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TechnoratiThe Silent Winter of Escalation
Sunday morning, before dawn, I read in the New York Times that "the Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan" within the next 18 months -- "raising American force levels to about 58,000" in that country. Then I scraped ice off a windshield and drove to the C-SPAN studios, where a picture window showed a serene daybreak over the Capitol dome.
While I was on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" for a live interview, the program aired some rarely seen footage with the voices of two courageous politicians who challenged the warfare state.
So, on Sunday morning, viewers across the country saw Barbara Lee speaking on the House floor three days after 9/11 -- just before she became the only member of Congress to vote against the president's green-light resolution to begin the U.S. military attack on Afghanistan.
"However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint," she said. The date was Sept. 14, 2001. Congresswoman Lee continued: "Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, Let's step back for a moment, let's just pause just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control."
And she said: "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."
The footage of Barbara Lee was an excerpt from the "War Made Easy" documentary film (based on my book of the same name). As she appeared on a TV monitor, I glanced out the picture window. The glowing blue sky and streaky clouds above the Hill looked postcard-serene.
But the silence now enveloping the political non-response to plans for the Afghanistan war is a message of acquiescence that echoes what happened when the escalation of the Vietnam War gathered momentum.
During the mid-1960s, the conventional wisdom was what everyone with a modicum of smarts kept saying: higher U.S. troop levels in Vietnam were absolutely necessary. Today, the conventional wisdom is that higher U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are absolutely necessary.
Many people who think otherwise -- including, I'd guess, quite a few members of Congress -- are keeping their thoughts to themselves, heads down and mouths shut, for roughly the same reasons that so many remained quiet as the deployment numbers rolled upward like an odometer of political mileage on the road to death in Vietnam.
Right now, the basic ingredients of further Afghan disasters are in place -- including, pivotally, a dire lack of wide-ranging debate over Washington's options. In an atmosphere reminiscent of 1965, when almost all of the esteemed public voices concurred with the decision by newly elected President Lyndon Johnson to deploy more troops to Vietnam, the tenet that the United States must send additional troops to Afghanistan is axiomatic in U.S. news media, on Capitol Hill and -- as far as can be discerned -- at the top of the incoming administration.
But the problem with such a foreign-policy "no brainer" is that the parameters of thinking have already been put in the rough equivalent of a lockbox. Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson approached Vietnam policy options no more rigidly than Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and Barack Obama appear poised to pursue Afghanistan policy options.
I was thinking about this when I left the C-SPAN building in the full light of day. The morning glow made the Capitol look majestic. Yet it was almost possible to see, streaked across the dome, an invisible new stain of blood and shattered bones.
Along with the grim patterns, there's a tradition of brave dissent on Capitol Hill. It's epitomized by Barbara Lee's prophetic statement just after 9/11 -- and by an earlier kindred spirit, the fierce Vietnam War opponent Senator Wayne Morse. If you'd like to see historic footage of them, retrieved from the nation's Orwellian memory hole, watch the "Washington Journal" segment by clicking here.
This morning, USA Today reports that the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan "has asked the Pentagon for more than 20,000 soldiers, Marines and airmen" to raise the U.S. troop level in Afghanistan to 55,000 or 60,000. General David McKiernan says that is "needed until we get to this tipping point where the Afghan army and the Afghan police have both the capacity and capability to provide security for their people." Such a tipping point "is at least three or four more years away," the general explained. So, "if we put these additional forces in here, it's going to be for the next few years. It's not a temporary increase of combat strength."
Is Afghanistan the same as Vietnam? Of course, competent geographers would say no. But the United States is the United States -- with domestic continuity between two eras of military intervention, spanning five decades, much more significant than we might think.
Bedrock faith in the Pentagon's massive capacity for inflicting violence is implicit in the nostrums from anointed foreign-policy experts. The echo chamber is echoing: the Afghanistan war is worth the cost that others will pay.
68 Comments so far
Show AllGreat article. OTC equates it to a hell bound train.
nycgreen writes:
"Obomba has declared, & continues to trumpet, that his over-all foreign policy is exemplified by the "war on terror" and that he will fight & win that war in Afghanistan. He says this loudly, again and again. He is leading the charge for more massive death and destruction. How is it that your remarks, Mr. Solomon, refuse to acknowledge the determining centrality of his explicit position?"
-----
White House Doggerel (in search of additions)
Obama's drama's wearing thin,
despite the birthday suit he's in.
And really he deserves much worse
than to be ridiculed in verse.
A possible answer to nycgreen's query above is that Obama's sycophant shill Solomon, smart enough to read the writing on the wall, is NOW busy hiding behind the skirts of Barbara Lee -- endorsing "brave dissent" is certainly a new song for Solomon.
For waaay better writing on Afghanistan, by an author who DOES dare, in his first two words, to mention "Barack Obama" ("Barack Obama is on record as advocating a military escalation in Afghanistan. Before sinking any deeper into that quagmire, we might do well to learn something about recent Afghan history and the role played by the United States."), see:
"Afghanistan, Another Untold Story", by Michael Parenti
at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11279
Why, one wonders, does CD publish endless installments of Solomon's pap, including this on A'stan ... and not Parenti's piece? As long as Republican publishers -- Solomon's, for instance -- decree who "leads" the left ...
Not directly related, but I believe relevant enough for what Solomon's article says is the following article.
"Kosovo: A European Narco State",
by Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling blog, Dec 7 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11323
That is a [must read], and having read some of the referenced supporting articles I find them also to be recommended. Parallels exist in more ways than what Solomon explicitly refers to, even if not many more ways. This above article by Tom Burghardt provides illustration, and I believe to have seen another or two other articles at GR over the past week or so (likely still linked in the homepage) on this whole Kosovo context starting in 1999.
One of the parallels, even if it's not with respect to Afghanistan or Iraq in particular, but still with one, if not both, is that ..., well, just consider what Bill Clinton was really used for in commanding that totally criminal war on the govt of former President Milosevic, who will always remain remembered, by me, as ("softly", "politically correctly", ...) [assassinated] by the convenient instrument of the "Western Establishment" and which we know of as the ICC, Intl Criminal Court or Intl Court of Crime or Criminals; run and controlled by them. We see that in, f.e., the or a prosecutor on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda having called for the leadership of the USA at that time and which was Clinton and his complicit partners, or directors, or both, in the U.S., well, having called for them to be required to answer to the tribunal, having strongly suspected their crimes. It's a parallel in the sense, among other senses, that that prosecutor's call was rejected, which could not happen if the court or tribunal was honest and competent, though it was competent, only it was in a dishonest, criminal sense. It's too much of a court that's ruled by the most powerful and despotic gangsters on Earth; they use it instrumentally or strategically.
But I don't think Clinton was the real ruler; there's much more than the U.S. President to be concerned about, for he or she is very much only a firgurehead, a puppet, and better not get in the way of "progress" as the real rulers think of it.
Similarly, I believe that Bush has not been the real commander, but a stooge put on the front stage for the real rulers to stay hidden, behind closed doors. Both Bush and Clinton are nevertheless and extremely criminal, although I believe Clinton's perhaps worse, for I don't think he's intellectually ... diminished, say, as badly as Bush is. I think, but may be possibly mistaken about that latter part or aspect.
The war on Kosovo, and the innocent Serbs and Albanians there, was all about RACKET, and former USMC Major General Smedley Butler was proven right again, and again, ... ever since he wrote his book after retiring from 34 years in the USMC. The same applies in every case that the U.S. is involved in African countries; and so on.
Anyway, Burghardt's article is very important, and as it and (I believe to recall), articles he refers to for additional reading indicate, there is some connection, say, between that war on Kosovo and Kosovars (the innocent ones) and the present war on Afghanistan; perhaps or certainly also Iraq.
As for the number of troops being talked about by different people in the Obama teams, I will post a link to Jeremey Scahill's article of just a few days ago, for he states that different members of the teams have spoken of anywhere between 10,000, or so, to as high as possibly 60,000 to 80,000. That's for, that is, with respect to the war on Iraq; although obama's stated he's for not only keeping the war on Afghanistan going, but also escalating it there and into Pakistan, where the war's already reached and is awaiting Obama to make the situation ever worse. All three of these present war zones are related in terms of overall "project" of the often-called "Western Establishment" elites, that is, the real rulers, who rule because the U.S. has no [real] govt. The U.S. wars, very covertly committed, in African countries, militarily and politically, are also related to the rest; there's a "deep state"-rooting between all of these acts of criminal aggression; although I've never heard of aggression that's not criminal, well, except for very minor, superficial spats anyway.
"Obama Doesn't Plan to End the Iraq Occupation", by Jeremy Scahill, Dec. 5th
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/05-1
"npwr.luv December 9th, 2008 12:36 am
If bu$h!t hadn't stolen the election in 2000,
__ there would have been no WTC disaster on 11th of September. ..."
Bull. Bush didn't hijack the presidency, he just "went along for the ride" he was needed to join in on, for the real deciders, rulers don't want to place themselves up on the front stage, so they employ puppets, front stage distractions, etcetera. It was a small, tiny panel of Supreme Court judges, right-wingers, extremists, "enemies of the nation (and world)", ... who [appointed] Bush because he, with his malleability, or manipulability, psychosis, and so on, was strategically needed by ... [others]. Bush does what he's directed to do and say; if the real rulers decided that it was time for the U.S. to become honest, law-abiding, ..., then Bush would follow these types of directions, but they're not profitable, so they're not given; they're buried, incinerated, ... never to be applied.
If people can't give up blaming Bush, who's psychotic, but then also are the real rulers, who are additionally ... not just sociopaths, but psychopaths; well, they'll continue to succeed with their disguises, distractions, hiding behind these front stage things or matters, or realities.
Obama's not going to be able to alter this reality; he's surely not even going to try. But he will likely do something evils differently; instead of having a neocon faction for policy teams, he has GHW Bush faction sort of teams, and both are extremely criminal, hegemonic, liars, ..., just that the neocons act in even more 'crazy' ways. F.e., we don't see any of them acting 'crazy' like Richard Cheney has often enough done; but they're all war criminals, as well as criminals in other terms, environmentally and economically, at least.
==========================
"oregoncharles December 8th, 2008 10:11 pm
Missing Cindy Sheehan? Commondreams doesn't publish her anymore, ...."
I was just wondering about her when reading Solomon's article, or maybe it was during the reading of "Liberals Voice Concerns About Obama" here today, Dec 8, at CD; wondering if she was elected, or not, and if not, then why the voters of San Fran. were so lame as to not elect her, unless the election was stolen, literally.
And thanks for the ICH link.
¿ Perhaps the bull's on you, while jumping to conclusions ?
Anyone who's ever seen a bull shit knows that it is quite effusive and an abundant process, tending to go everywhere ( very fast ).
I didn't clarify that I also believe that geo the shrub was a psychopathetic puppet, and actually part of the excrement evolving out of the diarrhea-ic orifice of the much larger "bull" run by the central banksters and fascist corporapist behind the scene.
There was no terrorist attack nor accident with the WTC disaster that occurred on 11th of September, 2001 -- it was carefully planned and covered up at the highest and most powerful levels of the international crime lords.
I still submit, that the orchestrations of the Supreme Courts ( & hidden payoffs ) and other complicity in election fraud -- if stopped dead at election time, would likely have prevented WTC 1 & 2 collapse -- because a Democratic administration ( although still bought and paid for ) would never have allowed such a criminal conspiracy to grow nor hide.
Of course we'll never know -- but for me
___ the " _ 9 _ ! _ ! _ " pretext was of course long in planning and
___ intricate in design and implementation
___ to instill mis- and dis-information, and
___ sway and mold public opinion ( manufactured consensus )
___ through PSYOPS and relentless propaganda and
___ excellent marketing prowess ( honed over a century of egregious manipulations ).
Perhaps we think more alike than you supposed ?
Namaste
Wow, there are some really ugly thoughts in this thread. Some folks haven't come to grips with the crimes of empire, not just those of the United States, but those of Russia and Britain before.
Afghanistan is sometimes called the most bombed nation on earth. First the British, then the Russians (after the U.S. provoked them via the mujahedeen) and finally the U.S. government. I think Iraq may be a contender in getting the most bombs these days too.
So, some people in this thread still think there was some meaning to all of the death? What is it that you believe? U.S. forces were bringing the Afghanis freedom? Or was it modernism or womens' liberation?
I think you need a crash course in imperialism to understand.
The United States does not bomb and invade countries out of charity. Please understand that. The correct course after 911 was a police action, not a military bombing that killed 3,500 Afghanis (more people than died in the Twin Towers attacks). The dead were civilians, as here.
Please understand. The Taliban are not Al Queda. Then, as today, the Taliban don't have the means to attack people in the United States. Doesn't that matter?
With regard to this article, it's no surprise that a troop escalation is being planned. Obama proposed such an escalation before the Presidential election and a lot of you voted for him anyway. What did you expect? What did Norman Solomon expect?
Better yet, how will you all now persuade Obama to reverse course? You are the change you believe in, but for god's sake, get your facts straight.
-TIA
Obomba has declared, & continues to trumpet, that his over-all foreign policy is exemplified by the "war on terror" and that he will fight & win that war in Afghanistan. He says this loudly, again and again. He is leading the charge for more massive death and destruction. How is it that your remarks, Mr. Solomon, refuse to acknowledge the determining centrality of his explicit position?
Missing Cindy Sheehan? Commondreams doesn't publish her anymore, but here she is: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21406.htm. Much better site.
A lot of commenters are missing, too, all critics of the Democratic Party. Are they banned?
I don't usually bother with sites that are nothing but shills for the Democrats, so I'm going to go away, too, for the time being. It's been nice, but this site is just too conservative for me.
Oregoncharles
Thanks for the link, a copious amount of great information, you just made my day. I used to come hear to read the articles and comments, then I got banned for about four weeks before and after the election. I have been coming back for a couple of days now and noticed all the articles suck and most of the commenters are democratic sycophants, so you will be missed, but I understand, I volunteered for Nader, so I have been dealing with these Osame "No Nothings" for a while now, they get very tiresome.
oregoncharles
Please reconsider your intention of leaving. We need all the different opinions we can get here and on other sites. If its too conservative for you, speak up more, throw a rock or two. If everyone were singing the same tune on a site, its worthless, you simply agree with everyone else aned learn nothing. I hope you stay.
I'm sorry to hear you're thinking of leaving, OC. This last election showed that party-rooting Dems just outnumber progressives.
Here's solace, though. Ask yourself how long it took for you to gain your perspective? Alternative views need to be out there if people are to progress.
-TIA
Excellent comment. Progressives are a small part of the electorate as you point out. Thats why Charles needs to stay and lend his perspective.
By the by, I usually enjoy yours.
Thomas More:Hello. Have you noticed some people type "pages"?
Ah......yes.
To answer your question, I'm afraid so. I don't believe anyone should be banned outright from a forum especially when that site claims to be a place for the Progressive Community. Not too long ago, there was a nasty set of users calling for someone to be banned just because he/she said something way off base. I thought that the Internet would be a place for different people to get together, share each others' ideas no matter how light or extreme they sounded or looked, and in time hammer out good ideas and solutions. I may not agree with those who speak against Obama, be they far right or far left, but it would be nice to work out some great ideas. Even people with extreme views can be corrected but if I say that, even the supposedly liberals or libertarians will think I'm a criminal. Unfortunately, I too have noticed that an increasing number of major blogs, even the ones that are supposed to be liberal or progressive, go out of their way to censor users. I would expect this from conservative sites which have no intention of holding debates. I hope these forums don't turn into Limbaugh land. If they do, no one will have to kill the Internet at this point.
Agreed.
the grouch
Thank you, cruxpuppy. It is secretive, vicious, and vindictive. Perhaps on a subconscious level the warfare state knows it can fail in very big ways; for it calls itself "the New American Century" rather than a "thousand year Reich." What further disasters will be perpetrated in the name of ____________ (progress, democracy, freedom)?
Paul Siemering
Thanks Norm.
Thanks Barbara Lee
Yeah, Afghanistan. Nobody there ever did anything to deserve this. Those big bombs they dropped in those first weeks in 01, daisy cutters they called them, also MOAB for mother of all bombs- those poor illiterate villagers and shepherds who survived kept saying "why is this? what did we do?" and no one had an answer, and still no one has. should we tell them "we decided to become the evil we deplore?" because it sure does look like it.
Obama has about 2 months to figure this out. If W and dan quayle pooled all their intellectual rsources. could they think up anything stupider than more war in Afghanistan? they could not. and even if he, like so many others, has no pity to spare for Afghans, can he not see the international disaster looming in Pakistan and India and Afghanistan?
if he don't change his mind soon, his administration is gonna be DOA
The stiff necks in the Pentagon are accustomed to getting their way and never bothering themselves over trivial matters such as money. Obama can't say no to the defense establishment. What leader dares to confront the secretive, vicious, and vindictive national security state other than a Barbara Lee and a few others who have no national soapbox to stand on? The militarists respond only to force and the only force capable of stopping the war machine is a technicality called national bankruptcy.
The militarists and advocates of empire are, of course, the primary engine of national bankruptcy. It is an amazing game they play, their nauseating flag-waving that simultaneously impoverishes the American people. The business of war is the biggest business of all and it is not too big to fail. It's going to take us all down the deflationary black hole....
Sioux Rose
CRUX: Short of any form of Divine Intervention, to which the ACTS of GAIA (as Venus, principle counter-balance to Mars) may qualify, your scenario (which I cannot deny) certainly makes it brutally clear where a nation's tributes to Mars rules lead.
When are we, the United States of America, going to realize that we CANNOT continue with this permanent unending war view.Afghanistan then Iran? The British could not control Afghanistan nor could the Russians, and now the U.S. is going to throw more troops into the country. STOP the maddness.
I wish we'd neglect the corrupt Afghan government, we're allied to a corpse there. Buy all the farmers' opium crop, donate it for medical use. Withdraw our military, invest the savings in a serious Afghan agricultural infrastructure- my old boss's family when he was growing up in Holland in the '30's grew vegetables, made it pay with a big greenhouse mounted on a flatbed railcar on a few hundred feet of track; they'd start an earlier crop under it, and move it over a later crop in the fall. Serious investment like that, irrigation, light rail to bring it fresh to market, and OUR MONEY, not the Taliban's, providing that hopeful future; if they called it imperialism and attacked the farmers, it'd be their last mistake. Finally, make it known that this honorable course is to heal the legacy of those whose loyalty was to nothing more than their own power and egos, and use the example set to demand an end to that other legacy of traitors: that "honour" culture of self-indulgent arrogance, misogyny.
"the Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan"
is like Sam Houston adding more troops to the Alamo.
Please, Sam Houston was a real Texan and Texans aren't that stupid. Thanks.
shellbeach
Given the action of the US Supreme Court in 2000 and Blackwell of Ohio and corrupted voting software in Ohio in 2004, we forfeited our democracy and the lives lost in Iraq on all sides of the
equation!
Thomas More: Hello. I am a descendant of one of the Alamo leaders:am 1/8th WASP. Mostly Jewish.
Howdy! Yep, we had whites, Mexicans, Blacks, Christians, Jews, you name it at the Alamo. Who was your relative?
Thomas More: I am reluctant to say. He was not Jewish. Was played in the movie by a Brit.
Ah-Ha! Then I know who it was.
Thomas More:I knew you would. I grew up thinking,every time grandmother reminded me (but didn't say it), "they lost". That was before I knew the rest of American history. Howard Zinn has a good thing on empire made into a graphics novel/video that had been on (a part of it) TomDispatch. It's got the real story of the Alamo in there,too. (It took me awhile to find the series of comments in this "round".) Good everything wishes to you. Happy New Year. I hope all is ok with the food pantry. You left a pantry-print/a mark on the site. A reminder.
It is worth remembering that the British were on their way out of Afghanistan when they were massacred in the Kyber pass.
Norman:
Support for Obama means support for war in Afghanistan.
There were options this year.
You choose to support war in Afghanistan.
No getting around it.
Can't take you seriously until you apologize.
best
Underdog
No one who supported and voted for Obama in this election in order to keep McCain/Palin out of the White House has anything to apologize for. Those who don't understand this basic fact are the same people who failed to learn from the mistake of voting for Nader in 2000. Fortunately enough of us learned from that mistake that we have been able to avert the disaster of a McCain presidency (and ultimately, a Palin presidency) this time. You're welcome!
I don't know about the whole blame thing, but Underdog's point is true. Obama's stated policy during the election was to add more troops to Afghanistan. And it looks like his policy wish will come true.
Do Obama voters now disagree with Obama's policy? I sure hope they do - better late than never. I also hope you aren't replying to me but are instead barraging Barak with letters of opposition. That would be the hope I'd believe in.
-TIA
Those who vote for the lesser of two evils will most certainly get the President they deserve!
Thank you Alice in Wonderland,
I think you all make good points. Norman Soloman was not only an Obama supporter, and not only did he cover the Democratic convention for CD (in an especially eloquent series of articles), but he was an Obama delegate! He shouldn't act so surprised that Obama wants to stabilize Afghanistan. Obama made no secret of it during the campaign. Personally, I'm proud of my choice to vote for Obama.
But why is this a bad thing?
If this was the day after 911, wouldn't we want Obama to take the fight to the terrorists? I'm afraid that our view of that war has become permanently negative due to the incompetence of the Bush administration. But on Sept. 12 2001, I think we would have all agreed that this was the right war at the right time. Just imagine if Obama had been in charge all along. Imagine if we had never had Bush as a leader. We would have caught OBL years ago.
No Joe . . . sorry . . . I did not agree this was the "right war at the right time". I didn't agree then. And I still don't agree.
If bu$h!t hadn't stolen the election in 2000,
__ there would have been no WTC disaster on 11th of September.
The facts will eventually come out just like "Pearl Harbor" and Gulf of Tonkin" false flag causative events did.
And BTW, I suspect that less than one third of all Americans would even begin to consider to agree with your balderdash statement:
__ "I think we would have all agreed that this was the right war at the right time."
Most of the people on CD besides you -- would be unlikely to agree with such militaristic claptrap. There is absolutely no 'court of law' provable evidence of any direct connection between assumed hijackers and anything to do with the Mideast -- it's all just bu$h!t.
Show me your best evidence, or not -- regardless, you really need to consider the source of the "facts" that you base your world view upon.
So, how much safer do you feel today, than on 11 Sept 2001 ?
Namaste
deleted
GwNorth - "Afghanistan offered to turn over Osama bin Laden if the US offered proof of his involvement in 911".
Thank you for reminding us of this pivotal moment in the global war on terror that everybody keeps glossing over. I believe the historical record is not nearly as nuanced and conditional as you characterize it, however.
My memory is that in October, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered an ultimatum to Mullah Omar's Taliban regime, using Pakistan as a diplomatic intermediary: turn over Osama bin Laden, Zwahiri, and the other al Qaeda "guests" on Afghan soil immediately and shut down all of al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan, or else America would militarily bring about regime change in Kabul. All the pundits and experts knew the State Department was simply going through the motions. These radical Taliban jihadi ideologues would never agree to turn over Osama, and the stage was just being set to warm up the B-52's.
But surprize of surprizes, Mullah Omar responded favorably. My recollection is that the Taliban (1) acknowledged that bin Laden and his merry band were indeed guests on Afghan soil, (2) agreed to withdraw the traditional sanctuary of hospitality and oust Osama and company, sending Osama to a "neutral Muslim state" if (3) the United States agreed not to attack Afghanistan militarily.
This remarkably reasonable proposal was perfunctorily rejected by the Bush White House because they didn't want to get involved in "lengthy negotiations" with rogue regimes like the Taliban that had a history of harboring terrorists. Not only was this peace feeler rejected, but the offeror (Mullah Omar) was abruptly added to the "Wanted Dead or Alive" million dollar US bounty list right alongside Osama bin Laden.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The Rumsfeld/Frank battle plan of 2001-2002 appeared to avoid the stupidity of the Soviet occupation model, and relied heavily upon helping the Northern Alliance with some hi tech firepower and using CIA bribery of local warlords and tribal factions to get them to turn on the Taliban faction in the ongoing, long running Afghan civil war. The strategy and tactics worked, in the traditional military sense. The Taliban regime was routed, and Hamid Karzai emerged as the head of a replacement government cobbled together out of the non-Taliban warlord/tribal groups. Osama, Zwahiri, and Mullah Omar all found sanctuary inside Pakistan, or in the northwest tribal region that buffers Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Norman Solomon has it pegged: Afghanistan has not only morphed into "another Vietnam" over the last six years, but it is a much more dangerous quagmire, given the multiplicity of armed factions and the spillover of violence into the major adjoining nation states (Pakistan and India) which both have nukes and a long history of hostility towards each other.
Just this weekend, Fareed Zakaria interviewed the retired head of the Pakistani ISI on CNN. When both a right wing nationalist like Gul and a western lefty like Solomon are in full agreement with the consensus foreign policy views of academe, we all should sit up and listen: whatever the facts on the ground once were or might have been, as of 2008 the US/NATO presence is universally perceived as a foreign occupation force and the forces of nationalism in that region (like the National Liberation Front in southeast Asia decades earlier) are united squarely against the United States of America.
The Afghans will eventually prevail. Time is on their side. They have support from outside their borders. It is their turf. NATO and America ultimately will be dislodged, just as surely as were the Soviets, the British colonials, and the armies of Alexander the Great.
If what we're looking for is (in General McKiernan's words) a "tipping point where the Afghan army and the Afghan police have both the capacity and the capability to provide security for their people", then certainly this has become a fool's errand - just like Vietnam, but very likely worse.
Bill from Saginaw
Sioux Rose
BILL: Once again a well-tempered analysis with facts that back it up. I would only add that having spent 5 months in Singapore in 2004 and befriending a number of Buddhists who knew that I studied various forms of prediction/prophecy, they told me that several high-level monks had futuristic visions wherein the Muslim world rose up into prominence.
Your scenario about tweaking the hornet's nest (as if the Russian experience didn't produce enough evidence of likely results) and how the "fire" can spread into India & Pakistan is my worst nightmare. After all the tribal divisions were aggravated in Iraq (due in part to the climate of constant violence and unsanitary living conditions, etc. How many Americans could show tolerance of their neighbors under far less compromised circumstances?) you'd think our military would back off from the unintended consequences their military "adventures" so tragically cause.
The consequences in Iraq were NOT unintended. The intention was to totally destabilize Iraq and smash it's infrastructure, creating chaos, "pouring gasoline" to fan the flames of factional conflict. Do not forget John Negroponte, experienced death-squad organizer in Central America, and the part played by U.S., British, and Israeli secret ops in the ensuing carnage, including the blowing up of mosques to incite further violence. The intent from the beginning was to fracture Iraq into pieces.
One addition: This method of control through fracturing and destruction of infrastructure applies as well to Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and others in the path of Globalization's bulldozer.
S I O U X R O S E,
I left you a message and a link ( indirectly from Star of the Sea ), see this CD article from yesterday, at time stamp :
npwr.luv December 8th, 2008 2:15 pm
Namaste
Sioux Rose
I wonder if I missed it? I can't find it... but I do remember reading it and planning to get back to it! (I was away for 8 days and still catching up on work, etc.)
you found it, and replied.
Namaste
shellbeach
What you are missing is the Taliban coming to Texas to negotiate with Sinclair? reference a gas? line while the Al Qaeda and Osama were training in Afghanistan before 9/11, but something happened. I do not remember what, but for sure Bush/Cheney were involved with this do you think?
Bill from Saginaw
I saw nothing above that wasn't substantially true in your posting. Your memory is very good. But I'll tell you now that Afganistan will not be anywhere as bad as Viet Nam. Never happen. Our country won't stand for it.
I believe we will be out of Afganistan sooner than many think in fact.
You and GwNorth are certainly correct about the reasonable offer that was spurned by Bush/Cheney, but if you remember they were practically salivating to attack Iraq. Almost wet themselves when they pulled the trigger.
Also remember that the Indian press reported PRIOR TO 9/11 that the US Government had informed countries in the region that it would attack Afghanistan in october of 2001.
http://www.infowars.com/saved%20pages/Prior_Knowledge/india_reacts.htm
This from the Press india dated June 2001. Three months prior to 9/11.
GwNorth
"India and Iran will "facilitate" US and Russian plans for "limited military action"
Very interesting, I hadn't seen that before and don't remember hearing it. Even Iran was on board. Shows that the attack on Iraq was even more stupid than we thought. It takes a strategic genius like Dick Cheney to turn a good position into a disaster. Lucky us!
Here's a better plan: the General says that with 60,000 soldiers, the "tipping point" is still 3-4 years away. So how about we deploy, say, 300,000 soldiers instead - that should move said tipping point up to about next June or so, right?
Or why not another 500,000? Seriously - is the goal to "get the job done" or to stretch it out for as long as possible for the obvious reason$?
Meanwhile, someone needs to ask this question: we've been occupying Afghanistan for nearly 7 years now - if the Afghan army and the Afghan police don't have the capacity and capability to provide security for their people by now, either A) we suck or B) they are the dumbest f**ks on Earth or C) security for their people is not actually on the to-do list.
All of the above. A) we suck B)they are the dumbest f**cks on Earth and C)security for their people is not on the to-do list.
The real idea was to hold a permanent war and provide eternal profits for Halliburton and Blackwater. That's why we don't either 1)Simply kill them all or 2)treat Afghans like humans whose lives we value. Afghans co-operate by refusing to calm down and wait for us to get bored and go away. It's not like we have a pressing need for rocks and sand here in the US.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
Excuse me, Norm, did I miss your apology for supporting Mr. Obama, the other war candidate?
Or are you just another Democratic shill for the government party?
Obama supporters NEVER apologize. They never lie and they're always right and if you so much as question them you must be a freeper, a Republican, and/or a racist. Spend a few minutes at Huffington Post if you don't believe me.
Quit complaining and feel the "change"!
Republicans are the idiots who took an attack by fifteen Saudis with Saudi Arabian financing and used that as an excuse to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. There was not a single Afghan or Iraqi among the alleged 19 hijackers on 9-11-2001, not one.
Then the conservative controlled media announced every terror alert for the next four years as if clever afghan insurgents had somehow managed to infiltrate Cor d'alene Idaho and Wichita Kansas and were going to hop out of their secret bunker with nuclear tipped RPG's. The millions of Liberals who told you the war was a stupid idea were ignored.
This war is a conservative construct from start to finish just like the financial crash. Conservative thinking is a mental health problem; it relies on motivation to action in defiance of proven facts.
Fighting the forces of rather dim lighting wherever they may be found!!
Starting around 1967, this is the static you heard if we didn't emerge victorious in Vietnam: There would be a second war in Korea which the Reds will win. Taiwan will become Communist. The Phillipines will become Communist. Japan will be pressured by the Communists to kick America out. The Reds will build the largest flotilla in the the history of the world and sail for our shores to invade and take us over. I heard all this shit back then, repeatedly. We lost the Vietnam War, lost it decisively, and none of those things ever happened. Cambodia happened and we can thank Richard Deathouse Nixon and Henry Kiss-of-Death as much as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge for that. The same kind of bistro killers and closet throatstickers that got us into Vietnam (McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow, Robert McNamara) are now in Obama's face, talking tough out the sides of their mouths, acting like Ivy League Edward G. Robinsons . . . nyah, see? . . . gotta kill all dem mugs, nyah, see? . . . and I just hope Obama is sick of the movie.
All true, but you should remember that concerning Cambodia all the surrounding countries wanted Pol Pot to rule, so I'm not sure you can really blame us for not going against the region as a whole.
In fact don't most folks keep asking that we honor the wishes of the countries involved and stay out of regional disputes?
Can war be the solution here? Another recent article on this web site stated who the taliban were. Is there no industry in Afghanistan? Is there no desire for the people to join the modern world?
If the benefits of modernism can not be shown to these folks, why shouldn't they live in the dark ages? Why shouldn't the taliban rule there? Let us censure the nations that encourage lawlessness and international terrorism, just as we were doing to Saddam. Maybe we need another version of that (becuase that hurt the people of Iraq more than Saddam), and engagement to the detriment of their byzantine behaviour.
Of course, our version of modernism is hurting the planet. Hopefully we will find a common ground.
Love
Zero
abdosoliman46
zero or Zorro tack your modernism to alaska or any other place in the continental USA where people believe that a 6 thousand year earth were created in 7 days etc. and spear us your love.
US history tends to show that when there a mad rush to go to war, inevitably the premises were based upon false or fabricated rationale.
This was true in 1812 when the British agreed to all the US demands BEFORE the USA declared war, this was true in 1848 when the US moved to Annex the Mexican territories. This was true when they annexed Hawaii and when they went to war against the Spanish due to the sinking of the Maine.
Afghanistan offerred to turn over Osama bin Laden if the US provided proof of his involnment in 9/11.
Why was that course not pursued?
Got any evidence of that? "Afghanistan" hasn't truly been ruled by any single "government" since before the Soviet invasion of the 1970's. Who exactly do you mean by "Afghanistan".
nwfisher: "Got any evidence of that?"
The evidence is from then-in-partial-power Afganistan's Taliban representatives of the time ... likely of the top war-lord leadership ... at a news conference on television answering the U.S. request for Bin Laden. Available on various DVD's about the truth of 9-11.
They were rational and not hysterical or wild-eyed or in angry denial. They simply stated that if the United States government produced evidence of Bin Laden's culpability in the planning and ordering of 9-11, they would turn him over to the United States. Evidently they had already requested this evidence several times.
Nothing was forthcoming from the U.S. government, nor was the lengthy factual report about 9-11 that Colin Powell insisted would be issued SOON ever issued. Likely it was never written or there was no attempt to write it because the facts promoted by the fawning, mindless media are BOGUS!
If you recall, right after 9-11, all kinds of picture, videos, stories were fed to the media who fed it to us about who was responsible for 9-11. Funny how all these cave pictures and in-a-blanket statements that Osama Bin Laden did it ... were available immediately. Kinda' makes you wonder that if the government and various intelligence agencies knew all this, why didn't they stop it before it happened? Doesn't seem very intelligent to me?
Afghanistan ... all the promises our government made to that poor war-torn country. We will free you. We will help reconstruct your nation, help your economy, help your people. You will not be forgotten this time. We pledge that to you. George W made, for him, and impassioned speech about our beleaguered Afghanistani friends.
Biff ... Bang ... Boom ... A Pentagon memo, by accident, I'm sure, briefly appeared on the internet. It described the plans for the attack on Afghanistan. It was dated September 8, 2001, and it forever disappeared, it seems.
And then on to Iraq. The Middle-east, the Caspian Sea area are only important to various persons in the business of oil, natural gas and making obscene profits. Northern Afghanistan was important because that's where Cheney and Rice's UNOCAL pipeline was to be constructed and completed. Karzai, the "selected" president of Afghanistan, worked for UNOCAL. Iraq, obviously, is a mother lode of oil. Iran has natural gas and oil, and that's why eventually as the Iraqi "War" dragged and drags on, it gained the status of "the most dangerous nation in the world," and a potential nuclear threat, definitely worthy of bombing, and with nukes yet. "Statesmen" and "Stateswomen" of a big country and it's sidekick little country have promoted that as a fine idea.
And with all that extra busy work, the well-being of the people of Afghanistan seems to have been forgotten. Instead there's a run on bombing wedding parties and festivals.
Well, anyway, this particular mystery story of Bin Laden is not so mysterious if you just go after the facts from many, many, many documented sources, and voila! the whole bloody picture appears, and with lots of talking heads that lie as easily as they breathe.
Likely you will also come across the information that Bin Laden is already dead, and it seems now, however, that once more 50,000 newly assigned troops wearing the uniform of the U.S. of A. will be chasing his ghost all over that mountainous creation.
On this, I wince every time that incredibly intelligent man, who is now our President-elect, talks about "finishing the job" and finding and killing Bin Laden.
Oh, please ...
/cm
Evidence of what? You need to be a bit more specific about what you're asking. Evidence that the Taliban (then the LEGITIMATE government of Afghanistan, like it or not) offered to turn over ObL to the US? There are dozens of published news stories about it. They were willing to turn him over to stand trial in international court. In fact, if you follow this link you will see that they actually were willing to "take care" of ObL well before the 9/11 attacks.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/19/taliban.documents/index.html
Good God! When are we, the United States of America, going to realize that we CANNOT continue with this permanent/unending war view.Afghanistan then Iran?
The British could not control Afghanistan nor could the Russians, and now the U.S. is going to throw more troops into the country. STOP the maddness!!
"When are we, the United States of America, going to realize that we CANNOT continue with this permanent/unending war view.Afghanistan then Iran?"
Well, I certainly wouldn't count on it happening any time during the next four (or eight!) years. Whenever His Holiness, St. Barack, talks about foreign policy he always mentions the military before he talks about any other possibilities. His word order should tell you where he stands and what to expect.
Next stop, Pakistan!
. . . or Iran.
I was opposed to going into Afghanistan as a military action, and was one of those regular folks who urged a "police" action/investigation after Sept. 11, 2001. A lot of people aren't old enough, or weren't born, or remember the mid-1960s and the US war on Vietnam.(Cambodia and Laos) No doubt it's been poorly covered in schools, leaving people to educate themselves in the past 40 years if they weren't following along while reading dissenters and protesting the Vietnam War.
Good reminding us of the history. Needs doing over and over. Meanwhile, we have to "dust off" our 2003era peace signs/art and make new ones.............Drat. Phyllis Bennis, of IPS-DC,yesterday, in an interview on "Beyond The Pale" WBAI 99.5 FM www.wbai.org said that Obama has been clear in what he has said and we should not read into his words what isn't there.