Juan Cole summarizes the highlight of a new Pentagon study of Afghanistan districts, which was first reported by The New York Times. The study covers the last six months. Cole refers to five of the study's findings. His assessment is that the findings do not augur well for the US-led occupation of Afghanistan. There is little support for President Karzai's government. And there is an increase in the number of districts where there is sympathy toward the insurgencies and an increase in the number of districts where violence has increased.
I expect that the Pentagon will be asking for another increase in US troops to Afghanistan. Instead, they should be contemplating a change in their course, including an increase in support for reconstruction and humanitarian aid.
------------------------
Juan Cole, Informed Comment, April 30, 2010
http://www.juancole.com
Meanwhile, some statistics on Afghanistan from a new Pentagon study of the past 6 months, as reported by the NYT:
NATO is operating in about 100 districts of the country (the vague equivalent of counties).
Number of Afghans in 92 districts (assessed for their relationship to the Federal government) that actively support the government of Hamid Karzai: 0
Number of districts out of 92 that are neutral toward the government: 44
Number of districts sympathetic to the insurgency in March 2010: 48
Number of districts that had been sympathetic to the insurgency in June, 2009: 33
Increase in violent incidents from Feb. 2009 to March 2010: 87 percent.
None of these statistics look particularly good to me.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
US plan to arm tribal militia runs into problems
Reporting from Achin, Afghanistan, Anand Gopal offers examples of how conflicted, or potentially conflicted, Afghan tribes can be. (See Gopal's article below.) Tribes are divided into clans and sub-clans. And tribal elders, representing various clans, may not always cooperate with one another. The US military had the idea of rewarding tribes with money and promised development projects that created militia to fight off "Taliban" in their areas. Their notion was that these militia would eventually work with regular Afghan police or troops and expedite the removal of "Taliban" from their areas.
Gopal gives examples of how this has not worked out as planned. He identifies two problems. First, not all clan leaders are consulted about or willing to agree to creating anti-Taliban militia. When one clan goes along with the US authorities and some do not this can heighten inter-tribal conflict and vitiate the viability of a militia. Second, Gopal found that when tribal militias were put in place, they were sometimes viewed by local Afghans as worse than the Taliban.
One implication of Gopal's report is that the US military authorities don't really understand tribal dynamics. It may be that, as an occupying force, they never will obtain such understanding or acceptance.
----------------------------
U.S. plan to arm Afghan militia founders on tribal rivalries
Anand Gopal McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: April 27, 2010 07:56:04 PM
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/27/92976/us-plan-to-arm-afghan-militia.html
ACHIN, Afghanistan — The detritus of tribal war litters the road that leads into this quiet mountain hamlet in eastern Afghanistan. The charred bodies of vehicles and the skeletal remains of destroyed houses fill the desert that flanks the road. Most of the shops in the main bazaar are shuttered, and some residents have packed up and left.
Achin district, a home of the Shinwari tribe, is part of an ambitious countrywide U.S. push to fund tribal militias to stand against the Taliban and stabilize the violence-plagued region. A months-long feud between Shinwari clans has brought Achin to a standstill, however, threatening to undermine the effort and illustrating the difficulties in enlisting tribes to combat the insurgency.
The initiative encourages tribes and other community groups in a number of areas around the country to defend their territory from the Taliban. A similar effort in Iraq is widely credited with diminishing the violence there.
The groups don't receive weapons — which already are plentiful in Afghanistan — but U.S. Special Operations Forces provide money and in some cases training. The militias are meant to complement uniformed Afghan forces and Western troops.
Locals say that tribal dynamics complicate such initiatives, however. "We want to solve the Taliban problem, but not cause a whole series of other problems in the process," said Moyen Shah, the deputy head of the provincial council, which helps govern the eastern province of Nangarhar.
The drive began last summer in the rugged, mountainous district of Achin. Insurgents and smugglers regularly crossed the nearby Pakistani border into the area, which consists of a small bazaar and clusters of homes behind mud-brick walls.
In July, two Shinwari leaders raised a militia to attack these insurgents. The tribal force killed a key Taliban commander and expelled a small band of insurgent fighters from its territory.
The rare uprising sparked a series of meetings between some tribal leaders and U.S. troops, according to Shinwari elders, after which the leaders pledged early this year to bar the Taliban from Achin.
It was one of the clearest anti-Taliban stances that any Afghan tribe had taken in recent years. "If we catch anyone harboring Taliban, we will fine him and burn down his house," said Malek Osman, one of the elders who made the pledge. "The Shinwaris are a huge tribe. We can make a major difference."
U.S. military officials rewarded the tribe with $200,000 and promised more development funds to come.
With the funds and newfound prestige, however, came infighting. Like most other Afghan tribes, the Shinwari are subdivided into a tangle of clans and sub-clans, each with its own leaders. Only one of the clans, the Shobli, had made the pledge against the Taliban.
"We haven't participated in that decision," said Muhammad Nabi, an Achin resident and member of another Shinwari clan, the Ali Sher Khel. "Those tribal elders don't represent us, and they don't speak for all Shinwaris." A number of others who were interviewed agreed with this sentiment.
Shortly after the decision to expel the Taliban was announced, the Ali Sher Khel claimed that the Shobli had occupied part of their land on the outskirts of the Achin bazaar, and launched an attack. Thirteen people were killed and 35 injured, and most of the houses there were reduced to rubble.
Many Shobli fled, leaving behind smoldering ruins and heightened tensions. Locals said life still hadn't returned to normal. "Look around," Achin resident Abdul Habib said, pointing to a gaunt, nearly deserted central bazaar. "There is fear everywhere. The (clans) don't trust each other and they think fighting will start again at any minute."
The Shobli that remain in the area don't patrol or otherwise attempt to enforce the Taliban ban, for fear that it would further stoke tensions. Moreover, the police rarely venture far from the main bazaar into the patchwork of farms and orchards in the countryside or the nearby barren flatland, where many Ali Sher Khel live.
As a result, the Taliban still roam openly in parts of Achin, according to locals and government officials.
Tensions also are brewing between Shobli elders and the Afghan government. "The government is made up of thieves and mafia men," Osman said. "We prefer to work for the Americans."
The Afghan government, in turn, is wary of tribal groups that are beyond its control, something that it said could undermine the development of the national army and police. Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, the Nangarhar provincial spokesman, said the government aimed to incorporate the tribal militias into the Afghan police force.
North of here, in the northern province of Kunduz, a multiethnic area that has a large Taliban presence in the Pashtun regions, dozens of militias have sprouted recently. Many of their commanders are former warlords who participated in Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s and were disarmed in the years after the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2001, only to rearm in recent months. In some areas — particularly those without large Pashtun populations — locals report that the militias have been reducing the Taliban threat.
In other parts of Kunduz, however, locals say that the new militias are even worse than the Taliban are. In the district of Imam Sahib, a militia leader known as Commander Nizam is widely accused of crimes that include looting and rape.
"His people stopped our bus one night," recalled Fardin Rasouli, a businessman from the area, "and took all of our money, even the jewelry from the women. During the day these people are supposedly providing security, but during the night they become thieves."
Kunduz government officials acknowledged that Nizam and other militias occasionally crossed the line. "There have been some complaints about the militias," said Mohebullah Saidi, a spokesman for Kunduz province. "Members of the suspected militias have been arrested, and there is an investigation ongoing."
Still, he said that the militias were needed until the government could field its own effective security force. U.S. Special Operations Forces are widely thought to have provided money to Nizam and other commanders, but neither side would comment on the issue.
Military officials say that the use of militias is subordinated to the development of Afghan security forces. The "over-reliance on tribal- or community-based security can promote instability or abuses of power that are associated with warlordism," said U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Porter, a spokesman with the international forces. "At the same time, we've learned that it's not productive to work against the grain of Afghan culture, which means respecting the existing system of tribal and communal ties."
Nonetheless, it's no surprise that governments are wary of any plan to arm the militias.
"We have a dangerous history in this country with militias," Abdulzai said, referring to the country's civil war, in which thousands died as a result of warring militias. "We need to learn from that experience and make sure we don't repeat the same mistakes."
(Gopal is a McClatchy special correspondent
Gopal gives examples of how this has not worked out as planned. He identifies two problems. First, not all clan leaders are consulted about or willing to agree to creating anti-Taliban militia. When one clan goes along with the US authorities and some do not this can heighten inter-tribal conflict and vitiate the viability of a militia. Second, Gopal found that when tribal militias were put in place, they were sometimes viewed by local Afghans as worse than the Taliban.
One implication of Gopal's report is that the US military authorities don't really understand tribal dynamics. It may be that, as an occupying force, they never will obtain such understanding or acceptance.
----------------------------
U.S. plan to arm Afghan militia founders on tribal rivalries
Anand Gopal McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: April 27, 2010 07:56:04 PM
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/27/92976/us-plan-to-arm-afghan-militia.html
ACHIN, Afghanistan — The detritus of tribal war litters the road that leads into this quiet mountain hamlet in eastern Afghanistan. The charred bodies of vehicles and the skeletal remains of destroyed houses fill the desert that flanks the road. Most of the shops in the main bazaar are shuttered, and some residents have packed up and left.
Achin district, a home of the Shinwari tribe, is part of an ambitious countrywide U.S. push to fund tribal militias to stand against the Taliban and stabilize the violence-plagued region. A months-long feud between Shinwari clans has brought Achin to a standstill, however, threatening to undermine the effort and illustrating the difficulties in enlisting tribes to combat the insurgency.
The initiative encourages tribes and other community groups in a number of areas around the country to defend their territory from the Taliban. A similar effort in Iraq is widely credited with diminishing the violence there.
The groups don't receive weapons — which already are plentiful in Afghanistan — but U.S. Special Operations Forces provide money and in some cases training. The militias are meant to complement uniformed Afghan forces and Western troops.
Locals say that tribal dynamics complicate such initiatives, however. "We want to solve the Taliban problem, but not cause a whole series of other problems in the process," said Moyen Shah, the deputy head of the provincial council, which helps govern the eastern province of Nangarhar.
The drive began last summer in the rugged, mountainous district of Achin. Insurgents and smugglers regularly crossed the nearby Pakistani border into the area, which consists of a small bazaar and clusters of homes behind mud-brick walls.
In July, two Shinwari leaders raised a militia to attack these insurgents. The tribal force killed a key Taliban commander and expelled a small band of insurgent fighters from its territory.
The rare uprising sparked a series of meetings between some tribal leaders and U.S. troops, according to Shinwari elders, after which the leaders pledged early this year to bar the Taliban from Achin.
It was one of the clearest anti-Taliban stances that any Afghan tribe had taken in recent years. "If we catch anyone harboring Taliban, we will fine him and burn down his house," said Malek Osman, one of the elders who made the pledge. "The Shinwaris are a huge tribe. We can make a major difference."
U.S. military officials rewarded the tribe with $200,000 and promised more development funds to come.
With the funds and newfound prestige, however, came infighting. Like most other Afghan tribes, the Shinwari are subdivided into a tangle of clans and sub-clans, each with its own leaders. Only one of the clans, the Shobli, had made the pledge against the Taliban.
"We haven't participated in that decision," said Muhammad Nabi, an Achin resident and member of another Shinwari clan, the Ali Sher Khel. "Those tribal elders don't represent us, and they don't speak for all Shinwaris." A number of others who were interviewed agreed with this sentiment.
Shortly after the decision to expel the Taliban was announced, the Ali Sher Khel claimed that the Shobli had occupied part of their land on the outskirts of the Achin bazaar, and launched an attack. Thirteen people were killed and 35 injured, and most of the houses there were reduced to rubble.
Many Shobli fled, leaving behind smoldering ruins and heightened tensions. Locals said life still hadn't returned to normal. "Look around," Achin resident Abdul Habib said, pointing to a gaunt, nearly deserted central bazaar. "There is fear everywhere. The (clans) don't trust each other and they think fighting will start again at any minute."
The Shobli that remain in the area don't patrol or otherwise attempt to enforce the Taliban ban, for fear that it would further stoke tensions. Moreover, the police rarely venture far from the main bazaar into the patchwork of farms and orchards in the countryside or the nearby barren flatland, where many Ali Sher Khel live.
As a result, the Taliban still roam openly in parts of Achin, according to locals and government officials.
Tensions also are brewing between Shobli elders and the Afghan government. "The government is made up of thieves and mafia men," Osman said. "We prefer to work for the Americans."
The Afghan government, in turn, is wary of tribal groups that are beyond its control, something that it said could undermine the development of the national army and police. Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, the Nangarhar provincial spokesman, said the government aimed to incorporate the tribal militias into the Afghan police force.
North of here, in the northern province of Kunduz, a multiethnic area that has a large Taliban presence in the Pashtun regions, dozens of militias have sprouted recently. Many of their commanders are former warlords who participated in Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s and were disarmed in the years after the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2001, only to rearm in recent months. In some areas — particularly those without large Pashtun populations — locals report that the militias have been reducing the Taliban threat.
In other parts of Kunduz, however, locals say that the new militias are even worse than the Taliban are. In the district of Imam Sahib, a militia leader known as Commander Nizam is widely accused of crimes that include looting and rape.
"His people stopped our bus one night," recalled Fardin Rasouli, a businessman from the area, "and took all of our money, even the jewelry from the women. During the day these people are supposedly providing security, but during the night they become thieves."
Kunduz government officials acknowledged that Nizam and other militias occasionally crossed the line. "There have been some complaints about the militias," said Mohebullah Saidi, a spokesman for Kunduz province. "Members of the suspected militias have been arrested, and there is an investigation ongoing."
Still, he said that the militias were needed until the government could field its own effective security force. U.S. Special Operations Forces are widely thought to have provided money to Nizam and other commanders, but neither side would comment on the issue.
Military officials say that the use of militias is subordinated to the development of Afghan security forces. The "over-reliance on tribal- or community-based security can promote instability or abuses of power that are associated with warlordism," said U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Porter, a spokesman with the international forces. "At the same time, we've learned that it's not productive to work against the grain of Afghan culture, which means respecting the existing system of tribal and communal ties."
Nonetheless, it's no surprise that governments are wary of any plan to arm the militias.
"We have a dangerous history in this country with militias," Abdulzai said, referring to the country's civil war, in which thousands died as a result of warring militias. "We need to learn from that experience and make sure we don't repeat the same mistakes."
(Gopal is a McClatchy special correspondent
Millions of Afghans face disaster in upcoming winter
As the following article indicates, food insecurity affects at least 8.4 million Afghans, caused by poverty, high food prices, drought, armed conflict, and the remoteness of many areas. With winter coming soon, they will suffer even more from inadequate diets. The situation is made worse by the general inaccessibility to medical care. As a consequence a large number of Afghans are vulnerable to high rates of pneumonia and respiratory diseases during the winter months. Women and children are especially at risk.
The focus of the US-led military occupation consumes most of the money being spent by the US and NATO in Afghanistan. This unfortunately does too little to confront the potential food and medical crises faced by millions of Afghans. The Afghan government is also burdened by the expense of training police and soldiers, with too little money to deal with the expected crises. A change in priorities from military objectives to humanitarian and reconstruction goals would surely make a positive difference.
----------------------------------
Nightmarish Potential Humanitarian Disaster
http://outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/Opinion.html
As the winter gets closer and closer, the parliamentarians have said that government is not ready to combat a potential humanitarian disaster. MPs say the lessons from last year’s bitter winter have not been learnt. With 30% of Afghans suffering from hunger, and 70% living below the poverty line, they have urged the government to send food aid to rural areas immediately. According to Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, last year heavy snowfall, extremely cold weather, diseases and lack of access to adequate food killed over 2,000 mostly elderly people and children. On the other hand, Health officials have expressed concerns about the spread of pneumonia and respiratory diseases in winter months if people do not have access to medical care. In fact, the people are facing three inextricably formidable challenges that include insecurity, food shortage and diseases. The minister of public health said “Food insecurity has made already vulnerable people even more vulnerable.” According aid workers, millions of Afghans have been affected by high food prices, drought, crop failure, armed conflict and other disasters. The ministry of public health has also said that lack of food and/or poor nutrition has caused deteriorating health in women and children, making access to healthcare all the more important. Earlier, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) analyst Paul Smyth said “While the eyes of the world have focused on violence which is increasingly terrorist in character, an estimated 8.4 million Afghans, perhaps a third of the nation, are now suffering from ‘chronic and food insecurity.” Observers and experts say that millions of Afghans have been pushed into high-risk food-insecurity by high food prices, drought and conflict-related problems. So with the snowfall imminent and with no adequate aid supplies into remote and rural areas, a severe humanitarian disaster remains nightmarish if the no immediate measures are taken.
The focus of the US-led military occupation consumes most of the money being spent by the US and NATO in Afghanistan. This unfortunately does too little to confront the potential food and medical crises faced by millions of Afghans. The Afghan government is also burdened by the expense of training police and soldiers, with too little money to deal with the expected crises. A change in priorities from military objectives to humanitarian and reconstruction goals would surely make a positive difference.
----------------------------------
Nightmarish Potential Humanitarian Disaster
http://outlookafghanistan.net/news_Pages/Opinion.html
As the winter gets closer and closer, the parliamentarians have said that government is not ready to combat a potential humanitarian disaster. MPs say the lessons from last year’s bitter winter have not been learnt. With 30% of Afghans suffering from hunger, and 70% living below the poverty line, they have urged the government to send food aid to rural areas immediately. According to Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, last year heavy snowfall, extremely cold weather, diseases and lack of access to adequate food killed over 2,000 mostly elderly people and children. On the other hand, Health officials have expressed concerns about the spread of pneumonia and respiratory diseases in winter months if people do not have access to medical care. In fact, the people are facing three inextricably formidable challenges that include insecurity, food shortage and diseases. The minister of public health said “Food insecurity has made already vulnerable people even more vulnerable.” According aid workers, millions of Afghans have been affected by high food prices, drought, crop failure, armed conflict and other disasters. The ministry of public health has also said that lack of food and/or poor nutrition has caused deteriorating health in women and children, making access to healthcare all the more important. Earlier, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) analyst Paul Smyth said “While the eyes of the world have focused on violence which is increasingly terrorist in character, an estimated 8.4 million Afghans, perhaps a third of the nation, are now suffering from ‘chronic and food insecurity.” Observers and experts say that millions of Afghans have been pushed into high-risk food-insecurity by high food prices, drought and conflict-related problems. So with the snowfall imminent and with no adequate aid supplies into remote and rural areas, a severe humanitarian disaster remains nightmarish if the no immediate measures are taken.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Momentum in US Congress for the beginning of the end of Afghan war
Mark Weisbrot suggests that the US-led war in Afghanistan will end when a majority of the members in the US House and Senate go on record as favoring a clear timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. Weisbrot's article was included today, April 27, 2010, at: http://www.zcommunications.org/how-wars-are-ended-rebellion-in-u-s-congress-could-mark-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-afghan-war-by-mark-weisbrot
Weisbrot writes that a "rebellion" in congress is happening. He writes:
"...a rebellion is growing in Congress against the war. Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, House Democrat Jim McGovern from Massachusetts, and House Republican Walter Jones from North Carolina have introduced legislation that would require President Obama to establish a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The bill has quickly picked up 29 co-sponsors, and could reach 100 within the next few weeks."
The movement in favor of withdrawal in Congress is being influenced by changes in the larger climate of opinion in both Afghanistan and the US, and probably by sheer economics. Weisbrot points out that in Afghanistan, which will be spending and unsustainable 61% of its projected 2011 GDP for the army and police, a poll sponsored by the US Army found that "94% of Kandahar residents support negotiations with the Taliban, rather than military confrontation."
In the US, Weisbrot writes, "The majority of Americans are against the war, and every week thousands of Americans continue to put pressure on their representatives in Congress...."
If the shift in the US Congress against the war maintiain's its momentum, then, along with pressures from the voters - and with mounting costs and casualties and high unemployment- the "end" of the US-led war in Afganistan may end sooner than we have thought. How great that would be!
Weisbrot writes that a "rebellion" in congress is happening. He writes:
"...a rebellion is growing in Congress against the war. Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, House Democrat Jim McGovern from Massachusetts, and House Republican Walter Jones from North Carolina have introduced legislation that would require President Obama to establish a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The bill has quickly picked up 29 co-sponsors, and could reach 100 within the next few weeks."
The movement in favor of withdrawal in Congress is being influenced by changes in the larger climate of opinion in both Afghanistan and the US, and probably by sheer economics. Weisbrot points out that in Afghanistan, which will be spending and unsustainable 61% of its projected 2011 GDP for the army and police, a poll sponsored by the US Army found that "94% of Kandahar residents support negotiations with the Taliban, rather than military confrontation."
In the US, Weisbrot writes, "The majority of Americans are against the war, and every week thousands of Americans continue to put pressure on their representatives in Congress...."
If the shift in the US Congress against the war maintiain's its momentum, then, along with pressures from the voters - and with mounting costs and casualties and high unemployment- the "end" of the US-led war in Afganistan may end sooner than we have thought. How great that would be!
Child Labor widespread amidst poverty in Afghanistan
The following article is written by Anna Badkhen and appears on the Foreign Policy.com website at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/26/kids_at_work_in_afghanistan. The following paragraph provides a framework for the specific examples she describes in other parts of the article.
"Despite the billions of international aid dollars funneled into Afghanistan since 2001, the country is weighed down by crushing poverty -- a burden that falls heavily on children. The United Nations estimates that one-third of Afghanistan's children under 14 work. Drive out of any city in any direction, and you will see children as young as seven herding livestock, tilling fields, leveling dirt roads. Peek inside the shops of Dasht-e-Shor Street: Half of the workforce on this grimy boulevard appears to be children. There are child welders, child carpenters, child auto mechanics, child haulers of bags of cement, child shredders of carrots for someone else's pilau."
Badken finds from her interviews that some children start working as young as 7 years old, they work long hours, and get little or no money (e.g., working for an uncle out of family loyalty or gratitude). Most have little formal education. Even before they reach their adolescence, they have the faces of old men, she observes. The faces of poverty and exploitation, exacerbated or generated by war and foreign occupation.
Anna Badkhen's reporting trip to Afghanistan is supported by a grant from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Her book about war and food, Peace Meals, is coming out in October.
"Despite the billions of international aid dollars funneled into Afghanistan since 2001, the country is weighed down by crushing poverty -- a burden that falls heavily on children. The United Nations estimates that one-third of Afghanistan's children under 14 work. Drive out of any city in any direction, and you will see children as young as seven herding livestock, tilling fields, leveling dirt roads. Peek inside the shops of Dasht-e-Shor Street: Half of the workforce on this grimy boulevard appears to be children. There are child welders, child carpenters, child auto mechanics, child haulers of bags of cement, child shredders of carrots for someone else's pilau."
Badken finds from her interviews that some children start working as young as 7 years old, they work long hours, and get little or no money (e.g., working for an uncle out of family loyalty or gratitude). Most have little formal education. Even before they reach their adolescence, they have the faces of old men, she observes. The faces of poverty and exploitation, exacerbated or generated by war and foreign occupation.
Anna Badkhen's reporting trip to Afghanistan is supported by a grant from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Her book about war and food, Peace Meals, is coming out in October.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Building schools in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan
You can find the following article, written by Steve Young for the the Argus Leader, at: http://www.argusleader.com/article/20100117/NEWS,1170325/1001/news. The article highlights how American Greg Mortenson was able to win the trust of villagers in remote parts of northeast Aganistan and northwest Pakistan, and, with donations from individuals and groups in the US, to build schools for children and youth, with special attention to increasing educational opportunities for girls. It is a remarkable story. And, above all else, it humanizes Afghan and Pakistan villagers. In the last analysis, they are basically like us, though, as a result of historical and geographical circumstances, with far fewer opportunities. In this story the villagers are not the passive recipients of government or international aid; rather, they are active in all vital decisions and in providing their skills and labor for the school and other projects. The work of Greg Mortenson provides examples of how there are peaceful alternatives to military interventions.
There is a caveat that comes to mind. The success of Greg Mortenson and the villagers with whom he worked, may be unusual in some ways. In these villages, there were respected elders, and then the villages as a whole, who came to trust Mortenson. This was a key factor. It may not be so easy to achieve these accomplishments in villages and areas that are already dominated by warlords or fundamentalist Taliban. Time will tell. What is clear, though, is that Mortenson has proven to be an inspiration for those who want, and believe in, peaceful change.
------------------------------------
Greg Mortenson left USD dreaming of the world’s tallest mountains and found his calling in education
Greg Mortenson’s advice is sought by world leaders, America’s top generals and the warriors trekking over from South Dakota as National Guardsmen to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Few other Americans can offer his unique perspectives on one of Earth’s most volatile regions. The University of South Dakota graduate has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and has just released his second book, “Stones into Schools.” The book, like his earlier one, “Three Cups of Tea,” is a best-seller on the New York Times book list.
The struggle in Afghanistan, Mortenson says, isn’t about flexing America’s military might.
It’s about listening, he says, about teaching and, when asked, about extending a helping hand. Sixteen years of building schools and relationships in the most desolate reaches of Afghanistan and Pakistan have taught him that. And now many in positions of influence across America are starting to see it, too.
“He has a very innate knowledge of the culture from being exposed to it for so many years,” Capt. John Kirby, spokesman for Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said by phone from Washington, D.C. “We have come to learn from Greg just how important things like education and literacy are. It has helped shape how we do our jobs.”
And this from Yankton native Tom Brokaw, the former news anchor for NBC: “You’re not going to win this war in the barrel of a gun. A lot of what we have to do in Afghanistan, and have been doing, involves efforts of people like Greg.
“He knows the culture. He knows that when you go out into the villages, it’s not 19th century, it’s 17th century. So the idea then that you can have education and a little bit of hope is an important component if we’re ever going to move forward in that part of the world. That’s why I think he is an important voice for people to hear.”
Mortenson’s voice has reached millions worldwide through his books, which chronicle his work in Central Asia.
It has found an audience in places such as Sioux Falls as well, where children at Hawthorne, Eugene Field, Discovery and other elementary schools have collected thousands of coins together with students at Augustana College to help build Mortenson’s schools through his “Pennies for Peace” program.
The effort at Hawthorne, which raised $1,200, particularly connected with Mortenson when he visited there in fall 2008, because more than 80 percent of its diverse student population comes out of poverty. “I visit lots of schools,” he said. “And Hawthorne was one of the most inspired, determined bunch of kids that wanted to help other kids. That really struck me.”
How Mortenson got the idea
Mortenson’s own decision to improve education and literacy in Central Asia was born of a chance encounter with a village in Pakistan in 1993.
At the time, he had a sister, Christa, who was an epileptic. She died of a massive seizure in July 1992, on the eve of a trip to visit Dyersville, Iowa, where the movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed in a cornfield. To honor her memory, Mortenson, an avid climber, resolved to take an amber necklace of Christa’s to the summit of Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain on earth.
“It’s a mountaineer’s mountain, one of the most dangerous,” Mortenson, 52, explained. “I thought it would be an awesome thing … to dedicate that climb to my sister.”
Just a few years removed from his days in the halls at USD, working as an orderly at Dakota Hospital in Vermillion and, soon after, in health care at Deadwood and Rapid City, Mortenson spent 78 days on the mountain before the rigors stopped him 2,000 feet beneath the 28,261-foot peak.
He stayed behind as two friends tried for the summit. He would be their safety net if they needed help down the mountain. “I probably could have made it,” Mortenson said. “In my mind, I could have made it and died, and it would have been perfectly fine.”
But after weeks above 16,000 feet, oxygen deprived and their bodies struggling against the high altitude, Mortenson and his friends headed down the mountain. He stopped in his descent in a little village, Korphe, to recover from his emaciation and exhaustion.
During his 10-day recovery, he met a little girl, Cho Cho, 9 years old and handicapped. He watched her writing with a stick in the dirt, along with the other children of the village. They had no classrooms, and their teacher was gone half the week because they couldn’t afford his daily $1 salary.
So to repay the villagers’ kindness to him – and because of the resolve of Cho Cho, like his sister, to persevere despite her disability – Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school.
Back in America, he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, asking for help in building the school. He got one response, a $100 check from Brokaw.
“My daughter has always said, ‘It’s outrageous that you get credit just because of that $100,’ ” Brokaw said, chuckling. “I can’t remember exactly if I’d been given a heads-up about Greg. We have a couple of mutual friends. He was a climber and had Midwestern roots. I thought it was a good idea.”
In 1994, Mortenson founded Pennies for Peace, engaging schoolchildren to donate their spare change to help pay for his first school. The children responded with 62,400 pennies.Village gives the land and the labor
Since then, through his Montana-based Central Asia Institute he co-founded, Mortenson has built or established 49 schools in Afghanistan and 82 schools in Pakistan, mainly for girls. His budget has grown to $3.5 million annually, funded 94 percent through private donations, such as Pennies for Peace, and the other 6 percent through corporations and foundations. He relies on a group he calls “the Dirty Dozen” to oversee his school building and management efforts.
It costs about $50,000 to establish a school, Mortenson said. Roughly $15,000 to $25,000 pays for the brick and mortar, supplies and furniture. Then there’s teacher training and support. The village then must provide land and labor.
“If they want a school in their village, that providing of land and labor ensures the buy-in,” Mortenson said. “That’s one of the reasons the Taliban haven’t destroyed any of our schools. The community has such a fierce support for the school.”
That’s important to note, Mortenson said, when you consider that the Taliban have bombed, destroyed or shut down more than 1,000 schools in Afghanistan and over 850 schools in Pakistan, 90 percent of which were girls schools.
The Taliban fears education, especially for young girls, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in a July 2009 New York Times piece on Mortenson. The war on terror is really a war of ideas within Islam, Friedman wrote. On the one side are the religious zealots who glorify martyrdom, who want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, and who want to keep women disempowered.
On the other side are those who embrace modernity, who want to open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men, Friedman said.Educated women can destroy the Taliban
Mortenson has come to understand that very well. He has seen that when girls are educated, health improves, infant mortality drops and overpopulation falls.
Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s education system has changed dramatically, with far more girls now being educated. In 2000, when the Taliban was in power and education for girls was discouraged, there were 800,000 schoolchildren in Afghanistan, almost all of them boys. Today, he said, there are 8.4 million students in school, and 2.5 million of them are girls.
When those girls learn to read and write, their mothers very carefully unfold the newspapers used to wrap meat and vegetables in the market and ask their daughters to read the news to them, Mortenson said.
“To finally hear the news, those mothers can get involved in political issues, or can understand about exploitation of women,” he said.
When women are educated, they are less likely to encourage their sons to get into the Taliban or extremist groups, he said.
“The Taliban, their primary recruiting ground is illiterate, impoverished society,” Mortenson said. “Most educated women will refuse to allow their sons to join the Taliban.”
That’s the message he has shared with Mullen and other military leaders, such as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, former commander in Iraq.
Kirby, the spokesman for Mullen, said Mortenson’s book, “Three Cups of Tea,” is required reading for the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., and encouraged for other units. As part of his work, Mortenson often briefs military units.
“We have come to realize over the course of these last eight years that we in the military can’t do it alone,” Kirby said. “In fact, what we have come to appreciate is that we shouldn’t try to do it all alone. There are certain things other people are more proficient at. Greg has helped us see that.”
The inroads are made, Mortenson said, when America builds relationships with village elders in Afghanistan – people he calls “shura” – who have risen in their communities to positions of respect and leadership.
“We have to put the elders back in charge,” he said. “And we must learn that we have to talk with and get to know each other before decisions are made.
“The elders tell me, their No. 1 complaint is, ‘Don’t bomb and kill our civilians.’ If there is any way we antagonize people, it’s when we bomb or kill civilians. The shura say, ‘If you don’t like someone, we’ll go and kill them ourselves.’ ”
For his 16 years of building schools and peace in Central Asia, Mortenson has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and 2009. Last year, he received Pakistan’s highest civil award, the Sitarae-Pakistan, or “Star of Pakistan.”
That comes as no surprise to those back in South Dakota and the Midwest who know him.
Brookings native Don Birkeland, a retired organizational psychologist, said Mortenson’s mother, Jerene, tells about 2-year-old Greg when the family was living in Tanzania and doing missionary work.
“She would look out her window, and there was Greg with the cookie jar, sharing it with a beggar,” Birkeland said.
That image of giving to the less fortunate resonated with her schoolchildren, said Cheryl Larson, principal at Hawthorne Elementary.
“Greg brought a great lesson to our children, that they could sense the value of their education, could sense the value of peace, and could learn the value of making a difference no matter how small we are,” Larson said. “We can still contribute and make a positive contribution to the global community. That’s what he showed us.”
Mortenson connects with the college crowds as well, said Julie Ashworth, an education professor at Augustana. In reading his books, her students learn that he struggled in college – first at Concordia College and later at USD – both with his studies and what he wanted to be.
“In that way, he’s not so different from many of them,” Ashworth said of her students. “But like him, they can choose to lead if they so choose. I think his is such a remarkable story of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.”
It’s not so difficult, Mortenson said. That’s what he would tell the more than 300 South Dakota National Guardsmen in Afghanistan today with the 211th Engineer Co. of De Smet and Madison, and the 196th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade of Sioux Falls.
That’s what he would tell those who haven’t left yet, either.
“To those from South Dakota or anywhere, I would say the same thing,” he said. “Listen to the elders when you get there. Be a teacher. Lend a hand when it’s asked for. That’s how we’ll win this war.”
Reach reporter Steve Young at 331-2306.
There is a caveat that comes to mind. The success of Greg Mortenson and the villagers with whom he worked, may be unusual in some ways. In these villages, there were respected elders, and then the villages as a whole, who came to trust Mortenson. This was a key factor. It may not be so easy to achieve these accomplishments in villages and areas that are already dominated by warlords or fundamentalist Taliban. Time will tell. What is clear, though, is that Mortenson has proven to be an inspiration for those who want, and believe in, peaceful change.
------------------------------------
Greg Mortenson left USD dreaming of the world’s tallest mountains and found his calling in education
Greg Mortenson’s advice is sought by world leaders, America’s top generals and the warriors trekking over from South Dakota as National Guardsmen to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Few other Americans can offer his unique perspectives on one of Earth’s most volatile regions. The University of South Dakota graduate has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and has just released his second book, “Stones into Schools.” The book, like his earlier one, “Three Cups of Tea,” is a best-seller on the New York Times book list.
The struggle in Afghanistan, Mortenson says, isn’t about flexing America’s military might.
It’s about listening, he says, about teaching and, when asked, about extending a helping hand. Sixteen years of building schools and relationships in the most desolate reaches of Afghanistan and Pakistan have taught him that. And now many in positions of influence across America are starting to see it, too.
“He has a very innate knowledge of the culture from being exposed to it for so many years,” Capt. John Kirby, spokesman for Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said by phone from Washington, D.C. “We have come to learn from Greg just how important things like education and literacy are. It has helped shape how we do our jobs.”
And this from Yankton native Tom Brokaw, the former news anchor for NBC: “You’re not going to win this war in the barrel of a gun. A lot of what we have to do in Afghanistan, and have been doing, involves efforts of people like Greg.
“He knows the culture. He knows that when you go out into the villages, it’s not 19th century, it’s 17th century. So the idea then that you can have education and a little bit of hope is an important component if we’re ever going to move forward in that part of the world. That’s why I think he is an important voice for people to hear.”
Mortenson’s voice has reached millions worldwide through his books, which chronicle his work in Central Asia.
It has found an audience in places such as Sioux Falls as well, where children at Hawthorne, Eugene Field, Discovery and other elementary schools have collected thousands of coins together with students at Augustana College to help build Mortenson’s schools through his “Pennies for Peace” program.
The effort at Hawthorne, which raised $1,200, particularly connected with Mortenson when he visited there in fall 2008, because more than 80 percent of its diverse student population comes out of poverty. “I visit lots of schools,” he said. “And Hawthorne was one of the most inspired, determined bunch of kids that wanted to help other kids. That really struck me.”
How Mortenson got the idea
Mortenson’s own decision to improve education and literacy in Central Asia was born of a chance encounter with a village in Pakistan in 1993.
At the time, he had a sister, Christa, who was an epileptic. She died of a massive seizure in July 1992, on the eve of a trip to visit Dyersville, Iowa, where the movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed in a cornfield. To honor her memory, Mortenson, an avid climber, resolved to take an amber necklace of Christa’s to the summit of Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain on earth.
“It’s a mountaineer’s mountain, one of the most dangerous,” Mortenson, 52, explained. “I thought it would be an awesome thing … to dedicate that climb to my sister.”
Just a few years removed from his days in the halls at USD, working as an orderly at Dakota Hospital in Vermillion and, soon after, in health care at Deadwood and Rapid City, Mortenson spent 78 days on the mountain before the rigors stopped him 2,000 feet beneath the 28,261-foot peak.
He stayed behind as two friends tried for the summit. He would be their safety net if they needed help down the mountain. “I probably could have made it,” Mortenson said. “In my mind, I could have made it and died, and it would have been perfectly fine.”
But after weeks above 16,000 feet, oxygen deprived and their bodies struggling against the high altitude, Mortenson and his friends headed down the mountain. He stopped in his descent in a little village, Korphe, to recover from his emaciation and exhaustion.
During his 10-day recovery, he met a little girl, Cho Cho, 9 years old and handicapped. He watched her writing with a stick in the dirt, along with the other children of the village. They had no classrooms, and their teacher was gone half the week because they couldn’t afford his daily $1 salary.
So to repay the villagers’ kindness to him – and because of the resolve of Cho Cho, like his sister, to persevere despite her disability – Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school.
Back in America, he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, asking for help in building the school. He got one response, a $100 check from Brokaw.
“My daughter has always said, ‘It’s outrageous that you get credit just because of that $100,’ ” Brokaw said, chuckling. “I can’t remember exactly if I’d been given a heads-up about Greg. We have a couple of mutual friends. He was a climber and had Midwestern roots. I thought it was a good idea.”
In 1994, Mortenson founded Pennies for Peace, engaging schoolchildren to donate their spare change to help pay for his first school. The children responded with 62,400 pennies.Village gives the land and the labor
Since then, through his Montana-based Central Asia Institute he co-founded, Mortenson has built or established 49 schools in Afghanistan and 82 schools in Pakistan, mainly for girls. His budget has grown to $3.5 million annually, funded 94 percent through private donations, such as Pennies for Peace, and the other 6 percent through corporations and foundations. He relies on a group he calls “the Dirty Dozen” to oversee his school building and management efforts.
It costs about $50,000 to establish a school, Mortenson said. Roughly $15,000 to $25,000 pays for the brick and mortar, supplies and furniture. Then there’s teacher training and support. The village then must provide land and labor.
“If they want a school in their village, that providing of land and labor ensures the buy-in,” Mortenson said. “That’s one of the reasons the Taliban haven’t destroyed any of our schools. The community has such a fierce support for the school.”
That’s important to note, Mortenson said, when you consider that the Taliban have bombed, destroyed or shut down more than 1,000 schools in Afghanistan and over 850 schools in Pakistan, 90 percent of which were girls schools.
The Taliban fears education, especially for young girls, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in a July 2009 New York Times piece on Mortenson. The war on terror is really a war of ideas within Islam, Friedman wrote. On the one side are the religious zealots who glorify martyrdom, who want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, and who want to keep women disempowered.
On the other side are those who embrace modernity, who want to open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men, Friedman said.Educated women can destroy the Taliban
Mortenson has come to understand that very well. He has seen that when girls are educated, health improves, infant mortality drops and overpopulation falls.
Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s education system has changed dramatically, with far more girls now being educated. In 2000, when the Taliban was in power and education for girls was discouraged, there were 800,000 schoolchildren in Afghanistan, almost all of them boys. Today, he said, there are 8.4 million students in school, and 2.5 million of them are girls.
When those girls learn to read and write, their mothers very carefully unfold the newspapers used to wrap meat and vegetables in the market and ask their daughters to read the news to them, Mortenson said.
“To finally hear the news, those mothers can get involved in political issues, or can understand about exploitation of women,” he said.
When women are educated, they are less likely to encourage their sons to get into the Taliban or extremist groups, he said.
“The Taliban, their primary recruiting ground is illiterate, impoverished society,” Mortenson said. “Most educated women will refuse to allow their sons to join the Taliban.”
That’s the message he has shared with Mullen and other military leaders, such as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, former commander in Iraq.
Kirby, the spokesman for Mullen, said Mortenson’s book, “Three Cups of Tea,” is required reading for the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., and encouraged for other units. As part of his work, Mortenson often briefs military units.
“We have come to realize over the course of these last eight years that we in the military can’t do it alone,” Kirby said. “In fact, what we have come to appreciate is that we shouldn’t try to do it all alone. There are certain things other people are more proficient at. Greg has helped us see that.”
The inroads are made, Mortenson said, when America builds relationships with village elders in Afghanistan – people he calls “shura” – who have risen in their communities to positions of respect and leadership.
“We have to put the elders back in charge,” he said. “And we must learn that we have to talk with and get to know each other before decisions are made.
“The elders tell me, their No. 1 complaint is, ‘Don’t bomb and kill our civilians.’ If there is any way we antagonize people, it’s when we bomb or kill civilians. The shura say, ‘If you don’t like someone, we’ll go and kill them ourselves.’ ”
For his 16 years of building schools and peace in Central Asia, Mortenson has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and 2009. Last year, he received Pakistan’s highest civil award, the Sitarae-Pakistan, or “Star of Pakistan.”
That comes as no surprise to those back in South Dakota and the Midwest who know him.
Brookings native Don Birkeland, a retired organizational psychologist, said Mortenson’s mother, Jerene, tells about 2-year-old Greg when the family was living in Tanzania and doing missionary work.
“She would look out her window, and there was Greg with the cookie jar, sharing it with a beggar,” Birkeland said.
That image of giving to the less fortunate resonated with her schoolchildren, said Cheryl Larson, principal at Hawthorne Elementary.
“Greg brought a great lesson to our children, that they could sense the value of their education, could sense the value of peace, and could learn the value of making a difference no matter how small we are,” Larson said. “We can still contribute and make a positive contribution to the global community. That’s what he showed us.”
Mortenson connects with the college crowds as well, said Julie Ashworth, an education professor at Augustana. In reading his books, her students learn that he struggled in college – first at Concordia College and later at USD – both with his studies and what he wanted to be.
“In that way, he’s not so different from many of them,” Ashworth said of her students. “But like him, they can choose to lead if they so choose. I think his is such a remarkable story of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things.”
It’s not so difficult, Mortenson said. That’s what he would tell the more than 300 South Dakota National Guardsmen in Afghanistan today with the 211th Engineer Co. of De Smet and Madison, and the 196th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade of Sioux Falls.
That’s what he would tell those who haven’t left yet, either.
“To those from South Dakota or anywhere, I would say the same thing,” he said. “Listen to the elders when you get there. Be a teacher. Lend a hand when it’s asked for. That’s how we’ll win this war.”
Reach reporter Steve Young at 331-2306.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Quotes about war and alternatives
The following quotes about war are from http://www.quotegarden.com/war.html There are other lists of quotes at this website. The quotes about war overwhelmingly reflect the ugly side of our species. There are quotes about the injuries and deaths of war, the disproportionate number of civilians that are the casualties of war, the sheer waste of war, the irrationality of war, the inevitable damnable consequences of war for everything in its wake, the rationalizations of generals after they have led soldiers into war, but who grasp in some belated sense its horror.
Chris Hedges finishes his book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, with these words:
"To survive as a human being is possible only through love. And, when Thanatos is ascendant, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity, and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others - even those with whom we are in conflict - love that is like our own. It does not mean we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has power both to resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is etneral" (pp. 184-185).
All of the quotes and comments in this post have application to the specific US-led occupation in Afghanistan. They suggest that much more could be accomplished through peaceful and negotiated means than through bombs, drones, Special Forces, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, breaking down doors, blowing up villages, prisons, torture, creating refugees, working with corrupt warlords against oppressive Taliban, attempts at buying the loyalty of Afghan men for police and military work under the pretense that loyalty and lives can be purchased. There is much to be undone before we can turn in a different direction. However, we do get a sense of how it would work from the courage of Malalai Joya, whose commentaries appear on this site and from her book, A Woman Among Warlords. We also get intimate glimpses of a better way, and of the humanity of ordinary Afghans, from the books of Greg Mortenson, including Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools.
------------------------------
Quotations about War
Related Quotes Veterans Day Peace Support Troops Memorial Day
Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace. ~Charles Sumner
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. ~Bertrand Russell
It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs
I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?" ~Eve Merriam
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. ~Albert Einstein
The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. ~David Friedman
"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes. ~James Morrow
Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him. ~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter
All the arms we need are for hugging. ~Author Unknown
A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. ~Napoleon
If we do not end war - war will end us. Everybody says that, millions of people believe it, and nobody does anything. ~H.G. Wells, Things to Come (the "film story"), Part III, adapted from his 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come, spoken by the character John Cabal (Thanks Bill!)
A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. ~German Proverb
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living. ~Omar Bradley
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 clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
The most persistent sound which reverberates through men's history is the beating of war drums. ~Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world. ~Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864
Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals. ~Colman McCarthy
You Said a Mouthful, Ronald D. Fuchs, ed.-->Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. ~Abraham Flexner
Draft beer, not people. ~Attributed to Bob Dylan
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. ~John F. Kennedy
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.~John McCrae
What this planet needs is more mistletoe and less missile-talk. ~Author Unknown
Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them. ~Pacifist Badge, 1978
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. ~Ernest Hemingway
War makes thieves and peace hangs them. ~George HerbertYou can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. ~Jeanette Rankin
You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon. ~David Lloyd George
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. ~Carl Sandburg
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. ~José Narosky
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage. ~James Russell Lowell
If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. ~Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War
I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy.... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago. ~Sir George Porter, quoted in The Observer, 26 August 1973
War would end if the dead could return. ~Stanley Baldwin
War! that mad game the world so loves to play. ~Jonathan Swift
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. ~Voltaire,
WarWe need a new law that owners of SUVs are automatically in the military reserve. Then they can go get their own goddamn oil. ~Jello Biafra, quoted in The Guardian, 3 November 2007
If it's natural to kill, why do men have to go into training to learn how? ~Joan Baez,
"What Would You Do If....?"I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together. ~Ronald Reagan, 1985
[John] Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war. ~Isaac Asimov
The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst. ~Henry Fosdick
All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. In my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration? ~Benjamin Franklin
In war, truth is the first casualty. ~Aeschylus (Thanks, Dan)
Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself. ~Francis Meehan
Only the dead have seen the end of war. ~Plato
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war. ~Ambrose Bierce
Man, in his sensitivity, does not give names to animals he intends to eat but goes on giving names to children he intends to send to war. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man. ~Napoleon Hill
We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace. ~Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth. ~Mark Twain
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country. ~Bertrand Russell, attributed
It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U.S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the Senate. ~George McGovern
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. ~George McGovern
When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. ~Jean-Paul Sartre
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. ~Albert Einstein, "Atomic War or Peace," Atlantic Monthly, November 1945
You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time. ~Albert Einstein
We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong. ~Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941
The refuge of the morally, intellectually, artistically and economically bankrupt is war. ~Martin H. Fischer
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. ~Ernest Hemingway
The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery. ~Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil
Where is the indignation about the fact that the United States and Soviet Union have accumulated thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world? ~Norman Cousins
I think war might be God's way of teaching us geography. ~Paul Rodriguez
The era of true peace on earth will not come as long as a tremendous percentage of your taxes goes to educate men in the trades of slaughter. ~Reginald Wright Kauffman
Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate? ~Gregory Clark
The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts. ~Omar Bradley
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. ~Thomas Mann
We have failed to grasp the fact that mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide. ~Havelock Ellis
Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? ~Thomas Carlyle, "Sartor Resartus"
The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. ~John F. Kennedy
War is the only game in which it doesn't pay to have the home-court advantage. ~Dick Motta
War. The dark time of valour, loss and hope where a man is controlled by his gun; where a gun is controlled by his hatred. Completely uncontrollable. ~Daniel Ha
If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "no" to war. For one does not create a human society on mounds of corpses. ~Louis Lecoin
War is fear cloaked in courage. ~William Westmoreland
War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered. ~Thomas de Quincey
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time. ~Henry Kissinger
Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood. ~Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War, 1948
I would like it if men had to partake in the same hormonal cycles to which we're subjected monthly. Maybe that's why men declare war - because they have a need to bleed on a regular basis. ~Brett Butler
We saw the lightning and that was the guns and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped. ~Harriet Tubman
It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passions, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace. ~André Gide, Journals, 13 September 1938
Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner. ~Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, vol 1, book VII, chapter 4
The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars. ~William Westmoreland
I have never advocated war except as a means of peace. ~Ulysses S. Grant
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain't they got no shame~Nikki Giovanni
Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity. ~Author Unknown
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood. ~Aldous Huxley
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Declaration of Rights"
Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals. ~Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1955
To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. ~Michael Servetus
A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in museums, just as instruments of torture are now, and the people will be astonished that such a thing could have been. ~Victor Hugo
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war. ~Otto Von Bismark
The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red people. ~Gerome Gragni and James Rado, 1967
War hath no fury like a noncombatant. ~Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment
What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war. Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat. ~Simone Weil, Ecrits historiques et politiques, 1960
War is never a solution; it is an aggravation. ~Benjamin Disraeli
The stench of the trail of Ego in our History. It is ego - ego, the fountain cry, origin, sole source of war. ~George Meredith, Beauchamp's Career
Dress it as we may, feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform? ~Douglas Jerrold
If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons. ~Pope John Paul II
Law never made men a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.... In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die. ~Herbert Hoover
A day of battle is a day of harvest for the devil. ~William Hooke
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. ~Havelock Ellis
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. ~François Fénelon
War should belong to the tragic past, to history: it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future. ~Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla)
Men were made for war. Without it they wandered greyly about, getting under the feet of the women, who were trying to organize the really important things of life. ~Alice Thomas Ellis
Will... the threat of common extermination continue?... Must children receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance? ~Pope John Paul II, speech at the UN, 1979
War is nothing less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are included. ~Robert Hall
Traditional nationalism cannot survive the fissioning of the atom. One world or none. ~Stuart Chase
Wars usually have the effect of speeding up the process of history. ~Pieter Geyl, Debates With Historians
Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong? ~Holly Near
The pioneers of a warless world are the [youth] who refuse military service. ~Albert Einstein
O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it. ~Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. ~Joe Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945
Men like war: they do not hold much sway over birth, so they make up for it with death. Unlike women, men menstruate by shedding other people's blood. ~Lucy Ellman
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~John Stewart Mill
The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it. ~Louis Simpson
The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his. ~George Patton
The expendability factor has increased by being transferred from the specialised, scarce and expensively trained military personnel to the amorphous civilian population. American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century's major wars. In the First World War 5 per cent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 per cent, while in a Third World War 90-95 per cent would be civilians. ~Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action
You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way. ~Will Rogers, New York Times, 23 December 1929
Organized slaughter, we realize, does not settle a dispute; it merely silences an argument. ~James Frederick Green
I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man. Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force? Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying to our nature than a waste of the blood of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures? ~Thomas Jefferson
War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals. ~Charles Evans Hughes
War is a game which were their subjects wise, kings would not play at. ~William Cowper
Borders are scratched across the hearts of men
By strangers with a calm, judicial pen,
And when the borders bleed we watch with dread
The lines of ink across the map turn red.~Marya Mannes, Subverse: Rhymes for Our Times, 1959
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
They should pick a dry year to fight the war. Better yet, civilize the moronic races and have no wars at all. ~Clair J. Clark, letter to wife, March 1944
I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war. ~Georges Clemenceau
As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of exalted characters. ~Edward Gibbon
There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal DreamsWar!
When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill? ~Guy de Maupassant, Sur l'Eau
The bomb that fell on Hiroshima fell on America too. It fell on no city, no munition plants, no docks. It erased no church, vaporized no public buildings, reduced no man to his atomic elements. But it fell, it fell. ~Hermann Hagedorn, "The Bomb That Fell on America"
I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it. I hate war, and never again will I sanction or support another. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick
It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way to rid the human race of unneeded trash. ~Fred Woodworth
In an incredible perversion of justice, former soldiers who sprayed festeringly poisonous chemicals on Vietnam, and now find today that they themselves have been damaged by them, appeal to the people for sympathy and charity. The effects of the defoliant "Agent Orange" are discussed at length, but not one single newspaper article or hearing that we are aware of has even mentioned the effects of the people who still live in those regions of Vietnam. It's as outlandish as if Nazis who gassed Jews were now to come forward and whine that the poisons they utilized had finally made them sick. The staggering monstrousness goes unlaughed at and even unnoticed, as in a Kafka novel. ~Fred Woodworth, The Match, No. 79
A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war. ~Herbert V. Prochnow
Studies by Medical Corps psychiatrists of combat fatigue cases... found that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure, and that fear of failure ran a strong second. ~S.L.A. Marshall
You're an old-timer if you can remember when setting the world on fire was a figure of speech. ~Franklin P. Jones, referring to the atomic bomb
Chris Hedges finishes his book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, with these words:
"To survive as a human being is possible only through love. And, when Thanatos is ascendant, the instinct must be to reach out to those we love, to see in them all the divinity, pity, and pathos of the human. And to recognize love in the lives of others - even those with whom we are in conflict - love that is like our own. It does not mean we will avoid war or death. It does not mean that we as distinct individuals will survive. But love, in its mystery, has its own power. It alone gives us meaning that endures. It alone allows us to embrace and cherish life. Love has power both to resist, and to affirm what we know we must affirm. And love, as the poets remind us, is etneral" (pp. 184-185).
All of the quotes and comments in this post have application to the specific US-led occupation in Afghanistan. They suggest that much more could be accomplished through peaceful and negotiated means than through bombs, drones, Special Forces, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, breaking down doors, blowing up villages, prisons, torture, creating refugees, working with corrupt warlords against oppressive Taliban, attempts at buying the loyalty of Afghan men for police and military work under the pretense that loyalty and lives can be purchased. There is much to be undone before we can turn in a different direction. However, we do get a sense of how it would work from the courage of Malalai Joya, whose commentaries appear on this site and from her book, A Woman Among Warlords. We also get intimate glimpses of a better way, and of the humanity of ordinary Afghans, from the books of Greg Mortenson, including Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools.
------------------------------
Quotations about War
Related Quotes Veterans Day Peace Support Troops Memorial Day
Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace. ~Charles Sumner
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. ~Bertrand Russell
It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs
I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?" ~Eve Merriam
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. ~Albert Einstein
The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. ~David Friedman
"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes. ~James Morrow
Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him. ~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter
All the arms we need are for hugging. ~Author Unknown
A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. ~Napoleon
If we do not end war - war will end us. Everybody says that, millions of people believe it, and nobody does anything. ~H.G. Wells, Things to Come (the "film story"), Part III, adapted from his 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come, spoken by the character John Cabal (Thanks Bill!)
A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. ~German Proverb
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living. ~Omar Bradley
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 clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
The most persistent sound which reverberates through men's history is the beating of war drums. ~Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world. ~Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864
Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals. ~Colman McCarthy
You Said a Mouthful, Ronald D. Fuchs, ed.-->Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. ~Abraham Flexner
Draft beer, not people. ~Attributed to Bob Dylan
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. ~John F. Kennedy
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.~John McCrae
What this planet needs is more mistletoe and less missile-talk. ~Author Unknown
Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them. ~Pacifist Badge, 1978
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. ~Ernest Hemingway
War makes thieves and peace hangs them. ~George HerbertYou can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. ~Jeanette Rankin
You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon. ~David Lloyd George
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. ~Carl Sandburg
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. ~José Narosky
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage. ~James Russell Lowell
If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. ~Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War
I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy.... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago. ~Sir George Porter, quoted in The Observer, 26 August 1973
War would end if the dead could return. ~Stanley Baldwin
War! that mad game the world so loves to play. ~Jonathan Swift
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. ~Voltaire,
WarWe need a new law that owners of SUVs are automatically in the military reserve. Then they can go get their own goddamn oil. ~Jello Biafra, quoted in The Guardian, 3 November 2007
If it's natural to kill, why do men have to go into training to learn how? ~Joan Baez,
"What Would You Do If....?"I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together. ~Ronald Reagan, 1985
[John] Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war. ~Isaac Asimov
The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst. ~Henry Fosdick
All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. In my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration? ~Benjamin Franklin
In war, truth is the first casualty. ~Aeschylus (Thanks, Dan)
Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself. ~Francis Meehan
Only the dead have seen the end of war. ~Plato
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war. ~Ambrose Bierce
Man, in his sensitivity, does not give names to animals he intends to eat but goes on giving names to children he intends to send to war. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man. ~Napoleon Hill
We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace. ~Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth. ~Mark Twain
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country. ~Bertrand Russell, attributed
It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U.S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the Senate. ~George McGovern
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. ~George McGovern
When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. ~Jean-Paul Sartre
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. ~Albert Einstein, "Atomic War or Peace," Atlantic Monthly, November 1945
You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time. ~Albert Einstein
We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong. ~Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941
The refuge of the morally, intellectually, artistically and economically bankrupt is war. ~Martin H. Fischer
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. ~Ernest Hemingway
The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery. ~Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil
Where is the indignation about the fact that the United States and Soviet Union have accumulated thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world? ~Norman Cousins
I think war might be God's way of teaching us geography. ~Paul Rodriguez
The era of true peace on earth will not come as long as a tremendous percentage of your taxes goes to educate men in the trades of slaughter. ~Reginald Wright Kauffman
Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate? ~Gregory Clark
The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts. ~Omar Bradley
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. ~Thomas Mann
We have failed to grasp the fact that mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide. ~Havelock Ellis
Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? ~Thomas Carlyle, "Sartor Resartus"
The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. ~John F. Kennedy
War is the only game in which it doesn't pay to have the home-court advantage. ~Dick Motta
War. The dark time of valour, loss and hope where a man is controlled by his gun; where a gun is controlled by his hatred. Completely uncontrollable. ~Daniel Ha
If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "no" to war. For one does not create a human society on mounds of corpses. ~Louis Lecoin
War is fear cloaked in courage. ~William Westmoreland
War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered. ~Thomas de Quincey
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time. ~Henry Kissinger
Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood. ~Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War, 1948
I would like it if men had to partake in the same hormonal cycles to which we're subjected monthly. Maybe that's why men declare war - because they have a need to bleed on a regular basis. ~Brett Butler
We saw the lightning and that was the guns and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped. ~Harriet Tubman
It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passions, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace. ~André Gide, Journals, 13 September 1938
Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner. ~Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, vol 1, book VII, chapter 4
The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars. ~William Westmoreland
I have never advocated war except as a means of peace. ~Ulysses S. Grant
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain't they got no shame~Nikki Giovanni
Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity. ~Author Unknown
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood. ~Aldous Huxley
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Declaration of Rights"
Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals. ~Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1955
To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. ~Michael Servetus
A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in museums, just as instruments of torture are now, and the people will be astonished that such a thing could have been. ~Victor Hugo
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war. ~Otto Von Bismark
The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red people. ~Gerome Gragni and James Rado, 1967
War hath no fury like a noncombatant. ~Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment
What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war. Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat. ~Simone Weil, Ecrits historiques et politiques, 1960
War is never a solution; it is an aggravation. ~Benjamin Disraeli
The stench of the trail of Ego in our History. It is ego - ego, the fountain cry, origin, sole source of war. ~George Meredith, Beauchamp's Career
Dress it as we may, feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform? ~Douglas Jerrold
If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons. ~Pope John Paul II
Law never made men a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.... In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die. ~Herbert Hoover
A day of battle is a day of harvest for the devil. ~William Hooke
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. ~Havelock Ellis
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. ~François Fénelon
War should belong to the tragic past, to history: it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future. ~Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla)
Men were made for war. Without it they wandered greyly about, getting under the feet of the women, who were trying to organize the really important things of life. ~Alice Thomas Ellis
Will... the threat of common extermination continue?... Must children receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance? ~Pope John Paul II, speech at the UN, 1979
War is nothing less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are included. ~Robert Hall
Traditional nationalism cannot survive the fissioning of the atom. One world or none. ~Stuart Chase
Wars usually have the effect of speeding up the process of history. ~Pieter Geyl, Debates With Historians
Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong? ~Holly Near
The pioneers of a warless world are the [youth] who refuse military service. ~Albert Einstein
O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it. ~Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. ~Joe Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945
Men like war: they do not hold much sway over birth, so they make up for it with death. Unlike women, men menstruate by shedding other people's blood. ~Lucy Ellman
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~John Stewart Mill
The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it. ~Louis Simpson
The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his. ~George Patton
The expendability factor has increased by being transferred from the specialised, scarce and expensively trained military personnel to the amorphous civilian population. American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century's major wars. In the First World War 5 per cent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 per cent, while in a Third World War 90-95 per cent would be civilians. ~Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action
You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way. ~Will Rogers, New York Times, 23 December 1929
Organized slaughter, we realize, does not settle a dispute; it merely silences an argument. ~James Frederick Green
I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man. Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force? Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying to our nature than a waste of the blood of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures? ~Thomas Jefferson
War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals. ~Charles Evans Hughes
War is a game which were their subjects wise, kings would not play at. ~William Cowper
Borders are scratched across the hearts of men
By strangers with a calm, judicial pen,
And when the borders bleed we watch with dread
The lines of ink across the map turn red.~Marya Mannes, Subverse: Rhymes for Our Times, 1959
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
They should pick a dry year to fight the war. Better yet, civilize the moronic races and have no wars at all. ~Clair J. Clark, letter to wife, March 1944
I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war. ~Georges Clemenceau
As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of exalted characters. ~Edward Gibbon
There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal DreamsWar!
When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill? ~Guy de Maupassant, Sur l'Eau
The bomb that fell on Hiroshima fell on America too. It fell on no city, no munition plants, no docks. It erased no church, vaporized no public buildings, reduced no man to his atomic elements. But it fell, it fell. ~Hermann Hagedorn, "The Bomb That Fell on America"
I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it. I hate war, and never again will I sanction or support another. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick
It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way to rid the human race of unneeded trash. ~Fred Woodworth
In an incredible perversion of justice, former soldiers who sprayed festeringly poisonous chemicals on Vietnam, and now find today that they themselves have been damaged by them, appeal to the people for sympathy and charity. The effects of the defoliant "Agent Orange" are discussed at length, but not one single newspaper article or hearing that we are aware of has even mentioned the effects of the people who still live in those regions of Vietnam. It's as outlandish as if Nazis who gassed Jews were now to come forward and whine that the poisons they utilized had finally made them sick. The staggering monstrousness goes unlaughed at and even unnoticed, as in a Kafka novel. ~Fred Woodworth, The Match, No. 79
A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war. ~Herbert V. Prochnow
Studies by Medical Corps psychiatrists of combat fatigue cases... found that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure, and that fear of failure ran a strong second. ~S.L.A. Marshall
You're an old-timer if you can remember when setting the world on fire was a figure of speech. ~Franklin P. Jones, referring to the atomic bomb
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Malalai Joya sends a memo to America - stop the killing
I found the following article by Malalai Joya today at http://www.zcommunications.org/memo-to-america-stop-murdering-my-people-by-malalai-joya. See a short bio of Malalai at the end of her article. She is an outstanding fighter for justice and democracy in her own country of Afghanistan, and is risking her life everyday in pursuit of these values. She opposes the US-led occupation, the Taliban, the warlords who control so much of the country outside of areas dominated by the Taliban, and the corrupt central government. She believes that ordinary Afghans are decent people who, given the chance, can create a good society.
--------------------------
Memo to America: Stop Murdering My People
By Malalai Joya
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Malalai Joya's ZSpace Page
http://www.zcommunications.org/memo-to-america-stop-murdering-my-people-by-malalai-joya
Amid increasing civilian deaths and resurgent warlordism, Afghan women's leader Malalai Joya writes that Hamid Karzai and the U.S. are losing credibility in Afghanistan day by day.
Almost every day, the NATO occupation of our country continues to kill innocent people. Each time, it seems, military officials try to claim that only insurgents are killed, or they completely deny and cover up their crimes. The work of a few courageous journalists is the only thing that brings some of these atrocities to light.
For instance, it was only after the reporting of Jerome Starkey of the Times of London that officials admitted to the brutal Feb. 12 murder of two pregnant women, a teenage girl, and several young men in a night raid at a home where a family was celebrating the birth of a child.
Night raids, air raid “mistakes,” firing on civilian buses and cars at checkpoints—the occupation finds many ways of killing the people of Afghanistan. The excuses and lies for these deaths are like salt in our wounds, and it is no wonder that protests against the U.S. military are growing. The Afghan people have had enough.
In recent weeks, there has been much talk about Hamid Karzai’s threats to join the Taliban and about his supposed differences with the American government. But for Afghans, Karzai long ago lost all credibility. The joke among our people is that Karzai doesn’t do or say anything without consulting the White House first. No amount of nationalistic rhetoric or demagoguery on his part will change this perception.
Everyone in Afghanistan knows that Karzai was placed into power with the backing of the United States and its allies, and to this day he relies on their support. His regime would not last a day without it. And Afghans know too well the reality of his corrupt government: It has delivered nothing to the country’s poor other than sorrow and destitution, while filling the pockets of drug traffickers, warlords, and its own corrupt officials.
Afghanistan has had puppet leaders before, rulers who served only the interests of foreign occupiers, whether British or Soviet. But Karzai may be the most hated puppet in our history; he has empowered some of the most brutal internal enemies of ordinary Afghans, warlords of the Northern Alliance like Sayyaf, Dr. Abdullah, Rabbani, Mohaqiq, Ismael Kahn, Dostum and many others. Even his two vice presidents, Fahim Qasim and Karim Khalili, are notorious fundamentalist warlords. The president’s brother in Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is another thug in power whose links to the drug trade and the CIA have been widely reported.
Karzai made headlines by threatening to “join the Taliban,” but the reality is that for more than eight years he has had no problem working with fundamentalists who are the ideological brothers of the anti-women Taliban. In fact, Karzai himself used to support the Taliban when he was a minor tribal leader in Kandahar in the 1990s, and for years he has been negotiating to bring Taliban leaders into his puppet regime. Some of them are already serving in his regime, and the U.S. government has been encouraging these negotiations by creating the false categories of "moderate" and "extremist" Taliban.
He has also been reaching out to that most brutal warlord and criminal, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen leader known for killing civilians and currently designated a terrorist by the U.S. government. Karzai recently appointed Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, an infamous leader of Hekmatyar’s party, as his minister in charge of the economy. These negotiations and flexible alliances by Karzai and the U.S. government are nothing new. For three decades, the U.S. has backed these criminals: Hekmatyar, al Qaeda and other fundamentalists in the 1980s, the Taliban in the 1990s, and now Karzai and his warlord allies.
Progressive-minded Afghans want to break out of this circle of warlordism once and for all. It is ironic that Karzai talks about the possibility that a “national resistance” could develop in Afghanistan. He should know that the prime target of such a movement will be his own regime and its foreign supporters.
Our people are deeply fed up. They have organized many anti-U.S. protests in the past months and if the occupation continues, the resistance will only grow. More than eight years of occupation have made life bleak, and we are tired of being pawns in the U.S. and NATO’s game for control of Central Asia.
We can no longer bear the killing of our pregnant mothers, the killing of our teenagers and young children, the killing of so many Afghan men and women. We can no longer bear these “accidents” and these “apologies” for the deaths of the innocent.
We salute the anti-war movements in the NATO countries. Here, we will struggle to our last breath to stop this war that is tearing apart our beloved Afghanistan.
Malalai Joya, now 31, was the youngest member of the Afghan parliament, elected in 2005. In 2007 she was suspended from parliament because of her consistent criticism of the warlords and other human-rights abusers in the Karzai regime. Joya has survived five assassination attempts to date, and has written her life story in the book A Woman Among Warlords (with Derrick O’Keefe, Scribner, 2009). She writes from Kabul, Afghanistan.
--------------------------
Memo to America: Stop Murdering My People
By Malalai Joya
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Malalai Joya's ZSpace Page
http://www.zcommunications.org/memo-to-america-stop-murdering-my-people-by-malalai-joya
Amid increasing civilian deaths and resurgent warlordism, Afghan women's leader Malalai Joya writes that Hamid Karzai and the U.S. are losing credibility in Afghanistan day by day.
Almost every day, the NATO occupation of our country continues to kill innocent people. Each time, it seems, military officials try to claim that only insurgents are killed, or they completely deny and cover up their crimes. The work of a few courageous journalists is the only thing that brings some of these atrocities to light.
For instance, it was only after the reporting of Jerome Starkey of the Times of London that officials admitted to the brutal Feb. 12 murder of two pregnant women, a teenage girl, and several young men in a night raid at a home where a family was celebrating the birth of a child.
Night raids, air raid “mistakes,” firing on civilian buses and cars at checkpoints—the occupation finds many ways of killing the people of Afghanistan. The excuses and lies for these deaths are like salt in our wounds, and it is no wonder that protests against the U.S. military are growing. The Afghan people have had enough.
In recent weeks, there has been much talk about Hamid Karzai’s threats to join the Taliban and about his supposed differences with the American government. But for Afghans, Karzai long ago lost all credibility. The joke among our people is that Karzai doesn’t do or say anything without consulting the White House first. No amount of nationalistic rhetoric or demagoguery on his part will change this perception.
Everyone in Afghanistan knows that Karzai was placed into power with the backing of the United States and its allies, and to this day he relies on their support. His regime would not last a day without it. And Afghans know too well the reality of his corrupt government: It has delivered nothing to the country’s poor other than sorrow and destitution, while filling the pockets of drug traffickers, warlords, and its own corrupt officials.
Afghanistan has had puppet leaders before, rulers who served only the interests of foreign occupiers, whether British or Soviet. But Karzai may be the most hated puppet in our history; he has empowered some of the most brutal internal enemies of ordinary Afghans, warlords of the Northern Alliance like Sayyaf, Dr. Abdullah, Rabbani, Mohaqiq, Ismael Kahn, Dostum and many others. Even his two vice presidents, Fahim Qasim and Karim Khalili, are notorious fundamentalist warlords. The president’s brother in Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is another thug in power whose links to the drug trade and the CIA have been widely reported.
Karzai made headlines by threatening to “join the Taliban,” but the reality is that for more than eight years he has had no problem working with fundamentalists who are the ideological brothers of the anti-women Taliban. In fact, Karzai himself used to support the Taliban when he was a minor tribal leader in Kandahar in the 1990s, and for years he has been negotiating to bring Taliban leaders into his puppet regime. Some of them are already serving in his regime, and the U.S. government has been encouraging these negotiations by creating the false categories of "moderate" and "extremist" Taliban.
He has also been reaching out to that most brutal warlord and criminal, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen leader known for killing civilians and currently designated a terrorist by the U.S. government. Karzai recently appointed Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, an infamous leader of Hekmatyar’s party, as his minister in charge of the economy. These negotiations and flexible alliances by Karzai and the U.S. government are nothing new. For three decades, the U.S. has backed these criminals: Hekmatyar, al Qaeda and other fundamentalists in the 1980s, the Taliban in the 1990s, and now Karzai and his warlord allies.
Progressive-minded Afghans want to break out of this circle of warlordism once and for all. It is ironic that Karzai talks about the possibility that a “national resistance” could develop in Afghanistan. He should know that the prime target of such a movement will be his own regime and its foreign supporters.
Our people are deeply fed up. They have organized many anti-U.S. protests in the past months and if the occupation continues, the resistance will only grow. More than eight years of occupation have made life bleak, and we are tired of being pawns in the U.S. and NATO’s game for control of Central Asia.
We can no longer bear the killing of our pregnant mothers, the killing of our teenagers and young children, the killing of so many Afghan men and women. We can no longer bear these “accidents” and these “apologies” for the deaths of the innocent.
We salute the anti-war movements in the NATO countries. Here, we will struggle to our last breath to stop this war that is tearing apart our beloved Afghanistan.
Malalai Joya, now 31, was the youngest member of the Afghan parliament, elected in 2005. In 2007 she was suspended from parliament because of her consistent criticism of the warlords and other human-rights abusers in the Karzai regime. Joya has survived five assassination attempts to date, and has written her life story in the book A Woman Among Warlords (with Derrick O’Keefe, Scribner, 2009). She writes from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Obama and Pentagon prepare to spend more on counterinsurgency preparation
The following notes are based on highlights of an article article by Michael T. Klare that appear in the April 26th issue of The Nation magazine. The title of the article is "Two, Three, Many Afghanistans." The complete article is available at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100426/Klare
The chief point of Klare’s article is that “Obama's Pentagon is preparing for a number of counterinsurgencies in the developing world,” all related to terrorism, failing states, rogue states, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, or other national-defense-sounding rationales. We gotta get them before they get us. Klare writes there are many similarities in the Obama plan to the counter-insurgency program that emerged back in the early 1960s under President Kennedy’s administration, when Kennedy “authorized a vast expansion of Special Forces” while continuing the expenditures on conventional and nuclear warfare.
Obama is interested in the same kind of military expansion. Klare quotes from a speech given by President Obama on “violent extremism,” in which Obama said: “Unlike the great power conflicts and clear lines of division that defined the twentieth century, our effort will involve disorderly regions, failed states, diffuse enemies….(consequently) we’ll have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power.” The Obama counterinsurgency policy will be used to keep Al Qaeda and other groups assumed connected to it from establishing a foothold anywhere in the world of developing countries.
Obama's counterinsurgency doctrine was, Klare writes, “first enunciated in a series of speeches by Obama and Gates [Secretary of Defense], and has been given formal character in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s Congressionally mandated overhaul of strategy,” released on the first of February. The QDR reaffirms the idea of America “as [being] a global power with global responsibilities.” However, there are changes in the current international situation, with the growth of “non-state actors, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and other destructive enabling technologies.” Therefore, according to the QDR, US forces must be able to respond to “the full range of challenges that could emerge from a complex and dynamic security environment.” This is a rationale for endless wars, in which the government, especially the Pentagon and its congressional and industry supporters, can identify enemies in any number of places that are perceived as a danger to our national security.
US forces must “be equipped for counterinsurgency-type operations: helicopters, small arms, body armor, night-vision devices, mine-resistant vehicles, aerial gunships, surveillance drones and the like.” More revenues for Special Forces. More revenues for our partners “to strengthen their capacity for internal security.” The US has already exported this model to other areas, “supporting counterinsurgency operations in Columbia, the Philippines, and Yemen, among other countries.”
“The greatest risk,” Klare emphasizes, “is that the military will become bogged down in a constellation of grueling, low-level wars.” At the same time, the policy also wants more funding for conventional high-intensity warfare (e.g., big ships, big planes, submarines, large conventional armies, etc) “thereby producing ever-increasing military budgets, a growing national deficit and persistent economic paralysis.” The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan already demonstrate how costly and counterproductive war can be, whatever its guise.
What Klare does not emphasize in this article, but does document in his books and other writing, is that the real challenge for the US comes from a world in which there are increasingly not enough resources to go round. Military force will not help us resolve this basic fact, but only exacerbate it. We need different economic policies than we have, ones that encourage cooperation, equity, and an economic model that is consistent with the earth. In the meantime, we do the opposite, with military interventions in the forefront.
The chief point of Klare’s article is that “Obama's Pentagon is preparing for a number of counterinsurgencies in the developing world,” all related to terrorism, failing states, rogue states, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, or other national-defense-sounding rationales. We gotta get them before they get us. Klare writes there are many similarities in the Obama plan to the counter-insurgency program that emerged back in the early 1960s under President Kennedy’s administration, when Kennedy “authorized a vast expansion of Special Forces” while continuing the expenditures on conventional and nuclear warfare.
Obama is interested in the same kind of military expansion. Klare quotes from a speech given by President Obama on “violent extremism,” in which Obama said: “Unlike the great power conflicts and clear lines of division that defined the twentieth century, our effort will involve disorderly regions, failed states, diffuse enemies….(consequently) we’ll have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power.” The Obama counterinsurgency policy will be used to keep Al Qaeda and other groups assumed connected to it from establishing a foothold anywhere in the world of developing countries.
Obama's counterinsurgency doctrine was, Klare writes, “first enunciated in a series of speeches by Obama and Gates [Secretary of Defense], and has been given formal character in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s Congressionally mandated overhaul of strategy,” released on the first of February. The QDR reaffirms the idea of America “as [being] a global power with global responsibilities.” However, there are changes in the current international situation, with the growth of “non-state actors, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and other destructive enabling technologies.” Therefore, according to the QDR, US forces must be able to respond to “the full range of challenges that could emerge from a complex and dynamic security environment.” This is a rationale for endless wars, in which the government, especially the Pentagon and its congressional and industry supporters, can identify enemies in any number of places that are perceived as a danger to our national security.
US forces must “be equipped for counterinsurgency-type operations: helicopters, small arms, body armor, night-vision devices, mine-resistant vehicles, aerial gunships, surveillance drones and the like.” More revenues for Special Forces. More revenues for our partners “to strengthen their capacity for internal security.” The US has already exported this model to other areas, “supporting counterinsurgency operations in Columbia, the Philippines, and Yemen, among other countries.”
“The greatest risk,” Klare emphasizes, “is that the military will become bogged down in a constellation of grueling, low-level wars.” At the same time, the policy also wants more funding for conventional high-intensity warfare (e.g., big ships, big planes, submarines, large conventional armies, etc) “thereby producing ever-increasing military budgets, a growing national deficit and persistent economic paralysis.” The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan already demonstrate how costly and counterproductive war can be, whatever its guise.
What Klare does not emphasize in this article, but does document in his books and other writing, is that the real challenge for the US comes from a world in which there are increasingly not enough resources to go round. Military force will not help us resolve this basic fact, but only exacerbate it. We need different economic policies than we have, ones that encourage cooperation, equity, and an economic model that is consistent with the earth. In the meantime, we do the opposite, with military interventions in the forefront.
War Resisters Leaque urges actions against funding for Afghanistan war and occupation
Important New Anti-War Legislation Call today!
Dear Friends,
In a time when there is such urgent need here in the U.S. we need to continue to pressure our elected officials to reduce the outrageous military budget. Please call your Representatives and Senators and urge them to vote NO on the upcoming supplemental that will provide an additional $33 billion for war and occupation in Afghanistan.
In addition to asking them to vote against this funding and instead support the swift and safe removal of all of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, we now have new legislation to let them know about. Last week, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and U.S. Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Walter Jones (R-NC) announced they are introducing legislation requiring President Obama to develop a timetable to draw down U.S. troops from Afghanistan.Senate bill: S. 3197House bill: H.R. 5015
There are over 20 national organizations mobilizing for a call-in week. Please help make it a success!1. Call the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121. If you want to call your Representative or Senator directly you can easily find them here. 2. Forward this message to your friends and family, and ask them to make a call as well.
What you can say to your representatives:"I urge you to vote against the $33 billion supplementary spending bill to pay for the escalation of troops in Afghanistan and the continuation of this war and occupation! I also want to let you know about the Afghanistan Timeline for Withdrawal Bill, Senate: S. 3197 and House: H.R. 5015 and ask you to do everything you can to insist that President Obama develop a rapid, real and complete plan to bring our troops home now." PLEASE CALL TODAY: 202-224-3121
Thank you for your work for peace!
War Resisters League339 Lafayette Street New York, NY 10012212.228.0450 wrl@warresisters.org
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Kandahar residents skeptical US-led assault will improve their security
The following article appeared today on the website of Progressive Democrats for America,
http://pdamerica.org/articles/news/2010-04-18-04-47-07-news.php. The title of the article is "Army Researchers: Why the Kandahar Offensive Could Backfire." The article includes highlights from a recent Army study, along with other evidence, indicating there are serious questions about the effectiveness of the planned military assualt on Kandahar and surrounding areas.
--------------------------
The southern Afghan province of Kandahar trusts the Taliban more than the government. And that’s according to a survey commissioned by the U.S. Army.
Kandahar is expected to be the focal point of operations for U.S. and NATO troops this summer, but a poll recently conducted by the Army’s controversial social science program, the Human Terrain System (HTS), is warning that rampant local corruption, and a lack of security, could undermine coalition efforts to win the support of the local population.
Among other things, the survey’s authors warned that a lack of confidence in the Afghan government “sets conditions for a disenfranchised population to respond either by not supporting the government due to its inability to deliver improvements in the quality of life or, worse yet, by supporting the Taliban.”
The unclassified report (.pdf) is worth examining for several reasons. For starters, it addresses many of the questions raised by Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, the top U.S. intelligence officer in Afghanistan. In an assessment made public earlier this year, Flynn complained that the coalition lacked a real understanding of the cultural context of the insurgency, and said troops needed richer information about the communities they were trying to engage.
That’s where HTS is supposed to come in. Originally, the program was focused on embedding social scientists and anthropologists within brigades. But as several people close to the program tell Danger Room, there is now an emphasis on larger-scale polls run by local contractors as a way to obtain a larger picture of the situation.
Both polling and embedding researchers have their risks, and their shortcomings: Two HTS social scientists have been killed in Afghanistan, but conducting surveys, even through local companies, can also be perilous. The survey draws on a total of 1,994 interviews covering nine of Kandahar Province’s 16 districts. But it leaves out seven crucial districts: As the survey’s authors note, there are “inherent dangers associated with conducting surveys in a conflict zone” like Kandahar Province, and interviewers stayed out of areas with active violence.
In other words, the survey leaves out the populations that most need to be understood, at least from the coalition’s perspective. Still, the results are telling. Interviewers queried residents of Kandahar on everything from quality of services like clean water, electricity to the availability of primary schooling for girls and boys and medical care. They also asked local residents about security government effectiveness.
Among the findings: Security on the roads is a major issue for residents of Kandahar. “When respondents are asked if they feel unsafe traveling within their district or around the province, in eight out of ten districts, at least half say they are unsafe,” the study says. And the biggest threat to security while traveling in the province, respondents said: Army and police checkpoints.
Likewise, attitudes in the south are generally sympathetic to the Taliban. Reconciliation with the insurgency is a popular concept in the province, and a significant majority of respondents viewed Taliban as “our Afghan brothers.” Some 84 percent cited “corruption” as the main reason for the conflict. But most of that corruption in on the government side: 53 percent said the Taliban cannot be corrupted.
Finally, there’s a significant amount of skepticism about the local police and security forces. “The primary reason respondents in Kandahar consider joining the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] is the desire for a job and a paycheck,” the study says. “Respondents are deterred from considering a career in the ANSF because of the dangers. Across all districts, the ANP [Afghan National Police] is viewed as a more dangerous profession than the ANA [Afghan National Army].”
http://pdamerica.org/articles/news/2010-04-18-04-47-07-news.php. The title of the article is "Army Researchers: Why the Kandahar Offensive Could Backfire." The article includes highlights from a recent Army study, along with other evidence, indicating there are serious questions about the effectiveness of the planned military assualt on Kandahar and surrounding areas.
--------------------------
The southern Afghan province of Kandahar trusts the Taliban more than the government. And that’s according to a survey commissioned by the U.S. Army.
Kandahar is expected to be the focal point of operations for U.S. and NATO troops this summer, but a poll recently conducted by the Army’s controversial social science program, the Human Terrain System (HTS), is warning that rampant local corruption, and a lack of security, could undermine coalition efforts to win the support of the local population.
Among other things, the survey’s authors warned that a lack of confidence in the Afghan government “sets conditions for a disenfranchised population to respond either by not supporting the government due to its inability to deliver improvements in the quality of life or, worse yet, by supporting the Taliban.”
The unclassified report (.pdf) is worth examining for several reasons. For starters, it addresses many of the questions raised by Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, the top U.S. intelligence officer in Afghanistan. In an assessment made public earlier this year, Flynn complained that the coalition lacked a real understanding of the cultural context of the insurgency, and said troops needed richer information about the communities they were trying to engage.
That’s where HTS is supposed to come in. Originally, the program was focused on embedding social scientists and anthropologists within brigades. But as several people close to the program tell Danger Room, there is now an emphasis on larger-scale polls run by local contractors as a way to obtain a larger picture of the situation.
Both polling and embedding researchers have their risks, and their shortcomings: Two HTS social scientists have been killed in Afghanistan, but conducting surveys, even through local companies, can also be perilous. The survey draws on a total of 1,994 interviews covering nine of Kandahar Province’s 16 districts. But it leaves out seven crucial districts: As the survey’s authors note, there are “inherent dangers associated with conducting surveys in a conflict zone” like Kandahar Province, and interviewers stayed out of areas with active violence.
In other words, the survey leaves out the populations that most need to be understood, at least from the coalition’s perspective. Still, the results are telling. Interviewers queried residents of Kandahar on everything from quality of services like clean water, electricity to the availability of primary schooling for girls and boys and medical care. They also asked local residents about security government effectiveness.
Among the findings: Security on the roads is a major issue for residents of Kandahar. “When respondents are asked if they feel unsafe traveling within their district or around the province, in eight out of ten districts, at least half say they are unsafe,” the study says. And the biggest threat to security while traveling in the province, respondents said: Army and police checkpoints.
Likewise, attitudes in the south are generally sympathetic to the Taliban. Reconciliation with the insurgency is a popular concept in the province, and a significant majority of respondents viewed Taliban as “our Afghan brothers.” Some 84 percent cited “corruption” as the main reason for the conflict. But most of that corruption in on the government side: 53 percent said the Taliban cannot be corrupted.
Finally, there’s a significant amount of skepticism about the local police and security forces. “The primary reason respondents in Kandahar consider joining the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] is the desire for a job and a paycheck,” the study says. “Respondents are deterred from considering a career in the ANSF because of the dangers. Across all districts, the ANP [Afghan National Police] is viewed as a more dangerous profession than the ANA [Afghan National Army].”
Friday, April 16, 2010
Reports of torture at Bagram Prison in Afghanistan
Here is one of today's headlines from Democracy Now.
Afghan Prisoners Detail Torture, Abuse at Bagram Prison
More accounts have emerged of torture and abuse at the US military’s Bagram prison in Afghanistan. BBC News says it’s collected testimony from nine witnesses describing human rights violations at a secret Bagram jail in the period since President Obama took office. One prisoner said the secret facility is known as the “Black Hole.” Prisoners reported being subjected to sleep deprivation, freezing temperatures and other abuses. One prisoner said he lost half a row of teeth after a US soldier struck him with the butt of a gun. The same prisoner also recounted being forced to dance to music every time he wanted to use the toilet.
Afghan Prisoners Detail Torture, Abuse at Bagram Prison
More accounts have emerged of torture and abuse at the US military’s Bagram prison in Afghanistan. BBC News says it’s collected testimony from nine witnesses describing human rights violations at a secret Bagram jail in the period since President Obama took office. One prisoner said the secret facility is known as the “Black Hole.” Prisoners reported being subjected to sleep deprivation, freezing temperatures and other abuses. One prisoner said he lost half a row of teeth after a US soldier struck him with the butt of a gun. The same prisoner also recounted being forced to dance to music every time he wanted to use the toilet.
Tribal elders oppose US-led plans to attack Kandahar
I've summarized below the highlights from an article by Gareth Porter that appears on several online sites today, including the site of the Inter Press News Service at: http://www.ipsnews/print.asp?idnews=51059. The title of Porter's article is "McChystal backtracks on Troop Veto By Kandahar Shura."
Porter reports that there is ambiguity in the discussions over the planned US-led attacks on Kandahar and surrouding areas. The central issue is whether the allied forces need the consent of local shura, or a consultative body of 1,000 or more elders, to move ahead with the military offensive. On one side, President Karzai wants the shura to have the final word. The elders have made it clear that they don't want the US-led forces to attack Kandahar or nearby areas. On the other side, spokesmen for General McChrystal indicated they will follow through on the planned attacks. At the same time, Porter writes, "McChrystal must now worry about how the Kandahar campaign can succeed in the face of opposition from local leaders and President Karzai."
Porter reports that there is ambiguity in the discussions over the planned US-led attacks on Kandahar and surrouding areas. The central issue is whether the allied forces need the consent of local shura, or a consultative body of 1,000 or more elders, to move ahead with the military offensive. On one side, President Karzai wants the shura to have the final word. The elders have made it clear that they don't want the US-led forces to attack Kandahar or nearby areas. On the other side, spokesmen for General McChrystal indicated they will follow through on the planned attacks. At the same time, Porter writes, "McChrystal must now worry about how the Kandahar campaign can succeed in the face of opposition from local leaders and President Karzai."
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Afghan tribes organized for regional jirgas can defeat Taliban intruders
The following article appeared today on Afghan Online Press at http://aopnews.com/today.html. The gist of the article is that US-led military operations are not protecting civilians and are not keeping Taliban permanently out of villages. The author, Mohammed Amin Mudaqiq, further points out that there are 40,000 villages in Afghanistan. The US military approach cannot deal effectively with this reality and landscape. Mudaqiq suggests the key to victory over alien Taliban is through bringing villages leaders together through regional jirgas and through the self-organization of tribal leaders.
----------------------------
After Marjah And Kandahar, How Many More Operations In Afghanistan?
April 15, 2010Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
By Mohammad Amin Mudaqiq
As Operation "Moshtarak" (Together) in the Marjah and Nad Ali districts of southern Helmand Province enters its final stage, preparations are already under way to launch another full-fledged military campaign named "Omaid" (Hope) in the Zirai and Panjawai districts of Kandahar.
The conventional wisdom among Western military generals and diplomats is that such operations are crucial in order to halt the advance of the Taliban, who now control large swathes of rural Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's emerging security establishment too is eager to see these operations implemented. Afghan deputy intelligence chief Naim Baluch recently declared that the insurgents pose a serious security threat to 15 provinces of Afghanistan (consisting of well over 100 districts). Ten districts in those 15 provinces have already fallen into Taliban hands since the Taliban resurgence began in 2005.
Afghanistan has 34 provinces with a total of 364 districts. The question now is: how many more military operations will be needed to secure the whole country. Perhaps another hundred? Operation Moshtarak is already into its second month. If most of the next 100 operations take as long, it will be another 100 months (eight years) before they are over. But there is still no guarantee these offensives will yield the desired results.
In Marjah, the results so far have been mixed. While the 15,000-strong Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) contingent may have pushed the Taliban and other extremists out of Marjah and Nad Ali, the operation has caused large-scale displacement and some civilian casualties. In addition, dozens of Afghan and ISAF soldiers have been killed, while thousands of displaced civilians remain stranded between the warring sides.
Unfortunately, there was no contingency plan to help the local residents displaced by this intense battle, and that failure in turn compounded the local population's anger and distrust. Afghans believe that such mistakes during military operations only push more youngsters to join the Taliban.
Tribal Realities On The Ground
The basic challenge is that the international community in Afghanistan is convinced that its approach is appropriate and correct. It seems reluctant to take into account the centuries-old tribal structure and traditions in Afghanistan, particularly in the region around Kandahar where the insurgency is strongest. Unless there is a genuine effort to understand the roots of the crisis and ultimately solve it in accordance with local tradition and practice, it will be almost impossible to convince the pro-Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and pledge support for the government.
Instead of resorting to such devastating military operations, the international community should encourage Kabul to convene an inclusive regional tribal jirga (council) in Kandahar that would bring together all tribal chiefs from the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, Oruzgan, Ghazni, and Farah. The international community should create a neutral mechanism for convening and hosting the Jirga to enable the tribal elders to express their wider concerns freely. Once those concerns are understood and addressed, then a military plan could be prepared to isolate and ultimately knock out the insurgents.
That approach has been successful before, eliminating insurgents from certain areas of Afghanistan. The once-volatile Spin Boldak district in Kandahar Province on the Pakistani border was tamed this way in 2003.General Abdul Razeq, with a battalion of 350 police officers recruited with the consent of the tribal chieftains, succeeded in expelling the Taliban from the whole district.
The grand jirga of the Shinwari tribe in Nangarhar Province just six weeks ago is another landmark example the success of those tactics. The Shinwari tribesmen agreed to expel the Taliban from their region and warned that those who accommodated them would be severely punished by the tribal authorities. Consequently, there is no longer any significant Taliban presence in this strategic belt along the border with Pakistan.
Afghanistan has a complicated tribal system with centuries-old rivalries. Geographically, over two-thirds of the country is mountainous, with 30 million people living in 40,000 villages. Unless you find a way to bring those people into the security system, address their concerns, and win their consent, there is no way that posting security guards can stop Taliban infiltration into the villages. Without a concerted effort to understand the Afghan people and address their wider concerns, any plan for bringing peace and stability will be doomed to failure.
Mohammad Amin Mudaqiq is the head of the Kabul bureau of RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan. The views expressed in this commentary are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL
----------------------------
After Marjah And Kandahar, How Many More Operations In Afghanistan?
April 15, 2010Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
By Mohammad Amin Mudaqiq
As Operation "Moshtarak" (Together) in the Marjah and Nad Ali districts of southern Helmand Province enters its final stage, preparations are already under way to launch another full-fledged military campaign named "Omaid" (Hope) in the Zirai and Panjawai districts of Kandahar.
The conventional wisdom among Western military generals and diplomats is that such operations are crucial in order to halt the advance of the Taliban, who now control large swathes of rural Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's emerging security establishment too is eager to see these operations implemented. Afghan deputy intelligence chief Naim Baluch recently declared that the insurgents pose a serious security threat to 15 provinces of Afghanistan (consisting of well over 100 districts). Ten districts in those 15 provinces have already fallen into Taliban hands since the Taliban resurgence began in 2005.
Afghanistan has 34 provinces with a total of 364 districts. The question now is: how many more military operations will be needed to secure the whole country. Perhaps another hundred? Operation Moshtarak is already into its second month. If most of the next 100 operations take as long, it will be another 100 months (eight years) before they are over. But there is still no guarantee these offensives will yield the desired results.
In Marjah, the results so far have been mixed. While the 15,000-strong Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) contingent may have pushed the Taliban and other extremists out of Marjah and Nad Ali, the operation has caused large-scale displacement and some civilian casualties. In addition, dozens of Afghan and ISAF soldiers have been killed, while thousands of displaced civilians remain stranded between the warring sides.
Unfortunately, there was no contingency plan to help the local residents displaced by this intense battle, and that failure in turn compounded the local population's anger and distrust. Afghans believe that such mistakes during military operations only push more youngsters to join the Taliban.
Tribal Realities On The Ground
The basic challenge is that the international community in Afghanistan is convinced that its approach is appropriate and correct. It seems reluctant to take into account the centuries-old tribal structure and traditions in Afghanistan, particularly in the region around Kandahar where the insurgency is strongest. Unless there is a genuine effort to understand the roots of the crisis and ultimately solve it in accordance with local tradition and practice, it will be almost impossible to convince the pro-Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and pledge support for the government.
Instead of resorting to such devastating military operations, the international community should encourage Kabul to convene an inclusive regional tribal jirga (council) in Kandahar that would bring together all tribal chiefs from the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, Oruzgan, Ghazni, and Farah. The international community should create a neutral mechanism for convening and hosting the Jirga to enable the tribal elders to express their wider concerns freely. Once those concerns are understood and addressed, then a military plan could be prepared to isolate and ultimately knock out the insurgents.
That approach has been successful before, eliminating insurgents from certain areas of Afghanistan. The once-volatile Spin Boldak district in Kandahar Province on the Pakistani border was tamed this way in 2003.General Abdul Razeq, with a battalion of 350 police officers recruited with the consent of the tribal chieftains, succeeded in expelling the Taliban from the whole district.
The grand jirga of the Shinwari tribe in Nangarhar Province just six weeks ago is another landmark example the success of those tactics. The Shinwari tribesmen agreed to expel the Taliban from their region and warned that those who accommodated them would be severely punished by the tribal authorities. Consequently, there is no longer any significant Taliban presence in this strategic belt along the border with Pakistan.
Afghanistan has a complicated tribal system with centuries-old rivalries. Geographically, over two-thirds of the country is mountainous, with 30 million people living in 40,000 villages. Unless you find a way to bring those people into the security system, address their concerns, and win their consent, there is no way that posting security guards can stop Taliban infiltration into the villages. Without a concerted effort to understand the Afghan people and address their wider concerns, any plan for bringing peace and stability will be doomed to failure.
Mohammad Amin Mudaqiq is the head of the Kabul bureau of RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan. The views expressed in this commentary are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
President Obama ready to talk to the Taliban?
The following article is from the Telegraph online, UK. I include here excerpts from the full article, the URL for which is at the end of the article. I have highlighted key words or ideas.
HEADLINE - President Barack Obama declares America should be ready to talk to the Taliban
American forces are prepared to make overtures to moderate Taliban commanders using an approach that saw insurgents in Iraq turn against al-Qaeda, President Barack Obama has said.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul Published: 9:36AM GMT 08 Mar 2009
US/Allied troop casualties expected to increase. President Obama conceded that conditions had deteriorated and fighting is expected to be heavier this year
Counter-insurgency not effective. President Obama said the military was not winning the counter insurgency war in Afghanistan as he opened the door for peace negotiations....
Model for talks is what General Patraeus did in Iraq. "If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq."
There can be no military victory. Coalition military commanders have repeatedly stressed the increasingly violent insurgency in Afghanistan cannot be solved by military means.
President Hamid Karzai wants negotiations. Hamid Karzai... has called for peace talks with members of the country's former Taliban regime and offered Mullah Omar, it's fugitive leader, safe passage for negotiations.
Concern that negotiations may not work because there are so many divisions among Afghan fighters. ....Analysts say the insurgency of disparate groups of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, foreign fighters, former jihadi commanders, alienated tribal leaders, drug barons and common bandits could be too fractured for negotiations.
National Afghan government is still unstable.... [Obama is quoted] "The national government still has not gained the confidence of the Afghan people.
In the meantime. "And so it's going to be critical for us," Obama is quoted as saying, "to not only, get through these national elections to stabilize the security situation, but we've got to recast our policy so that our military, diplomatic and development goals are all aligned to ensure that al-Qaeda and extremists that would do us harm don't have the kinds of safe havens that allow them to operate."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/4956581/President-Barack-Obama-declares-America-should-be-ready-to-talk-to-the-Taliban.html
TelegraphNews
HEADLINE - President Barack Obama declares America should be ready to talk to the Taliban
American forces are prepared to make overtures to moderate Taliban commanders using an approach that saw insurgents in Iraq turn against al-Qaeda, President Barack Obama has said.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul Published: 9:36AM GMT 08 Mar 2009
US/Allied troop casualties expected to increase. President Obama conceded that conditions had deteriorated and fighting is expected to be heavier this year
Counter-insurgency not effective. President Obama said the military was not winning the counter insurgency war in Afghanistan as he opened the door for peace negotiations....
Model for talks is what General Patraeus did in Iraq. "If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq."
There can be no military victory. Coalition military commanders have repeatedly stressed the increasingly violent insurgency in Afghanistan cannot be solved by military means.
President Hamid Karzai wants negotiations. Hamid Karzai... has called for peace talks with members of the country's former Taliban regime and offered Mullah Omar, it's fugitive leader, safe passage for negotiations.
Concern that negotiations may not work because there are so many divisions among Afghan fighters. ....Analysts say the insurgency of disparate groups of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, foreign fighters, former jihadi commanders, alienated tribal leaders, drug barons and common bandits could be too fractured for negotiations.
National Afghan government is still unstable.... [Obama is quoted] "The national government still has not gained the confidence of the Afghan people.
In the meantime. "And so it's going to be critical for us," Obama is quoted as saying, "to not only, get through these national elections to stabilize the security situation, but we've got to recast our policy so that our military, diplomatic and development goals are all aligned to ensure that al-Qaeda and extremists that would do us harm don't have the kinds of safe havens that allow them to operate."
An ambiguity in the report: Will negotiations be advanced? Will negotiations be fostered whether the national government is stabilized or not? Will the US-led occupation forces be able to effectively combine military, diplomatic, and development actions in a way it hasn't so far.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/4956581/President-Barack-Obama-declares-America-should-be-ready-to-talk-to-the-Taliban.html
TelegraphNews
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