train the
Afghan army. Special Forces and CIA goons will raid this or that family compound on someone's
say-so. Bombs will be dropped on whatever is considered a target.
Trump will announce that 1,000 or so troops will be added to the current contingent. About
15,000 foreign troops will be in Afghanistan. About three contractors per each soldier will be
additionally deployed.
Trump knows that this "path forward" is nonsense that leads nowhere, that the best option
for all foreign troops in Afghanistan is to simply leave:
We have wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Their government
has zero appreciation. Let's get out!
But neither the military nor the CIA nor the local Afghan government will let the U.S.
leave. Fear mongering is abound: "What happens if Afghanistan becomes a hotbed for
international terrorists?" But few if any international terrorist incident in the "west" were
ever organized in Afghanistan. In all recent incidents the culprits were locals.
For the military it is all about optics. The generals do not want to concede that they lost
another war. The CIA wants to keep is militarized forces and drones which it justifies through
its engagement in Afghanistan. The drug production in Afghanistan, which the U.S. never really
tried to suppress, is rumored to finance "black" CIA operations just like it did during the
Vietnam war and throughout various South American conflicts. The members of the Afghan
government all live off U.S. largess. The war in
Afghanistan is a racket paid for with the lives of countless Afghans and U.S. taxpayer
money.
Now tightly under control of neo-conservative leaning generals Trump had little chance to
make a different decision. He had asked his team for alternatives but
none were given to him:
The president told McMaster "to go back to the drawing board," the official said. "But he
just kept coming back with the same thing."
Trump's former strategic advisor Steve Bannon promoted an idea of Eric Prince, a shady
provider of international mercenaries. Afghanistan would be given to a private for-profit
entity comparable to the Brutish East-India Company. That company, with its own large army,
robbed India of all possible valuables and nearly became a state of its own. But Prince and
Bannon forgot to tell the
end of that company's story. It came down after a large mutiny in India defeated its armed
forces and had to be bailed out by the government. The end state of an East India Company like
entity in Afghanistan would the same as it is now.
Then there is the fairy tale of the mineral rich Afghanistan. $1 trillion of iron, copper,
rare-metals and other nice stuff could be picked out of the ground. But in reality the costs of
picking minerals in Afghanistan is, for various reasons, prohibitive.
The Bannon/Prince plan was lunatic but it was at least somewhat different than the
never
changing ideas of the military:
The Defense Secretary [Mattis] has been using this line in meetings: "Mr. President, we
haven't fought a 16-year war so much as we have fought a one-year war, 16 times."
That line has already been used
five years ago to describe the war on Afghanistan. (It originally describes the 10 year war
in Vietnam.) Mattis did not explain why or how that repetitive one year rhythm would now
change.
A "new" part of the plan is to put pressure on Pakistan to stop the financing and supplying
of Taliban groups. That is not in Pakistan's interest and is not going to happen. The Trump
administration wants to hold back the yearly cash payment to the Pakistani military. This has
been tried before and the Pakistani response was to close down the U.S. supply route to
Afghanistan. An alternative supply route through Russia had been developed but has now been
shut down over U.S. hostilities towards that country. The U.S. can not sustain a deployment in
Afghanistan without a sea-land route into the country.
The Afghan army is, like the government, utterly corrupt and filled with people who do not
want to engage in fighting. More "training" will not change that. The U.S. proxy government is
limited to a few larger cities. It claims to control many districts but its forces are often
constricted to central compounds while the Taliban rule the countryside. In total the Taliban
and associated local war lords hold
more than half of the country and continue to gain support. The alleged ISIS derivative in
Afghanistan was originally formed out of Pakistani Taliban
by the Afghan National Directorate of Security which is under the control of the CIA:
In Nangarhar, over a year ago, the vanguard of the movement was a group of Pakistani
militants who had lived there for years as 'guests' of the Afghan government and local
people. While initially avoiding attacks on Afghan forces, they made their new allegiances
known by attacking the Taleban and taking their territory.
ISIS in Afghanistan, founded as an anti-Taliban force, is just another form of the usual
Afghan warlordism.
During 16 years the U.S. failed to set a realistic strategic aim for the occupation of
Afghanistan. It still has none. Without political aim the military is deployed in tactical
engagements that make no long lasting differences. Any attempts to negotiate some peace in
Afghanistan requires extensive engagement with the Taliban, Pakistan, China, Russia and Iran.
No one in Washington is willing to commit to that.
Trump's likely decision means that the story of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan will
continue throughout the next years exactly as it happened during the last 16 years. The
decision, once made, is unlikely to change until the next presidential election. The 16
one-year-wars in Afghanistan will become 20 one-year-wars for no perceivable gain.
The only conceivable event that could change the situation is an incident with a large
number of U.S. military casualties. That could lead to a groundswell of anti-war sentiment
which could press Congress into legislating an end of the war. But are the Taliban interested
in achieving that?
Posted by b on August 21, 2017 at 01:54 PM | Permalink
Left unvoiced is the actual strategic reason for the Outlaw US Empire's occupation of
Afghanistan: It puts Imperial Stormtroopers smack-dab in the middle of China and Russia's
plans for Eurasian economic and eventual political integration while allowing the CIA to reap
the benefits of its opium/heroin export program which is used to destabilize nations
globally--including the homeland--which fits in quite well with the sole Neolibralcon policy
goal of Full Spectrum Domination. As b mentioned, only dialog between regional actors--all of
which now have some form of SCO membership--will finally solve the Afghan Problem. Of course,
it would be of immense benefit if the pretext for the Outlaw US Empire presence there was
proven to be the massive Big Lie that it is, but I don't expect the Truth to become known
about until ??? G
Given the strategic reason above, I don't expect the Outlaw US Empire to retreat from
Afghanistan until the Neoliberalcons are defeated domestically, which will require a massive
Movement within the nation to regain control of the federal government and monetary
policy--gaining just the Executive isn't nearly enough as Trump's proven.
OT: For those wondering what happened with Syrian Perspectives, it changed platforms and has
a new URL, https://www.syrianperspective.com/
On Topic: It appears Mercouris at the Duran decided to write something similar to
b, but that site's new format is still plagued by very long running ad scripts making the
content very difficult to read. Can't even copy/paste the URL. What a shame!
make work project........... it never ends.................
"But neither the military nor the CIA nor the local Afghan government will let the U.S.
leave. Fear mongering is abound: "What happens if Afghanistan becomes a hotbed for
international terrorists?"
of course this is the rationale for it all - terrorism....
war on communism, war on drugs, war on terrorism....
not sure what they replace terrorism with, so for the time being it will have to be the
rationale de jour........
@2 kalen.. propping up the us$, ensuring the continuation of the us$ is indeed
paramount..
Defund the war machine and piss off the war party. Stop the printing press of paper "money."
Repeal the 16th amendment.
The US Fed thinks that it can manage the healthcare of 320 million Americans while
simultaneously, it cannot manage the healthcare of 9 million Veterans.
I'm not a great fan of the Duran new design, but I can read its stories okay. I think you
may need to use Firefox browser and install the AdBlock Plus add-on. It's free and easy. The
wonderful thing about Firefox is its built-in Reader View button, which strips all the excess
media out of a page and formats just the story itself in a perfectly readable column width,
with a nice size font. You can actually lean back and read. It's amazing how this helps
comprehension. I often read b's articles and even a lot of the comments this way.
The alternative would be to find people in the U.S. govt who actually understand the Taliban.
You would think that after 16yrs, that we would have developed some expertise on the true
structure of Afghanistan.
The only beef we had with the Taliban was that they harbored Al Qaeda. Couldn't we bribe
them and let them keep their own country as long as they don't host international terrorists?
I don't know the answer to this question but that is the 'new' approach that I'd explore. I
recall that the Taliban seemed a bit put off when Al Qaeda destroyed the WTC and asked to
review the evidence. They made some reference to not wanting to violate some guest code.
Perhaps we were too heavy handed with them.
Doubling down on failure (or insanity by doing the same thing but expecting a different
result).
For some reason, our troop training skills are not working. The ones we trained in Iraq gave
up Mosul. The ones we trained in Jordan joined al Nusra and ISIS in Syria. And the ones we've
trained in Afghanistan still cannot secure the country.
The following members of the United Nations have made statements about their recognition
of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol as federal subjects of Russia[35][36][37][38]:
'We haven't fought a 16 yr. war we have fought the same 1yr war 16 times'.
It is distressing that our core competence is selling each other BS. It reminds me of all
of the slick arguments I hear about how woefully underfunded the U.S. military is.
We must have hired Consultants because I've read over a dozen articles with the same
format ...
1. As a percent of GDP our military budget is at historic lows (creative accounting, it's
closer to 5% of GDP, not the advertised 3%).
2. 50% of our aircraft are not operational, along with other readiness scare stories (so
we should reward incompetence?)
3. The military is only 15% of the budget (flat out lie, it's 40% of discretionary
spending and owns about that much of the annual debt service that they also don't count. If
you eliminated Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, our payroll taxes would disappear, not
our deficit)
But the argument sounds good and never gets challenged on FOX/CNN.
Thanks for your help hints. I was finally able to read the entire article with almost no
interruptions. As the title suggests, it's a compare/contrast essay detailing the two
different experiences, goals and costs incurred. Mercouris points out that the USSR didn't
lose in Afghanistan--it fulfilled its policy goal and left--which is contrary to the West's
propaganda on the subject. It's a decent read, but Mercouris, like b, neglects to mention the
actual strategic goal of the Outlaw US Empire's invasion and occupation.
Also Grieved, thanks for your thoughtful comments in your reply to me on a previous
thread. Liked your comment at The Saker's latest Neocon thread.
" former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said that it "made no sense" to expand the
military's presence without a new strategy, while Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin put it this
way:
"We've tried this before, we've tried to fortify our effort in Afghanistan under
Republican and Democratic presidents, and the fact is we're still in a situation where the
Taliban controls a massive part of the territory," Durbin told MSNBC in May. "We need to have
an honest answer to the question: Will the Afghans ever be in a position where there is less
corruption and there is less incompetence and they're able to stand up and defend their own
nation? It's time for some honest answers." "
And Donald Trump has the answer tonight? When Durbin says "their own nation", I believe he
is referring to the geographic boundaries assigned by Western commerce. That is the failure
of understanding, that a central government imposed on the warlord/tribal mosaic that is the
Afghan territories is doomed. Rather than troops, as Christian C. suggests @12, sending tons
of cash might be more persuasive than arming one band against another. A complete waste of
spec ops troops absent a true civil war against a hated tyrant.
The US project in Afghanistan started before the Eurasian project got going. Afghanistan
is is peripheral to the Eurasian project for the time being; it is currently economically
unimportant and will remain so until considerable development of infrastructure in the region
takes place. Having the resources is one thing. Having the infrastructure to develop those
resources is quite another.
"In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just a part of
a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I
never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in
suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher ups. This is typical with
everyone in the military service."*
~ Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1935 https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
Total Vision 2010--the policy paper that announced the #1 policy goal of the Outlaw US
Empire, nee New World Order--was published in 1996, and the plan to invade Afghanistan was
put into motion about 5 months prior to the "justification event" on 911. Total Vision 2020
is the latest update to the initial policy goal and was published during Bu$hCo.
The Eurasian vision was begun during Deng's years as China's leader and has accelerated
ever since.
@21 Think of the vast amounts of equipment, weapons, fuel, food, bottled water etc. consumed
daily. It all has to be flown in or moved across Russia by rail (do they still do that?) and
the troops and contractors have to be rotated in and out. Afghanistan has considerable
economic importance.
I'll attempt to read between the lines for those outside the US trying to understand all
this:
DynCorp's annual military contractor revenue from the US Government is reportedly more
than Germany's entire defense budget of around $42 billion (€36 billion). Only a few
billion from Afghanistan, but business there could use a shot in the arm.
Billionaire psychopath Stephen Feinberg controls DynCorp, bathed in the river of
blood/profits from Afghanistan (among others). He doesn't like the US military's performance
there - it's hurting business. Feinberg wants to fire US Afghanistan commander Gen. John
Nicholson (via his lapdog Trump, of course) but that alone will not help DynCorp much.
DynCorp is missing out on the lucrative combat merc market in Afghanistan. Most of the
military contractors it supplies are support, and only a few 'security' types are armed.
Feinberg knows supplying actual combat mercs is where DynCorpo will reap the real
profits.
Problem for Feinberg is the US military hates mercs and won't use them much (mostly
because mercs are homicidal psychopaths). Solution? Why stop at firing Nicholson? Fire ALL
the US military commanders in Afghanistan and replace them with obedient, profitable
dual-citizen DynCorp commanders. The Mini-Me US President Jared Kushner just loves this plan.
Maybe he gets a few DynCorp stock options out of the deal.
Some other issues:
Outsourcing the US Military might wake up a few of the intellectual lepar military
commanders to their duty to defend the US Constitution. US Military coup?
Solution: Mad Dog Mattis, of course: "Obey your Commander in Chief's unconstitutional
orders, you insolent bastards! Constitutional law and critical thinking is way above a
general's pay grade - leave that to CNN. Train your merc replacements in Afghanistan and shut
the hell UP!
Title 10 of the US Legal Code on the military prohibits using mercs in combat
Solution: Screw the law - that's why DynCorp bribes Congress. Rather than using illegal Title
10 military contractors in Afghanistan, Congress and Trump will classify their activities
from now on under Title 50: intelligence activities. See? Nothing at all to do with military
operations.
The US military doesn't control the current CIA spooks and won't be able to control the
new DynCorp mercs
Solution: If all Afghanistan mercs are reclassified as Title 50 spooks, then they report to
the CIA and its chain of command. The US military in Afghanistan will not and doesn't need to
control them - that's the point.
Who will command US troops if the military commanders are sent packing?
Solution: The Afghani slaughter will become a CIA operation, not a US military one. It will
complement the CIA's booming opium 'fund-raising' business there. US combat troops will just
be assigned to the CIA operation (combat, not poppy farming). Give all the US soldiers sent
there some kind of special berets (anything but green) and call them Special Forces. Shhh!
They're now involved in secret spook operations. Don't ask any questions.
How can the CIA possibly command so many mercs and US soldiers in Afghanistan?
Solution: That's where ex-Blackwater war criminal Eric Prince and his private UAE-based army
and air force come in. The CIA will simply hire contractor commanders for 'their' command
structure that will replace the current US military one. Whether Prince rebrands his current
commanders as DynCorp or uses some other ruse, he can flesh out the line staff from his
current merc army. The CIA will chose all the senior contractor commanders who will then be
hired by whatever DynCorp names that business.
Who will be the overall commander of military ops in Afghanistan going forward if Gen.
Nicholson is canned?
Soluton: Trump will choose an overall commander, reportedly with the title of viceroy
. My jaw hit the floor at that one. Here's Wikipedia:
"...A viceroy is a regal official who runs a country, colony, city, province, or
sub-national state, in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the
territory. The term derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of" and the
French word roi, meaning "king"..."
Chief DynCorp psychopath and dual-US/Israeli citizen Stephen Feinberg himself is
interested in the job according to Prince. An investment banker commanding psychopath mercs
slaughtering Afghanis in the name of the US - imagine that. Plus, Afghanistan is right next
door to Iran - convenient for US invasions and such. Oh, that's right. DynCorp is a business.
They'll gladly invade Iran for anyone with a big enough bag of shekels.
"On your knees and bow your heads, Afghani peons! All hail the supreme commander of all
Afghanistan, Viceroy Stephen Feinberg."
Surely Trump can't sell this plan to the US public. They're pretty dim, but this scheme
is just over the top!
Solution: Think again. This will be spun as a mere 1000 US combat troop surge... oh, and a
few contractors. Intelligence contractors, not mercs. The details of who they are and what
they will be doing is classified. Just never mind them. And as soon as US military commanders
and troops have their replacements trained up, they'll get to come home. Yay! Imagine the CNN
video at the airport of a weary US soldier returning from Afghanistan to his loving family.
JOY!
But what about the utter debasement of the US Constitution and myriad of war crimes the
US government will commit by doing something so insane?
Solution: Buy DynCorp stock and shut the hell up about the American's dumb-assed
Constitution. Besides, who are you to question the Viceroy?
For some reason, our troop training skills are not working. The ones we trained in Iraq gave
up Mosul. The ones we trained in Jordan joined al Nusra and ISIS in Syria. And the ones we've
trained in Afghanistan still cannot secure the country.
Posted by: Curtis | Aug 21, 2017 4:07:36 PM | 13
There are also success stories. The training program in Mali had good students and bad
students. Good students joined the rebellion of the Tuareg and clobbered the bad ones. Bad
ones were pissed to be sent by civilian government to the scorching sands of Sahara and made
a coup. The Tuareg had enough weapons from the fallen Libya to engage in infighting,
temporarily won by the group that claimed ISIS affiliation. Each group had some degree of
success.
Common theme is that USA offers no idea that would fire up troops under training. Did they
try "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" (the catch-phrase of the comic-book character
Superman). Or Here I
come to save the day! I think that the crux is economic development and decrease in
abject poverty, but does anyone in Administration have an idea how that could be done?
@26 "Imagine the CNN video at the airport of a weary US soldier returning from Afghanistan to
his loving family. JOY!"
I can see it already. He will have his faithful dog with him that he rescued from a ruined
Afghan village. His faithful translator unfortunately wasn't so lucky.
- The warlords are NOT "on the same page" as the Taliban !!!! The afghan people are/were
abused by the warlords, were suffering under the warlords. The warlords performed henous
crimse against the afghan population.
- The afghan people were treated better by the Taliban than by the warlords. That allowed the
Taliban to make a comeback in the 1990s. But it also meant that the afghans suffered under
the religious islamic fanaticism of that same Taliban.
- With the US invasion the Taliban was defeated and allowed the warlords to make a comeback
and now the afghan people were suffereing from/under the warlords again. The warlords were
needed by the US military to protect the transports that bring in all the goods that the US
military, other foreign troops and all mercenaries need to continue their "occupation" of
Afghanistan. Without those supplies those military forces will be "left hanging out to
dry".
- Generals like David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal were both in command in Afghanistan and
recognized this hopeless situation and left their afghan post early. McChrystal retired and
Petraeus became director of the CIA
"... The US doesn't like Russia. So it doesn't like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). India and Pakistan joined SCO as full members on 9 June 2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan. ..."
Posted by: From The Hague | Aug 20, 2017 3:55:12 AM |
96
What's the purpose of the "escalation"? Why escalate in Afghanistan?
What has happened recently to require such an escaltion?
The US doesn't like Russia. So it doesn't like the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (SCO). India and Pakistan joined SCO as full members on 9 June
2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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United States War Crimes. A Historical Review
