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Published on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Why and To What End in Afghanistan
Matthew P. Hoh, a former U.S. combat marine captain and Department of
Defense civilian in Iraq starting in 2004 and until September a
political officer in the Foreign Service stationed in Afghanistan is
giving some consternation to President Obama’s advisors as the
Commander in Chief considers sending more soldiers to that war-torn
country next to Pakistan.
Mr. Hoh wrote a letter of resignation to the State Department in September. His four page letter frames his doubts about what he said is the “why and to what end” behind “the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. He notes that like the Soviets’ nine year occupation, “we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people.”
Mr. Hoh focuses on the giant Pashtun society composed of 42 million people and moves to his conclusions. Read his words:
Will Mr. Hoh’s highly regarded experience, sensitivity and judgment reach the attention of millions of Americans? That will depend on whether President Obama meets with him, whether Congressional committees will provide a hearing for him and others of similar persuasion, and whether the mass media will suspend their dittoheading and trivia long enough to report these views, so that we the people can deliberate better about avoiding a devastating, worsening quagmire replete with serial tragedies over there and boomerangs back here.
Mr. Hoh wrote a letter of resignation to the State Department in September. His four page letter frames his doubts about what he said is the “why and to what end” behind “the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. He notes that like the Soviets’ nine year occupation, “we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people.”
Mr. Hoh focuses on the giant Pashtun society composed of 42 million people and moves to his conclusions. Read his words:
“The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.
“The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people. The Afghan government’s failings, particularly when weighed against the sacrifice of American lives and dollars, appear legion and metastatic:
• Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;
• A President whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and war crimes villains, who mock our own rule of law and counternarcotics efforts;
• A system of provincial and district leaders constituted of local power brokers, opportunists and strongmen allied to the United States solely for, and limited by, the value of our USAID and CERP contracts and whose own political and economic interests stand nothing to gain from any positive or genuine attempts at reconciliation; and
• The recent election process dominated by fraud and discredited by low voter turnout, which has created an enormous victory for our enemy who now claims a popular boycott and will call into question worldwide our government’s military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and illegitimate Afghan government.
“Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency’s true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our Nation’s own internal peace, against an insurgency whose nationalism we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology.
“I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of its nuclear weapons. However, again, to follow the logic of our stated goals we should garrison Pakistan, not Afghanistan. More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries. Finally, if our concern is for a failed state crippled by corruption and poverty and under assault from criminal and drug lords, then if we bear our military and financial contributions to Afghanistan, we must reevaluate and increase our commitment to and involvement in Mexico.
“Eight years into war, no nation has ever known a more dedicated, well trained, experienced and disciplined military as the U.S. Armed Forces. I do not believe any military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. military has received in Afghanistan. …
“’We are spending ourselves into oblivion’ a very talented and intelligent commander, one of America’s best, briefs every visitor, staff delegation and senior officer. We are mortgaging our Nation’s economy on a war, which, even with increased commitment, will remain a draw for years to come. Success and victory, whatever they may be, will be realized not in years, after billions more spent, but in decades and generations. The United States does not enjoy a national treasury for such success and victory. …
“Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds, some that will never heal or will only worsen with time. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can anymore be made. As such, I submit my resignation.”
Will Mr. Hoh’s highly regarded experience, sensitivity and judgment reach the attention of millions of Americans? That will depend on whether President Obama meets with him, whether Congressional committees will provide a hearing for him and others of similar persuasion, and whether the mass media will suspend their dittoheading and trivia long enough to report these views, so that we the people can deliberate better about avoiding a devastating, worsening quagmire replete with serial tragedies over there and boomerangs back here.
Posted in afghan exit, afghan occupation
68 Comments so far
Show All" I do not believe any military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. military has received in Afghanistan. "
The oath Capt. Hoh took charged him to protect and defend the Constitution, and obey lawful orders, not to do what he was told to further the commercial interests of global corporations and the inbred power structure they wallow in.
War is a business.
When a CIC orders that war be revenue-neutral and congress/wo/men take their own children down to the recruiters' office, THEN you may assume that our "national interests" are threatened.
Republicans: 20% High Society
Democrats: 30% intelligent middleclass
A very few liberals represent us, and since 1776 it
was always been that way.
NATO strategy sucks. Afghanistan does not need an army.
Creating a strong Afghan army and national police force is simply creating a training ground for future dictators and extortionists. These institutions are heavily occupied by ethnic elements of the Northern Alliance and are resented by most of the population.
The national army and police should be downsized and police affairs handled at the local level.
Afghanistan has no external enemies that it could defeat with an army. Once NATO has left, Afghans will come to some sort of accommodation with each other. An army will be a waste of resources.
I hear lots of outrage about the war in Afghanistan, but rarely a rational explanation as to why the United States is slaughtering civilians and enriching corrupt warlords at such a steep cost to U.S. citizens. Obviously, we are not spending a trillion dollars to protect the U.S. from attack by the 100 Al Qaeda nobodies which the military think inhabit Afghanistan. What is the real military goal being sought in Afghanistan?
In fact, the great game which the U.S. is playing, with the lives of Afghani and Pakistani citizens as the chips, appears to be "the prevention of a Russian energy monopoly" in Central Asia or Chinese domination of the energy-rich region, according to an article published last year in the magazine of the US Army War College by Dr. Stephen Blank, the college’s professor of National Security Studies. Studying the strategic papers of those who guide the national security state can yield rich understanding to those who want to counter their tactics.
For some reason we rarely hear about a promised pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, the TAPI pipeline, when pundits discuss the Af-Pak conflict on CNN. The energy industry is currently seeing a major expansion of its facilities in the Middle East.
"Not surprisingly," Blank writes, "the leitmotif of US energy policy has been focused on fostering the development of multiple pipelines and links to foreign consumers and producers of energy" that bypass the control of our regional rivals. Strangely enough, he singles out the most important of these pipelines as the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAPI) pipeline, which would pump oil and natural gas from Central Asia across the exact territory now occupied by US troops. Of course, many on the left assume this is a mere coincidence.
Suddenly, the 3.6 billion a month that we taxpayers are contributing to the "Great Game" begins to make sense. What are a few tens of thousands of Afghanis and Pakistanis and American soldiers compared to the control of Central Asian energy resources?
One other quick point - a strong, united Afghanistan could cause difficulties in our plan for dominating the region. Much better to have a failed state ruled by warlords, especially those in the pay of the CIA. Of course, the more civilians we kill, the more recruits flock to the Taliban, keeping the situation in an endless swirl in which we can work our will without resistance.
Yes, it's striking that despite his various insights, Hoh never connects the basic dots (oil wealth, control, and power), doesn't even mention them. Furthermore, he gets some of the analysis wrong. First, the US crushed independent development in Vietnam, which in a very real sense is always a "threat" to longstanding hegemonic designs, whether of the US or anyone else. That is, the US basically got what it wanted out of the Vietnam conquest, the barbaric result it intended to get. Second, Hoh believes no "assurances can anymore be made" that the US military action in Afghanistan has "worthy purposes." "Anymore"? In reality, deployment of the US military against Afghanistan was never justifiable. Hoh and the US have been engaged in a brutal criminal smash-and-grab, or smash-and-hold, in Afghanistan (and beyond) from the beginning. For Reasons of Theft. Theft of oil, and theft of the wealth, control, and power that go with it. Smedley Butler famously had the more basic insight.
Hoh is correct to "find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan." He found no worthy justification for continuing on in what he was asked to do. But there was never justification in the first place, and there remains none, for the brutal conquest of Oila. Never mind that the ongoing conquest increases the peril of all our lives.
The reason Hoh doesn't mention the basic dots might be the same reason why they are never mentioned in the mainstream media. We have been systematically conditioned to regard such explanations as outside the boundaries of civilized discourse. To state that control over Central Asian energy resources is the primary motivation for the Afghanistan war is to say something that isolates and marginalizes you, though I doubt many people could assign a precise reason for the stigma. It is this marginalization of certain types of discourse that we see even on the "left" (the corporate media euphemism for the Democratic party). If it doesn't fit the acceptable frame then the discourse is not really audible.
I found this observation of yours very interesting "the US basically got what it wanted out of the Vietnam conquest, the barbaric result it intended to get", partly because it's so counter-intuitive and partly because it accords so well with the current strategy in the Middle East. The mission appears to be to foment as much chaos as possible so as to justify our continued presence. If we can provoke a few terrorist attacks along the way, so much the better. It makes the case for continuing the occupation irrefutable.
The corporate media doesn't emphasize the oil wealth, control, and power goals for the US conquest of Oila, because - even if the owners of this media cared about the underlying crime against humanity - they would be bankrupted by other elements of the corporate world for the threat to their interests. So, plenty of people and institutions stand to lose position, wealth, livelihood, by standing against the pillaging of Oila. Some people in general are afraid to speak out, or stand against. Others feel that you "shouldn't make people angry" by speaking against the pillaging of Oila, because, they may rationalize, at some level, even unconsciously, that it's wrong to create disharmony at home over what is done to distant others, or even not so distant others. Standing against barbarism is rendered "improper," even "belligerent," in this way and in many other ways by corporate-state propaganda, ideology. Plenty of Orwellianisms to go around.
US officials and institutions certainly understand the mendacious usefulness of sowing discord to justify invasion, occupation, and "defense." But surely they would prefer - because it's less expensive and less difficult - that subservient states be more like an abject Honduras (typically) rather than an expensive exploding Colombia. US troops have never left Korea or Germany but were forced out of an explosive Vietnam. Oila is much more treasured by the US than Vietnam, which does not bode well for anyone involved. The empire rages on, which, in establishment circles far and wide, "does not do to say."
I take on a lot of these issues in various topical, sometimes geopolitical, works of fiction and criticism: apracticalpolicy.org/works/
Well said, Boyd R.
Rumsfeld set the stage for endless war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
They clearly don't want to "win."
I think the wars are Halliburton's fee for getting Bush and Cheney elected.
When the world seems to make no sense at all, I just ask the question are corporations are benefitting from our crazy policies.
Boyd R. Collins writes, "Of course, the more civilians we kill, the more recruits flock to the Taliban, keeping the situation in an endless swirl in which we can work our will without resistance."
Listen, they knew about Pearl Harbor and they let it happen. Why should this be any different?
You know its a lie, so you don't have to worry so much about which lie it is, except that innocent people are dying while nothing changes.
so it goes,
Obviously the US assault in Afghanistan is part of the larger craven and disastrous Conquest of Oila. I take it up in a book of short fiction by the same name, The Conquest of Oila:
Barack O'Bomba: John McPain had it all wrong. Why do in a hundred years, a thousand, what we can do in a few years, a few short years. We can do it. Yes, we can! In a few short years I will cut the number of US soldiers in Iraq in half! I will cut them in half. That's what we call withdrawal, I mean, redeployment, with enduring bases, I mean - I oppose the war! I oppose this war that I voted for every chance I got to fund it, that I sign off on every chance I get. Yes, I do. And I'll tell you why. It's because I oppose it! I'm sure I should be the one to run the war. I mean end it, in the sense of not retreating. I will manage it. I will manage all of Oila one oil well at a time, oil terrorists be damned, whoever they are. We will find out who the oil terrorists are, I promise. Afghanistan, Pakistan, here we come, here we are. Yes, we can!
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/5560
Nader recently published a progressive work of the imagination, but good luck finding much anti-conquest imaginative literature coming out of the establishment.
No matter how bad it gets, the U.S. cannot leave because control of fossil fuels = control of the world economy. Even if the U.S. cannot have its way, it must stay to prevent other powers from gaining the kind of leverage that the U.S. experienced in the oil embargo of 1973.
One solution, abolish the private auto. Start with free public transport.
http://freepublictransports.com http://freepublictransit.org
You are of course 100% correct when you say "the US cannot leave because control of fossil fuels=control of the world economy." The US no longer possesses large untapped petroleum reserves. Therefore, in order to maintain great power status, we had to secure reserves outside of our borders. Iraq was convenient because it sat on huge reserves and was ruled by someone generally seen to be a vicious tyrant. Those secret energy task force talks Vice President Cheney held in 2000 had to do among other things with the disposition of Iraqi oil in a post-Saddam Iraq. The American people, most of them anyway, are deliberately kept innocent of the nasty things that are done to maintain our great power status. Only those whose eyes have been opened to our dirty history of intervention grasp why we would do something like overthrow a country such as Iraq. In Afghanistan its more great power gambits. The majority of Americans are taught ad nauseum a false narrative of American history and American involvement in the rest of the world as benevolent and not self-interested.
Ralph, here is a suggestion. Run for Congress. You'll get a bully pulpit, be able to introduce progressive bills and root out the corruption. You can run as a progressive Dem or as an Independent, whichever gives you the best chance of being elected. The point being to get elected and stay in Congress.
Ralph, maybe we can shame Obama into getting off his arse and being the anti-war candidate he claimed to be, by comparing him unfavorably and un-courageously with Martin Luther King, and thereby make Obama "Break the Silence".
Obama’s crucial decisions on Afghanistan --- and ‘Beyond Afghanistan’ --- on EMPIRE.
All the media talk is about the crucial decision that Obama faces in Afghanistan. Whether to give in to the generals, and allow the war to expand, after years of 40,000 to 70,000 US troops fighting and training Afghanistanis, to over a 100.000 troops (or more) with a massive weapons build-up.
But while the intense speculation regarding Obama’s decision about expanding the Afghanistan War, the designed-to-be-expanded ‘Global War on Terrorism’, into a likely AfPak war is on everyone’s front-burner, Obama has a multiplicity of other foreign policy decisions, and an even more vast array of domestic economic and social goals he desperately wants to pursue in the U.S.
Has any president, has any leader, ever had so many critical decisions to make at one time, and so many issues to speak to the American people about –-- and build their confidence that he can speak with them openly and address their combined problems?
Has any leader ever had such a problem in dealing with critical domestic issues that mean so much to him, and yet had such risks to his plans and hopes caused by a foreign war he would rather not have to speak about?
Like Obama, Rev. Martin Luther King was confronted with a similar monumental decision about whether to speak-out against the imperialist war ‘abroad’, that was grinding up the working-class sons of both black and white Americans, or to continue focusing on his most heart-felt problem ‘at home’ of inequality and racism’s tyranny against young blacks.
For more than a year, Rev. King kept his focus on the racial battle at home, and would not be detoured by addressing the combination of multiple issues that would inevitably spring from taking-on the crimes of imperialist foreign war, domestic racism, and the ‘class-warfare’ that linked these crimes of Empire.
Finally, on April 4th, 1967, and at the Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King decided that it was “A Time to Break Silence” not only about Vietnam, but Beyond Vietnam, and to speak the truth about the nature of Empire and the class-war that Empire always uses to maintain its unfair, unjust, and un-democratic control over the indivisible political-economics of power both ‘abroad’ and ‘at home’.
Hopefully, Obama will reach the same monumental decision as Dr. King – and even more hopefully, average Americans of all colors will respond to a seminal outing of Empire by recognizing their common humanity, their common-wealth in country, their common ‘public interest’ in democracy (against the ‘private interest’ of Empire), and by treating this 21st century messenger and leader against Empire and for democracy differently than Dr. King was treated.
I hope that Obama is benefiting, in his time of decision, from taking the time to re-read King’s Riverside speech:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
King noted, “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit”
And today, hopefully, Obama will take note that, “The war in [fill in the blank____________] is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit”
King continued:
“It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
Finally, King concludes with, “If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”
I hope that Obama, in preparing to make his choice, recognizes that the multiplicity of those “jangling discords of our world”, those pressing problems ‘abroad’ and ‘at home’ are but the uniform fingerprints of one thing ---- EMPIRE.
I hope that Obama recognizes that those “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism”, plus the arrogance of super-power (as Francis Fukuyama now recognizes) are really the shadow of EMPIRE --- even if it is presented under the veil of sweet sounding speeches and through the facade of 'Vichy' democracy.
I can only hope that Obama recognizes that what makes peaceful revolution impossible is EMPIRE --- and that he soon shares this terrible truth with the American people, that the Empire is posing as us, the U.S.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
There is one point Matthew Hoh overlooked in his resignation/assessment letter and which most people do not think about in regard to the religious "fundamentalists" in both Afganistan and in Pakistan.
The source of funding for the training schools (and the source of their ideology) largely comes from one of the U.S.A.'s favorite tyranical and misogynistic states - Saudi Arabia.
The Home of Osama. The Bush family buddies. We will never challenge them because we love our addiction to their oil and we are their whores.
It is also no mere coincidence that, to the (Sunni) Saudi's, the (Shiite) Iranians are considered infidels. Very much as was Iraq.
This warmongering is all about oil, natural gas, weapons, and the money to be made therein.
Matthew Hoh wrote a brilliant poignant letter of resignation that almost says it all on Afghanistan.
Ralph Nader cut and pasted it here.
Too bad Mr. Nader got all those votes in Florida.
I don't think Al Gore would have invaded Afghanistan.
"Too bad Mr. Nader got all those votes in Florida."
Actually, too bad 12% of Florida's Democrats voted for Bush. Had 1% of them stuck with their own candidate, Gore would have won. Had Gore carried his own home state or Clinton's home state (as Clinton did 4 years before), Gore would have won. Had the more than half of registered Democrats in Florida who stayed home actually bothered to vote for Gore, he would have won. And all this is to say nothing of the darker fraud allegations and judicial interference.
But of course Democrats will contend till the end of time, as they have relentlessly these past nine years, that Gore's failure as an incumbent to defeat a semi-literate meatpuppet like George Bush is all someone else's, anyone else's, fault.
All the rest of us should prepare for the same upon Obama's probable defeat in 2012; that too will of course be all *our* fault.
George Bush handily won his home state. Did that make him a good President? It is particularly disingenuous of Nader to deride Al Gore for not winning his home state when Nader never wins any state. GWB should have been easy to beat? Then why didn't Nader beat him. Gore WOULD have beat him if you took Nader out of the equation. I am all for Third Party Candidates if they are worthy. Nader isn't worthy.
Well, j, you should have at least given Honorable Mention to the Jews for Buchanan-- what was up with THAT?
But yeah, between that narcissist Pied Piper Nader, and decades of slow poisoning from all the fluoride those Cuban Commie rats put in the water supply, those Floridians really got screwed up-- and dragged the rest of us down with them, dammit!
Glad you're keeping your eyes on the ball there, j.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Hey now, don't blame us Floridians (and I was 17 at the time, couldn't vote), or even Nader.
There were, what, 8 candidates for president on the ballot in Florida? Maybe a few more. All of them got more than the 537 votes Bush officially beat Gore by.
Oh, you of little faith!
You mean the same Al Gore who chose Joe LIEberman to be one heartbeat away from the presidency?
If you watch Al Gore closely, even in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", where much of his talking was done in the back of a gas guzzling limo, you would know the guy is not really going to cause much trouble for his colleagues in the ruling class.
Well said. And now AG is pushing biofuels and buying into carbon trading. Nowhere does he mention getting rid of the private automobile.
.
the U.S. cannot leave.
.
http://freepublictransit.org/Oil__Pipeline_Wars.php
http://frepubtra.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-is-us-military-is-in-pipelineistan.html
.
Gore's book Earth in the Balance does indeed decry the internal combustion engine as the root of many of our environmental troubles.
Have you heard Al raise an objection in public about Afghanistan or the Obama fetish of coal and nuclear?
The best thing Al can do is continue getting rich off environmental "green washing" void of action directed at the Obama Administration anti environmental plans. .
Please, our election and electoral system is a sham.
The winner takes all, big money, corporate directed, election system is not to blame?
Don't hate the playa, hate the game.
Seriously, blaming Ralph is like killing the messenger and then blaming him for his own death.
Read: "Ten steps to repair American Democracy" Stephen Hill. This is a good start.
With all due respect, after you understand the intricacies of our our system you will realize why it is not democratic. The ruling D/R oligarchy do not want you to know about these things, so better not investigate too much.
Look where the one-party system got us with Obama: a right-wing President who can lie without a smirk. Aint nothin changed exept for slicker rhetoric and a more attractive brand name.
I agree with you on all of these points except the part where Ralph is not culpable.
Matthew Hoh put his future on the line and resigned for what he had come to believe in.
This is in stark contrast to Nader who glibly took campaign assistance offered by the Republican Party, refused to consider that he might interfere with a race between the Champion of the Environmental Movement and the Oil Man, and entered the race for the benefit of his ego.
There is no difference between McCain and Obama.
There was a huge difference between Bush and Gore.
We will likely never have a shot at a decent President again, since they seem to get worse every election.
We will never recover from two disastrous wars started by Bush.
Nader is no hero.
He barely even campaigned. He just entered the race and wrought havoc.
I am afraid you are trapped in the black/white two-party dichotomy. If we don't have a real democratic choice, don't you think we ought to ask why? Do you remember the election fraud? No one wants to fix our sham of an electoral system, but are quick to blame Nader everything.
If the messenger speaks the truth, you don't chop his head off for it and then blame him for his own death. Ralph is right on the money.
Let's see Gore/Clinton saw the passage of NAFTA, increased Pentagon budgets, decreased social spending, decreased education spending. That sounds like right-of center politics to me. Not much difference there. Remmber, JFK escalated the involvement in Vietnam as did LBJ, both democrats. The D party is corrupt to the bone.
Nader is responsible for more legislation than any president. Please don't believe me and don't believe the Democratic party. Do your own research with an open mind and find out what he has done in the last 40 years before making sweeping generalizations.
Really, I am not defending the two party system.
For the most part, Democrats have been no better than Republicans.
Most of the time, Nader might as well run because there is no difference.
That was very much not the case in 2000.
I watched an interview with Nader about that race. Wen asked if he felt in anyway responsible for GWB he replied that Gore didn't even win his home state. No apology. No reflection. Nader did not win any state. It is disgusting to hear him reproach Gore in this fashion.
As testament to Nader's dangerous ego, he doesn't bother working his way to the Presidency by running for Congress or for Governor. He thinks he should sail right to the top.
He puts very little effort forth, but gets a lot of attention.
This article is an example.
He just signed on to Matthew Hoh's work.
You prove my point very well thank you. However you did not address the points I raised.
You prove my point very well thank you. However you did not address the points I raised.
One of the many problems with Nader is that he doesn't put much effort toward winning. The third Party concept is really a sham if the candidates just throw their name in the ring and have enough name recognition to end up on the ballot without trying.
No argument here about Kennedy and Johnson.
I don't hold Gore responsible for the Clinton years. Gore was obviously disgusted by Clinton.
How much attention does anybody pay Biden?
Obama can do whatever he wants.
The VP only breaks a Senate tie on very rare occasions.
Gore would have been so much better than Bush.
Do I really have to explain this?
What the hell are you talking about 'ego'? He wasn't responsible for Gore losing. That has been rebutted so often and yet it gets dragged out again and again (typical of democrats who are loyal to the party and not the party principles). Hearing this type of comment is like listening to Dittoheads, it's so Bizzaro World.
Just remember Gore's VP, Lieberman. And not one peep on global warming from him at the time.
Gore didn't represent my views, Nader did. So all of you who still claim that Nader cost Gore the vote, get your head out of the sand.
If you disagree with Nader, don't vote for him.
But who are you determining who can and who can't run for president, especially when there isn't a democrat or republican representing the positions that Nader represented.
Have you ever even listened to Nader? What is happening in our country wouldn't come as a surprise if you listened to other points of view other than the democratic party leadership.
I say that for every 5% of the vote Nader would have gotten, the democrats wouldn't have been able to do 10% of their BS. That is a pretty good return. Maybe the bailout would have only been $725 billion dollars of our tax money. But with no opposition, the democrats are given free reign to do the bidding of the power elite.
As a testament of your ignorance of why Nader is running, you obviously are mistaking ethics with ego.
If you don't stand for something, you will fall for everything.
notonemore,
Dennis Kucinich has served in Congress representing the people and being outspoken on these issues:
An end to war
Single-payer health care
Environmental and Corporate regulations
Peace Department
End to NAFTA, WTO
Public Works
Green jobs
Free public college education
Protection of Civil Liberties
Equal rights in Marriage
Why has Ralph Nader never run for Congress?
I say we take the pledge:
NO MORE millionaires
NO MORE Harvard graduates
NO MORE lawyers
The Wash Post, NYT will run this aricle right? And then Ralph will get multiple requests for interviews on CNN, Fux, and PBS Newshour, right?
Nader and Hoh are 100% correct...but still we don't leave. Why?
Right now the US is running a corrupt, narco-state called Afghanistan. Why?
Pipelines. No one mentions the P-word. Energy pipelines, that's why we're there. Friend Karzai once worked as a consultant for the oil giant firm, Unocal. Current government installed by the CIA. Remember, the CIA was sending guys around on horseback with wads of bills in their saddle packs --paying vast sums to the anti-Taliban (And anti -Pushton) Northern Alliance. We provided air support to the NA troops in their fight to defeat the Taliban. The NA won and a lot of corrupt/narco Tajik war lords were put in power. Still there.
A giant pipeline is planned for Afghanistan--one that will bring middle east gas/oil to the west (and avoid, Russia and Iran). That's the holy grail for the US. That's why we are in Afghanistan and that's why Karzai is our man in Kabul.
But if we leave, won't the people of Afghanistan build the pipeline anyway since there are profits to be had? And build it faster than if we are there creating havoc? Wouldn't we be able to purchase this oil and natural gas faster if got out of the way and let the Afghan people build their own pipeline? Or are we so delusional that we think that can permanently occupy this country and control any oil or natural gas that flows through it? Can anyone help me out here?
Yes, here is help: The U.S. could just back off and buy. One problem, control of fossil-fuels = control of world economy, so the U.S. has to stay to keep China and Russia out. That is why no matter how bad it is the U.S. cannot leave.
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http://freepublictransit.org/Oil__Pipeline_Wars.php
http://frepubtra.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-is-us-military-is-in-pipelineistan.html
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Thank you, fpteditors.
Thank you. More people need to re-watch Farenheit 911 where Moore mentions this (I think that's where I saw it - either there or in Oliver Stone's W).
Afghanistan is a wasteland. Why else would the Soviets, the US, etc be interested in it. That and now there's the threat of nukes getting into the wrong-er hands. But why not be honest about it? Perhaps the sheeple couldn't handle it.
Good point. Pepe Escobar, Tariq Ali, and Chris Hedges have written about this, as you are probably aware. Also, contrary to most "news" reports in the MSM, the vast majority of the opium money goes to warlords and is funneled through Karzai's brother. The so-callled Taliban is responsible for a very tiny fraction of this.
There's only one way out of this mess - 'we' must guarantee Big Military Profiteer that their profits will not take a hit due to Peace.
We're spending the $$ anyway, so we'll re-task said BMPs to make green stuff, and infrastructure stuff, and KBR can have the contract to build the new American PublicCare clinics across the land, under the condition they promise not to electrocute any poor, sick people.
Once the BMPs are re-tasked and paid, there will be no more lobbying for perpetual death and destruction of foreigners and US military personnel. That will free the Pres/Congress to do the right thing for the right reasons, not for the right bribe - er, I mean, campaign contribution.
If ya can't beat em, pay em to go the f**k away. Hey - we're paying the Taliban not to fight, right? Same thing...
Good article,
Peace is the only answer.
The Hawks do not seem to have much support in the media anymore.
Killing for peace is expensive and the people are beginning to see the cost.
Something is making Obama hold back from the Hawks request to escalate.
We'll see
Yes, but "Hawks" is a false metaphor. A more fitting one would be war-monger, war-profiteers, vultures, parasites, and Vampires. Hawks acutally do the work themselves and kill only to survive. These old, fat, bloated, wealthy, dudes don't do anything: they don't do the fighting, they don't pay for it either. They profit.
"Killing for Peace" straight outa Owrwell's 1984
Killing for peace is like having sexual intercourse to prevent pregnancy.
Sign me up for that one. I'm ready to go.
The United States' participation in the crime of the Vietnam war ended a little over 30 years ago. That is well within the memory of many. Yet this new group of warmongers, movie tough guys and bagmen for USA exceptionalism, led, once again, by Democrats, are strutting through the news with their shorts down, trying to convince not us but themselves that they are The Cocks of the Walk. Afghanistan is the cockpit wherein the true and comical length of their screwdrivers elicits only laughs and does not inspire fear. Obama is Shaft; he shafted all of us, the Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis and lastly, and unsurprisingly, himself.
Doesn't Mr. Hoh understand that we have a Black Budget estimated at upwards of $300 billion a year and that Afghan poppy will continue to fund it beautifully?
Why would anyone blow that money to bail taxpayers?
Ralph my man, if we the sheeple took feminism seriously enough and used it as a genuine litmus test against elections, you would be our great leader and Congress would be totally different. I'm afraid that we'll have to do some more learning in Afghanistan as we did in Iraq.
The graveyard of umpires.
Perhaps the only salvation is for the empire to collapse and the sooner the better..
The thing to do is to reinstate the draft, That would end this folly in two weeks, I remember
back in the day that nothing will focus a fellow like that letter telling you to report for
the physical.. Or your collage room mate coming home in a body bag.
I disagree:
1. If, IF the US were to collapse, into whose hands would our own army & weapons nukes fall? Blackwater USA? Or KBR, etc.?, only to disperse around the world, out of the grasp of anyone, to be "at large" and beholden to the highest bidder/corporation?
2. Reinstating the draft? Not going to happen. Shutting down and holding the Capital and the Pentagon would shut this war down a lot quicker than anything else.
In today's world, it might mean high civilian casualties, but our situation now demands we do what needs to be done to end this madness of violence and criminal activity.
Q: Would they kill us, The People?
yes
they will kill ya read up on Kent State..
and of course the labor wars of the early twentieth century..
Let's hope that trend continues. I think the smart money says it will.
And I heard Derrick Jensen on the radio yesterday, saying that he thinks there will be a military coup against Obama if we pull out of Afghanistan. Great choices we have here.
A year into his reign, attempts to defend 0bama from news of his own policies have become shrill.
The military has, if anything, less argument with 0 than with Cheney. 0 is not only fetching them their money and handing them the good will of a new swath of the electorate, he's likely less a pain on quail shoots.
I don't know where DJ came up with that thought but I can rest assure you that the military has no intention of staging a military coup against Obama. He is no FDR. Even the DOD is prepared to gracefully accept budget cuts but the President, his staff, and Congress of both parties are playing politics with fire here. There is a deep divide within the military on pursuing Afghanistan. Most of them really don't want it but are going reluctant on this.
He lumped in the MIC with it, and I can easily see them supporting such a coup.
Ah, I see what you're getting at. I'm not a conspiracy nut by any stretch of the means but since Obama has done so much in favor of MIC, I don't see how they could possibly stage a coup against him unless Biden had something far bigger and better to offer kinda like LBJ having more to offer the MIC than JFK but even then, I don't see them doing it even if he does pull out of Afghanistan.
Deleted by poster because there really is no free speech in this country.
I keep posting that wishing for Santa Obama to order the withdrawal of US troops from the Afghan theater is pointless, useless, futile and time-wasting.
We do have choices.
We can end the DAFT war.
Matthew Hoh references that ever present name of Vietnam while discussing the quagmire that is taking place in Afghanistan. Barbara Tuchman points out in her classic work The March of Folly that during the battle of Dien Bien Phu the French Cabinet spoke to American ambassador Douglas Dillon to request "immediate armed intervention of United States carrier aircraft." They tried to persuade Dillon by claiming that the fate of Southern Asia and the impending Geneva Conference "now rested on Dien Bien Phu."
President Eisenhower told a press conference in March of 1954 that:
"There is going to be no involvement of America in war unless it is the result of the constitutional process that is placed upon Congress to declare it." With words that would precede Barack Obama, Eisenhower declared:
"Now let us be clear; and that is the answer."
Obama, like every other president that has come after Eisenhower, has decided, unlike Ike, to circumvent the Congress by sending armed forces into a third world country. The legislative branch is just as culpable as Obama as they have allowed the 44th president to make a mockery of the law by not invoking Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution in which only Congress has the power to declare war. Since, to the best of my knowledge, that part of the Constitution has not been revoked or rescinded or amended, the president has been in direct violation of conducting a war that has never had the approval of Congress. And the Congress apparently has absolutely no problem in seeing the presidents of the United States make complete fools of them when the executive branch decides to egregiously become, and maintain the position of, a war criminal.
- Obama, like every other president that has come after Eisenhower, has decided, unlike Ike, to circumvent the Congress... -
How can you argue this?
Congress enacted Public Law 107-40, the DAFT law. That law allowed Bush to invade Afghanistan and (with the further P.L. 107-243) provided justification for the invasion of Iraq.
The DAFT law is just like the Tonkin Gulf resolution - responsible for justifying further military aggression, and ignored by those wanting to stop the madness.
It is Congress's fault (except Barbara Lee) for the mess we're in.
From Prof. Juan Cole today over at InformedComment -
- our anxieties about terrorism--the key, or even sole, reason for extending the war in Afghanistan according to President Obama -
Progressives won't solve the problem of Afghanistan until they solve the bigger problem of America's paranoia over terrorism - which has been enshrined into a law that is ignored by Progressives.
Locust
Before being so quick to jump all over me, you might want to reread what I had written. You state that "It is Congress's fault..." I had never said that it was not. The quote that you have taken from my comment does nothing to obviate the fact that Obama has maintained an occupation without Congress actually declaring war. The DAFT law that you cite was used as an excuse, as you say, to grant Bush the authorization to invade Afghanistan. However, it is NOT the same as Congress actually declaring war. I also understand that it is the same as the Tonkin Gulf resolution. But in both cases those authorizations were used as a way for Congress to abrogate its responsibilities for it to be the one to lead this country into war and not the executive branch. That is how I can argue and back up what I had written. Your comments would be much more persuasive if you were to decide to argue with your head instead of hour heart.
grassroots, couldn't get through w/your posted e-mail---my idea---can be found in a comment I posted to Chris Hedges article "War is a Hate Crime"--I believe it's at the top of the comments. Let me know what you think.
gershonmitchel@yahoo.com
Finally, we are beginning to get a true definition of the war in Afghanistan.
Mr. Hoh correctly identifies a Pashtun Insurgency and not a fight against Al Queda and the Taliban.
There are more than 40 million Pashtun in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have never been sucessfully integrated into a nation state. They fiercely defend their self-determination.
There are more than 40 million Pashtun. Afghanistan has a population of 28 million. The Pashtun are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan with 42% of the population. This means 11 million Pashtun in Afghanistan and 29 million outside of Afghanistan - in Pakistan.
In the logic of European colonization, Afghanistan is an area that has never been colonized yet we insist on calling it a nation state. All the easier to impose a western style democracy.
The Pashtun have never been colonized. They sucessfully defend their identities against all foreign invaders. They have sucessfully resisted the Persians,the Macedonians,the Mongols, the British and the Soviets. Why should the US and its coalition be any different?
The Pashtun have virtually no representation in Kabul or in the Afghan military. As in South Vietnam, we support the wrong cultural group.
The Pashtun have the misfortune of living on the route of the Afghan oil pipeline. Helmund Province, the heartland of the Pashtun, is also the heartland of poppy cultivation.
The Pashtun stand in the way of US oil hegemony in the South Asia and Central Asia Regions and in the way of CIA controlled opium operations.
The first step in ending this "war" is to identify the "insurgency". We must eliminate all straw dogs.
Yes ... Al Queda and the Taliban may be the enemy. We must understand, however, that the Pashtun are defending their freedom and identity as they have done (sucessfully) for the last several millenia.
As Progressives, we should drop the labels of the Bush and Obama adminisrations and correctly identitfy this "war" as a Pashtun insurgency or a Pashtun "freedon" fight.
Rather, Conduct RETREAT! NOW!!