In Sweden it has been said, Somalia refugees who are Muslim, have trouble accepting Swedish woman’s freedoms, and have assaulted women because of their religious beliefs?  Of course this is used to support outrage for the right wingers even in Sweden? Was it in Somalia just after the USA had arrived,  were they showed a mob chasing a women through the streets because she was alleged as a prostitute and killed her by stoning?

It’s true just look for the news articles. Somalian women also practice some of the most barbaric forms of FGM. I say leave Somalia to the Somalis. I knew a Somalian fellow at my job who liked to pretend he was a toll collector as a joke. This joke has a basis in reality as you can’t travel parts of Africa without paying a toll in money or other things.

Seeing war first hand as Clinton saw Somalia with a mob dragging the American solders remains through the streets may be what more political war hawks need to witness, the real thing, the real ugly face of war, not the normal Ronald Regan attitude or typical John Wane movie stereotype of war. 

What we see and are told by the media seems cherry picked. In Sweden it has been said, Somalia refugees who are Muslim, have trouble accepting Swedish woman’s freedoms, and have assaulted women because of their religious beliefs?  Of course this is used to support outrage for the right wingers even in Sweden? Was it in Somalia just after the USA had arrived,  were they showed a mob chasing a women through the streets because she was alleged as a prostitute and killed her by stoning?

Yes, how do we know what is real and what is true? Even if other countries seem backward to some, what self righteous attitudes are to be the right one for all to follow, who chooses? 

One should defend their nation with the full thrust of their military, but in our case, not feel the need to change others, guess this makes me a pacifist?

Anarcissie—I take your points; good post. It’s unfortunate that nothing is ever simple or works the way it should. It’s possible to surveil but not necessarily be able to affect what the intervener is doing. A general based a safe distance from Mogadishu saw nearly everything through video feeds and transmitted voices, but was unable to control the situation, and disagreed with his orders to pull out but had to. I still think it would be worth it to deliver food and medical care but stop there.

You’re entirely correct re evolution of Europe and the USA (except some of us couldn’t wait for the economy to move the South from its total agricultural base as the North moved from its mercantile rum and slave trade as well as slaveholding economy to the industrial economy, hence half a million and more dead in a civil war that would no longer have been necessary in roughly five years). In any case, we have no business attacking Islamic governments or any other governments unless there is a strong causus belli, which I don’t think we’ve had since WW II. 9/11 was not perpetrated by any single government and we’ve gone about responding in about as wrong a way as anyone could imagine. Astonishing. 

Right now, Somalia’s government is Islamic and under attack by other more extreme Moslems, and the people are suffering under this war as they have since the Islamic war lords were fighting other Islamic war lords (which I suppose is essentially what is going on now). I think it’s both wrong and stupid of us to sort of wink at Ethiopia for their desire to fight the Somalians lest Moslems spread into and attack Ethiopia, which has a large number of Christians and a shrinking number of Jews, who are all trying to migrate to Israel, which country is taking them in as fast as possible though the acculturation period is about as long as it was in the late ‘40s when the Arab countries’ Jews refugeed in.

Now Somalian extremists as well as innocent Somalian refugees are getting themselves and weapons into the porous and long Kenyan border—largely unmarked and fitfully patrolled. The refugees say it’s easy as long as you pay the Kenyan police something. The police commissioner in Nairobi says Kenyan police are incorruptible.

But you can’t just let people starve when there is aid food to distribute. We should have stayed to get the food where it needed to be, then left. When the next food shipment arrived, the UN should have designated another developed country’s army to see that it got delivered, then leave. And so forth. I don’t see what is so hard about that. Especially if you kept rotating troops so no one got ambitious or saw a chance for a foothold. This is the very least the UN could do, it never occurred to them, and if it had they probably wouldn’t allow it. When the UN and well-meaning NGOs distribute food and medical aid, they have to arrange for its equitable delivery, or the whole exercise is pointless. (continued)

Sepharad—intervention can be morally supported only if there is a way of surveilling and controlling the intervener.  We know from the recent past history of the U.S. that supposedly democratic political forms and supposed free media do not suffice to prevent supposedly benevolent intervention from being a cover for imperialism.  Therefore, intervention by the U.S. must be opposed (morally speaking).

As for what we know and don’t know, as I’ve said elsewhere my immediate personal experience has been that the mainstream media don’t report the truth—not that they invariably lie, but they tend to get things wrong, partly because of lying, partly for other reasons.  A major problem is the widely-held assumption or pretense of godlike objectivity.  Thus, long ago a famous reporter went to Vietnam and was horrified to find the people living in straw huts.  He decided that intervention (imperial invasion and occupation) was correct because from his point of view the people were leading miserable lives and needed to be straightened out by Americans.  People who live in grass huts were too far down the food chain to have a right to decide how to live their own lives in their own way.  He wasn’t lying—he was incapable of seeing things otherwise.  He later changed his mind, but by then Nixon, Spellman, Kennedy, Rusk, McNamara, Bundy and Johnson had gotten their war started and didn’t need people like him any more.

In reference to Somalia, several years ago an alleged Somali popped up on Usenet in a controversy about our subject, and said things were much, much different there than what was being portrayed in the American media.  Judging by his remarks (which I concede I have no way of verifying) I would say that Somalia had had a functioning feudal culture, which is not what we think of as the best of all possible worlds, but which can be brought into the modern world, not by war, but by indigenous trade and capitalism.  (That’s how it happened in Europe.)  Somalia’s problem is that the West (and, until the 1990s, the East Bloc) wouldn’t leave it alone.  Hence the country was given a dictator, filled up with guns, and sprinkled with foreign agents.  Now it grows warlords, pirates, terrorists, and religious fanatics.

Possibly the Islamic Courts could have moved Somalia forward, but they weren’t good enough for the U.S., and were dispersed; from what I read, more radically hostile parties have taken their place.  (Again, I’m going by reports which may be partly or entirely fanciful.)  As usual, the fruit of war and terror is more war and more terror.  Unfortunately, the American side of the equation is apparently not going to be modified until some sort of catastrophe occurs, so we can expect more and more of the same.

Folktruther, you are losing it. Or is it just jet-lag?

I never mentioned Sudan. How am I endorsing it as another quagmire?

Re Somalia, getting food to starving people is a bad thing? The UN didn’t think so and got 27 Pakistani troops to try. They were killed by the warlords. We tried to get the food for the people instead of the thieving warlords, got into trouble and were pulled out. Staying there and delivering the damned food would have been a better idea. Not suggesting we get into a “quagmire”.

What’s the matter with you? You’re coherent enough to think up yet another label for me but not to deploy reason, as muddled as yours usually is, to the issue itself?

Frank, Israeli women like Israeli men also serve in the army. For a long time the women were restricted from frontline combat units, but lobbied and fought for the privilege to do everything the men did and now can request combat duty if they want it. They are as free as they want to be.

If you read my post carefully, I’m not saying we should go in and turn Afghani culture upside down so women have some rights—only Afghani men can do it, though some of the women keep trying. What I also said is that we shouldn’t encourage them to do anything that will get them killed when we leave. And that if these Afghani women WANT to leave and migrate to the U.S. we should accept them.

The Afpak war DOES have a political purpose for Obama, namely, to avoid losing it.  The idea is to keep it going until after the next election when he may or may not end it In the meantime ziofascists like Sepharad are for creating new quagmires in Sudan and Somolia to divert attention from the Isreali quagmire, seconded by Inherit.

Gordy- I know that you are a dingbat- why should you be different from any of the rest of us?- but I have been out of town for a while and don’t remember why.
I had planned to attack your latest post as a substitute but, unfortunately, I agree with much of it.  Better luck next time.

Anarcissie, anti-interventionism and anti-imperialism are very different, though I realize ambitious imperialists can cloak their activities in intervention. Anti-imperialism is correct practically and morally. Anti-intervention is sometimes right but sometimes deeply immoral.

Seeing that food gets distributed to starving people and medical aid to sick people is never wrong (unless you look at it from the population time bomb perspective). As the UN is very close to being worthless except as an expensive debating society, maybe we should pull our money out of it and use it to feed and heal without upending cultures. For that matter, giving the grievous state of our own country, perhaps we should pull out of the UN and use the money to feed our own hungry, heal our own sick, and make sure our educational system is good enough to grow children who are wise, multi-culturally literate, competent, creative thinkers.

Re knowledge of what is occuring at a given time and place and its background, we probably learn more from good print media foreign correspondents than any other source. I don’t think the quality of this class of reporter has changed that much since I worked with them (though it is now endangered by the decline of newspapers, thanks to the Net, which has not generated the same caliber of reportage).

Other gifted people gathering information these days are freelance journalists and book authors—e.g., Sebastian Junger, who lived with Mullah Omar and his men for months, and who also investigated the city where four South American countries meet, originally a trading center dominated by Lebanese merchants but since morphed into a meeting haven/supermarket for non-state terrorists from many countries and causes. There, terrorists train, obtain supplies, and exchange operational notes and tips.

A few newspapers have managed to retain their own investigative foreign reporters, who live in their assigned part of the world longterm—15-20 years or longer—know the language/s, the people and culture, and develop the trust of sources in and outside government. But when someone like Daniel Pearl, otherwise very bright, decides to get to the roots of violent jihad by traveling and spending time in certain places but not nearly long enough to understand the cultures, they’re vulnerable to, like Danny, a wretched death at the hands of the same people he was trying to understand. In similar danger are news photographers, nearly always not dug in for the long term, but dispatched to cover current happenings. A Dutch guy I knew from journalism grad school was taking pictures in Sierra Leone when a 15-year-old child soldier walks around the corner and blew Pers in half with an automatic weapon.

Somalia is not a place where a reporter can live unnoticed, but there are reporters in the region who have been there for a long time and they dispatch their stories from Nairobi. Lately the NYTimes has been using correspondents who’ve spent large amounts of time is Moslem countries. The military has a large number of sub-Saharan specialists in the area, also sources of information as such people tend to focus on the realities of the situation, not inventing some picture the government wants to paint. In America, news is not as managed as you might suppose—though not from a lack of trying on the part of the government.

Many Afghani women organized to push for more equality, forming local human rights groups and supporting—often with the help of their husbands—schools for girls. This, heart-breakingly, is a cultural issue in a way that food and medical care are not. If, while in Afghanistan, we can do more help than setting them up for harm when we leave, we should. If not, we shouldn’t encourage them to try things under our protection that will get them brutally murdered when we pull out. Our government should grant citizenship any Afghani woman involved in such efforts who requests it.

“We should be educating and empowering Afghan women…” Ross Sargent

Sorry, Ross, I completely disagree unless, of course, you’re an Afghan, living in Afghanistan.

But I’m assuming you are an American who, as with millions of your fellow citizens, somehow think you have some God-given RIGHT to blast you way into other people’s countries to teach them “how to live RIGHT.” (And puulllleeeese don’t give me some BS about “fighting terrorism.” - No country on this planet generates more terror than does America!)

I wonder how many Viet Nams, Iraqs, Afghanistans, perhaps Irans its going to take for Americans to learn their lesson? You Americans have BLOWN TRILLIONS on wars you had NO BUSINESS fighting in the first place, even if you had won them!

But then, how would those who head up the military/industrial complexes keep those bucks coming in by the busload?

OldUncleDave—More generally, industrial capitalism has to produce scarcity in order to keep its ruling class in power.  Producing scarcity means increasing desire and using up material production.  War is one way to use up a lot of production, but there are others, like waste and consumerism.  One should not forget that as yet all of these are popular as well as being strategically beneficial for the ruling class.  We can’t do anything about the latter because it’s simply a fact, but we can try to reduce the popularity, which is based on stupidity, ignorance, greed, and brutality.

Howard Dean appearing on DemocracyNow! told Amy Goodman that he agreed with Obama’s stance in Afghanistan.  He expanded on his position to imply that the the U.S. was saving Afghan womanhood from the the the Taliban. 
Now, first of all, according to the the U.S soldier recently taken captive, the so called “Taliban” refer to themselves as the Mujahadeen, the same group by name that we supported in its fight to oust the Russians.
Secondly, are we to take this as the U.S. stance against gender discrimination?  No.  Dean was quick to point out that the U.S. cannot go around the world righting every gender wrong that occurs.  So I assume he meant that this is a “one time offer” to the women of Afghanistan.
In other words, The US will bomb your wedding parties and kill your children indiscriminately.  You, the women of Afghanistan, can then begin to live your lives as US women do, free from whatever it is they are from from.
I hope for mankind’s sake that we lose the war in Afghanistan and lose it BIG.
Humans seem to be to be the only species who learn by having their noses rub in it.

There is a purpose to the “wars.”

Excerpted from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

The primary aim of modern warfare … is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. … From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. …

But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction—indeed, in some sense was the destruction—of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. …

The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. ... In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.
…
War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. ... In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.

oldog:
‘The Middle East ‘War on Terror’ will be won only if ...’

Terror, or terrorism, is just a method of carrying on war.  Logically, one can’t win a war on war by carrying on war, and the history of the “war to end war” and its consequences bears this out.  However, one might be able to reduce the occurrence of wars by resisting or sabotaging the tendency of state leaders to start them and build empires.  In the U.S., our work is cut out for us.

Sepharad—do we really know what’s going on in, for instance, Somalia?  I don’t think so.  Remember that every bit of news we’re likely to hear from such places is selected, framed, and composed (if it has any relation to fact at all) by people whose prejudices are strongly aligned with ruling classes, states, and capital.  In any case, organizations of states like the United Nations seem unable to keep their members from sliding back into their bad practices.  The League of Nations was unable to restrain the British, French, Dutch, etc., from preserving their empires nor the aggressions of the Germans and the Japanese from attempting to acquire them.  The United Nations seems to be pretty much cowed by the United States most of the time and in any case the U.S. and its allies, or rather their leadership, ignore the U.N. whenever they want.  These observations are exactly what I would expect given the nature of state power.

In any case, if we were going to accept the notion that it is right and good for Americans to intervene in Somalia to set it right, we must also accept the notion that it is right and good for Somalis to intervene in America to set it right—something I am very dubious about.

Non-interventionism and anti-imperialism may be crude principles, but they look like the best we can do.

This doesn’t mean we should tolerate attacks on ourselves, but the response should be confined to neutralizing the perpetrators, not ruling the world.

The Middle East ‘War on Terror’ will be won only if we drag these primitive cultures into the modern world. That will take time and money…and lives. Terrorism thrives in ignorance.

It is highly unlikely that ‘we’(USA) can do this with a culture we have little in common with, when we can’t even drag our own under-educated, highly-prejudiced, religious fanatics, out of the dark ages.

KDelphi—funnny; guess our posts crossed even though mine was earlier. You make some very good points.

KDelphi—the little email notice said you just posted but I don’t see your post. What happened?

Just saw “The Hurt Locker”—excellent anti-war film in effect if not intent.

“Gates pointedly told an Army audience on July 16 that he did not expect an increase beyond the 68,000 .....This week, the defence secretary announced that the size of the US Army will be temporarily enlarged by 22,000 troops for the next three years. The explicit reason for the increase was to provide additional personnel for deployment to Iraq and the burgeoning war in Afghanistan. The military is confident it will get the recruits due to the economic devastation and unemployment that the global financial crisis has inflicted on millions of young Americans…
...The consequences of the Afghan escalation has already been a frenzy of killing and violence against the Afghan and Pakistani people and a steadily growing tally of American and NATO dead and wounded. More will follow. In its first six months, the Obama White House has proven that its foreign policy is just as militarist and criminal as that of the Bush administration.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/afgh-j22.shtml

Gee, I hope the “future troops” werent counting on Wall St investments to keep them from having to go fight rich’s guys wars, because their portfolio just went up!!! It should work out, considering that “unemployment is a lagging indicator”..yeah, right..
Anyone who doesnt think that this is Obama’s war now is in denial.

And, Clinton signing that arms deal with India should really help ME relations, as should encouraging India to devlop nuclear power…how ironic…one reason Pakistan supported the Taliban, was fear of India…and, of course the US “wont do anything to impede India’s progress” as far as climate change goes..of course not, we wont do anything to impede Corporation’s “progress” anywhere!

US “foreign policy” is dangerous and ridiculous.

War Without Purpose

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090720_war_without_purpose/

Posted on Jul 20, 2009 By Chris Hedges

I believe war under FASCISM always has a purpose, in fact several purposes.

The FASCISTS running America are using the wars as shock & awe (SHOCK

DOCTRINE…” ) to continue

to usurp power, bankrupt the nation , enslave the populace. And remain a competitive

arms supplier. A new twist to

the deception is that so many military personnel have been killed , maimed,

suicided, & emotionallly crippled, that a call has gone out to increase the

military by 20 to 30 thousand to replace those no longer suitable fodder.

The $billions of interest going to the FED on the catastrophic deficits which can never

be paid off keeps we the people in a debtor’s abyss.

The fact that the wars can never be won is a plus for the Oligarchy/MIC,

& a death knell for MAIN STREET.

A big plus for the American drug cartel is the Afghan poppy crop to compete

with the Mexican drug cartel sweeping through “ariba MEXICO”,aka the U.S.

I’m sure someone will want to ask so here is the TED link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

Thanks Night-Gaunt ... very well put.

Gordy - I did say that all those reasons listed were “cr@p” but they are not all untrue.  Yes, seeking power and wealth is the main driver for the war.  It is just that the idea of war has to be sold to the millions of citizens who will not get any power or wealth from it (in fact, it can be easily argued that they are losing rights and being impoverished).  For them, the vast majority of the country, these reasons are “cr@ppy”.

Now, you say things have always been thus and will never change.  In this, I choose to be naive and think that the human race can evolve to a better place.  Believe it or not (there is an excellent TED presentation on it) the world is currently the least violent that it has ever been in recorded history - that is, there is the least chance that a human life will end at the hands of another human.  It is possible, just possible, that a fairer better structure for the world can be achieved.  It will take work, commitment and an unwillingness to accept anything less by a large number of people.

I also believe that the most likely place for this to start is in The West.  This is not least because of the unprecedented wealth of these nations; it is also because there is at least a strong pretence of government for the benefit of the people.  This needs to be nurtured and encouraged.  The next step after that would be some sort of internationalisation.  So imperfect steps towards this goal like the U.N. and the European Union should be encouraged and developed.

If none of that is true ... it’s still worth striving for rather than just resigning ourselves to a cycle of violence and inequality.

War is the antithesis of this evolution and is IMHO “Stupid” old thinking.  Are we as a species better than that?

By Earthprisoner, July 21 at 5:07 pm #
I’m glad more people are seeing the truth about our Involvement in other countries.

      x x x x x x x x x x x x

The American people won’t support a big war effort in Afghanistan for very long. The military-industrial complex running things may launch another “terrorist attack” to keep the people’s support for the war up.

DBM, why do you dismiss as ‘cr@p’ the speculation that the war is at least in part motivated by a desire ‘to keep “our enemies” off-balance and poor’?  Doesn’t this tactic have historical precedent?  Does it not truly describe the thinking of the imperialists that have run empires from the year dot? 

I hardly think it is paranoid tinfoil hat theorizing: similar behaviour can be observed even in primates.  It is a matter of everyday observation that power/interest-groups will try to undermine rival power/interest-groups competing for the same resources. 

Apparently, and I would appreciate it if anyone could confirm or refute this, there was some Neocon policy document in circulation before 9/11 in which Dick Cheney stated that it was imperative for the continuance of America’s domination that it control Middle-Eastern oil resources, specifically in Iraq; he said “what we really need right now is another Pearl Harbour”. 

These people think in terms of power.  If they did not, then others who do would topple them.  If you observe high fliers, politicians the world over you see a minority predominantly driven by idealism and a vast majority who are predominantly driven by ambition, playing out the familiar steps in the game of power.  Surely this cannot be debatable.  Do people seriously go around thinking that contemporary politicians are a new breed living in a new age unlike all the rulers of history who did and said whatever they had to just to increase the height of their own pedestal?  Really? 

I am sure that the Ancient Romans had their share of hand-wringers and ethical debates of the day, yet the actual course of their history owed a lot more to tall shields and short swords.  I am sure that they rationalized their actions as being ultimately beneficial and regarded their conquering armies as a police force.  The Romans regarded other peoples as barbarians and conveniently assumed that they were doing them a favour by bringing them a Roman adminsitration.  Strong nations today judge weak nations as barbaric and backward, and do them the ‘favour’ of enlightening them by force. 

War has always been a profitable adventure for the strongest nations, and has often required some justificatory fig-leaf; increasingly so as nations become better informed and educated.  America can afford to have much more sophisticated propaganda than Rome, so it is no major obstacle. 

The US used the destruction of the USS Maine to justify grabbing resource-rich territories from the Spanish, triggering the war of 1898, ev

FatimaF - Thank you so much for your July 21 post citing Bertrand Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness.” We do race around too much, minds full of the chaos of war, financial collapse, blogging and texting and cell-phoning. I am a reluctant user of the computer; it finally got too hard to find a typewriter repair person within 500 miles. In the 15 years I spent editing a history magazine (‘Dec ‘82 thru Dec ‘97), some people still used typewriters though most were submitting manuscripts via computer. After awhile, I began to notice that the manscripts painstakingly typed were better organized and more thoughtful. I’m not sure why that should be, but it was definitely the case. Perhaps before typing the final draft, the author was able to slow down, hold the article in his or her hand, and rethink something, tag it for revision, and after finishing the critical reread, work on changes.  It’s much easier to make changes on the computer of course, but excellent authors such as the late Updike relied on the tyewriter and great patience.

When I’m working at writing on the computer (not counting TD comments), I’ve had to find ways to make myself slow down. Sometimes it’s a poetry break, or a walk out to the horses and through the woods where there’s inevitably some small animal or bird to focus on. Or sometimes I see something to sit down an sketch and send to my granddaughers. We’re far apart, and they like drawings of something that has just happened here. A heron missing a fish and knocking the bullrushes as he flies off, a baby horse learning to scratch an itch on its flank without falling over ... mainly little things.

My husband takes breaks too, and we go for a walk or sit outside and talk about anything but work. At night we read, sometimes go for a horseback ride, sometimes a movie, sometimes just talk. The daily newspaper, political blogs, etc are a little like small bombs going off (mentally speaking), and if that becomes your universe it definitely distorts reality—ironically, as these media are meant to convey reality.

Obama is in afghanistan to grease the Industrial Military complex and Secondly to show America and the world He has the guts to kill people. It is all so sick and twisted….......

Anarcissie—am with you on “to limit the scope and nature” on our involvement, and may have missed the fact that I said there may be some times and some plays where we, with the U.N., could intervene in a useful and limited way. Have you ever looked at Sebastiao Saigado’s photography documenting the human misery of places many comfortable First-Worlders would rather not think about? Famine in Somalia and many subSaharan countries as the desert creeps southward? People, from children to elderly, worked to death in Brazilian gold mines, African diamond mines? The Peace Corps is useful in many ways, but it is not able to provide what these people so desperately need. Doctors Without Borders can only treat the effects, not change the cause. The UN and a variety of NGOs do try very hard to deliver food to starving people, but the chaos and warfare in many countries makes that impossible to deliver because powerful warlords and Islamist militants seize the food and distribute it to their soldiers and the civilian supporters. The U.S. initial involvement in Somalia was an effort to get food to people who needed it, after UN Pakistan troops had been massacred in their attempt to see that it was distributed based on need and not whichever warlord happened to prevail at the time. I can’t see that type of involvement as a bad thing, and felt Clinton made a terrible mistake by abruptly pulling out.

I obviously don’t think we should jump in everywhere and anywhere, for oil or any other reason. There are usually smarter approaches to war, too. In Afghanistan for example, it would put a major crimp in the Taliban’s finances to legalize drugs in the U.S.—marijuana, opiates, all the rest—requiring only a doctor’s RX. (On the other hand, it might make economic sense to outlaw tobacco, considering the long, drawn-out suffering of lung cancer and emphysema and the enormous medical expense that accompanies that human suffering like a dirge following a coffin.)

Of course this war had a purpose, avarice by the imperial corporate oligarchy!  All trumpeted as “nationalism, patriotism, and American fervor” by the rabid talking heads, who had nothing more than dollar signs in their eyes!  “Democracy” was never really the point - it just sounded good - hell there isn’t any real democracy in America!  Reagan aided the Taliban to help defeat the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union - yet once the Soviets left - America left the Afghans to the Taliban.  Even as the average Afghan was suffering under the Taliban, the government knew about it, and so did the corporate media - but “those people” were no longer useful to “our” needs so it wasn’t “our problem”!

On the lead up to going into Afghanistan there was never any real questioning by the media - patriotism and being called a traitor stifled all argument!  The lies that were the basis of taking the military into Iraq was another p.r. ploy - to do what - other than rape another country because they have natural resources and the oligarchy wanted to control them!  Even now BIG OIL is making record profits and yet the price of gas is creeping up! 

No, we have invaded another nation and the best thing that we can do is to remove our troops, and help the Afghanis to rebuild their nation that our greed and avarice helped to destroy!

I see the Johnny Come Lately are starting to see what the May 15th Prophecy has been saying all along

If you what to know what is about to happen next click http:/may15thprophecy.com

I’m glad more people are seeing the truth about our Involvement in other countries, it’s about greed not patriotism. Poor Alan has an angry attitude and closed mind toward a discussion, they could use him in the army.
  If you are familiar with the decline of the Roman empire they also had troops all over the world, corrupt leaders, extreme taxes, etc..
  Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. History has been carefully removed from the school system and replaced with social studies. We are in the decline of the American Empire brought about by greed.

Re politicky, July 21 at 3:43 pm #
What are we doing in Afghanistan?

You mean Pipelineistan?

        x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Oil pipelines and poppies is what it’s all about all right.

The Taliban are the closest thing to the legitimate government of Afghanistan. We might as well give it back to them. We are going to win in Afghanistan less than we won in Vietnam. Our own security agencies are riddled with corruption. We have to get our own house in order, which means we have to get the hell out of Afghanistan right now and spend all our energy on investigating and uncovering the corruption in our own security services.

What are we doing in Afghanistan?

You mean Pipelineistan?

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&ei=NBpmSvGqFYP8sQOG7fnxDg&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=pipelineistan&spell=1&fp=WJN00bVEX_k

The Builderberg group (130 or so of the rich elite) that runs the world, has us in Afghanistan so they can make money on the poppies, why else would the locals burn the poppy fields?  Just like why we are in Iran for the oil, remember them burning the oil? They also profit from death and re-building the ruin, Halliburton ring a bell?

What we need to do is cut the $ trillion plus national ‘defense’ budget by 90% and retrain the the recruits, and deprogram them, to become medical personel and start opening new hospitals right away.

So true Night-Gaunt. Your last paragraph is especially chilling. Think tanks are way ahead of us on this one. Many weapons are in need of technical refinement, such as drones. The Afghan war is but a prelude of future mayhem where the battlefield may be closer to home.

According to Hedges, “The Taliban runs the poppy trade, which brings in an annual income of about $300 million a year.” He cites no sources. I heard Hamid Karzai’s brother is the biggest drug dealer in Afghanistan.
CIA, ISI, the Taliban, the Afghan government, the Northern Alliance, Hekmatyar, Haqqani…everybody’s in it for the drug money. 

Somehow this reminds me British opium wars in China in the 19th century. Things don’t change that much.

Night-Gaunt - you forgot to mention the thousands of our military personnel who, trained to have personality disorders (lean, mean killing machines), will someday return to our shores - personality disorders in tact.

Wars may be stupid but for whom? Those who reap the rewards for their plunder? Those citizens duped into believing it is for “God and country?” Those who are attacked and slaughtered by armed foreigners in their own nations who are labeled the “enemy” by the invaders (us) and control most of the media gets back to their “land of the free” country? The terrorists believing they are the “good guys” while they slaughter and rape. The destruction of entire nations at our hand? The robbery of whole continents of their wealth to us and our allies? War is the amalgum of all the horrors and evil that men do.

No war isn’t stupid, it is evil and a horror we should never do to our fellow human. It must stop. As long as it goes on it empowers our true enemies, the cabal of the rich and well connected 2% of the population who want the entire USA to become their massive base to affect the world and stay in power and glory forever. We have an estimated 787 bases in over 140 countries. [Probably and under count.] We could add the British, Roman, Spanish and French empires together and maybe that might come close. The only difference is we don’t have an empire internally. That won’t take much longer till we get it. It is only a matter of when the present agent of change, Obama finishes the job started by Reagan and carried through each president to bring the Republic down.

The on-going Depression is filling the ranks of the military with the desperate and nuveau poor. Along with lax regulation allowing in all kinds of criminals including gang members too. While the youth are being trained in game simulators to use the new weapons of the new century to kill remotely. Something they are vastly familiar with. The military is becoming the new school for many citizens as needed for an empire. Those who don’t will get military style training in other fields needed to keep God and Country going. Just a matter of time till the plan finishes and the republic is dead.

Review the link, internalize the factual information and the geography.

  Two facts become obvious. The areas where “we” are loved and the areas where we “are not loved”. Then determine which of all of them “wars’s” purposes mean anything.

  ENJOY: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&t=h&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=108235310141486563019.0004514364e41fec31907

How can the US defeat the Taliban with cold war style tactics?  How can we even compete when the morons in Congress disagree with Sec. Gates on what weapons systems are useful now?  At $10B a week in costs, just bring the troops home until there is a real way of winning.  Gee, that money might actually pay for national health care.  Not to mention helping rehabilitate and support the 150,000 wounded from these crazy wars.

Sepharad:
’... I realize that the U.S. cannot and should not police the entire world, but there are times and places when, with the UN, it seems to make sense to step in.’

Anarcissie:
Who is going to police the U.S.?

Inherit The Wind:
How cryptic and clever!

Even with Bush/Cheney the US has been one of the most reluctant super-powers in history.  When OTHER nations were the most powerful anybody knew, they did anything they damned pleased.  Consider: Genghis and Kublai Kahn—Genghis virtually INVENTED genocide, killing 160,000 in one fell swoop, with execution teams.

Rome never worried “What will they think?”  The Soviet Union never gave a rat’s ass about the feelings of her neighbors.  Britain ruled the waves and used it to turn China into a sink-hole for opium.

I could list more and more but the point is, even at our WORST, we are still much more timid than other powers. ...’

I don’t see anything particularly cryptic or clever in my question.  It’s simple and straightforward, and would occur to anyone who wasn’t steeped in some sort of religious exceptionalism about the U.S., or rather its ruling class—most Americans are actually not very fond of imperial projects, not if they have to pay for them.

Somehow a comparison with Genghis Khan is not very heartening.  In any case, the fact is that most of the killing, terror, torture and so forth going on in the world today is being perpetrated by the U.S., so the main question, if you’re interested in reducing the killing, terror, torture, etc., is to figure out how to limit the activities and scope of the aforesaid American ruling class.  A beginning might be to reflect that the government and social order of such places as Somalia and Afghanistan is the business of the inhabitants thereof until they bother someone else, just as the government and social order of the U.S. is the business of Americans.

In any case, it ought to be pretty clear by now that the U.S. ruling class does not have the duty, right or intellectual or material capacity to rule the world.  As this becomes evident to the people, the ruling class will have to choose to give up the project or establish some kind of dictatorship—fraud isn’t working any more, for the most part.  Although some people are evidently still snookered.

DBM - “THIS IS A STUPID WAR”

Wars often follow the trajectory the world was on leading up to WWI.  It was a product of a chauvinism, of ambitions for national prestige, of capitalist competition for markets and new fields of investment, of age old hatreds between nations, and fears engendered by crises and by the race for superiority in armaments.

When such factors combined to ride the constellation of events, political leaders were hardly more than playthings of fate. 

‘Stupid’ is being blind to what leads to wars.

Well yes, that one is laughable on its face ... but every justification in the list is a load of cr@p!

*  To defeat the Vatican funded Hezbollah effort to eradicate Israel (just saw that one in this thread!)
*****************************************

Is there ANY crack-pot idea that people at TD will NOT buy into???

What POSSIBLE motive could the Vatican have to support a RADICAL Shi’ite militant organization against Israel???  WHO is more likely to block access to Christian holy sites?  Who blocked access to Jewish holy sites for 19 years?  Not Israel!

The movement away from Catholic Church sanctioned anti-semitism officially began with the 2nd Vatican Council around 1962 (I think).  It has steadily moved away from it since then and included Pope John Paul II’s flat-out ban on anti-semitism, referring to Judaism as “our elder brothers”.  To think the JPII, who was nearly killed by a Moslem assassin, would sanction a radical violent Shi’a group to attack Israel is the height of irresponsible IDIOCY!

It ranks with those jackasses who committed suicide so they could go to heaven with the ETs whose space ship they said was confused with being Comet Hale-Bopp.

Put out any piece of nonsense and some fool at TD is gonna say “Uh, Yeah, that sounds right…”

Lots of short term profit being made with any war any where
For the arms, steel, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and many other industries;
Lots of jobs too…..Short term profit and ” it’s business, nothing personal”
Being the name of the capitalist game we play
At the taxpayers and foreign citizens cost
Means its the taxpayer who needs to wake up and make a noise
If we wish to have any say and change the way
Our planet is running.

Why are we there?  Oil, pipelines, gaining control of the natural resourses of the “Stans” and of Iran’s vast oil fields in this game of who will rule the world that we are playing with Russia and China.
Will it work?  I don’t think so.  The very tools needed to sustain an expanding empire are missing.  The wealth, real wealth has vanished, we produce financial houses of cards and chain stores selling goods produced elsewhere while increasing the military budget year after year.
Democracy,  freedom, women’s rights?  We can’t even defend our own much less lecture the world without provoking snickers, but we can bomb, bomb, bomb away.
We watch the battles from afar like generals on a hill in other wars, inquiring from time to time about the number of dead. How many will it take before there is a thumbs down?

Not only sacrificing “our kids and our friends and neighbors’ kids” ... doesn’t anyone feel any shame for the catastrophe that has been visited on the Afghan and Iraqi people?  100’s of thousands if not millions killed directly and certainly many millions displaced and with their lives ruined.

This is Imperialism with a capital “I”.  The U.S. media carries on and on about “the troops” and their losses and sacrifice.  Given that there seems to be no good reason for it, surely shame and conscience for what has been done to these millions of people should be bothering the American people just as much.

Yeah, that’s one of the main points of this article. The war supporters can’t even agree on why they want to fight or what they want to win. But we’re supposed to continue to sacrifice our kids and our friends and neighbors’ kids to this stupidity? There is no justification for continuing this.

It is extraordinarily Imperial for so many people in this discussion to support any sort of violent (military) intervention anywhere when there is so much disagreement about the purpose.

Chris Hedges original article lists:

*  Hunting down bin Laden and al-Qaida
*  “to consolidate progress” (whatever that means)
*  War on the Taliban
*  Building democracy
*  Fighting terrorists there so we do not have to fight them here
*  “Liberating” the women of Afghanistan

To this, the people in this blog and elsewhere could add:

*  To give the military-industrial complex a reason to build/sell more stuff (profits)
*  To secure the nukes in Pakistan
*  To build a pipeline from the Caspian oil & gas to the Indian Ocean
*  To satisfy Israel somehow
*  9/11 (usually seems a good reason for anything)
*  It’s all part of the drug war (suppressing heroin production)
*  To defeat the Vatican funded Hezbollah effort to eradicate Israel (just saw that one in this thread!)
*  To keep “our enemies” off-balance and poor
*  To prevent military funding from creeping into the education system and better educating the U.S. population (just saw that one here too)

You get the point ... no-one can agree what the war is for.  Therefore no-one can know what it means to “win” it.  The troops on the ground will often be counterproductive because there is no clarity about what they are trying to achieve. 

THIS IS A STUPID WAR

Personally, I think most wars fall in that categoray (Stupid) but even among other wars this is a really stupid war.  What’s more, from the Afghan perspective I expect that they feel like they are defending themselves like England in WWII.  Their total clarity will eventually win out because they will win when the last foreign soldier leaves no matter how long it takes.

So yes, I agree with Hedges.  Leave Afghanistan and Iraq militarily.  In fact over time, dump almost all of the approximately 1000 foreign military outposts maintained by the U.S.  The whole kit and caboodle is counterproductive ...

Now, I’m not naive enough to think that this will happen any time soon.  There is too much profit to be made by the already rich and too much fear of what might happen amongst the rest of the U.S. population.  It’s a tough puzzle to crack but I believe that it is the only chance the U.S. has of being different from all the previous empires ... and maybe even having a more fundamental influence and surviving longer.

Anarcissie, July 20 at 10:34 pm #

Who is going to police the U.S.?
*************************************

How cryptic and clever!

Even with Bush/Cheney the US has been one of the most reluctant super-powers in history.  When OTHER nations were the most powerful anybody knew, they did anything they damned pleased.  Consider: Genghis and Kublai Kahn—Genghis virtually INVENTED genocide, killing 160,000 in one fell swoop, with execution teams.

Rome never worried “What will they think?”  The Soviet Union never gave a rat’s ass about the feelings of her neighbors.  Britain ruled the waves and used it to turn China into a sink-hole for opium.

I could list more and more but the point is, even at our WORST, we are still much more timid than other powers.

Now understand this: I think our reluctance is a GOOD thing but it’s not going to be copied by anyone from the Chinese to Al Qaeda.

Yet we DO allow ourselves to be policed—when we have sane leaders.  Clinton was VERY careful of his coalition in Yugoslavia, as was Bush 41 in the first Iraq war.  Bush 41 would NEVER have started the 2nd Gulf War, and it’s clear from all the toothmarks in his tongue….

However, if we fall, the question of who polices us will be answered, but you may not like the answer.

In 1899, after the Spanish American Farce and the creation of the American Empire thru Land Grabs and Revolutions in distant lands like Hawaii, Samoa and the Philippines, Mark Twain suggested that we redesign the US Flag.

He thought we should change the white stripes to black ones. The stars should become little skulls and crossbones.

In this way, everyone would immediately understand that we were a great Pirate Nation, interested only in money. To Hell with Freedom!

Sepharad:
’... I realize that the U.S. cannot and should not police the entire world, but there are times and places when, with the UN, it seems to make sense to step in.’

Who is going to police the U.S.?

I agree with Inherit the Wind’s entire post, as well as the point made by felicity that Iraq might be better off as a federation akin to the UAE. If nothing else, that would give the Kurds a semi-autonomous region of their own, to which Turkey’s and Iran’s Kurds might want to migrate, lessening the conflict they endure in those countries.

Also think that in portraying all the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan as wrong, Hedges is more inclusive than he should be. Whether bin Laden is dead or not it makes no difference: the Taliban and Al Quaeda’s central operation most probably are still in the Afghanistan/Pakistan mountains, because the terrain and tight tribal clan society make it easier for them to swing their arms a little rather than being somewhere more open to strangers. From there they deploy orders from operatives, sometimes personnel, distribute money generated by the organization itself to far-flung clones, operatives and imitators. As the AQ virus seems to be spreading throughout Somalia and other African countries, there is some argument to be made for the West involving themselves there.

However clumsy Americans have been, I don’t think that our original involvement in Somalia has been entirely forgotten by the people. Warlords were stealing food being distributed under the UN, and using it to increase their own influence among the starving populace. UN soldiers had tried to interfere, and after 27 Pakistani UN troops were killed the US sent in forces to help. This was by anyone’s measure a good intervention, under Clinton, but when 18 American soldiers were killed in Mogadishu and videos of a dead American soldier being dragged through the city’s streets came out, Clinton pullled the soldiers all out. This was a mistake, and what was a smaller conflict in a famine-stricken country has ballooned into an endless litany of suffering as Islamists in and out of Somalia’s government fight while people still starve. There was the potential for a resolution akin to that in the Balkans, and the main sufferers for our untimely pullout are Somalia’s people. I could be wrong, but the Somalian episode may have encouraged the Sudanese dictator to unleash the janjaweed, who have murdered and murdered and murdered and continue to do so, confident that the UN will not try to stop them with anything harsher than words.

I realize that the U.S. cannot and should not police the entire world, but there are times and places when, with the UN, it seems to make sense to step in.

Bamford by way of omop - “...remaking the Middle East into a region friendly, instead of hostile, to Israel…” is a crock.  More like it is the ancient and proven tactic/strategy of creating turmoil in states hostile to yours is your best guarantee that you’ll be left pretty much alone. 

Bombing is a political act intended to create civil strife and even a cursory glance at the present situations in Iraq and Afghanistan confirms that it works. 

The seemingly collective naivete and ignorance of our politicians as regards what’s really going on on the world stage as directed by Israel challenges credulity.  But what’s in it for us - and there has to be something - is where the truth of our foreign policy lies.  I mean, they/we can’t be THAT stupid.

The people prosecuting these wars are fascists. The American people are not. There is a clash and a disconnect between the taxpayers and those who use their tax money to fight wars.

‘(Fascism is) a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.’ (Robert O. Paxton, Wikipedia)

This encapsulates the Bush/neo con/fascists in all their glory. But there are no good choices in Afghanistan. The United States is fighting World War II and the Taliban are fighing to get their country and their power back. The bulk of the population hopes only to survive. The Spanish invented guerilla warfare because it was all they had to fight Napoleon. They won. The idea that Afghanistan is going to take over the world is laughable. Afghanistan couldn’t invade a soccer pitch. It’s one of the poorest, most destroyed countries in the world, after almost thirty years of war and destabilization.

And David Ignatius, neo con mouthpiece, had these stirring words to say on the war in Iraq: ‘…this may be the most idealistic war fought in modern times – a war whose only rationale, for all the misleading hype about weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaida terrorists, is that it toppled a tyrant and created the possibility of a democratic future’. But for whom? America has built military bases all over Iraq, over a hundred at last count, and seems to have no intention of ever leaving, especially now that the multinationals have control of Iraq’s oil. As Noam Chomsky points out, the real reason for the invasion of Iraq is much less noble: to build military bases in a pacified client state in a part of the world that holds two thirds of the world’s oil. Ignatius’ words might have some meaning if it wasn’t obvious that the Bush administration and the neo cons have a contempt for democracy that has become legendary.

On this subject Chomsky is scathing, and it’s easy to see why. He decribes the sight of Paul Wolfowitz calling on the Iraqis to ‘build democracy’ at Hilla in Iraq, the site of a ‘well-substantiated massacre of civilians by U.S. forces’. And you only need to cast a non-partisan eye over Patriot Act I and even worse Patriot Act II to understand that the people driving this war agenda hate democracy and will do anything to thwart it, at home and abroad.

felicity und sophrosyne:

The Blueprint for the new Bush policy had actually been drawn up five years earlier by three of his top national security advisors, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser who were working for conservative pro-Israel think tanks.

James Bamford explains, “the centerpiece of the recommendations was the removal of Saddam Hussein as the first step in remaking the Middle East into a region friendly, instead of hostile, to Israel.

Their plan “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” also signaled a radical departure from the peace-oriented policies of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a member of an extreme right-wing Israeli group.”

The report was “a kind of US-Israeli neoconservative manifesto” according to journalist Jason Vest.

In Vest’s analysis, the report proposed “a mini-cold war in the Middle East, advocating the use of proxy armies for regime changes, destabilization and containment. Indeed, it even goes so far as to articulate a way to advance right-wing Zionism by melding it with missile-defense advocacy.”

Patrick J. Buchanan[4] wrote that the report “urged Bibi to ditch the Oslo Accords of the assassinated Yitzak Rabin and adopt a new aggressive strategy.”
Because of the shared organizational membership of the paper’s authors,

Vest wrote that the report provides “perhaps the most insightful window” into the “policy worldview” of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and Center for Security Policy, two United States-based thinktanks.
Sidney Blumenthal’s summary of the report:
“Instead of trading land for peace, the neocons advocated tossing aside the Oslo agreements that established negotiations and demanding unconditional Palestinian acceptance of Likud’s terms, peace for peace. Rather than negotiations with Syria, they proposed weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. They also advanced a wild scenario to redefine Iraq.

  So as sophrosyn coined it….

    USA will get back control of its foreign and military policy when Israel permits it.

Let us count the ways:

1. Give-aways to financial institutions 2. Bungled health care reform proposal(s)  3. Torturers still un-accountable & Gitmo still open 4. Job lose continuing 5. Foreclosures rising 6. Interest rates (zero to banks) but climbing past 5 and 6% for home buyers and up to 30% for credit card users 7. salaries and hours cut for workers and government-sanctioned bonuses for financial institutions 8. educational declines continuing unabated and 9. military spending continuing to rise (though there can be ‘no military victory in Afghanistan’)  Any one want to make a # 10 ? or more? it’s easy.

Where is Obama? Enabling this stupidity, squandering the wealth of a nation.

Do you think it matters whether the Republicans have their act together or not?
Polls show Obama losing the ‘independents’, but i can tell you - whether or not the polls show it - Obama is losing the liberals and the progressives.  Obama and the Democrats are easy prey, it doesnt matter whether or not the Repubs are together or falling apart.  Folks will simply vote against this madness. (Of course, they’ll get more of it and faster, but the Dems will be out.)

Obama, you need to stop frittering away the best chance in a life time for ‘real change’. Take a chance and lead.  That’s what we were hoping for. You can begin by declaring an end to the non-sense in Afghanistan.  Find your way out of this craziness , the killing and your counter-productive war.  Soon you will be alone, with only the ‘coalition of the willing’ (the numbskulls you have advising you now, the countries you can buy-off and the mercenaries you can pay for with money borrowed from China). Stop this insanity.

Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are three nation-states.  Al-Qaida is a criminal group.  Quite different. 

Patriotism demands that decent Iraqis and Afghans try to kill Americans, as Americans would try to kill occupying Afghans or Iraqis. As we should have learned in Nam, when the patriots want to kill you, you can’t win.

The only seemingly various pathologies Chris Hedges catalogues regularly here are actually a ‘singularity’....a kind of black hole of degeneracy which is the naturally inevitable CONsequence of the collapse of this “civilization” into the bottomless pit of its own vacuous CONtradictions.  It remains a matter of mild curiosity, though, that he and others here seem (blissfully?) unaware of it all having long since crossed the ‘event horizon,’ and accelerating irretrievably toward its own total dis-integration.

So precious Personal and Community attention CONtinues to be wasted on futile efforts to somehow salvage something in the way of “comfort” and CONvenience from the already sunken wreckage of our tormentors’ ages-old wet-dream….our own now-finally-fading ten-millennium nightmare.  We already ‘own’ everything we can take-away from our ordeal, tame Sisters and Brothers.  We’re in no ‘danger’ whatsoever of forgetting any of this.  Its actual effects on us and our Mother Earth and All Our Relations are indelibly inscribed in the very fiber of our being….encoded in our DNA.  Once released from its CONfines, we’ll be ten thousand generations living together through all the ‘changes’ it has wrought upon us ALL. 

Shift is among a few here offering sound council.  Let go of what can only pull you further into CONfusion and, ultimately, oblivion.  Take ‘hold of each other, and start giving all your attention to rising all together above the degradation the tormentors and their two-legged agents have tried to drag you down into….so as to have some forced ‘company’ in their own self-imposed perpetual misery.

Despite all the CONtrary propaganda, we’re under absolutely no obligation to ‘go-there.’

HokaHey!

Yeah Prole, I wondered that too - don’t see how the US is in any position to proselytize about a better way of life. 

Ironically the Neocons themselves harbour a deep disgust for consumer society, just like the Taliban.  It’s a big tangled nest of hatred! 

If the US concentrated on being a good little boy it would not have to worry so much about how to win hearts and minds with disingenuous propaganda - people would naturally come to see it as a beacon.  Many Americans thought that was the case already, and got a big shock on 9/11.

“The only way to defeat terrorist groups is to isolate them within their own societies.” Sure, good idea - but how do you isolate the Republican and Democratic Parties in their own society? Especially since most of the supine American population is either too stupid to know any better or too lazy to get off their seat cushions and try and stop them. So that leaves the heroic resistance movements around the world to free themselves from the alien invaders, with their own versions of Lexington and Concord, sans Paul Revere.“This requires wooing the population away from radicals” - which, given it’s tremendous public relations industry, the American ruling class has been very effective at doing at home. The American population has long since been wooed from any radical notions of ending corporate imperialism abroad or domestically. Whether foreign populations are going to buy that is another matter. So, “It is a political, economic and cultural war”. “The terrible algebra of military occupation and violence is always” ...instrumental to this kind of battle. So naturally “It always creates more insurgents than it kills” Which in turn, provides a pretext for greater imperial intervention and which then “legitimizes terorism” by rogue states like the the U.S. and Israel in pre-meditated response. A very familiar and predictable pattern which by now is transparent enough to all, except the vacant American public.“And while we squander resources and lives, the real enemy” ...the ruling elites “has moved on to build networks” and bases around the world, to carry on more of the same with the new politically-correct black American caesar to help give the whole nefarious enterprise a new feel-good factor. But whether you’re being bombed by W. or by hip Hussein, the game is still the same.All that is depressingly clear enough. What’s not so clear is, why C. Hedges, who on numerous occasions has made abundantly clear, the utter depravity of “our” ruling elites, and the fundamental political, economic and cultural bankruptcy of American society and its impending doom, should suggest that America is therefore in any position to be “wooing” foreign populations. Wooing them to what? Wooing them to following the venal American society off that famous metaphorical cliff on the horizon and into the abyss? Little wonder the U.S. has to resort to military force, does anyone seriously believe that America could possibly “woo” anyone by its decrepit example?. “There is no shortage of backwaters and broken patches of the Earth”...in America itself. Foreign populations don’t need to be “wooed” - let alone attacked - by the American ruling class with its decadent way of life - “and neither do we.”

A number of years ago I lived in a 5th world Arab country. Throughout the entire sorry spectacle of our invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan I have been amazed at how little we seem to understand that the political, social and economic structures of these ancient countries do not and will not ‘fit’ in an American model.

Whether the height of arrogance or ignorance, early on in Iraq some idiot decided that Iraq ‘needed’ a different flag so one was designed.  It hung for less than a day because Iraqis immediately tore it down.  (Even Americans should be able to understand how Americans would react to a foreign country tearing down their flag and replacing it with one of ‘foreign’ design.)  Idiotic.

Of, has it ever occurred to us that Iraqis may prefer the UAE model, a loose federation of 7 tribal states, each overseen by a prince and ruled by a president/king?  Of course not.  Didn’t Condeleeza Rice say that American values are universal, which can’t be translated any other way than all countries must be transplanted Americas.  She believed it and we believe it and until we get over believing it we’ll continue to go around the world trying to make it so.  It’s a false premise and believing it true can and will only end in disaster - one after another.

Inherit The Wind:
... Let’s let the Taliban have Afghanistan back. ...

No, let’s rule the world and sell Afghanistan to the highest bidder.

The DEA is in Afghanistan waging another one of their doomed “war on drugs.” Actually the POTUS and the Pentagon don’t want this war to succeed. Tens of millions of Americans are recently unemployed and no longer useful to the American ruling junta. Far better they get addicted to cheap heroin, remain apolitical and become criminalized. Then the American prison industry can make money off them, or they can die and lower health care costs and of course decrease the “surplus” population. 

Afghani production has doubled since the war began, and no doubt will soar exponentially now the DEA has gotten involved. If you don’t believe that, just look at California and how “successful” their eradication of cannabis has been there. That reminds me that harvest is approaching; families throughout the state will shop for clothing and school supplies for their kids, all purchased with cannabis money.

Besides the role of DEA, let’s not forget the ever-present American military-industrial complex. One of the few products manufactured in the U.S. (besides drugs) is armaments. Waging warfare in the ME assures a continuing market for U.S. goods, and employs the unemployable who won’t die on American streets. At least dying in the ME gives the impacted families a free flag to fly on the 4th, as well as a free funereal and crowing rights in certain circles.

In Perpetual War the goal isn’t to defeat an enemy: rather, the idea is to form semi-permanent markets for warfare products, supplies (heroin, minerals, oil) for an unsustainable economy and an ideological point to satisfy the propaganda apparatus’ mission to mislead and misinform a public being prepared for a future where they have no place.

Our misguided policies are coming back to us with a vengeance.  The more we dish out the more we take it on the chin.  Greed and power blind the elites, who control our military actions to the hardships they are inflicting on others and, by extension, to Americans.

There are two ways to stop the elites, fight them or destroy their economic power by not purchasing their products or borrowing their money. The second option is in my view more transformational and non-violent. 

It requires that we first change our thinking from “I” to “We.”  Then we cooperate with people for the betterment of the “We.”  Buy local, consume less, learn to live on less, slow down, assist nature in restoring it’s balance, stop listening to the propaganda on radio and television, and make a conscious choice to be happy.

I don’t get a clear sense in this article of whether Chris Hedges thinks that the war strategy is incompetent or dishonest. 

If you are playing a chess-like game of statecraft then it suits to have geographically distant rivals in disarray, unable to compete economically, intellectually or militarily.  I suspect that Western governments would rather suffer terrorist attacks, which can handily be used to justify authoritarianism anyway, than have to square up against serious rivals with multinational corporations, respectable and vocal institutions, and nuclear arsenals. 

The money spent on ordnance dropped on Vietnam could have furnished it with one of the finest living-standards in the world.  There is a ruthless competitive logic here: if you can’t buy an opponent, spend money to ruin and dominate them.  The US may more than break even by bleeding their resources in different ways, but even if not, still, if my neighbour becomes twice as poor it’s like I became twice as rich.

I can’t help but remember that a ministerial friend who is close to local (San Diego) imans quoted them as saying Barak Obam’s Cairo speech put a nail in al-Qaeda’s coffin. I think that was kind hyperbole with more than a grain of pragmatism.

I’m also comparing Chris Hedges with Walter Cronkite. A news veteran of D-Day, Cronkite really traveled a long way to get to his The US can’t win in Viet Nam pronouncement. Hedges, who spent even more time covering combat—but in venues often clearly not “good” (Central America), is better prepared to speak about USA warmaking.

I am also making connection with Hedges’ last column on the mass media. One aspect of technology taking increased civilian loss to Afghanistan are the Predator and Reaper drone aircraft bombers.

The drones are controled from Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base (along the southern rim of the Nevada (nuclear weapons) Test Site. The craft operators are warring through a form of video gaming. Information has been released that the video controllers and observers continue to watch the results of their bombing runs. Talk about cognitive dissonance. The gamers leave their Las Vegas home in the morning, some drop children off at school, they drive 1/2 hour to Creech and spend 12 hours bombing Afghanistan and Pakistan sites before returning home to dinner.

What do you mean by we, white man, Tonto said to the Lone Ranger as the Indians were surrounding them in a tack.

Maybe Hedges has a thing with the three little piggies, who went we, we, we all the way home to watch Kermit and Mrs Piggy? !

Hedges and some posters bandy the collective “we” like it includes every man women, child and Republican in the USA.  “We” are responsible for the actions of the Imbeciles in power, we went to war, we did the bailout, we are all dieing.  Yes we made the rich people rich and poor people poor.  Yep, we all did do it together as we in lock step unison like lemmings marching over a cliff!

The reason Al Queda-Taliban-Hamas-Hizbullah-Iran are winning is due to what the Israeli military claim in a US financed booklet that details how The Vatican is training Hezbullah and associates to kill Israelis.

  For wars with a purpose ‘ALL’ those “evil ones” can only fight back whenever and wherever they are allowed to in their own countries.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1101158.html

We lost in Afghanistan when the first troops parachuted in there. We can’t do anything but lose, because there is nothing there for us to win. The American people voted against the war in 2006 and 2008, and we are still throwing good bodies after bad. Join local anti-war groups in your community or start one yourself. Join all of the national anti-war groups. Go to every protest and demonstration within a 100 mile radius of your home. Put up anti-war signs along roads and freeways where you live. Make a committment to do these things today, and vote. Vote against your incumbents who continue to fund this monstrosity without regard to party line, and don’t be afraid to vote for third party candidates, independents and write-ins.

Oh, but there is a purpose.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-dea-afghan20-2009jul20,0,3098699.story

@ ITW

Let’s just retreat and let Al Qaeda do whatever it wants, hide under our beds and say “Please, Mr. Bin Laden. We’ll leave you alone if you’ll just leave us alone.”

I thought he had been dead for years.

Chris, do you think for one second that ANY series of retreats like that will SLOW Al Qaeda?

The only ones who concern themselves with Al Qaeda are the ones at film studios of Langley, Virginia. Al Qaeda is so 2002.

It was in the aftermath and speculation about that assassination that the attacks of 9/11 took place.

What does 9-11 have to do with all this?

As usual Hedges has a germ of truth, but takes it to the worst and stupidest conclusion.

Here’s the germ: We are fighting with the wrong weapons considering the enemy.

Here’s the stupid conclusion: Let’s let the Taliban have Afghanistan back. Then let’s let equally oppressive and fanatical dictatorships take over nation after nation.  Like Pakistan and Somalia.  Let’s just retreat and let Al Qaeda do whatever it wants, hide under our beds and say “Please, Mr. Bin Laden. We’ll leave you alone if you’ll just leave us alone.”

Chris, do you think for one second that ANY series of retreats like that will SLOW Al Qaeda?

Changing tactics, re-evaluating endpoints, reducing mission-creep are ALL valid tactics.

But like so many, you condemn the Northern Alliance while forgetting that at the end of August of 2001, the Northern Alliance was the biggest threat to the Taliban. So Al Qaeda sent two suiciders masquerading as reporters to kill the charismatic leader of the Alliance.  It was in the aftermath and speculation about that assassination that the attacks of 9/11 took place.

Pointing out problems is great, Chris, but realistic solutions would be far better. REALISTIC solutions.