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State of Denial: After the Big Leak, Spinning for War
Washington’s spin machine is in overdrive to counter the massive leak of documents on Afghanistan. Much of the counterattack revolves around the theme that the documents aren’t particularly relevant to this year’s new-and-improved war effort.
The White House seized on the timeframe of the documents released by WikiLeaks. “The period of time covered in these documents (January 2004-December 2009) is before the President announced his new strategy,” a White House email told reporters on Sunday evening. “Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the President ordered a three month policy review and a change in strategy.”
Unfortunately, the “change in strategy” has remained on the same basic track as the old strategy -- except for escalation. On Tuesday morning, the lead story on the New York Times website noted: “As the debate over the war begins anew, administration officials have been striking tones similar to the Bush administration’s to argue for continuing the current Afghanistan strategy, which calls for a significant troop buildup.”
Even while straining to depict the U.S. war policy as freshly hatched since last winter, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs solemnly proclaimed that the basis for it hasn’t changed since the autumn of 2001. “We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” Gibbs said on Monday. “Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can be planned.” In other words: a nifty rationale for perpetual war.
Some Democrats on Capitol Hill were eager to rebrand the war. “Under the new counterinsurgency strategy implemented earlier this year, we now have the pieces in place to turn things around,” said the head of the House Armed Services Committee, Ike Skelton. “These leaked reports pre-date our new strategy in Afghanistan and should not be used as a measure of success or a determining factor in our continued mission there.”
Other prominent war supporters in Washington have tried to show how open they are to tweaking the same doomed approach that they’re clinging to. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, continued his record of hollow leadership by speaking of a need for “calibrations.” A statement from Kerry declared that the leaked documents “raise serious questions about the reality of America’s policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those policies are at a critical stage and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent.”
The Washington Post reported that -- “while the leaks may add to the volume of the debate” -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “said they do not address current circumstances. ‘A lot of it predates the president’s new policy,’ Pelosi said.” The speaker’s discomfort with the war has not stopped her from serving as a reluctant enabler.
What has been most significant about “the president’s new policy” is the steady step-up of bombing in Afghanistan and the raising of U.S. troop levels in that country to a total of 100,000. None of what was basically wrong with the war last year has been solved by the “new policy.” On the contrary.
Consider the wording of a Washington Post report that “the documents provide new insights into a period in which the Taliban was gaining strength, Afghan civilians were growing increasingly disillusioned with their government, and U.S. troops in the field often expressed frustration at having to fight a war without sufficient resources.”
In the current stage of denial, administration spinners are acutely eager to distinguish the “new policy” from events as recent as last year -- as though we’re supposed to believe it’s no longer the case that the Taliban is “gaining strength” or that Afghan civilians are “growing increasingly disillusioned with their government.”
And if, these days, “U.S. troops in the field” are not as inclined to express “frustration at having to fight a war without sufficient resources,” the latest boosts of Pentagon outlays for war in Afghanistan merely reflect the unhinged escalation of a war effort that should not exist.
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88 Comments so far
Show AllNorman,
You voted for candidate Obama after he'd made it perfectly clear that Afghanistan was the "right" war. So now is the time for you to either remain silent or admit that you were dead wrong in voting for Obama. In fact, you could go further by acknowledging that liberals/progressives have no reason for continuing to support the Democratic Party.
If it means anything. I freely admit my mistake of voting for Barack Obama. I was fooled and betrayed once again by the Democratic party. No longer. The Democrats have earned my wrath and I am actively campaigning against them. In any event, I shall NEVER vote for another Fascist to represent me. Go Green Party!!!
I'd say we all fooled ourselves rather than that they fooled us. I read the well researched information by those who warned that Obama would turn out to be exactly what he has turned out to be. I chose to ignore it. The reasons are now immaterial. In any event, it's worth repeating your next to last sentence: "I shall NEVER vote for another Fascist to represent me."
Psychopaths on more than one continent are fully united and in lock-step on perpetuating wide-scale acts of aggression.
Apparently, the three-quel will soon be in play in South America.
Their feet never grow weary as they run to shed blood.
Sitting on the sidelines is a luxury soon ended.
Many will be forced to choose.
Others will have no choice.
I admit it, too, but unfortunately many of my friends who voted the same way refuse to criticize anything about this administration. Health care reform is a good start, they say; at least it's something. No criticism of the wars at all. Nothing negative said about the handling of the economy, 100,000 teacher layoffs, firing of 241 teachers in DC, continuing to overspend on the military, the layoffs and foreclosures. And yes, I know that we had 8 years of Bush and Obama inherited a mess, but when are people going to admit that there's virtually no difference between the parties?
They can't visualize a US that isn't tied to the two party fantasy, so to admit that Obama is no different than Bush is to admit there is no hope.
"The party system was thus the means of removing political grievance from the greater part of the populace, and of giving to the ruling classes the hidden but genuine permanence of control..."
Written about a century ago by Randolph Bourne:
http://fair-use.org/randolph-bourne/the-state/
Before anyone votes, I hope they remember two Gulfs--one a quagmire of oil, the other a quagmire for oil--and remember who gave us both--the Titanic parties, the Republicans and Democrats, Frik and Frak, Tweedle Dee and Dum, Dumb and Dumber. Any one who votes for either party again is complicit in war crimes and the destruction of our environment. Green 4ever!
Lingum
Very well said. In keeping with your thought, I had received in the mail today a request from Senator Al Franken asking that I send money in order to keep about a half dozen Democrats from being defeated by the Republicans. Given the fact that Franken and his Democratic colleagues have still not called for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, have not condemned Israeli soldiers from attacking the Gaza flotilla and have not allowed universal health care to be placed on the table, there is absolutely no possibility that the Savage Mules, who are little different than the Republicans, will be receiving any money from this household.
Any time a piece by Norman Solomon appears here, somebody sooner or later will start screaming that he can't say anything cuz he voted. Give us a break. we know all about it. He is still a smart dude who has things to say.
you need to argue with what he actually says, if you want to argue. otherwise i would ask that you, not Norm to shut up.
I am not asking Norman to shut up, what I am doing is questioning his continued support for Obama and the Dems. When Norman withdraws his support, only then will I know he's off the koolaid.
Obama's new "war plan" is a failure right out of the box. It doesn't include US forces halting killing of innocent civilians and exiting their (and I emphasize THEIR) country. Regardless of what new and exciting color Obama painted the deck chairs, the ship (of state, economy, war, recovery, etc, etc, etc.) is still sinking.
Even worse than that the vast bulk of the American proletariat will yawn this news into oblivion and the "war" will continue as our country and future burns to ash around us.
"...Robert Gibbs solemnly proclaimed that the basis for it hasn’t changed since the autumn of 2001. “We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” Gibbs said on Monday..."
And there are those who still believe there's really a difference between Obama and Bush?
That is why the war is already lost.
The 9/11 hijackers, not one of them was from Afghanistan and the funding was from sources in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.
They were trained at flight schools in the USA and Israel always knows what goes on here and there... They knew.
So that is why the USA has lost the war and needs another.
We are not poor enough yet for peace
The only difference between Bush and Obama is one was the village idiot that was a puppet of the fascist, corportocracy and the other is their consummate con man!
"A fuck-up is a fuck-up is a fuck-up", Gertrude Stein might have written about the United States government and military, were she alive today.
Maybe these leaks are on a par with the Pentagon papers, but until the United States re-instates the universal draft, most people won't give a damn unless they or members of their family are forced to risk their own lives in this snafu.
Right you are.
And this is exactly why you'll never see a draft again.
A double digit US unemployment rate for years to come is the defacto draft that will keep the military manned.
For millions of Americans the military is and will be their only employment opportunity.
Why are the goofballs never called out who name one war objective as denying "the enemy" a place to plan future attacks?
Any 10 year old can tell them that such planning can take place ANYWHERE ON EARTH.
Absolutely true. Unfortunately, the American government only recruits its brain-trust cadre -- in terms of mental development -- from among the 9-and-under demographic.
As those 10-and-older know from their "old news," the planning for the 9/11 attacks actually took place in Hamburg, Germany (if not Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well). Even more significantly, the one piece of absolutely necessary training that these hijackers received -- namely, how to fly a commercial jet airliner -- they obtained in American flight simulator schools (somewhere in Florida, I think). No amount of planning, no matter where in the world undertaken, could have had the slightest chance of success absent this one essential ingredient provided by the United States itself. And, of course, the hijackers obtained their box-cutter "weapons" from American stationary stores and launched their attack from American airports using tickets purchased with American currency at American airline reservation counters. As the "old news" told us long ago, the governments and peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq had nothing to do with launching or carrying out the attacks of 9/11.
President Barack Obama has only one "reason" for repeating Deputy Dubya Bush's threadbare rationale for attacking and occupying Afghanistan: namely, because he thinks it makes him look all-tough-and-stuff politically while trying to exit Iraq without anyone noticing America's tail tucked proudly between its legs on the way out. President Obama foolishly made the crass political calculation that one cared about Afghanistan, anyway, and that he could have a splendid "little" war (like Reagan's Grenada) as a distraction covering America's gross military bungling in Iraq. Too bad the Afghans have made such hash of our President's cheap political "thinking." Now he has to find a way to tiptoe out of Afghanistan after stupidly escalating America's gross military bungling in that country, too.
Bottom line: Trying to exit from one Vietnam quagmire using another Vietnam quagmire as a "face-saving" cover doesn't appear too smart. I doubt if even the 9-year-old crowd would want to own THIS self-constructed American tar-baby.
But do not give up hope, fellow Crimestoppers. America's political and military "leadership" want you to know that real soon now the tipping point will turn the corner and begin connecting the dots on the ink-stained flypaper dominoes in the tunnel at the end of the light.
Nine-One-One was planned and trained for mainly at flight schools in Venice, Forida, and in Minnesota.
Also in an apartment in Bethesda, Maryland, with a view of the National Security Agency's headquarters.
Of course, this very inconvenient truth was seldom, and now never, referred to.
“American Bradley Manning shall be praised for his courage with the United States of America’s Congressional Metal Honour” – Scott ffolliott
Guilty as charged, but which adult members of the empire were not "complicit in the crimes of the corporate state"? The McCain voters? The people who voted for unelectable candidates? The people who refused to participate? Who?
If this isn't a Democracy, if voting has no effect on the actual governance of the country, then it doesn't matter who you voted for or if you voted. The vote is as meaningless as a non-binding resolution. My vote for Obama has no more significance than your vote for Nader. It's like responding to an opinion poll.
If this is a Democracy and voting makes a difference in the country's governance, then your vote is important. If you didn't vote you opted to let others decide how the country would be run. What the country would do wasn't important enough to you for you to bother with it.
If this is a Democracy and you voted for an unelectable candidate, one with no chance of winning, you too elected to let others decide who would be actually be governing. Your desire to make a statement/protest vote was more important to you than than who actually won the election.
So the question really is: "Is this a Democracy?"
If it is, you opted not to participate in the actual selection of the President and I opted to vote for the candidate I thought was the better of the two who had any chance of winning. I decided to make a difference.
If it isn't a Democracy, what does it matter if you vote or who you vote for? The vote is just an expression of an opinion. In that scenario, at least you've made a protest whereas I helped the system to creak along.
So I think if voting actually has an impact on how the country gets run, I made the better choice. If voting is a farce, you did.
Nicely put.I voted for Obama, but with circumspection.Nader and the Greens couldn't organize their way out of the city dump.
Charles N.: Does your vote make a difference in the way the country is governed?
Now I'm not saying it does, but I will say that if you think it doesn't then you've got no grounds for attacking others because their meaningless vote wasn't the same as your meaningless vote.
If voting is controlled by a corporate duopoly with a stranglehold on governance, voting isn't going to change who is in control.
So what are you getting all hot and bothered about?
Or do you think that who you vote for matters?
Because that's a different conversation.
Not that I'd expect much from someone who thought Nader could win.
Charles, If you can do it more power to you. Best of luck.
I am sure you will do an excellent job of organizing people who feel exactly the same as you.
You know, if you keep telling people they are your enemy, at some point they're likely to agree with you.
Have you considered that attitudes like yours may be incompatible with building a broad (or even narrow) consensus for change?
Of your laundry list there are two items I disagree with and one I don't know enough about to comment on.
I don't feel like engaging with you on the individual items. I'm sure that I am not in agreement on three is far more significant to you than the fact that I agree on the others.
My near term political activities are all going to be very local. In our county elections the initial results between a hard core tea party candidate and a liberal sitting county commissioner favored the TP candidate by less than 10 votes. This was enough to trigger a run-off election in the fall. If the tea party candidate wins, all 3 of our county commissioners will be conservative/right-wingers. The current effect of having two conservatives and one liberal is that while issues get an airing, the commission almost always favors development over sustainability, business over quality of life.
So, while national issues are important, I think my political activities are best spent trying to halt a local rightward slide. It's an area where I think I may be able to make a difference.
When I'm contacting people in support of the candidate, I'm not going to be looking to tell them where they're wrong. I'm going to be looking for points of agreement or points where they would see it in their best interest to either support the candidate I do or, at least, not vote for the TP candidate.
When I talk to TP & conservative people, I'm going to tell them quotes by the tea party candidate that they may find offensive. If they're interested or don't believe the candidate said that, I'll direct them to a website where they can verify the info. I'm not going to argue points with them.
There was no Green candidate in the election. The only 'independent' was the TP candidate.
If you were contacting voters to help the cause of a progressive candidate, how would you go about it?
You didn't answer my question. From that I can deduce how you stand on every issue and that you harbor a secret lust for Jack Bauer.
Naughty boy.
Best of luck with that organizing thing. Let me know how it goes.
Charles, you sound kind of upset. Put on a pot of tea and kick back and relax a little. It doesn't pay to be wound so tight.
Good. It seems to be getting a little crowded in here.
No air.
argggggggg...
Inquiring minds want to know:
How is the Obama administration better than Bush or better than McCain would have been .... besides the superficial stuff? Do you think it was worth all the trouble you took to convince voters to stick with the Dems? Do you think that had progressives made a few demands - which they didn't - had refused to jump on the Yes We Can! band wagon immediately - which they did - we might have had a little better prospects?
When they know you'll vote for them no matter what, it only encourages them!
That's one reason the lesser of two evils strategy will only push them to the right, where all the money is. You're not pushing, you're down on your knees, begging. You can sometimes get what you push for, but never will you get what you beg for.
Well, we can certainly look around and see all the evidence that your Nader vote changed the world. What was I thinking?
Perhaps you could explain how my vote stops you from organizing?
So my voting for someone who actually has a chance of winning is stopping me from organizing? How long do you figure it actually takes to cast a vote?
Or maybe you're saying that people who vote for someone with a chance of winnning, people who actually want to be involved in the outcome of the election, have a mindset that is incompatible with organizing to make a change in the world
but
people who vote for candidates with a snowball's chance in hell of being elected, people who don't want their vote to have an impact on the election results, do have the mindset to make a change in the real world.
Makes perfect sense.
And speaking of perfect sense:
"What you're doing is called sabotaging the building of a movement by rationalizing lazy support for neoliberal reaction, institutionalized in the two major parties and rationalized in the mass-media groupthink that you predictably parrot."
How silly of me not to have seen that you meant I was sabotaging my own efforts to build a movement. Thank you so much for showing me my misinterpretation (and the error of my ways).
This:
"Anyone who was conscious during that time, who had actually read about and understood Obama's openly stated neoliberal agenda yet swallowed the vapid marketing hype and voted for him is complicit in the crimes of the corporate state."
includes an AWFUL lot of people!
You should make the mascot for you new movement a porcupine. Or a hedgehog. Hedgehogs are cuter but still have that bristly/thorny quality.
As reported, it is true that last year we put meat in the grinder and only got hamburger, but this year we are putting in a lot more meat.
10 Years without a Leader
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTuhPbWhRDA
The Obama administration's objection to Julian Assange's statement that he likes "to crush bastards" contains the implicit assumption that they (the Obama administration) are not bastards.
Astounding! What are they thinking? What self-deception!
When you kill innocents, and you do it ALWAYS, as General McChrystal said before the Rolling Stones article-- and Winter Soldiers testified in the exact same words in Silver Spring a couple of years ago-- people have every right, a humanistic obligation in fact, to think of you as a bastard.
Deniers will always try to obfuscate this point like Andrew Exum writing in The New York Times today of "the complexity of the Afghan War."
But the Afghan War is not complex. It's simply awful, simply stupid and simply wrong.
Exum, Obama, and all supporters of the American war in Afghanistan need a simplicity check. Until they learn to simplify their view they will remain nothing less than bastards (and murderers).
Solomon does a good job detailing some of the spin the media is using to "deny" the importance of the leaked information.
Another example can be found in today's Washington Post, which actually has four articles (maybe five) arguing that the leaked information is not significant because it's already known and mostly trivial. This spin can be found in one news article that interviews military personnel, in the Post's primary op-ed, and in opinion pieces written by Robinson, Cohen, and (maybe) Gerson. Remarkably, these people managed to examine 92,000 leaked documents in two days in order to come to their conclusion.
This is clearly a concerted preemptive strike by the Post attempting to minimize the leaked information. Since "there's nothing there", the Post assumes that its readers will not bother to think about or investigate the leaks. This will make subsequent cover-up efforts, which will be necessary, all the easier.
DougD said: Since "there's nothing there", the Post assumes that its readers will not bother to think about or investigate the leaks.
Unfortunately, I think you're right about this. Also, would the average American bother to do any research? Even if he or she does, few of us seem capable of analysis and critical thinking anymore. Others are too caught up in their own crises- unemployment, mounting debt, foreclosure, health care concerns.
What's depressing is how much more we're distracted today. Back when journalists did their jobs and we learned the truth about the Vietnam War and Watergate, we didn't have hundreds of channels to choose from with cable and satellite TV, plus all the high tech gadgets and toys allowing people to play games, text, surf the 'net, etc. Few people seem to be even aware of what's going on. How many people could you discuss this story with today? (Internet postings don't count; I mean face-to-face conversations with coworkers, colleagues, neighbors.)
The people who own the country know that what they do and how they rule is best done in secret. How do you think they 'earn' their money?
We should concentrate instead on more tax cuts for these 'leaders' to enable them to best serve their country.
If you're looking for one large, nation-wide group that's lobbying hard to end this madness, look at Progressive Democrats of America, www.pdamerica.org. PDA is committed to ending the occupation of Iraq and bringing all troops home from Afghanistan. The billions and billions of tax-payer dollars that are spent now on violence in Iraq and Afghanistan could be put to infintely better use here in the United States, on health-care for the millions of Americans who currently have no access due to lack of health insurance.
We at PDA have a working group that is dedicated specifically to redirecting war-funding to health care, located here: http://pdamerica.org/iot/iotpage.php?page=End+War+%26+Occupations%2C+Redirect+Funding
The only way to stop this madness is to cut off the funding for the wars and foreign occupations; PDA recognizes that fact and works constantly to that end.
Visit the PDA pages and see what we're up to.
The link was an error here.
Someone here had a good suggestion that if Pelosi and the Dems really wanted to end it they would keep the War funding bills off the Table.
If they are serious they would do that... Are the PDA's ready for the real deal?