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Cameron, Obama Agree: Continue War on Afghanistan
While corporate media have framed the recent massacre of Afghan civilians by a U.S. soldier as presenting problems with the war strategy and as a PR problem, President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed today their joint view that the war on Afghanistan must go on.
CNN reports that
Both Obama and Cameron referred to the difficulties of recent days, a clear reference to the civilian killings in Kandahar province that brought threats of retaliation from the Taliban and a demand for justice from President Hamid Karzai's government.
The Hill reports on the press conference today in which both leaders expressed their continued war plans:
“I don’t anticipate at this stage that we’ll make any sudden additional changes to the plan that we currently have,” Obama said in a Rose Garden news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron that took place as part of an official visit.
“We’ve already taken out 10,000 troops, and we’re slated to draw down an additional 23,000 by this summer,” Obama continued. “There will be a robust coalition presence during this fighting season, and after the fighting season, in conjunction with our allies ... [we’ll discuss] how to make sure [the drawdown] doesn’t result in a steep cliff after 2014, but rather is gradual.” [...]
While Obama said there will be “multiple challenges” along the way, and that the United States “can’t be naïve about the difficulties of withdrawing from the region,” he added: “If we maintain a steady, responsible transition process, which is what we’ve designed, then I am confident that we can put Afghans in a position where they can deal with their own security.”
Cameron, who stood beside Obama on the warm March afternoon, reaffirmed his support, saying, “We will not give up on this mission, because Afghanistan must never again be a safe haven for al Qaeda to launch attacks against us.”
CNN has video of the Cameron and Obama speaking about Afghanistan at the conference today:
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Kathy Kelly remarked on Democracy Now! on the recent massacre of 16 civilians in Afghanistan by a U.S. soldier:
“President Obama and U.S. military brass are depicting a U.S. soldier killing 16 Afghan civilians as an exceptional event. But in fact, this tragedy reflects and encapsulates the U.S. war of choice in Afghanistan. Groups of U.S. soldiers have been breaking into Afghan homes and killing people, without cause or provocation, for the last 11 years. Civilians have been afflicted by aerial bombing by helicopter gunships, drone surveillance and attacks, and night raids.
“In the recent past, Afghan civilians have been appalled and agitated by news of U.S. soldiers that went on killing sprees, cutting off body parts of their victims to save as war trophies. They’ve been repulsed by photos of U.S. soldiers urinating on the corpses of Afghans whom they have killed. The burning of the Quran further enraged civilians. One of the greatest factors contributing to public dismay and hostility towards the foreign forces is the practice of night raids. As many as 40 of these raids happen around the country on some nights, and the U.S. military reports an average of 10 a night. U.S. /NATO soldiers burst into people’s homes and attack people in their sleep.
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79 Comments so far
Show AllI'm starting to miss them.
I guess I should try to find the positive side and admire the current war criminals for their resolute "if at first you don't succeed..." sticktoitiveness.
Might it be that these corporate lackeys would only stop their world-wide bellicose activities, if their own families succumbed to collateral damage?
The bit about 'never again will Afghanistan be a haven for those who want to attack us'-- disregarding the inescapable resentment and blowback caused by occupation, as well as the question of who is attacking whom here-- has to give any rational person cause to wonder about their mental state.
http://www.worldgolf.com/courses/afghanistan/
Perhaps Cameron has whispered into Obama's ear that the United States still has a ways to go before they can match Britain's record of having had the world's largest empire. Or perhaps Cameron has convinced Obama that Britain's desire to slaughter heathens is just as powerful as the United States.
A new phrase for the Amerikan Empire killing machine -- "the fighting season."
What shall we name the other seasons? We could call the one coming to an end the massacre of children and women season.
tomcarberry
Like most of Obama's rhetorical flourishes, "the fighting season" was yet another phrase that was begged, borrowed, and stolen from another source, to wit:
Here is Saint David Petraeus, master propagandist, from late April 2011, self-spinning his own autohagiography using the same phrase:
"The last fighting season: part one -- At a defining moment in the war in Afghanistan, General Petraeus' legacy is on the line."
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan...
"KABUL – The snows of the Hindu Kush have melted and the poppy harvest is winding down.
"That means Afghanistan’s "fighting season" is about to begin.
"The fighting, of course, never really stops, it just intensifies this time of year as Taliban fighters who pulled back to wait out the winter in safe havens inside Pakistan are now returning to Afghanistan.
"And the Taliban returns over the rugged steppes of the Hindu Kush flush with the illicit revenue from vast poppy fields that make Afghanistan the world’s leading supplier of heroin.
"For Gen. David H. Petraeus, this spring will mark a major turning point with more troops in the field than ever in the 10-year conflict. For Petraeus, it also begins what is expected to be his last fighting season here. And GlobalPost confirmed Wednesday from several well-placed sources that Petraeus is to be the White House’s pick to head the Central Intelligence Agency in the fall."
And the Sequel:
"The last fighting season: part two -- When a long, hot summer in Afghanistan is over, Gen. Petraeus will likely be taking the helm of the CIA."
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan...
At least, Global Post presented a dissenting view:
"Afghanistan: Petraeus 'should be ashamed of himself' -- A former UK envoy to Kabul has harsh words for U.S. strategy in Afghanistan."
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan...
The money quote from UK envoy Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles (2007-2009):
“No doubt Petraeus has hammered the Taliban extremely hard,” Cowper-Coles told the Guardian. “I am sure that some of them are more willing to parlay. But, equally, for every dead Pashtun warrior there will be 10 pledged to revenge. I’m afraid I don’t think the present increase in violence is right or proper and its nightly slaughter of the Taliban without a political strategy in place is tactics, not strategy. It is profoundly wrong and it is not conducive to a stable political settlement.”
The UK envoy's words from late May 2011 sound ominously prophetic at this point in time.
As bizarre as the phrase "the fighting season" sounds when emerging from the forked tongue of Barack Obama, the phrase makes more sense from the Afghan perspective since it dates back to the days of the Soviet invasion and occupation. Evidently, the Afghans hunker down during the bitterly cold winters and take up their effective asymmetic warfare in the spring and keep on fighting the invaders and occupiers until the late Fall when the snows of winter descend upon the land.
Obama doesn't have an original thought or phrase in his entire bag of rhetorical tricks, and "the fighting season" is just another example of an appropriated line from other sources.
To your point: Throughout the long duration of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, every season is "massacre of civilians, especially, women and children" season.
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Once again, thanks for the information. You know a lot I don't. Thanks also for the statistics link you posted the other day. Very valuable tool.
Women and children always bear the brunt of war. Queen Elizabeth I sent Sir Humphrey Gilbert to Ireland to conquer the hated Catholics. He ordered his men to kill the women and children because the rebels needed them for support. He cut off the heads of the dead Irish and put them on pikes. The colonists and later the American did similar horrors to the native Americans, scalping and making boots of the natives' skin.
It never ends. The hierarchical nature of agricultural/domestication based societies demands war and slavery. (At least Plato thought so). Thomas Jefferson and other pro-slavery southerners argued that history, in particular of the Greeks and the Romans, taught that all great civilizations needed slavery.
They had a point about the history of slavery. The giant difference in American slavery is it was the first race based slavery and one of the only slave systems where slavery continued through birth. In most ancient societies, once freed slaves would blend back into the population.
But black Americans can't blend into white society, so vast racism continues because the attitudes of racism towards blacks became deeply ingrained centuries ago in America.
The Greeks enslaved Greeks (and others) and the Romans enslaved Romans (and others). The early Christians Europeans (HRE) enslaved so many non-Christian Slavs, that we get the word "slave" from Slav.
While some slavery still exists, capitalists realized that wage slavery works much more efficiently for the rich.
Obama and Cameron Agree: More War!
The Special Relationship:
From Bush and Poodle Blair to Obama and Spaniel Cameron
Cameron bleats: “We will not give up on this mission, because Afghanistan must never again be a safe haven for al Qaeda to launch attacks against us.”
Well, now, that makes perfect sense, because Afghanistan certainly is the only place in the Whole Wide World where al-Qaeda could ever possibly establish a “safe haven” from where they could “launch attacks against us” — and they must never ever do it again! -- no, no, no, not ever!
Obama drones: “If we maintain a steady, responsible transition process, which is what we’ve designed, then I am confident that we can put Afghans in a position where they can deal with their own security.”
The Afghans, who are being put in a position to “deal with their own security” – following a maintained, steady, responsible “transition process” designed by Obama, Inc. -- are still, for the most part, illiterate after 10 plus years of U.S. and NATO occupation. So, I think “confident” is a wee bit too optimistic – but, still, Mr. President, good luck with that cunning plan.
Obama and Cameron: The Deadly Duo
Wanker + Wanker = Twice the Wankers!
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In this upside down, twisted world it is the shit that rises to the top. Just witness these two psychopaths (Obama and Cameron) pounding their chests for more war.
Or politics is like a cup of hot chocolate, the scum always rises.
That really means the opposite, and that "the mission" is "lost" by the US-NATO - or rather won by the Taliban/Pashtuns/Afghans. Hooray!
The Afghan war has been a campaign waged by idiots,"full of sound and fury - and murder - signifying nothing".
According to the time-honored rules of withdrawals pretending not to be, Cameron's statement: "What we can never forget is our forces are making very real progress." - means the precise opposite.
After 10 years in Afghanistan, the US-NATO forces finally realized no progress has been made, and none can be sustained. The Afghan people simply love their homeland too much. "The graveyard of empires", indeed.
The only winners have been the weapons merchants and the western dictator-puppets of rarely named elites, conditioning their populace (US) to eternal war, rescinding civil rights under its pretext. In the shadow of the "permanent" wars, a police state has been erected in the USA, with the EU as hang-arounds.
The people of the US-NATO countries are going through a bad patch. But when the implosion is over, a new and humbler, better world-integrated condition and set of policies may appear. After self-destruction, new sanity. - Hopefully.
Many statements made by politicians are designed to solve the problem of undesirable perceptions, which are usually well founded. Thus, they often say the polar opposite of the truth, with lots strong words around it in order to make it sound convincing. "What we can never forget", "complete", "responsibly", "very real progress" are typical examples.
I shall be your apprentice. Lets see if I got it right:-
"What we can never forget" roughly translates to "I am about to tell a real whopper, and I want you to not only believe it, but remember it forever."
"Very real" is an attempt to conjure substance out of thin air.
Let's change the perspective a bit, as follows:
"England must never again be a safe haven for British thugs such as Cameron and Blair to launch imperialist attacks against other nations."
Pakistan is critical to US goals in this region andit has NOTHING to do with fighting terrorism.
>>Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R – CA) has announced that he is introducing a bill into the House of Representatives calling for the independence of Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, from the rest of Pakistan
Remember the straegy outlined in "The Grand Chessboard" where it concluded that the country that dominated this area would dominate the world. This is the same "Great Game" of Empire that saw the old British Empire go into Afghanistan to check the power of Russia.
Forget about Human rights and terrosim. This IS empire on the behalf of the Corporations and IS an attempt to exert control over the worlds resources. It the very strategy promoted by Zbigniew Brzezinski .
"He is also known as an advocate for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he has been a lifelong practicing member, and as a political commentator on many issues, including opposition to the legalization of same-sex marriage." - Wikipedia
Still, fairly good sci-fi novels once the bias is recognized.