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There’s Nothing Surgical About Cluster BombsPosted on Aug 17, 2010
Gen. David Petraeus, the man who replaced his former Central Command subordinate, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, when the latter was cashiered last month for insubordinate criticism of his civilian superiors, denies that President Barack Obama has given him the assignment to “seek a graceful exit” from America’s war against the Taliban. He is determined to win. He will need additional time and material to succeed, he says, but at the end of August or early September, “we will have the inputs about right,” and, with the campaign plan drawn up by himself and McChrystal “perfected,” victory will be on its way. Actually, history is not quite as he has put it. When Obama was elected in 2008 on a campaign promise to fight the “right war” in Afghanistan, while closing down the wrong war in Iraq, he found when he arrived at the White House that Petraeus, theater commander for both Iraq and Afghanistan, had already laid out a plan that the military novice Obama was expected to follow. The new president was told that McChrystal, the prospective Afghanistan commander, would go to Kabul for consultations and return to Washington to present the plan the two generals and their staffs had already drawn up. This plan would ask for a new “surge” of troops (which had been publicized as working in Iraq). It would number more than 100,000 reinforcements plus what has become roughly an equivalent force of civilian military contractors, many of them non-Americans, who are less expensive and more dispensable than regular soldiers. Obama asked the generals if this plan would assure the United States victory in Afghanistan within a year, so that American troops could then begin their withdrawal from that country in July 2011. “No problem, Sir,” seems to have been their answer, in the best military fashion. Improbable as this answer was, it is what the press and administration spokesmen said the generals promised Obama, and the president shook their hands and said this all sounded great. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seems to be the only person, aside from a few journalists and other critics, who actually remembers this promise. Petraeus suggested during his tour of the American television news programs last Sunday that sending troops home a year from now might be a little premature. Gates then intervened to say that the promise given the president in 2009 by the military commanders would be kept. (Mr. Gates, a Republican, may no longer be in Washington by then.) This was a very striking contradiction at a moment when foreign military casualties in Afghanistan since the American invasion in 2001 have passed 2,000; Afghan civilian casualties, according to a U.N. report, have risen sharply, the majority killed by the insurgents. (NATO, under both McChrystal and now Petraeus, is attempting to limit the use of air strikes because of civilian casualties.) Advertisement The Dutch have left the NATO command because of public pressure at home; the Canadians are scheduled to go; and the new British government is very unhappy with the situation. To European governments, this is a pointless and politically poisonous war that is inherently impossible to “win.” Who surrenders to whom? Better let Afghan President Hamid Karzai (who already has said he wants foreign military contractors out of the country by the end of this year) carry on with his attempts to negotiate with the Taliban, and encourage Afghanistan’s vulnerable neighboring states to work on developing regional security arrangements. They have to live with Afghanistan. The United States is on the other side of the world. Not only is the war in Afghanistan being reinforced and perpetuated by the Obama administration, but the globalist militarism that remains the dominant force among the American policy class in Washington (Democrats prominently involved) now has its members talking to the press about its new use of “the scalpel” rather than “the hammer.” John O. Brennan, reported to be the president’s top counterterrorism adviser, says this is an international program of the assassination of individuals identified as American enemies, intended to become a “multi-generational” asset in America’s apparently permanent war to make peace. This currently is being promoted to citizens as a better idea than invading countries like Yemen, Somalia or Mauritania, overturning their governments, installing a puppet president and building democracy from scratch. One recent political assassination mission was against “al-Qaida in Yemen”—the new name for one of the many factions that have been waging regional, sectarian, tribal and ideological wars in that country since the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1922 (and probably since the Queen of Sheba ruled in 10th century B.C.). The attack succeeded in killing, among others, a much-respected governor of the province, who was visiting these militants to convince them to give up their war. The president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was livid at the Americans, and paid a blood price to the tribe from which his late subordinate belonged. Last December, another “scalpel-like” American mission in Yemen attacked a supposed al-Qaida desert training camp. Cluster bombs were used (internationally illegal, but employed by the U.S. in the interest of efficiency). The attack extended to a neighboring desert nomad encampment. Videos of murdered children and women were quickly transmitted by the media-savvy insurgents to Qatar television and Al-Jazeera. So it goes in Obama’s and the Pentagon’s search for a better way to wage war for democracy. Visit William Pfaff’s website for more on his latest book, “The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy,” at www.williampfaff.com. © 2010 Tribune Media Services Inc. CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig. Add Your Comment |
By Dale Headley, August 22, 2010 at 12:14 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Do we really think that Americans will object to the use of illegal cluster bombs
Report thisin Afghanistan just because they will kill innocent civilians along with armed
fighters? Please!! General Petraeus “won” in Iraq largely by significantly reducing
the Iraqi population with cluster bombs, hideous phosphorous bombs, and carpet
bombing, beginning in Fallujah, and hardly any Americans objected. And find me
an American who is the least bit remorseful over the hundreds of thousands of
innocent Japanese women, children, and old people who were killed and maimed
by the atomic bombs we unnecessarily unleashed on them in WWII and I’ll believe
that they might lose a minute of sleep over any “collateral damage” to
“towelheads” in Afghanistan.
By rico, suave, August 20, 2010 at 1:41 pm Link to this comment
Pat:
You go back almost as far as me.
Report thisBy PatrickHenry, August 20, 2010 at 12:33 pm Link to this comment
Capt Suave,
I remember them with the playboy bunny on their tail, the RF-4B recon birds they flew with had the gallery fox, together they were composite squadron VMCJ-3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMAQ-2
Report thisBy ofersince72, August 19, 2010 at 6:20 pm Link to this comment
That does it!!!!!!!!!
Rico, you have proven yourself to be the most
enlightened…
And it is me that is going to vote for YOU
As PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA….
you are getting drafted….on the ticket of
CUBAN DESCENDENTS OF THE YEAR.
Report thisBy rico, suave, August 19, 2010 at 5:20 pm Link to this comment
Pat:
Are EA-6s even armed?
Report thisBy PatrickHenry, August 19, 2010 at 2:49 pm Link to this comment
I wonder what a VMAQ-2 aircraft is doing dropping bombs? They are an electronic warfare unit, a flying bridge club.
They fire HARM missles against SAM sites but cluster bombs? Someone needs to get the story straight.
Report thisBy rico, suave, August 19, 2010 at 1:38 pm Link to this comment
“...but the globalist militarism that remains the dominant force among the American policy class in Washington…”
Somebody on this website called Pfaff a conservative. What is the shorthand for “I can’t breathe, I’m LOL so hard.”
Report thisBy photoshock, August 19, 2010 at 7:20 am Link to this comment
In the history of the U.S. we have the ‘manifest
Report thisdestiny’ doctrine of expansion in the continental
United States.
Well, more and more presidents seem to have taken
this doctrine and used it as justification for
expansion into areas of the world that are not
contiguous to the United States of America. While
this is not a doctrine that can be used for the
expansion of military power in other parts of the
world, for it is illegal to retain land and countries
won during wartime, it is still used to the benefit
of the U.S. and its allies, namely Britain and
Israel.
Should the sheeple stand for this kind of abuse of
power? NO! Do they? Yes. Because the simple fact is
the sheeple of the U.S. are so conditioned by the
Main Stream Media to believe the lies of the
administration, which are thought out in the halls of
the oligarchy. That oligarchy being Wall Street and
its thugs.
I am saddened that the country that once stood for
freedom and liberty is now thought of as an
imperialistic, colonialist power that cannot fulfill
its promises to the people and the people of the
world.
We are a rogue nation that cannot live by the rule of
law, not the people, but the politicians and
oligarchs that run this nation. They should not and
cannot be trusted with the power of the military and
should not and cannot be trusted to be the policeman
of the world. In point of fact there should be no
policeman of the world. We should, as a mature
society work out our problems without the shedding of
innocent blood through the use of munitions that are
outlawed by convention, which convention was signed
by the U.S and approved by the Senate.
America stands as a bastion of freedom, that’s what
the oligarchy wants the world to believe but in fact
is nothing more than a proto-fascist state, squarely
heading for the land of ‘banana republican
statehood.’
Come what may, the sheeple of the U.S. had better
wake up and realize that we are nothing more than a
nation run by thugs who steal from the poor and hand
over fist, give money to the rich without moral
compunction.
By Darker Green, August 18, 2010 at 5:29 pm Link to this comment
There should be international sanctions waged against the US until it agrees to ban cluster bombs, close it’s foreign bases, end the wars against Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, Yemen, disband the CIA, end all aid to Israel, return Guantanamo Bay to Cuba, and take care of it’s own citizens.
Report thisBy the worm, August 18, 2010 at 2:14 pm Link to this comment
After eight years of lies from the Bush administration, the voters where hungry for
something new - “Change you could believe in !”
But the lies just keep on a coming !
and
The promise that was once Obama is just more lies.
Report thisBy Mike3, August 18, 2010 at 9:42 am Link to this comment
Hay Mr. Pfaff, nice to see you back in men’s clothing. That was a joke; I meant your last stupid Republican hate filled comment about Germany. Leave Europe to those who know what they are talking about, and concentrate on what you do best – like this article. You know it makes sense. Keep them coming.
Report thisBy balkas, August 18, 2010 at 7:08 am Link to this comment
“War against taliban”?? Why not “Pashtuns warring against US warlords”?
Pfaff does not explain why US criminal assault on iraq is “wrong” war and the aggression against afghanistan “right” aggression, oops, war.
Naturally, MSM columnists prefer the use of word “war” as in a war against US or its interests.
But, then, to media, clergy, politicains, ‘educators’ all US wars are self-defensive. tnx
Report thisBy felicity, August 18, 2010 at 6:30 am Link to this comment
jphinton - great post. I’m reminded that prior to
pulling out of Lebanon, Israel dotted the southern part
of that country with bomblets, buried killers of mostly
children. The Lebanonese backed by the UN asked the
Israeli government to provide the government of Lebanon
with a map of where the bomblets were so they could be
detonated before some innocent child picked one up.
Israel, backed by the US refused.
Report thisBy jphinton, August 18, 2010 at 6:11 am Link to this comment
Cluster F**KED! The US commits atrocity after atrocity. If it were one of our enemies using “cluster bombs” we would have the leadership ready for a war crimes tribunal. Israel also uses cluster bombs also without impunity. The US and Israel will not sign the ban on such weapons with the other nations. We are literally a loose cannon! As long as the military industrial complex wags the dog, the world will be subject to our arrogance, greed, and cruelty. I can’t believe that this is the US any more…
A great quote from General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
http://streamingprophet.blogspot.com/2010/08/dragons-bombs-and-protracted-human.html
Report thisBy bogi666, August 18, 2010 at 2:47 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The term precision bombing started during WW2. It is only a term, not a reality. Besides any country, USG, which claims it’s concerned about civilian casualties and still uses cluster bombs, USG, is being disingenuous or lying and as pointed out as long as they are perceived to have different color skin thereby expendable. In Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia there are frequent casualties from cluster bombs and they are usually children. The gifts that still keep on giving, like a venereal disease, compliments of the USG, the family friendly nation which murders children with impunity and then puts a child murderer, McCain, to run for President. The USG and its political parties insult to the world are disgusting and reprehensible. McCain should have been tried for war crimes and treason but runs for President instead.
Report thisBy ofersince72, August 18, 2010 at 1:45 am Link to this comment
Some more brown skinned people getting in the way
of Natural Gas and Petro,
Cluster Bomb all those brown skinned people!!!! ! ! ! !
Report this