Reporting for Aljazeera online, Spencer Ackerman writes on the unprecedented CIA’s drone attacks in Waziristan areas of Pakistan (Dec. 17, 2010). Before delving further into his article, I draw information from Wikipedia that helps us to locate Waziristan in Pakistan, its official designation, and why it is important to the CIA and US military forces stationed in Afghanistan.
According to Wikipedia,
“Waziristan (Pashto and Urdu: وزیرستان, "land of the Wazir") is a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan and covering some 11,585 km² (4,473 sq mi). It is part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, considered to be outside the country's four provinces.
“Waziristan comprises the area west and southwest of Peshawar between the Tochi River to the north and the Gomal River to the south. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa lies immediately to the east. The region was an independent tribal territory until 1893, remaining outside the British Empire. Tribal raiding into British-ruled territory was a constant problem for the British,[1] eliciting frequent punitive expeditions between 1860 and 1945. The region became part of Pakistan in 1947. [See map from Wikipedia below.]
“For administrative purposes, Waziristan is divided into two "agencies", North Waziristan and South Waziristan, with estimated populations (as of 1998) of 361,246 and 429,841 respectively. The two parts have quite distinct characteristics, though both tribes are subgroups of the Wazir Tribe and speak a common Wazirwola language. They have a reputation as formidable warriors,[2] and are known for their frequent blood feuds.[citation needed]
“The Wazir tribes are divided into sub-tribes governed by male village elders who meet in a tribal jirga. Socially and religiously, Waziristan is an extremely conservative area. Women are carefully guarded, and every household must be headed by a male figure. Tribal cohesiveness is also kept strong by means of the so-called Collective Responsibility Acts in the Frontier Crimes Regulation.
“Taliban presence in the area has been an issue of international concern in the War on Terrorism particularly since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.”
Expansion of Drone Warfare
Once focused on South Waziristan, the CIA drone attacks have been expanded to and increasingly concentrated on North Waziristan. Ackerman writes:
“Over the past two days, four Predators or Reapers fired their missiles at suspected militants in North Waziristan, with three of the strikes coming early today.
“They represent a geographic expansion of the drone war. Today’s strikes come in Khyber, an area abutting Afghanistan’s Nangahar province, that’s been notably drone-free. It has become an area for militants fleeing military action in South Waziristan to take succor.”
As drone attacks have been expanded geographically, they have also increased in number. The “drone-strike tally for this year,” Ackerman reports, [is] “up to 113, more than twice last year’s 53 strikes.” But there is more.
“According to a tally kept by the Long War Journal, 58 of those strikes have come since September: There has been a drone attack every 1.8 days since Labor Day. LWJ’s Bill Roggio says the pace of attacks between September and November (there was a brief December respite, now erased) is “unprecedented since the U.S. began the air campaign in Pakistan in 2004.” (By contrast, in 2008, there were just 34 strikes.)
And the majority of the drone attacks in 2010 have “clustered in North Waziristan.”
“Both Roggio and the New America Foundation have found that the overwhelming majority of this year’s strikes have clustered in North Waziristan: at least 99, by Roggio’s count.”
What are drones? The following information is from Wikipedia, “General Atomics MQ-1 Predator.”
“The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used primarily by the United States Air Force (USAF) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Initially conceived in the early 1990s for reconnaissance and forward observation roles, the Predator carries cameras and other sensors but has been modified and upgraded to carry and fire two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles or other munitions. The aircraft, in use since 1995, has seen combat over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, and Yemen.
“The USAF describes the Predator as a "Tier II" MALE UAS (medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV system). The UAS consists of four aircraft or "air vehicles" with sensors, a ground control station (GCS), and a primary satellite link communication suite.[3] Powered by a Rotax engine and driven by a propeller, the air vehicle can fly up to 400 nautical miles (740 km) to a target, loiter overhead for 14 hours, then return to its base.
“Following 2001, the RQ-1 Predator drone became the primary UAV used for offensive operations by the USAF and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas. It has also been deployed in other locations. Because offensive uses of the Predator are classified, US military officials have reported an appreciation for the intelligence and reconnaissance-gathering abilities of UAVs but declined to discuss their offensive use in public.[4]”
Effects on and responses from Pakistanis to Drone attacks
Ackerman:
“It may take years, but some researcher will travel to Pakistan’s tribal areas and produce a definitive study on what it’s been like to live amidst an aerial bombardment from American pilotless aircraft. When that account inevitably comes out, it’s likely to find that 2010 — and especially the final quarter of 2010 — marked a turning point in how civilians coped with a drone war that turned relentless.”
[….]
“But no one knows whether a backlash is just around the corner. While most Pakistanis remain ignorant of the strikes, those in the tribal areas live literally in their shadow, and register enormous discontent, approving of retaliatory attacks on U.S. forces.
“Reportedly, the CIA’s top officer in Islamabad has fled Pakistan after a man from North Waziristan whose son and brother were killed in a strike filed a lawsuit against the agency.
“There’s no official or universally accepted figure of how many civilians have died as a result of the strikes, but New America pegs it at around 25 percent of all fatalities. Long War Journal’s registry is more generous, claiming that 1,671 militants and 108 civilians have died in the strikes since 2006.”
Are the Drone Attacks Legal?
From Ackerman: “Then there’s the question of whether the strikes are legal. Obama administration claims that the September 2001 congressional Authorization to Use Military Force in retaliation for 9/11 provides all the legal protection necessary for the strikes. Some lawyers and law professors, by contrast, think that the drones’ remote pilots could eventually get hauled before a war-crimes tribunal.
“A United Nations report urged Obama to rein in the drones, restricting them to attacks on the seniormost militants. He did the opposite.
“Don’t expect him to heed that warning in 2011 either. After reading the administration’s war-progress report, The New York Times‘ David Sanger noted that background discussions with administration officials made it clear that next year “the pace will be picked up.” The technology certainly enables it: The Predator is giving way to the Reaper drone, which carries a bigger payload; while weapons manufacturers are lightening the weights of air-launched precision missiles.
[….]
“However targeted the strikes may be, the hundreds of thousands of civilians in North Waziristan and the rest of the tribal areas live with the anxiety of the missiles overhead. How long can the U.S. avoid a reckoning?” [End of quotes from Ackerman.]
For more information on the legality of the CIA drone attacks on Waziristan, see David W. Glazier’s statement before the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs on April 28, 2010. The Subcommittee hearings addressed the topic “Rise of the Drone II: Examining the Legality of Unmanned Targeting.” Glazier is a Professor of Law at the Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. You can find the full six page testimony at: www.fas.org/irp/2010_hr/042810glazier.pdf - In finishing his statement, Glazier says:
“But some matters, such as the use of CIA personnel to conduct armed attacks clearly fall outside the scope of permissible conduct and ought to be reconsidered, particularly as the United States seeks to prosecute members of its adversaries for generally similar conduct.”
Drone attacks may generate instability in Pakistan and backlash against the US.
Anatol Lieven offers his assessment of the implications in a long, informative article published in The Nation magazine, January 3, 2011issue. Lieven is “a professor in the war studies department of King’s College London and a senior fellow of the New American Foundation in Washington.” His thought: we are playing with fire. Here are a few of his paragraphs from the article, highlighting various issues on why Pakistan is important in the US-led Afghanistan war/occupation and generally for the stability of the region and globally.
“The top leadership of the Afghan Taliban is based in Pakistani Baluchistan under the protection of Pakistani military intelligence, and Pakistan has prevented the United States from launching drone attacks on them there (in contrast with the intensive campaign against targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas to the north). Taliban forces use Pakistani territory for rest and recuperation, with the support of the local Pashtun population. Pakistan also has close ties to the two other Afghan Pashtun Islamist forces allied to the Taliban, the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani network in the Afghan region of Greater Paktika. All of this gives Pakistan considerable influence over the Afghan Taliban—though it must be stressed that this influence is also limited. Any settlement brokered by Pakistan would have to be one the Taliban could accept without humiliation.
“But if Pakistan is vital to a settlement, Pakistan is also vital in itself. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the survival of Pakistan, not Afghanistan, is the most important issue for Western and global security in that region. With six times Afghanistan's population, plus nuclear weapons, a highly trained 500,000-man army and a huge diaspora (especially in Britain), Pakistan would increase the international terrorist threat by orders of magnitude if it collapsed. There is a widespread (though exaggerated) view in the West that the weakness of the Pakistani state and the strength of Islamist support makes the country's collapse a real possibility. Leaving aside the danger (as exposed by WikiLeaks) of nuclear materials and skills reaching terrorist groups, the disintegration of the Pakistani army, with its highly trained engineers and anti-aircraft forces, would vastly increase the "conventional" terrorist threat to India and the West.
“It was therefore with horror that I recently heard that the diminished threat from Al Qaeda means that some Western security officials are suggesting that the West can afford to put much more pressure on Islamabad to attack Taliban strongholds in Pakistan's border region, even though this may lead to greater destabilization within Pakistan. This is lunatic reasoning. The diminished power of Al Qaeda should be cause for the United States and NATO to find ways to withdraw from Afghanistan, not step up the fight against the Taliban—since it was to fight Al Qaeda that we went there in the first place. As for the terrorist threat to the West, this has never come from the Afghan Taliban—but it increasingly comes from the Pakistani Taliban and their allies, as the case of attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad demonstrates.
“Unfortunately, the current US strategy is headed in the opposite direction from using Pakistan to broker a settlement, and toward an intensified fight against the Taliban and intensified pressure on Pakistan. Even worse, there are barely the rudiments of a Plan B if that strategy fails. If it proves impossible to strengthen the Afghan National Army sufficiently within the next two years, the options will be stark: either US forces will have to fight on in Afghanistan indefinitely or they will have to accept the probable loss of the south and east of the country and either unending civil war or de facto partition through bloody war rather than negotiated agreement. Among other things, all these options will be bad for Pakistan, especially if India is drawn into much greater support for the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan. This would in effect lead to an Indo-Pakistani proxy war in Afghanistan.”
[….]
In his concluding paragraph, Lieven writes:
“Behind all these questions lies once again the issue of Pakistan’s role, Pakistan’s future and the US role in that future. Since our options for coercing Pakistan are so limited – at least, without actions that would risk destroying Pakistan and involving us in far worse disasters – we should try to make the best of an admittedly very difficult situation and seek Pakistan’s help in finding a settlement to the Afghanistan conflict.”
In sum, the US is prosecuting a war/occupation in Afghanistan by expanding it into Pakistan, increasing the use of drones, which are of dubious legality, violating the sovereignty of Pakistan, causing civilian casualties, raising the level of anger and hatred of Pakistanis toward the US, potentially undermining the fragile stability of the Pakistan state, and avoiding real negotiations with the Taliban leaders. As Anatol Lieven notes, “This [or something like this] is lunatic reasoning.”
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Obama, veteran benefits, and the ravages of war
President Obama has moved his administration to improve benefits for US veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In his speech of August 31, 2010 on the end of US military combat, or the “end” of this war, not counting the 50,000 “non-combat” soldiers still there, or the escalated air war, or the increased special forces and military advisers. Obama made the following points in one part of his speech.
“Part of that responsibility is making sure that we honor our commitments to those who have served our country with such valor. As long as I am President, we will maintain the finest fighting force that the world has ever known, and do whatever it takes to serve our veterans as well as they have served us. This is a sacred trust. That is why we have already made one of the largest increases in funding for veterans in decades. We are treating the signature wounds of today's wars post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, while providing the health care and benefits that all of our veterans have earned. And we are funding a post-9/11 GI Bill that helps our veterans and their families pursue the dream of a college education. Just as the GI Bill helped those who fought World War II- including my grandfather- become the backbone of our middle class, so today's servicemen and women must have the chance to apply their gifts to expand the American economy. Because part of ending a war responsibly is standing by those who have fought it.”
We can only hope. Still, Obama and the US Congress delivered rhetorically and with new or expanded programs on at least some of the needed (and well earned) benefits. Blake Henderson lists provisions of the legislation passed in the middle of December, 2010, during the “lame duck” session. Henderson’s article, “Lame Duck Comes Up Big for New Vets” (Dec 23, 2010) can be found on the website of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). Here is quote.
“This past week, IAVA saw incredible progress on a number of issues that will impact the lives of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families. The clock was ticking, but IAVA kept the pressure on and we cut through the gridlock that has plagued Washington all year. After a hectic and historic lame duck session, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan saw several key victories, including critical GI Bill upgrades, the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ (DADT) and the passage of the Defense Bill (NDAA).
“Here is the principal and most recent segment of the new Obama-supported veterans’ benefits, including all of the “Upgrades to the New GI Bill.” Henderson writes as follows.
“In 2008, historic New GI Bill legislation was signed into law. Since then, IAVA has been fighting for critical upgrades where the benefit was lacking. These upgrades, which were passed [by the Senate and House] last week, will impact 400,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans within the first year.” The President is expected to sign the legislation before the end of the year, which includes the following provisions:
85,000 full-time National Guardsmen who will become eligible for the New GI Bill
58,000 students at private and graduate schools will have increased tuition benefits
25,000 distance learners will receive a monthly living allowance
21,000 disabled vets using Vocational Rehab will receive additional allowances
19,000 Active Duty service members will receive an annual book stipend
6,000 vocational students will receive tuition/fees and a monthly living allowance
6,000 On The Job training/Apprenticeship participants will get access to an expanded program 6,000 schools will receive increased fees for processing vets’ paperwork
180,000 new recruits will not have to pay $1,200 to buy into the old GI Bill
The new legislation is praiseworthy. But there are three points I would like to make, and I’ll elaborate the third of them. First, there is nothing in this legislation or any other veterans’ legislation that creates jobs, one of the big problems affecting not only vets but also up to at least twenty million other Americans. Second, without accompanying taxes, the new programs add to the US debt. Third, President Obama’s speech, and subsequent public addresses, glosses over the great harm that the illegal Iraq war has wrought to US troops. By the way, however great this harm is, it pales in significance to the harm the US-led war in Iraq and in Afghanistan has done to their societies, infrastructures, and civilians. (See the last post.)
First example: How much has the Iraq War cost in dollar terms for US taxpayers? What does it continue to cost?
Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes have written one of the definitive answers to this question in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (2008). Their analysis indicates that the war will have cost between $3 trillion and $5 trillion by 2017.
In their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War (2008), Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) and Linda Bilmes (Harvard University), estimate that by 2017 the war in Iraq would have cost at least $3 trillion dollars. In a recent article, Washington Post, Sept. 5, 2010, they raise their lowest estimate to $4 trillion. They include costs to date, costs of future operations, estimates of long-term veterans’ medical costs, veteran’s disability, veteran’s social security, repair and updating of equipment, the interest from the debt-based payment for the war. They also contend that the war and occupation of Iraq has led to rising oil prices, a higher national debt and higher related interest payments on the debt. In the following quotes they explain a couple of reasons (there are more in the article) for why their costs’ estimates have gone up.
But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For example, the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans has proved higher than we expected.
“Moreover, two years on, it has become clear to us that our estimate did not capture what may have been the conflict's most sobering expenses: those in the category of "might have beens," or what economists call opportunity costs. For instance, many have wondered aloud whether, absent the Iraq invasion, we would still be stuck in Afghanistan. And this is not the only "what if" worth contemplating. We might also ask: If not for the war in Iraq, would oil prices have risen so rapidly? Would the federal debt be so high? Would the economic crisis have been so severe?
Second example: US troop casualties – In addition to the 4,426 deaths (source: http://icasualties.org), there were as of Oct 16, 2010, a total of 32,899 wounded US military soldiers and an additional 320,000 with brain injuries, with an unknown number of war veterans who had suffered concussions.
Lizette Alvaraz writes, in a lengthy New York Times article (Aug 26, 2008), that concussions are “a mild traumatic brain injury” caused by powerful explosions. Such injuries went unscreened until 2007. The symptoms of concussions include some combination of headaches, dizzy spells, persistent ringing in the ears, sometimes numbness in the arms, and memory loss. The symptoms do not immediately surface in all cases, but can be experienced in months after the injury occurred. Alavaraz writes that, according to the latest Pentagon estimates, “As many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly worked…away from bases, have suffered at least one concussion. She writes, further: “…tens of thousands of [these soldiers] have longer-term problems that can include, to varying degrees, a persistent memory loss, headaches, mood swings, dizziness, hearing problems and light sensitivity.” She points out that it is impossible to know how many suffer from the symptoms of mild brain trauma because the Veterans Affairs Department only in recent years screened for it, because the criteria remain ambiguous, and because they may not surface right away.”
T. Christian Miller and Daniel Zwerdling provide further evidence on the scope of mild brain injuries in their article, “Pentagon Health Plan Won’t Cover Brain Damage,” printed on Common Dreams. Org, December 20, 2010 (http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/20-5). Here are some excerpted paragraphs from this very long and well documented article.
“Official Pentagon figures show that 188,000 service members have suffered brain injuries since 2000. Of those, 44,000 suffered moderate or severe head injuries. Another 144,000 had mild traumatic brain injuries. However, previous ProPublica and NPR reports [13] [13] showed that number likely understates the true toll by tens of thousands of troops. Some estimates put the number of brain injuries at 400,000 service members.
“Mild traumatic brain injuries are the most common head trauma in Iraq and Afghanistan. Commonly caused by blast waves from roadside bombs, such injuries are defined as a blow to the head resulting in an alteration or loss of consciousness of less than 30 minutes. Studies suggest that while most troops with concussions heal quickly, some 5 percent to 15 percent go on to suffer lasting difficulties in memory, concentration and multitasking.
“For the military's health system, the costs of treating brain damaged soldiers with cognitive rehabilitative therapy added up quickly. If tens of thousands of service members and veterans were authorized to receive such treatment, the bill might be in the billions, using high-end estimates for the cost of treatment from the Brain Injury Association [14] [14].
“The costs could swell the Pentagon's annual $50 billion health budget -- at a time when Gates has said the military is being "eaten alive" by skyrocketing medical bills.
“Tricare ‘is basically an insurance company. They'll take no action to provide more service," said the person familiar with the conversation, who would only discuss it in general terms. "If they do it, it's an enormous cost.’”
Third example - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The following quote come from Jacquelin Shoen, “Wounds of War,” Oct 20, 2010 – http://www.majalla.com/en/ideas/article165470.ece?service=print
“As Emile Tracey’s account suggests, the number of veterans from the war returning with PTSD is staggering as well. The US Congress commissioned a yearlong study by military and civilian experts in response to the increasing suicide tally amongst veterans. “From 2005 to 2009, more than 1,100 members of the military killed themselves, with the highest tolls among Army soldiers and Marines carrying the burden on the battlefronts,” reported The New York Times. The article further noted that one in five veterans returning from the conflict report signs of PTSD and depression. However, less than half have sought treatment. What is maybe more alarming is that a 2007 survey of soldiers found that 17 percent of active-duty troops and 25 percent of reservists had screened positive for symptoms of stress disorder. In other words, not only are few of these individuals receiving treatment for the trauma of war, many are returning to war with potential consequences to their ability to recover.
“In an investigative report on the mental health issues facing the US army, TIME reporter Mark Thompson put it clearly when he said that “While its combat troops fight two wars, its mental-health professionals are waging a battle to save soldiers’ sanity when they come back, one that will cost billions long after combat ends in Baghdad and Kabul.”
The point: While President Obama and the US Congress should be given credit for the new veterans’ benefits, they also should be held accountable for the great harm wrought by the Iraq war– and Afghanistan war. The best way to avoid such catastrophes and atrocities is not to enter into or continue support for these wars or others being waged with US troops in Columbia, Yemen, Pakistan, and other places. The US government must set an example in international affairs that is based on the search for cooperation, justice, and peace rather than on force. We really can’t afford to continue in the old way, unless US citizens are willing to see their own circumstances and societal institutions driven into the ground. There are big, pressing environmental and economic challenges that beset us at home, and they are not being adequately addressed.
Andrew J. Bascevich makes some relevant points in the last paragraph of his book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War:
“Americans must reckon with a contradiction of gaping proportions. Promising prosperity and peace, the Washington Rules are propelling the United States toward insolvency and perpetual war. Over the horizon a shipwreck of epic proportions awaits. To acknowledge the danger we face to make learning – and perhaps even a course change – possible. To willfully ignore the danger is to become complicit in the destruction of what most Americans profess to hold dear. We, too, must choose” (p. 250).
“Part of that responsibility is making sure that we honor our commitments to those who have served our country with such valor. As long as I am President, we will maintain the finest fighting force that the world has ever known, and do whatever it takes to serve our veterans as well as they have served us. This is a sacred trust. That is why we have already made one of the largest increases in funding for veterans in decades. We are treating the signature wounds of today's wars post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, while providing the health care and benefits that all of our veterans have earned. And we are funding a post-9/11 GI Bill that helps our veterans and their families pursue the dream of a college education. Just as the GI Bill helped those who fought World War II- including my grandfather- become the backbone of our middle class, so today's servicemen and women must have the chance to apply their gifts to expand the American economy. Because part of ending a war responsibly is standing by those who have fought it.”
We can only hope. Still, Obama and the US Congress delivered rhetorically and with new or expanded programs on at least some of the needed (and well earned) benefits. Blake Henderson lists provisions of the legislation passed in the middle of December, 2010, during the “lame duck” session. Henderson’s article, “Lame Duck Comes Up Big for New Vets” (Dec 23, 2010) can be found on the website of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). Here is quote.
“This past week, IAVA saw incredible progress on a number of issues that will impact the lives of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families. The clock was ticking, but IAVA kept the pressure on and we cut through the gridlock that has plagued Washington all year. After a hectic and historic lame duck session, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan saw several key victories, including critical GI Bill upgrades, the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ (DADT) and the passage of the Defense Bill (NDAA).
“Here is the principal and most recent segment of the new Obama-supported veterans’ benefits, including all of the “Upgrades to the New GI Bill.” Henderson writes as follows.
“In 2008, historic New GI Bill legislation was signed into law. Since then, IAVA has been fighting for critical upgrades where the benefit was lacking. These upgrades, which were passed [by the Senate and House] last week, will impact 400,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans within the first year.” The President is expected to sign the legislation before the end of the year, which includes the following provisions:
85,000 full-time National Guardsmen who will become eligible for the New GI Bill
58,000 students at private and graduate schools will have increased tuition benefits
25,000 distance learners will receive a monthly living allowance
21,000 disabled vets using Vocational Rehab will receive additional allowances
19,000 Active Duty service members will receive an annual book stipend
6,000 vocational students will receive tuition/fees and a monthly living allowance
6,000 On The Job training/Apprenticeship participants will get access to an expanded program 6,000 schools will receive increased fees for processing vets’ paperwork
180,000 new recruits will not have to pay $1,200 to buy into the old GI Bill
The new legislation is praiseworthy. But there are three points I would like to make, and I’ll elaborate the third of them. First, there is nothing in this legislation or any other veterans’ legislation that creates jobs, one of the big problems affecting not only vets but also up to at least twenty million other Americans. Second, without accompanying taxes, the new programs add to the US debt. Third, President Obama’s speech, and subsequent public addresses, glosses over the great harm that the illegal Iraq war has wrought to US troops. By the way, however great this harm is, it pales in significance to the harm the US-led war in Iraq and in Afghanistan has done to their societies, infrastructures, and civilians. (See the last post.)
First example: How much has the Iraq War cost in dollar terms for US taxpayers? What does it continue to cost?
Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes have written one of the definitive answers to this question in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (2008). Their analysis indicates that the war will have cost between $3 trillion and $5 trillion by 2017.
In their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War (2008), Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) and Linda Bilmes (Harvard University), estimate that by 2017 the war in Iraq would have cost at least $3 trillion dollars. In a recent article, Washington Post, Sept. 5, 2010, they raise their lowest estimate to $4 trillion. They include costs to date, costs of future operations, estimates of long-term veterans’ medical costs, veteran’s disability, veteran’s social security, repair and updating of equipment, the interest from the debt-based payment for the war. They also contend that the war and occupation of Iraq has led to rising oil prices, a higher national debt and higher related interest payments on the debt. In the following quotes they explain a couple of reasons (there are more in the article) for why their costs’ estimates have gone up.
But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low. For example, the cost of diagnosing, treating and compensating disabled veterans has proved higher than we expected.
“Moreover, two years on, it has become clear to us that our estimate did not capture what may have been the conflict's most sobering expenses: those in the category of "might have beens," or what economists call opportunity costs. For instance, many have wondered aloud whether, absent the Iraq invasion, we would still be stuck in Afghanistan. And this is not the only "what if" worth contemplating. We might also ask: If not for the war in Iraq, would oil prices have risen so rapidly? Would the federal debt be so high? Would the economic crisis have been so severe?
Second example: US troop casualties – In addition to the 4,426 deaths (source: http://icasualties.org), there were as of Oct 16, 2010, a total of 32,899 wounded US military soldiers and an additional 320,000 with brain injuries, with an unknown number of war veterans who had suffered concussions.
Lizette Alvaraz writes, in a lengthy New York Times article (Aug 26, 2008), that concussions are “a mild traumatic brain injury” caused by powerful explosions. Such injuries went unscreened until 2007. The symptoms of concussions include some combination of headaches, dizzy spells, persistent ringing in the ears, sometimes numbness in the arms, and memory loss. The symptoms do not immediately surface in all cases, but can be experienced in months after the injury occurred. Alavaraz writes that, according to the latest Pentagon estimates, “As many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly worked…away from bases, have suffered at least one concussion. She writes, further: “…tens of thousands of [these soldiers] have longer-term problems that can include, to varying degrees, a persistent memory loss, headaches, mood swings, dizziness, hearing problems and light sensitivity.” She points out that it is impossible to know how many suffer from the symptoms of mild brain trauma because the Veterans Affairs Department only in recent years screened for it, because the criteria remain ambiguous, and because they may not surface right away.”
T. Christian Miller and Daniel Zwerdling provide further evidence on the scope of mild brain injuries in their article, “Pentagon Health Plan Won’t Cover Brain Damage,” printed on Common Dreams. Org, December 20, 2010 (http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/20-5). Here are some excerpted paragraphs from this very long and well documented article.
“Official Pentagon figures show that 188,000 service members have suffered brain injuries since 2000. Of those, 44,000 suffered moderate or severe head injuries. Another 144,000 had mild traumatic brain injuries. However, previous ProPublica and NPR reports [13] [13] showed that number likely understates the true toll by tens of thousands of troops. Some estimates put the number of brain injuries at 400,000 service members.
“Mild traumatic brain injuries are the most common head trauma in Iraq and Afghanistan. Commonly caused by blast waves from roadside bombs, such injuries are defined as a blow to the head resulting in an alteration or loss of consciousness of less than 30 minutes. Studies suggest that while most troops with concussions heal quickly, some 5 percent to 15 percent go on to suffer lasting difficulties in memory, concentration and multitasking.
“For the military's health system, the costs of treating brain damaged soldiers with cognitive rehabilitative therapy added up quickly. If tens of thousands of service members and veterans were authorized to receive such treatment, the bill might be in the billions, using high-end estimates for the cost of treatment from the Brain Injury Association [14] [14].
“The costs could swell the Pentagon's annual $50 billion health budget -- at a time when Gates has said the military is being "eaten alive" by skyrocketing medical bills.
“Tricare ‘is basically an insurance company. They'll take no action to provide more service," said the person familiar with the conversation, who would only discuss it in general terms. "If they do it, it's an enormous cost.’”
Third example - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The following quote come from Jacquelin Shoen, “Wounds of War,” Oct 20, 2010 – http://www.majalla.com/en/ideas/article165470.ece?service=print
“As Emile Tracey’s account suggests, the number of veterans from the war returning with PTSD is staggering as well. The US Congress commissioned a yearlong study by military and civilian experts in response to the increasing suicide tally amongst veterans. “From 2005 to 2009, more than 1,100 members of the military killed themselves, with the highest tolls among Army soldiers and Marines carrying the burden on the battlefronts,” reported The New York Times. The article further noted that one in five veterans returning from the conflict report signs of PTSD and depression. However, less than half have sought treatment. What is maybe more alarming is that a 2007 survey of soldiers found that 17 percent of active-duty troops and 25 percent of reservists had screened positive for symptoms of stress disorder. In other words, not only are few of these individuals receiving treatment for the trauma of war, many are returning to war with potential consequences to their ability to recover.
“In an investigative report on the mental health issues facing the US army, TIME reporter Mark Thompson put it clearly when he said that “While its combat troops fight two wars, its mental-health professionals are waging a battle to save soldiers’ sanity when they come back, one that will cost billions long after combat ends in Baghdad and Kabul.”
The point: While President Obama and the US Congress should be given credit for the new veterans’ benefits, they also should be held accountable for the great harm wrought by the Iraq war– and Afghanistan war. The best way to avoid such catastrophes and atrocities is not to enter into or continue support for these wars or others being waged with US troops in Columbia, Yemen, Pakistan, and other places. The US government must set an example in international affairs that is based on the search for cooperation, justice, and peace rather than on force. We really can’t afford to continue in the old way, unless US citizens are willing to see their own circumstances and societal institutions driven into the ground. There are big, pressing environmental and economic challenges that beset us at home, and they are not being adequately addressed.
Andrew J. Bascevich makes some relevant points in the last paragraph of his book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War:
“Americans must reckon with a contradiction of gaping proportions. Promising prosperity and peace, the Washington Rules are propelling the United States toward insolvency and perpetual war. Over the horizon a shipwreck of epic proportions awaits. To acknowledge the danger we face to make learning – and perhaps even a course change – possible. To willfully ignore the danger is to become complicit in the destruction of what most Americans profess to hold dear. We, too, must choose” (p. 250).
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Iraq war will not end with US troop withdrawal
Juan Cole sees promise for a complete US military withdrawal from Iraq as a result of three developments. (“Iraq has a Government: Can we Please Come Home Now?” Informed Comment, 12-22-10).
First, the 50,000 troops still deployed in Iraq “are scheduled to be out of the country on December 31, 2011.” This deadline is reinforced by the “newly reinstalled prime minister Nuri al-Maliki...insisting that the deadline be met.”
Second, “the United Nations Security Council removed Chapter 7 restrictions on Iraq,” that is the long-standing sanctions first imposed on Iraq back in 1991. This means that in July of 2011, when the UN decision takes effect, Iraq “will again become a fully sovereign nation in the law.”
Third, Iraq has “finally formed a new government of national unity....” These “milestones” herald “good news” and “mean that the troops really can and likely will come home now.” Cole continues: “A long nightmare is coming to an end. Iraq has been Lebanonized and will likely be fragile for years, with occasional bombings and attacks. But it can now muddle through on its own.”
The Iraq war has indeed been a nightmare for US decision-makers, US troops, US citizens/taxpayers, the mounting US debt. It has also been an illegal war that has set a perverse example to other nations and generated anger and hatred toward the United States among many people in the Middle East and in Muslim countries elsewhere. In his new book, War is a Lie, David Swanson refers to the research of Michael Haas, who “identifies and documents 263 war crimes, in addition to aggression, that have occurred just in the current War on Iraq, and divides them into the categories of ‘conduct of war,’ ‘treatment of prisoners,’ ‘and ‘the conduct of the postwar occupation’” (p. 309-310).
As Cole implies here and explicates in other posts, the war does not end for the Iraqi people even when, and if, the US troops go home. But the word “fragile” does not capture the full effects of the war (and the sanctions) on Iraq and its citizens (see examples below). Furthermore, many of the last American troops that may come home at the end of 2011, and the troops that have preceded them, in the hundreds of thousands in all, will require costly health and psychological treatment for many years, and in some cases their whole lives. The war does not end for them, their families, or for the society as a whole.
Here I list only examples and quotes from sources that focus on the situation of Iraq and its citizens. They represent a legacy of the US-initiated and –led war and occupation. What does this have to do with Afghanistan? Wherever US military forces wage war, civilians suffer, whether directly or indirectly.
Agriculture - “By August 2009, the New York Times reported that the once-rich agricultural system had been so devastated ‘during the past few years’ (that is, during the U.S. occupation) that ‘there are increasing doubts about whether it makes much sense to grow dates – or much of anything for that matter.’ (Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects, 2010).
Electricity - “Iraqis promised development with the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the arrival of the U.S. are now suffering a lack of development as never before. And where it hurts every moment is through the collapse of power supply.” “More than seven years into the U.S. occupation, most Iraqis lack electricity, leading to demonstrations in towns and cities across the country.” “The problems since 2003 have been far worse” (Abdu Rahman and Dahr Jamail, After Flase Promises, the Heat in On in Iraq, http://dahrjamail.com/after-false-promises-the-heat-is-on-inIraq#more-1990).
Housing - “By United Nations estimates, Iraq has 2.8 million housing units for a population of 30 million, leaving a shortage of about 1.3 million homes. As the population continues to grow, the country needs to build 3.5 million housing units — more than doubling its stock — by 2015, said Istabraq I. al-Shouk, the senior deputy minister of construction and housing (John Leland, “Cramped Quarters Define Struggles of Iraqi Families, NYT, Feb 27, 2010).
Water - According to government statistics cited by the ICRC, one in four of Iraq’s 30 million people does not have access to safe drinking water” (Julia Apland Hitz, “Water, Another Crisis for Iraq,” Earth Institute, June 17, 2010 – http://blogs.eicolumbia.edu/2010/06/17/water-another-crisis-for-Iraq).
Uranium depletion effects- “Months of bombing during the first Gulf War by the United States and Great Britain left a deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the United States hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles (Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, “Iraq Wrecked Environment,” Counterpunch, May 1-3, 2009)
Cluster bomb effects - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Iraq: Local NGOs welcome cluster bomb ban,” Feb 18, 2010 - BAGHDAD, 18 February 2010 (IRIN) - Iraqi NGOs working in the field of landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) clearance have welcomed the ratification of an international convention banning the use of cluster bombs. (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/SHIG-82SHXW?Open Document&RSS20&RSS20=FS). However:
Ali Jawad Kati, who heads the Baghdad-based NGO Aysen, which raises awareness about mine risks says: “millions of bomblets dispersed by cluster bombs were still scattered across the country as a result of the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 US-led invasion.” “In Baghdad 331 areas are affected by cluster bomb debris, mostly from the 2003 war….Welfare runs out – “Iraq has run out of money to pay for widows' benefits, farm crops and other programs for the poor, the parliament leader told lawmakers, who have collected nearly $180,000 so far this year in one of the world's most oil-rich nations” (Lara Jakes, “Welfare funding runs out in Iraq,” AP News, Nov 21, 2010).
Missing billions and serious health rates - Juan Gonzalez, on Democracy Now - “We turn now to news from Iraq, where an official audit by the US Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction found that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $9 billion taken from Iraqi oil revenues between 2004 and 2007 for use in reconstruction. The report comes amidst continuing Iraqi concerns that, seven years since the US-led invasion, the billions of dollars pumped into reconstruction have failed to rebuild the country’s ravaged infrastructure.” “Meanwhile, a new medical study has found dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004. The rates of infant mortality and cancer exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945” (Andrew Cockburn interviewed on Democracy Now on “the missing billions in Iraq and soaring cancer and infant mortality rates,” July 29, 2010).
Devastation, Not Liberation - The US leaders said that we were invading Iraq to “liberate” it. Tom Engelhardt summarizes in the following paragraph from his book, The American Way of War (2010) the “devastation” that US forces brought to the country.
“Since then, Saddam Hussein’s killing fields have been dwarfed by a fierce set of destructive US military operations, as well as insurgencies cum-civil-wars-cum-terrorist-acts: major cities have been largely or partially destroyed, or ethnically cleansed; millions of Iraqis have been forced from their homes, becoming internal refugees or going into exile; untold numbers of Iraqis have been imprisoned, assassinated, tortured, or abused; and the country’s cultural heritage has been ransacked. Basic services – electricity, water, food – were terribly impaired and the economy was simply wrecked. Health services were crippled. Oil production upon which Iraq now depends for up to 90 percent of its government funds, has only relatively recently barely surpassed the worst levels of the pre-invasion era” (155)
US troop brutality – some sources
See Dahr Jamail, “Iraq War Vet: ‘We Were Told Just to Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us,” Truthout, April 7, 2010
Wikileaks releases would further confirm this the summer of 2010….
Pervasive Violence – see Kamil Mahdi, “What the Wikileaks don’t reveal, Stop the War Coalition, 10-24-10 – http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2117/1/
More on violence – Pratap Chatterjee, “Wikileaks Iraq War Logs Reveal Private Military Contractors Killing With Impunity, Alternet.org, Oct. 25, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/1485941
Number of excess Iraqi deaths - Swanson refers to the findings of two “serious” studies. Here are his comments on one of them. “The second serious study of deaths caused by the War on Iraq was a poll of 2,000 Iraqi adults conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) in August 2007. ORB estimated 1,033,000 violent deaths due to the War, on Iraq: ’48 percent died from a gunshot wound, 20 percent from the impact of a car bomb, 9 percent from aerial bombardment, 6 percent as a result of an accident, and 6 percent from another blast/ordnance” (War is a Lie, 220).
Soaring Cancer rates in Fallujah - David Edwards, “The Non-Reporting of Fallujah’s Cancer Catastrophe,” Znet,Sept., 12, 2010, makes the following points.
“After all, the cancer crisis reported in the study is impacting thousands of people in one of Iraq's largest cities and is so severe that local doctors are advising women not to have children.
“In the Independent, Patrick Cockburn wrote:
‘Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.’ (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html)
Millions of refugees - Fred Branfman – http://www.alternet.org/story/147281, June 22, 1010:
“’Counting both internal and external refugees, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that nearly 5 million of Iraq’s population of 24 million have been uprooted during the conflict,’ the N.Y. Review of Books reported on May 13, 2010. This is the equivalent of 60 million Americans by percentage of population. Five-hundred thousand are homeless squatters within Iraq, whose ‘settlements all lack basic services, including water, sanitation and electricity and are built in precarious places -- under bridges, alongside railroad tracks and amongst garbage dumps’ according to Refugees International in March 2010. The emigration of 2-3 million Iraqis to refugee camps in Syria and other Mideast countries decimated Iraq's educated middle class, with some daughters forced to become prostitutes and sons menial laborers just to keep their families alive.”
Iraqi children – a humanitarian and educational crisis – from Save the Children: Iraq, July 2009 (includes the entire, unedited post from: http://www.savethechildren.org)
“Although the violence that followed the invasion of Iraq by multi-national forces in 2003 has ebbed and flowed, Iraq remains within the top five humanitarian emergencies in the world. Children continue to suffer from the psychological trauma of war and conflict, and access to education and development opportunities has been severely constrained.
“As an example, in the northern part of Iraq (where Save the Children is currently operating) 15 schools host operations for 43 separate institutions — that is, most schools serve three to four shifts of students per day, for a few hours at a time. Besides overcrowding, these schools lack a clean water supply, sanitation and garbage disposal systems — as do many of the communities in which the schools are based.
“In the south of the country, including Basra, the situation is more acute. In particular, access to fresh water remains a key issue due to the use of a brackish water supply in Basra. Exacerbating the situation, temperatures can reach 140 F during the summer. Because of the salty residue, the water supply needs to go through a complex process of desalinization and purification, which is costly, time consuming and not always effective. It remains another obstacle for children in obtaining a quality education and having a healthy childhood.”
Iraq – a country of orphans
John Tirman estimated in Feb. 2009 that there were 5 million orphans. See John Terman, “4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans,” The Nation, Feb 2, 2009
Editor-in-Chief: Saad Albazzaz, “Iraq a country of Orphans,” Azzaman.com, September 13, 2010:
“One in every six Iraqis is an orphan. That is the toll Iraqi children are paying in a country which is supposedly under the occupation and protection of the world’s only superpower.
“Not all the orphans are the result of the violence that swept the country in the aftermath of the 2003-U.S. invasion.
“But the invasion has caused untold miseries for Iraqis, surpassing those inflicted on them by their former tormentors, the clique that ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
“There were unconfirmed reports that Iraq has turned into a country of orphans. But the exact figure only became a reality recently, when the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs made public its own statistics.
“The statistics points to dangerous demographics with grave social, health and economic consequences for a country which still lacks basic infrastructure.
“ These are the voiceless Iraqis. Their U.S. occupiers have almost cut and run and their Iraqi rulers are not so much concerned about their livelihood and well-being.
“In a violent country like Iraq, where U.S. marines with bullet-proof jackets and thick armor, cannot feel safe, there is not so much room for an orphan.
“Hundreds of thousands of them live on the street. There is no social security system to look after them.”
Children – PSID (post-traumatic stress disorder) -- “The great number of Iraqi children affected with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is one of the saddest, and least known, legacies of the Iraq war. That a new clinic for their treatment opened last August in Baghdad is the first of its kind says a lot about how this problem is being addressed. Until now, hundreds of children suffering from PTSD have been treated by Dr. Haider Maliki at the Central Pediatric Teaching Hospital in Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands remain untreated” (Cesar Chelala, “Iraqi Children Bear the Costs of War,” CommonDreams.org, March 5, 2010).
Imprisonment – Tens of thousands of Iraqi men spent years in American prisons. Most of the prisons and prisoners have been transferred to the Iraqis, who are known for the brutal treatment of prisoners. (Leila Fadel, “Some worry about abuse as U.S. hands over final detention center to Iraq,” Washington Post Foreign Service, July 16, 2010).
Democracy Now interview with Malcolm Smart on Amnesty International of Abuses in Iraqi Prisons, Sept 20, 2010:
Amy Goodman: Amnesty International has released a new report that finds more than 30,000 prisoners are being held in Iraq without charge, including 10,000 prisoners who were recently transferred from US custody. Amnesty’s report is called "New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq."
Torture - Tim Branfman reports: “Tens of thousands of innocents imprisoned, many tortured: “In an article headlined "In Iraq, A Prison Full of Innocent Men, the Washington Post reported that ‘100,000 prisoners have passed through the American-run detention system in Iraq,’ that Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi says that ‘most of the people they detain are innocent’ but that prisoners are not permitted to prove their innocence. Conditions have been even worse in the secret torture chambers run for five years by General Stanley McChrystal, from which all outside observers including the Red Cross have been excluded. Salon's Glenn Greenwald recently reported that ‘72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain just minimal due process -- after years of being in a cage without charges -- have been found by federal judges to be wrongfully detained.’ Countless innocent Iraqis have been regularly tortured.”
The situation of women and girls has deteriorated - Nadje Al-Ali, “The Iraq Legacy: Millions of Women’s Lives Destroyed,” Alter Net.com, March 31, 2008 – (http://www.alternet.org/story/80609) [Also Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s book, What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq.]
“In fact, Iraq's women have become the biggest losers in the post-invasion disaster. While men have borne the brunt in terms of direct armed violence, women have been particularly hard-hit by poverty, malnutrition, lack of health services and a crumbling infrastructure, not least chronic power cuts which in some areas of Iraq see electricity only available for two hours a day.
“More than 70 percent of the four million people forced out of their homes in the past five years in Iraq have been women and children. Many have found temporary shelter with relatives who share their limited space, food and supplies. But this, according to the UN refugee agency, has created ‘rising tension between families over scarce resources.’ Many displaced women and children find themselves in unsanitary and overcrowded public buildings under constant threat of eviction.
“Meanwhile, rampant political violence has also engulfed women in Iraq. Islamist militias with links to political parties in government and insurgent groups opposing both the government and the occupation have particularly targeted Iraqi women and girls. A new Islamist puritanism is seeing women and girls being violently pressured to conform to rigid dress codes. Personal movement and social behaviour are being ‘regulated,’ with acid attacks (deliberately designed to disfigure ‘transgressive’ women's faces), just one of the sanctions of the new moral guardians of post-Saddam Iraq.”
First, the 50,000 troops still deployed in Iraq “are scheduled to be out of the country on December 31, 2011.” This deadline is reinforced by the “newly reinstalled prime minister Nuri al-Maliki...insisting that the deadline be met.”
Second, “the United Nations Security Council removed Chapter 7 restrictions on Iraq,” that is the long-standing sanctions first imposed on Iraq back in 1991. This means that in July of 2011, when the UN decision takes effect, Iraq “will again become a fully sovereign nation in the law.”
Third, Iraq has “finally formed a new government of national unity....” These “milestones” herald “good news” and “mean that the troops really can and likely will come home now.” Cole continues: “A long nightmare is coming to an end. Iraq has been Lebanonized and will likely be fragile for years, with occasional bombings and attacks. But it can now muddle through on its own.”
The Iraq war has indeed been a nightmare for US decision-makers, US troops, US citizens/taxpayers, the mounting US debt. It has also been an illegal war that has set a perverse example to other nations and generated anger and hatred toward the United States among many people in the Middle East and in Muslim countries elsewhere. In his new book, War is a Lie, David Swanson refers to the research of Michael Haas, who “identifies and documents 263 war crimes, in addition to aggression, that have occurred just in the current War on Iraq, and divides them into the categories of ‘conduct of war,’ ‘treatment of prisoners,’ ‘and ‘the conduct of the postwar occupation’” (p. 309-310).
As Cole implies here and explicates in other posts, the war does not end for the Iraqi people even when, and if, the US troops go home. But the word “fragile” does not capture the full effects of the war (and the sanctions) on Iraq and its citizens (see examples below). Furthermore, many of the last American troops that may come home at the end of 2011, and the troops that have preceded them, in the hundreds of thousands in all, will require costly health and psychological treatment for many years, and in some cases their whole lives. The war does not end for them, their families, or for the society as a whole.
Here I list only examples and quotes from sources that focus on the situation of Iraq and its citizens. They represent a legacy of the US-initiated and –led war and occupation. What does this have to do with Afghanistan? Wherever US military forces wage war, civilians suffer, whether directly or indirectly.
Agriculture - “By August 2009, the New York Times reported that the once-rich agricultural system had been so devastated ‘during the past few years’ (that is, during the U.S. occupation) that ‘there are increasing doubts about whether it makes much sense to grow dates – or much of anything for that matter.’ (Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects, 2010).
Electricity - “Iraqis promised development with the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the arrival of the U.S. are now suffering a lack of development as never before. And where it hurts every moment is through the collapse of power supply.” “More than seven years into the U.S. occupation, most Iraqis lack electricity, leading to demonstrations in towns and cities across the country.” “The problems since 2003 have been far worse” (Abdu Rahman and Dahr Jamail, After Flase Promises, the Heat in On in Iraq, http://dahrjamail.com/after-false-promises-the-heat-is-on-inIraq#more-1990).
Housing - “By United Nations estimates, Iraq has 2.8 million housing units for a population of 30 million, leaving a shortage of about 1.3 million homes. As the population continues to grow, the country needs to build 3.5 million housing units — more than doubling its stock — by 2015, said Istabraq I. al-Shouk, the senior deputy minister of construction and housing (John Leland, “Cramped Quarters Define Struggles of Iraqi Families, NYT, Feb 27, 2010).
Water - According to government statistics cited by the ICRC, one in four of Iraq’s 30 million people does not have access to safe drinking water” (Julia Apland Hitz, “Water, Another Crisis for Iraq,” Earth Institute, June 17, 2010 – http://blogs.eicolumbia.edu/2010/06/17/water-another-crisis-for-Iraq).
Uranium depletion effects- “Months of bombing during the first Gulf War by the United States and Great Britain left a deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the United States hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles (Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, “Iraq Wrecked Environment,” Counterpunch, May 1-3, 2009)
Cluster bomb effects - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Iraq: Local NGOs welcome cluster bomb ban,” Feb 18, 2010 - BAGHDAD, 18 February 2010 (IRIN) - Iraqi NGOs working in the field of landmine and unexploded ordnance (UXO) clearance have welcomed the ratification of an international convention banning the use of cluster bombs. (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/SHIG-82SHXW?Open Document&RSS20&RSS20=FS). However:
Ali Jawad Kati, who heads the Baghdad-based NGO Aysen, which raises awareness about mine risks says: “millions of bomblets dispersed by cluster bombs were still scattered across the country as a result of the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 US-led invasion.” “In Baghdad 331 areas are affected by cluster bomb debris, mostly from the 2003 war….Welfare runs out – “Iraq has run out of money to pay for widows' benefits, farm crops and other programs for the poor, the parliament leader told lawmakers, who have collected nearly $180,000 so far this year in one of the world's most oil-rich nations” (Lara Jakes, “Welfare funding runs out in Iraq,” AP News, Nov 21, 2010).
Missing billions and serious health rates - Juan Gonzalez, on Democracy Now - “We turn now to news from Iraq, where an official audit by the US Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction found that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $9 billion taken from Iraqi oil revenues between 2004 and 2007 for use in reconstruction. The report comes amidst continuing Iraqi concerns that, seven years since the US-led invasion, the billions of dollars pumped into reconstruction have failed to rebuild the country’s ravaged infrastructure.” “Meanwhile, a new medical study has found dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004. The rates of infant mortality and cancer exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945” (Andrew Cockburn interviewed on Democracy Now on “the missing billions in Iraq and soaring cancer and infant mortality rates,” July 29, 2010).
Devastation, Not Liberation - The US leaders said that we were invading Iraq to “liberate” it. Tom Engelhardt summarizes in the following paragraph from his book, The American Way of War (2010) the “devastation” that US forces brought to the country.
“Since then, Saddam Hussein’s killing fields have been dwarfed by a fierce set of destructive US military operations, as well as insurgencies cum-civil-wars-cum-terrorist-acts: major cities have been largely or partially destroyed, or ethnically cleansed; millions of Iraqis have been forced from their homes, becoming internal refugees or going into exile; untold numbers of Iraqis have been imprisoned, assassinated, tortured, or abused; and the country’s cultural heritage has been ransacked. Basic services – electricity, water, food – were terribly impaired and the economy was simply wrecked. Health services were crippled. Oil production upon which Iraq now depends for up to 90 percent of its government funds, has only relatively recently barely surpassed the worst levels of the pre-invasion era” (155)
US troop brutality – some sources
See Dahr Jamail, “Iraq War Vet: ‘We Were Told Just to Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us,” Truthout, April 7, 2010
Wikileaks releases would further confirm this the summer of 2010….
Pervasive Violence – see Kamil Mahdi, “What the Wikileaks don’t reveal, Stop the War Coalition, 10-24-10 – http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2117/1/
More on violence – Pratap Chatterjee, “Wikileaks Iraq War Logs Reveal Private Military Contractors Killing With Impunity, Alternet.org, Oct. 25, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/1485941
Number of excess Iraqi deaths - Swanson refers to the findings of two “serious” studies. Here are his comments on one of them. “The second serious study of deaths caused by the War on Iraq was a poll of 2,000 Iraqi adults conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) in August 2007. ORB estimated 1,033,000 violent deaths due to the War, on Iraq: ’48 percent died from a gunshot wound, 20 percent from the impact of a car bomb, 9 percent from aerial bombardment, 6 percent as a result of an accident, and 6 percent from another blast/ordnance” (War is a Lie, 220).
Soaring Cancer rates in Fallujah - David Edwards, “The Non-Reporting of Fallujah’s Cancer Catastrophe,” Znet,Sept., 12, 2010, makes the following points.
“After all, the cancer crisis reported in the study is impacting thousands of people in one of Iraq's largest cities and is so severe that local doctors are advising women not to have children.
“In the Independent, Patrick Cockburn wrote:
‘Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.’ (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html)
Millions of refugees - Fred Branfman – http://www.alternet.org/story/147281, June 22, 1010:
“’Counting both internal and external refugees, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that nearly 5 million of Iraq’s population of 24 million have been uprooted during the conflict,’ the N.Y. Review of Books reported on May 13, 2010. This is the equivalent of 60 million Americans by percentage of population. Five-hundred thousand are homeless squatters within Iraq, whose ‘settlements all lack basic services, including water, sanitation and electricity and are built in precarious places -- under bridges, alongside railroad tracks and amongst garbage dumps’ according to Refugees International in March 2010. The emigration of 2-3 million Iraqis to refugee camps in Syria and other Mideast countries decimated Iraq's educated middle class, with some daughters forced to become prostitutes and sons menial laborers just to keep their families alive.”
Iraqi children – a humanitarian and educational crisis – from Save the Children: Iraq, July 2009 (includes the entire, unedited post from: http://www.savethechildren.org)
“Although the violence that followed the invasion of Iraq by multi-national forces in 2003 has ebbed and flowed, Iraq remains within the top five humanitarian emergencies in the world. Children continue to suffer from the psychological trauma of war and conflict, and access to education and development opportunities has been severely constrained.
“As an example, in the northern part of Iraq (where Save the Children is currently operating) 15 schools host operations for 43 separate institutions — that is, most schools serve three to four shifts of students per day, for a few hours at a time. Besides overcrowding, these schools lack a clean water supply, sanitation and garbage disposal systems — as do many of the communities in which the schools are based.
“In the south of the country, including Basra, the situation is more acute. In particular, access to fresh water remains a key issue due to the use of a brackish water supply in Basra. Exacerbating the situation, temperatures can reach 140 F during the summer. Because of the salty residue, the water supply needs to go through a complex process of desalinization and purification, which is costly, time consuming and not always effective. It remains another obstacle for children in obtaining a quality education and having a healthy childhood.”
Iraq – a country of orphans
John Tirman estimated in Feb. 2009 that there were 5 million orphans. See John Terman, “4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans,” The Nation, Feb 2, 2009
Editor-in-Chief: Saad Albazzaz, “Iraq a country of Orphans,” Azzaman.com, September 13, 2010:
“One in every six Iraqis is an orphan. That is the toll Iraqi children are paying in a country which is supposedly under the occupation and protection of the world’s only superpower.
“Not all the orphans are the result of the violence that swept the country in the aftermath of the 2003-U.S. invasion.
“But the invasion has caused untold miseries for Iraqis, surpassing those inflicted on them by their former tormentors, the clique that ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
“There were unconfirmed reports that Iraq has turned into a country of orphans. But the exact figure only became a reality recently, when the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs made public its own statistics.
“The statistics points to dangerous demographics with grave social, health and economic consequences for a country which still lacks basic infrastructure.
“ These are the voiceless Iraqis. Their U.S. occupiers have almost cut and run and their Iraqi rulers are not so much concerned about their livelihood and well-being.
“In a violent country like Iraq, where U.S. marines with bullet-proof jackets and thick armor, cannot feel safe, there is not so much room for an orphan.
“Hundreds of thousands of them live on the street. There is no social security system to look after them.”
Children – PSID (post-traumatic stress disorder) -- “The great number of Iraqi children affected with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is one of the saddest, and least known, legacies of the Iraq war. That a new clinic for their treatment opened last August in Baghdad is the first of its kind says a lot about how this problem is being addressed. Until now, hundreds of children suffering from PTSD have been treated by Dr. Haider Maliki at the Central Pediatric Teaching Hospital in Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands remain untreated” (Cesar Chelala, “Iraqi Children Bear the Costs of War,” CommonDreams.org, March 5, 2010).
Imprisonment – Tens of thousands of Iraqi men spent years in American prisons. Most of the prisons and prisoners have been transferred to the Iraqis, who are known for the brutal treatment of prisoners. (Leila Fadel, “Some worry about abuse as U.S. hands over final detention center to Iraq,” Washington Post Foreign Service, July 16, 2010).
Democracy Now interview with Malcolm Smart on Amnesty International of Abuses in Iraqi Prisons, Sept 20, 2010:
Amy Goodman: Amnesty International has released a new report that finds more than 30,000 prisoners are being held in Iraq without charge, including 10,000 prisoners who were recently transferred from US custody. Amnesty’s report is called "New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq."
Torture - Tim Branfman reports: “Tens of thousands of innocents imprisoned, many tortured: “In an article headlined "In Iraq, A Prison Full of Innocent Men, the Washington Post reported that ‘100,000 prisoners have passed through the American-run detention system in Iraq,’ that Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi says that ‘most of the people they detain are innocent’ but that prisoners are not permitted to prove their innocence. Conditions have been even worse in the secret torture chambers run for five years by General Stanley McChrystal, from which all outside observers including the Red Cross have been excluded. Salon's Glenn Greenwald recently reported that ‘72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain just minimal due process -- after years of being in a cage without charges -- have been found by federal judges to be wrongfully detained.’ Countless innocent Iraqis have been regularly tortured.”
The situation of women and girls has deteriorated - Nadje Al-Ali, “The Iraq Legacy: Millions of Women’s Lives Destroyed,” Alter Net.com, March 31, 2008 – (http://www.alternet.org/story/80609) [Also Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s book, What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq.]
“In fact, Iraq's women have become the biggest losers in the post-invasion disaster. While men have borne the brunt in terms of direct armed violence, women have been particularly hard-hit by poverty, malnutrition, lack of health services and a crumbling infrastructure, not least chronic power cuts which in some areas of Iraq see electricity only available for two hours a day.
“More than 70 percent of the four million people forced out of their homes in the past five years in Iraq have been women and children. Many have found temporary shelter with relatives who share their limited space, food and supplies. But this, according to the UN refugee agency, has created ‘rising tension between families over scarce resources.’ Many displaced women and children find themselves in unsanitary and overcrowded public buildings under constant threat of eviction.
“Meanwhile, rampant political violence has also engulfed women in Iraq. Islamist militias with links to political parties in government and insurgent groups opposing both the government and the occupation have particularly targeted Iraqi women and girls. A new Islamist puritanism is seeing women and girls being violently pressured to conform to rigid dress codes. Personal movement and social behaviour are being ‘regulated,’ with acid attacks (deliberately designed to disfigure ‘transgressive’ women's faces), just one of the sanctions of the new moral guardians of post-Saddam Iraq.”
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
President Obama's speech is misleading
President Obama read from a five-page summary of US policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan on Thursday, December 16 (2010). The title of the summary document is “Overview of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review. The president does his best to bring an upbeat message to Americans and to defend the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan. But then he says this occupation/war will continue until at least 2014 and perhaps “beyond.” Overall, his rhetoric and evidence are unconvincing.
He shamefully echoes former-president Bush’s rationale for the Afghan invasion and occupation in some instances, when he says that the “core goals” of the US-led Afghanistan occupation is to defeat “al-Qa-ida,” that is, “to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa-ida” and “to prevent its return to either country” (i.e., Afghanistan or Pakistan). The evidence overwhelmingly challenges the idea that al-Qaeda is the principal threat to the creation of a stable Afghanistan. There are few Afghans affiliated with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The President maintains that al-Qaeda poses a direct threat to the US. He says: “Al-Qa-ida continues its terrorist plotting…against the United States and our allies and partners.”
Eliminating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan will not end the threat of random terrorist attacks on the US or any other country. The roots of such terrorism stem from rage over the US-led occupations and wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, support for dictatorial Middle East regimes (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan), and the one-sided support of the long-standing US support of Israeli oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. (Juan Cole has documented this point many times on his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. Also see: David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis' book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan.)
Experts point out that Al-Qaeda is a decentralized international network located in various parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, and some “developing countries” (e.g., Indonesia), but it does not have a consolidated center. The President does acknowledge, “There are a range of other groups, including some affiliated with al-Qa-ida, as well as individuals inspired by al-Qa-ida, who to do harm to our nation and our allies.” (See, for example, Loretta Napaleoni’s new book, The Politics of Fear: How Fighting Terrorism is Bankrupting the World and Making US Less Safe, Seven Stories Press, 2010.)
The major opponents of the foreign US and allied occupiers come from Afghan participants variously associated with the “Taliban,” a category that includes separate, uncoordinated, groups from mainly the Pashtun population of the country. Grievances are local and often responses to the ground and escalating air attacks of the American forces, and to a war that has produced tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, further destruction of infrastructure and communities, widespread corruption, and little reconstruction.
As a consequence, Afghanistan has one of the poorest and most deprived populations in the world. Kathy Kelly provides a glimpse of Afghan impoverishment and the counterproductive use of increasingly destructive weaponry by US forces in an article on Antiwar.com, December 10, 2010:
“In Afghanistan, a nation where 850 children die every day, about a quarter of the population goes hungry. The UN says that 7.4 million Afghans live with hunger and fear of starvation, while millions more rely on food help, and one in five children die before the age of five.
"’Do you think we like to live this way?’ an Afghan man asked me, last October, as he led us toward a primitive tent encampment on the outskirts of Kabul. ‘Do you see how we live? The cold and the rain are coming. How will we protect our children?’ He flicked his forefinger on a weather-beaten blanket covering a tent. The blanket immediately ripped.”
[….]
“Inside one of the tents, a young mother welcomed me to sit down on the only available cushion. It appeared that they slept on the ground. The families share one pot over a fire pit, and a few utensils. They also have access to a water pump. Near their area is a tent where they join for prayers, and also one that is used for classes. One man begged us to tell the authorities that they have no medicines in the camp and that many of the children are ill.
[…]
“Although the U.S. military forbids soldiers to mutilate corpses and go on killing sprees that target civilians, the U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan have bragged, in recent weeks, about increased capacities to kill with ever more invulnerable weapons. A company of 16 Abrams tanks was recently delivered to Afghanistan. ‘We’ve taken the gloves off,’ said an unnamed U.S. military official, ‘and it has had huge impact.’ (Washington Post, November 19, 2010) The 68-ton tanks fire high explosive, white phosphorus and anti-personnel shells that can destroy a house a mile away. Each tank costs 4.3 million dollars and uses 3 gallons of jet fuel per mile.
“The Pentagon is also sending 12,500 XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapons to Afghanistan, one to each infantry squad and Special Forces team in Afghanistan. The XM25 gun can fire a projectile that will travel the length of eight football fields. ‘When fired, the projectile is designed to explode directly above a target,’ says the Army Times, ‘raining shrapnel down on an enemy crouched behind cover.’
“In a report to the November 2010 NATO conference held in Lisbon, 29 aid groups working in Afghanistan warned that the increases in air attacks, the use of night raids, and the destruction of civilian property contributes to ‘rapidly deteriorating" security for most Afghans and a rise in civilian casualties. People who flee from U.S. attacks face food insecurity, loss of income, lack of health care, and homelessness. The aid groups’ report is entitled ‘Nowhere to Turn.’ Increasingly, Afghans living in war zones have nowhere to hide.”
The president claims that US and allied forces are “degrading the Taliban insurgency,” another unsubstantiated claim. Unsurprisingly, as noted above, there is nothing in Obama’s annual review of the conditions in Afghanistan concerning civilian casualties, devastation of those parts of the country invaded by US and allied forces, or the ever-more destructive weaponry employed by these forces in places identified as war zones. And the insurgency is growing. Tom Anderson reports in an article for CommonDreams.org, Dec. 16, 2010, evidence that contradicts President Obama’s claim of degrading the insurgency. Anderson writes:
“A U.S. intelligence estimate presented to President Obama in October 2009 showed that the number of fighters in the insurgency had ballooned to 25,000 from only 7,000 in 2006. Now Matt Waldman, former Head of Policy and Advocacy for Oxfam International in Afghanistan, reports that "today [the NATO force] estimates the Taliban as 35,000 to 40,000. One of the points we have to bear in mind is they have a very large pool of recruits inside Afghanistan and Pakistan."
In the meantime, security is down and violence is up, according to Anderson’s sources.
“Nationwide, security in Afghanistan has not improved. According to the Pentagon's own report to Congress in November 2010, the portion of the population living in districts with a ‘satisfactory' security rating "remains relatively unchanged over the past three quarters." In fact, "the number of Afghans rating their security situation as ‘bad' is the highest since the nationwide survey began in September 2008. This downward trend in security perception is likely due to the steady increase in total violence over the past nine months."
“Violence has dramatically increased in Afghanistan over the last year. Kinetic events -- Pentagon speak for violence -- "are up 300 percent since 2007 and up an additional 70 percent since 2009." The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office reports a 59% increase in insurgent-led attacks in the 3rd quarter of this year over and above the 2009 level. They state: "By any measure 2010 has been the most violent year since ANSO's records began in 2002."
“Any progress toward increased security in the south has been more than offset by increased violence elsewhere in Afghanistan. Insurgent attacks in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan "rose 200% in June compared with June 2009." There are reports that "in northern Afghanistan, security has been deteriorating for the past two years in Kunduz and surrounding provinces" and that "the Taliban also have spread their influence in western Afghanistan and now control several districts."
President Obama’s review of conditions in Afghanistan are similarly dubious on a number of his other claims; for example that US forces are “supporting Afghanistan’s efforts to better improve national and sub-national governance.” Andrews refutes this claim as follows.
“Corruption runs rampant, fueling the insurgency. The Pentagon's own polling from September 2010 ‘shows that 80.6 percent of Afghans polled believe corruption affects their daily lives. This is consistent with the view that corruption is preventing the Afghan Government from connecting with the people and remains a key reason for Afghans supporting the insurgency...’
“As the New York Times reported, after a meeting with President Karzai's brother, Ahmed Walid Karzai, Ambassador Eikenberry wrote that ‘one of our major challenges in Afghanistan [is] how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt.’
“And just this past weekend, Afghanistan's Attorney General asked their Supreme Court to nullify the results of recent parliamentary elections due to allegations of fraud and to ‘issue sentences against 14 top officials who organized the vote and oversaw fraud investigations.’”
And, furthermore, Andrews adds:
“Nationwide, governance has not expanded. The Pentagon reports that only ‘38 percent of the population live in areas rated as having ‘emerging' or ‘full authority' Afghan governance. This reflects no substantial change since March 2010.’ ‘Shadow governments’ run by insurgent forces continue to operate in many parts of the south and east, ‘extracting taxes and carrying out ‘official' functions like trials and determining land and marriage disputes.’”
There are other downbeat rather than upbeat issues that Obama omits from his speech. Wasted US aid: Patrick Cockburn documents the “billions down the drain in useless US Afghan aid” (Counter Punch, Dec. 13, 2010). Mounting US debt: the costs of the wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq (it’s not over) are undermining the American economy and helping to deepen the US national debt.
In another article, this one for The Independent (Dec 18, 2010), Cockburn provides the words for ending this post and implicitly indicating how misleading Obama’s speech is. Cockburn writes:
“Afghans are adept at concealing their real views. A government official was giving me a bland account of his ministry's activities. Bored, I asked if there was anything he would like to say to me unattributably. ‘Well’, he said, without changing his smooth tone of voice, ‘there is no chance of any progress here so long as our country is run by gangsters and warlords.’ But it is to keep these same people in power that the US and Britain are now fighting a war.”
He shamefully echoes former-president Bush’s rationale for the Afghan invasion and occupation in some instances, when he says that the “core goals” of the US-led Afghanistan occupation is to defeat “al-Qa-ida,” that is, “to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa-ida” and “to prevent its return to either country” (i.e., Afghanistan or Pakistan). The evidence overwhelmingly challenges the idea that al-Qaeda is the principal threat to the creation of a stable Afghanistan. There are few Afghans affiliated with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The President maintains that al-Qaeda poses a direct threat to the US. He says: “Al-Qa-ida continues its terrorist plotting…against the United States and our allies and partners.”
Eliminating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan will not end the threat of random terrorist attacks on the US or any other country. The roots of such terrorism stem from rage over the US-led occupations and wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, support for dictatorial Middle East regimes (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan), and the one-sided support of the long-standing US support of Israeli oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. (Juan Cole has documented this point many times on his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. Also see: David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis' book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan.)
Experts point out that Al-Qaeda is a decentralized international network located in various parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, and some “developing countries” (e.g., Indonesia), but it does not have a consolidated center. The President does acknowledge, “There are a range of other groups, including some affiliated with al-Qa-ida, as well as individuals inspired by al-Qa-ida, who to do harm to our nation and our allies.” (See, for example, Loretta Napaleoni’s new book, The Politics of Fear: How Fighting Terrorism is Bankrupting the World and Making US Less Safe, Seven Stories Press, 2010.)
The major opponents of the foreign US and allied occupiers come from Afghan participants variously associated with the “Taliban,” a category that includes separate, uncoordinated, groups from mainly the Pashtun population of the country. Grievances are local and often responses to the ground and escalating air attacks of the American forces, and to a war that has produced tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, further destruction of infrastructure and communities, widespread corruption, and little reconstruction.
As a consequence, Afghanistan has one of the poorest and most deprived populations in the world. Kathy Kelly provides a glimpse of Afghan impoverishment and the counterproductive use of increasingly destructive weaponry by US forces in an article on Antiwar.com, December 10, 2010:
“In Afghanistan, a nation where 850 children die every day, about a quarter of the population goes hungry. The UN says that 7.4 million Afghans live with hunger and fear of starvation, while millions more rely on food help, and one in five children die before the age of five.
"’Do you think we like to live this way?’ an Afghan man asked me, last October, as he led us toward a primitive tent encampment on the outskirts of Kabul. ‘Do you see how we live? The cold and the rain are coming. How will we protect our children?’ He flicked his forefinger on a weather-beaten blanket covering a tent. The blanket immediately ripped.”
[….]
“Inside one of the tents, a young mother welcomed me to sit down on the only available cushion. It appeared that they slept on the ground. The families share one pot over a fire pit, and a few utensils. They also have access to a water pump. Near their area is a tent where they join for prayers, and also one that is used for classes. One man begged us to tell the authorities that they have no medicines in the camp and that many of the children are ill.
[…]
“Although the U.S. military forbids soldiers to mutilate corpses and go on killing sprees that target civilians, the U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan have bragged, in recent weeks, about increased capacities to kill with ever more invulnerable weapons. A company of 16 Abrams tanks was recently delivered to Afghanistan. ‘We’ve taken the gloves off,’ said an unnamed U.S. military official, ‘and it has had huge impact.’ (Washington Post, November 19, 2010) The 68-ton tanks fire high explosive, white phosphorus and anti-personnel shells that can destroy a house a mile away. Each tank costs 4.3 million dollars and uses 3 gallons of jet fuel per mile.
“The Pentagon is also sending 12,500 XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapons to Afghanistan, one to each infantry squad and Special Forces team in Afghanistan. The XM25 gun can fire a projectile that will travel the length of eight football fields. ‘When fired, the projectile is designed to explode directly above a target,’ says the Army Times, ‘raining shrapnel down on an enemy crouched behind cover.’
“In a report to the November 2010 NATO conference held in Lisbon, 29 aid groups working in Afghanistan warned that the increases in air attacks, the use of night raids, and the destruction of civilian property contributes to ‘rapidly deteriorating" security for most Afghans and a rise in civilian casualties. People who flee from U.S. attacks face food insecurity, loss of income, lack of health care, and homelessness. The aid groups’ report is entitled ‘Nowhere to Turn.’ Increasingly, Afghans living in war zones have nowhere to hide.”
The president claims that US and allied forces are “degrading the Taliban insurgency,” another unsubstantiated claim. Unsurprisingly, as noted above, there is nothing in Obama’s annual review of the conditions in Afghanistan concerning civilian casualties, devastation of those parts of the country invaded by US and allied forces, or the ever-more destructive weaponry employed by these forces in places identified as war zones. And the insurgency is growing. Tom Anderson reports in an article for CommonDreams.org, Dec. 16, 2010, evidence that contradicts President Obama’s claim of degrading the insurgency. Anderson writes:
“A U.S. intelligence estimate presented to President Obama in October 2009 showed that the number of fighters in the insurgency had ballooned to 25,000 from only 7,000 in 2006. Now Matt Waldman, former Head of Policy and Advocacy for Oxfam International in Afghanistan, reports that "today [the NATO force] estimates the Taliban as 35,000 to 40,000. One of the points we have to bear in mind is they have a very large pool of recruits inside Afghanistan and Pakistan."
In the meantime, security is down and violence is up, according to Anderson’s sources.
“Nationwide, security in Afghanistan has not improved. According to the Pentagon's own report to Congress in November 2010, the portion of the population living in districts with a ‘satisfactory' security rating "remains relatively unchanged over the past three quarters." In fact, "the number of Afghans rating their security situation as ‘bad' is the highest since the nationwide survey began in September 2008. This downward trend in security perception is likely due to the steady increase in total violence over the past nine months."
“Violence has dramatically increased in Afghanistan over the last year. Kinetic events -- Pentagon speak for violence -- "are up 300 percent since 2007 and up an additional 70 percent since 2009." The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office reports a 59% increase in insurgent-led attacks in the 3rd quarter of this year over and above the 2009 level. They state: "By any measure 2010 has been the most violent year since ANSO's records began in 2002."
“Any progress toward increased security in the south has been more than offset by increased violence elsewhere in Afghanistan. Insurgent attacks in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan "rose 200% in June compared with June 2009." There are reports that "in northern Afghanistan, security has been deteriorating for the past two years in Kunduz and surrounding provinces" and that "the Taliban also have spread their influence in western Afghanistan and now control several districts."
President Obama’s review of conditions in Afghanistan are similarly dubious on a number of his other claims; for example that US forces are “supporting Afghanistan’s efforts to better improve national and sub-national governance.” Andrews refutes this claim as follows.
“Corruption runs rampant, fueling the insurgency. The Pentagon's own polling from September 2010 ‘shows that 80.6 percent of Afghans polled believe corruption affects their daily lives. This is consistent with the view that corruption is preventing the Afghan Government from connecting with the people and remains a key reason for Afghans supporting the insurgency...’
“As the New York Times reported, after a meeting with President Karzai's brother, Ahmed Walid Karzai, Ambassador Eikenberry wrote that ‘one of our major challenges in Afghanistan [is] how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt.’
“And just this past weekend, Afghanistan's Attorney General asked their Supreme Court to nullify the results of recent parliamentary elections due to allegations of fraud and to ‘issue sentences against 14 top officials who organized the vote and oversaw fraud investigations.’”
And, furthermore, Andrews adds:
“Nationwide, governance has not expanded. The Pentagon reports that only ‘38 percent of the population live in areas rated as having ‘emerging' or ‘full authority' Afghan governance. This reflects no substantial change since March 2010.’ ‘Shadow governments’ run by insurgent forces continue to operate in many parts of the south and east, ‘extracting taxes and carrying out ‘official' functions like trials and determining land and marriage disputes.’”
There are other downbeat rather than upbeat issues that Obama omits from his speech. Wasted US aid: Patrick Cockburn documents the “billions down the drain in useless US Afghan aid” (Counter Punch, Dec. 13, 2010). Mounting US debt: the costs of the wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq (it’s not over) are undermining the American economy and helping to deepen the US national debt.
In another article, this one for The Independent (Dec 18, 2010), Cockburn provides the words for ending this post and implicitly indicating how misleading Obama’s speech is. Cockburn writes:
“Afghans are adept at concealing their real views. A government official was giving me a bland account of his ministry's activities. Bored, I asked if there was anything he would like to say to me unattributably. ‘Well’, he said, without changing his smooth tone of voice, ‘there is no chance of any progress here so long as our country is run by gangsters and warlords.’ But it is to keep these same people in power that the US and Britain are now fighting a war.”
Monday, December 20, 2010
Why all the wars and military spending?
Never under-estimate the power of military interests and values on the American people and US government, however misguided, self-serving, and counterproductive such interests and values may be. The forces in the United States that support of war, or a military-oriented foreign policy, are strong and unabated.
In the United States, unfortunately, there are many powerful groups, communities, and just ordinary citizens that support a militarized foreign policy. Why? Many parts of the US have benefited from the Iraq War financially, ideologically, psychologically, and/or politically. Consider the following list of items that exemplify my point.
(1) The military budget continues to climb and far overshadows military expenditures by any other nation-state.
(2) The corporations associated with the huge military-industrial complex continue to increase their sales and profits.
(3) The military-industrial complex thrives on wars, however reckless, costly in resources and to people, and counterproductive they are.
(4)The President along with too many elected officials in the U.S. Congress advance a bipartisan, pro-war budget and agenda and have won votes for their campaigns as a result. Here is a tangential example, among many available in the critical literature.
“In 2005 and 2006 while Republicans held a majority in Congress, Democratic Congress members led by John Conyers (Mich.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), and Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) pushed hard for an investigation into the lies that had launched the aggression against Iraq. But from the time the Democrats took the majority in January 2007 up to the present moment, there has been no further mention of the matter, apart from a Senate committee’s release of its long-delayed report” (David Swanson, War Is a Lie, p. 303).
(5)The large veterans’ organizations typically defend the militarized foreign policy of the US government.
(6 )Thousands of communities across the United States and in virtually all congressional districts support the government’s large military budgets, especially when they have military bases in their areas or local business with contracts to produce weapons or military-related supplies. The benefits are in employment, additional taxes, and spurs to the local economy. In his many important books, Seymour Melman, among others, documents this point - and many others.
(7) Burgeoning private firms prosper that provide services to the troops, security to embassies and officials, experienced former soldiers for special operations, and intelligence to the military. Jeremy Scahill's book, Blackwater, provides a well documented analysis of a growing, and very profitable"mercenary army."
(8) Millions of citizens who pride themselves on being patriotic have adopted the idea that military force is the only way to protect America and its interests here and abroad. Here is a sad commentary on the US culture from David Swanson’s new book, War Is a Lie.
“We are more saturated with militarism than ever before. The military and its support industries eat up an increasingly larger share of the economy, providing jobs intentionally spread across all congressional districts. Military recruiters and recruitment advertising are ubiquitous. Sporting events on television welcome ‘members of the United States armed forces viewing in 177 nations around the world’ and nobody blinks. When wars begin, the government does whatever it has to do to persuade enough of the public to support the wars. Once the public turns against wars, the government just as effectively resists pressure to bring them to a swift end. Some years into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a majority of Americans told pollsters it had been a mistake to begin either of those wars. But easily manipulated majorities had supported those mistakes when they were made” (p. 10).
(9) The terror-complex. A widely held view in the United States is that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were necessary to forestall and ultimately defeat international Islamic terrorism. These misbegotten goals generate fear and submissiveness in the population but also opportunities for the creation and expansion of yet more profitable and career-enhancing opportunities. Chris Hedges provides a glimpse of this in her article, “The Terror-Industrial Complex,” truthdig.com, February 8, 2010.
“It is difficult to get a fair trial in this country if the government wants to accuse you of terrorism,” said Foster. “It is difficult to get a fair trial on any types of charges. The government is allowed to tell the jury you are a terrorist before you have to put on any evidence. The fear factor that has emerged since 9/11 has permeated into the U.S. court system in a profoundly disturbing way. It embraces the idea that we can compromise core principles, for example the presumption of innocence, based on perceived threats that may or may not come to light. We, as a society, have chosen to cave on fear.”
“I spent more than a year covering al-Qaida for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East. The threat posed by Islamic extremists, while real, is also wildly overblown, used to foster a climate of fear and political passivity, as well as pump billions of dollars into the hands of the military, private contractors, intelligence agencies and repressive client governments including that of Pakistan. The leader of one FBI counterterrorism squad told The New York Times that of the 5,500 terrorism-related leads its 21 agents had pursued over the past five years, just 5 percent were credible and not one had foiled an actual terrorist plot. These statistics strike me as emblematic of the entire war on terror.
“Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power. All this will not make us safer. It will not protect us from terrorist strikes. The more we dispatch brutal forms of power to the Islamic world the more enraged Muslims and terrorists we propel into the ranks of those who oppose us.
(10) The media are by and large an echo chamber of the official war narratives – Check out these two books, for example: Anthony Dimaggio, When Media Goes to War, and Norman Solomon’s War Made Easy.
Additionally, in his book War is a Lie, David Swanson comments on the role of the media: “The approach of the US corporate media to war coverage is to feature lots of ‘experts’ on war. By ‘experts’ they clearly mean high-ranking military officials, current or retired. But if the question is whether or not to go to war, or whether or not to continue war, or whether or not to escalate war, then why aren’t experts at peace making as relevant as experts at war making? In fact, why aren’t they more relevant, given our supposed preference for peace, its legality, and the ongoing pretense of civilian control over our military? The military can offer expertise on how to start and fight a way, but should it be considered to have any authority on whether to start a war?” (p. 252).
(11) Think tanks (some) provide rationales for war. Derek Leebaert provides the following examples in his book Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy.
“Think tankers who double as advisers to the military – including Frederick Kagan and his spouse, Kimberly Kagan, who runs a new organization, ‘the Institute for the Study of War’ – wrote an op-ed…stating, ‘There is no doubt that we can succeed against the much weaker foes,’ comparing the Afghan insurgents dismissively to those in Iraq. Brookings expert Michael O’Hanlon and participated from the CSIS, Brookings, and the AEI to urge ‘significant escalation’ as they unanimously insisted ‘there is no alternative to victory’” (p. 243).
My reaction:
Despite the forces for a strong military and an empire built on a thousand or so military bases in countries across the planet, the voices and groups in favor of a non-militarized society and a peace-oriented and just national agenda continue.
In this regard, by the way, Wikileaks is a channel of information about the machinations and bumblings of the US government and military that enhance the information available to these dissidents and activites. Wikileaks is fundamentally opposed to the Security State.
In the United States, unfortunately, there are many powerful groups, communities, and just ordinary citizens that support a militarized foreign policy. Why? Many parts of the US have benefited from the Iraq War financially, ideologically, psychologically, and/or politically. Consider the following list of items that exemplify my point.
(1) The military budget continues to climb and far overshadows military expenditures by any other nation-state.
(2) The corporations associated with the huge military-industrial complex continue to increase their sales and profits.
(3) The military-industrial complex thrives on wars, however reckless, costly in resources and to people, and counterproductive they are.
(4)The President along with too many elected officials in the U.S. Congress advance a bipartisan, pro-war budget and agenda and have won votes for their campaigns as a result. Here is a tangential example, among many available in the critical literature.
“In 2005 and 2006 while Republicans held a majority in Congress, Democratic Congress members led by John Conyers (Mich.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), and Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) pushed hard for an investigation into the lies that had launched the aggression against Iraq. But from the time the Democrats took the majority in January 2007 up to the present moment, there has been no further mention of the matter, apart from a Senate committee’s release of its long-delayed report” (David Swanson, War Is a Lie, p. 303).
(5)The large veterans’ organizations typically defend the militarized foreign policy of the US government.
(6 )Thousands of communities across the United States and in virtually all congressional districts support the government’s large military budgets, especially when they have military bases in their areas or local business with contracts to produce weapons or military-related supplies. The benefits are in employment, additional taxes, and spurs to the local economy. In his many important books, Seymour Melman, among others, documents this point - and many others.
(7) Burgeoning private firms prosper that provide services to the troops, security to embassies and officials, experienced former soldiers for special operations, and intelligence to the military. Jeremy Scahill's book, Blackwater, provides a well documented analysis of a growing, and very profitable"mercenary army."
(8) Millions of citizens who pride themselves on being patriotic have adopted the idea that military force is the only way to protect America and its interests here and abroad. Here is a sad commentary on the US culture from David Swanson’s new book, War Is a Lie.
“We are more saturated with militarism than ever before. The military and its support industries eat up an increasingly larger share of the economy, providing jobs intentionally spread across all congressional districts. Military recruiters and recruitment advertising are ubiquitous. Sporting events on television welcome ‘members of the United States armed forces viewing in 177 nations around the world’ and nobody blinks. When wars begin, the government does whatever it has to do to persuade enough of the public to support the wars. Once the public turns against wars, the government just as effectively resists pressure to bring them to a swift end. Some years into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a majority of Americans told pollsters it had been a mistake to begin either of those wars. But easily manipulated majorities had supported those mistakes when they were made” (p. 10).
(9) The terror-complex. A widely held view in the United States is that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were necessary to forestall and ultimately defeat international Islamic terrorism. These misbegotten goals generate fear and submissiveness in the population but also opportunities for the creation and expansion of yet more profitable and career-enhancing opportunities. Chris Hedges provides a glimpse of this in her article, “The Terror-Industrial Complex,” truthdig.com, February 8, 2010.
“It is difficult to get a fair trial in this country if the government wants to accuse you of terrorism,” said Foster. “It is difficult to get a fair trial on any types of charges. The government is allowed to tell the jury you are a terrorist before you have to put on any evidence. The fear factor that has emerged since 9/11 has permeated into the U.S. court system in a profoundly disturbing way. It embraces the idea that we can compromise core principles, for example the presumption of innocence, based on perceived threats that may or may not come to light. We, as a society, have chosen to cave on fear.”
“I spent more than a year covering al-Qaida for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East. The threat posed by Islamic extremists, while real, is also wildly overblown, used to foster a climate of fear and political passivity, as well as pump billions of dollars into the hands of the military, private contractors, intelligence agencies and repressive client governments including that of Pakistan. The leader of one FBI counterterrorism squad told The New York Times that of the 5,500 terrorism-related leads its 21 agents had pursued over the past five years, just 5 percent were credible and not one had foiled an actual terrorist plot. These statistics strike me as emblematic of the entire war on terror.
“Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power. All this will not make us safer. It will not protect us from terrorist strikes. The more we dispatch brutal forms of power to the Islamic world the more enraged Muslims and terrorists we propel into the ranks of those who oppose us.
(10) The media are by and large an echo chamber of the official war narratives – Check out these two books, for example: Anthony Dimaggio, When Media Goes to War, and Norman Solomon’s War Made Easy.
Additionally, in his book War is a Lie, David Swanson comments on the role of the media: “The approach of the US corporate media to war coverage is to feature lots of ‘experts’ on war. By ‘experts’ they clearly mean high-ranking military officials, current or retired. But if the question is whether or not to go to war, or whether or not to continue war, or whether or not to escalate war, then why aren’t experts at peace making as relevant as experts at war making? In fact, why aren’t they more relevant, given our supposed preference for peace, its legality, and the ongoing pretense of civilian control over our military? The military can offer expertise on how to start and fight a way, but should it be considered to have any authority on whether to start a war?” (p. 252).
(11) Think tanks (some) provide rationales for war. Derek Leebaert provides the following examples in his book Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy.
“Think tankers who double as advisers to the military – including Frederick Kagan and his spouse, Kimberly Kagan, who runs a new organization, ‘the Institute for the Study of War’ – wrote an op-ed…stating, ‘There is no doubt that we can succeed against the much weaker foes,’ comparing the Afghan insurgents dismissively to those in Iraq. Brookings expert Michael O’Hanlon and participated from the CSIS, Brookings, and the AEI to urge ‘significant escalation’ as they unanimously insisted ‘there is no alternative to victory’” (p. 243).
My reaction:
Despite the forces for a strong military and an empire built on a thousand or so military bases in countries across the planet, the voices and groups in favor of a non-militarized society and a peace-oriented and just national agenda continue.
In this regard, by the way, Wikileaks is a channel of information about the machinations and bumblings of the US government and military that enhance the information available to these dissidents and activites. Wikileaks is fundamentally opposed to the Security State.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Voices from Afghanistan demanding an immediate withdrawal of US troops
After my two paragraphs, I reproduce a very moving and powerful letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace It does not mince words. With illuminating clarity, the letter calls for a withdrawal of US and allied troops immediately. The costs of the occupation are just too great. The letter offers a profound antithesis to President Obama's upbeat message to America on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010, in which the President insists that the occupation in Afghanistan is succeeding and that the US will remain in Afghanistan until at least 2014 and perhaps "beyond."
The President did not allude to polls of Afghan opinions or, for that matter, to recent polls of American opinion. Nor did he refer to the ongoing devastation of the country by an escalated US airwar, US special forces, undisciplined Afghan police and soldiers, Afghan warlords, or to the mounting civilian casualties and displaced persons among the Afghan people, or to the increasing casualties among US troops. President Obama insisted that our core goal is to wipe out al Qaeda, and to do this safe havens for al Qaeda in Pakistan must be eliminated, one way or another. In the meantime, US generals are suggesting yet more US troops are necessary to reign in the Taliban, a category implicitly covering diverse Afghan insurgent groups, to overcome widespread corruption, as well as to stamping out al Qaeda once and for all, which is a pipe dream given the decentralized nature of the group and how, according to many experts, most of the violence in Afghanistan is waged by local, not international, groups.
We Want You Out: An Open Letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace
Friday 17 December 2010
by: Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, t r u t h o u t Op-Ed
Voices for Creative Nonviolence representatives in Kabul are privileged to be meeting with representatives of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan, Afghanistan who campaign to promote nonviolence. As the Obama administration releases its December review of the US war in Afghanistan, the AYPV, along with Afghans for Peace, have issued a review of their experiences. To express support for their letter, follow this link.
To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the "Taliban/Al-Qaeda" and regional countries:
We are intolerably angry.
All our senses are hurting.
Our women, our men and, yes, shame on you, our children, are grieving.
Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.
President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?
America's $250 million annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anemic mother.
We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.
Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly unequal. They do not listen, do not think, and, worst, they do not care.
We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.
We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.
We are not beasts.
We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.
Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, laborers, teachers, doctors … people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide.
This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you.
Come arrest us all.
Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.
We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.
We refuse you.
Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.
Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for nonviolence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.
We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans, and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another's pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us! Email youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com to arrange a call.
We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of nonviolent resistance.
How can we do any less?
14-year-old Abdulai's father was killed by the "Taliban" and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.
But he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that "something is very wrong with the world I'm caught up in"; "these elders of the world are not getting it."
How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?
How does it make anyone safer?
How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?
Your policies, skewed-ly "diagnosed" and "reviewed" in a cold, clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people; thus we endeavor to have a People's Afghanistan December Review, because that's what ordinary people can do.
We would try not to "throw" our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner's tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.
We want peace.
We want you out.
With singular sincerity,
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Afghans for Peace
Quote from Malalia Joya: My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government - world public opinion. -Malalai Joya
Excerpts from Wikipedia's entry on "International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan":
International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
The 25-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009 reported that majorities or pluralities in 18 out of 25 countries want U.S. and NATO to remove their military troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Despite American calls for NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was majority or plurality opposition to such action in every one of the NATO countries surveyed: Germany (63% opposition), France (62%), Poland (57%), Canada (55%), Britain (51%), Spain (50%), and Turkey (49%).
In Europe, poll after poll in France, Germany and even Britain show that the European public want their troops to be pulled out and less money spent on the war in Afghanistan
ABC News/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll of 1,691 Afghan adults from October 29-November 13, 2010
Afghans indicated they were more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident about US-led coalition troops providing security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than a year ago. More than half of Afghans interviewed said US and NATO forces should begin withdrawing from the country in mid-2011 or sooner.
Malalai Joya:
There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.
If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice. - Malalai Joya
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan
The President did not allude to polls of Afghan opinions or, for that matter, to recent polls of American opinion. Nor did he refer to the ongoing devastation of the country by an escalated US airwar, US special forces, undisciplined Afghan police and soldiers, Afghan warlords, or to the mounting civilian casualties and displaced persons among the Afghan people, or to the increasing casualties among US troops. President Obama insisted that our core goal is to wipe out al Qaeda, and to do this safe havens for al Qaeda in Pakistan must be eliminated, one way or another. In the meantime, US generals are suggesting yet more US troops are necessary to reign in the Taliban, a category implicitly covering diverse Afghan insurgent groups, to overcome widespread corruption, as well as to stamping out al Qaeda once and for all, which is a pipe dream given the decentralized nature of the group and how, according to many experts, most of the violence in Afghanistan is waged by local, not international, groups.
We Want You Out: An Open Letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace
Friday 17 December 2010
by: Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, t r u t h o u t Op-Ed
Voices for Creative Nonviolence representatives in Kabul are privileged to be meeting with representatives of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan, Afghanistan who campaign to promote nonviolence. As the Obama administration releases its December review of the US war in Afghanistan, the AYPV, along with Afghans for Peace, have issued a review of their experiences. To express support for their letter, follow this link.
To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the "Taliban/Al-Qaeda" and regional countries:
We are intolerably angry.
All our senses are hurting.
Our women, our men and, yes, shame on you, our children, are grieving.
Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.
President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?
America's $250 million annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anemic mother.
We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.
Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly unequal. They do not listen, do not think, and, worst, they do not care.
We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.
We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.
We are not beasts.
We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.
Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, laborers, teachers, doctors … people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide.
This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you.
Come arrest us all.
Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.
We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.
We refuse you.
Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.
Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for nonviolence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.
We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans, and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another's pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us! Email youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com to arrange a call.
We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of nonviolent resistance.
How can we do any less?
14-year-old Abdulai's father was killed by the "Taliban" and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.
But he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that "something is very wrong with the world I'm caught up in"; "these elders of the world are not getting it."
How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?
How does it make anyone safer?
How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?
Your policies, skewed-ly "diagnosed" and "reviewed" in a cold, clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people; thus we endeavor to have a People's Afghanistan December Review, because that's what ordinary people can do.
We would try not to "throw" our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner's tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.
We want peace.
We want you out.
With singular sincerity,
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Afghans for Peace
Quote from Malalia Joya: My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government - world public opinion. -Malalai Joya
Excerpts from Wikipedia's entry on "International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan":
International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
The 25-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009 reported that majorities or pluralities in 18 out of 25 countries want U.S. and NATO to remove their military troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Despite American calls for NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was majority or plurality opposition to such action in every one of the NATO countries surveyed: Germany (63% opposition), France (62%), Poland (57%), Canada (55%), Britain (51%), Spain (50%), and Turkey (49%).
In Europe, poll after poll in France, Germany and even Britain show that the European public want their troops to be pulled out and less money spent on the war in Afghanistan
ABC News/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll of 1,691 Afghan adults from October 29-November 13, 2010
Afghans indicated they were more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident about US-led coalition troops providing security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than a year ago. More than half of Afghans interviewed said US and NATO forces should begin withdrawing from the country in mid-2011 or sooner.
Malalai Joya:
There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.
If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice. - Malalai Joya
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Two levels in understanding US Afghanistan War
Two levels for understanding US Afghanistan War
Post for stopafghanwar
There are two levels for understanding the US-led and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan.
One level deals with news and analysis about current developments and debates about US troop casualties, whether troop levels are sufficient, whether US forces are making military progress (or is there light at the end of the tunnel), whether the Afghan elections are honest (or just how dishonest), whether the Karzai government is totally corrupt or only partially so, whether the special forces and unmanned drones and other destructive tactics are counterproductive with the goals of counterinsurgency, whether and to what extent the “Taliban” is gaining the support of the Afghan people, whether or how much private contractors are exploiting US taxpayer funds, whether the US military is forced to pay lucrative bribes to Taliban forces and certain tribal groups just to allow military supplies to get to their destinations, how long the US-led occupation will last, whether there will be a need for additional “surges,” and so forth, like, what’s with the training efforts of Afghan police and army and what is Pakistan up to. US think tanks and policy advisers are constantly offering ideas on how to deal with one or more of these problems.
Here is an example of analysis at this level. Juan Cole, the expert commentator on the Afghanistan situation – and much more – provides the following post on Dec 3, 2010, from his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. The title: “The Karzai Problem in Afghanistan: Wikileaks”
“The bodies of the six US troops — killed Monday by a newly recruited Afghan border guard who turned Taliban — arrived back in the United States late Wednesday. That 6 US soldiers were killed in one day was generally not news on the so-called news networks, though of course the major print media reported it.
“The troubling question is what they died fighting for. My own hypothesis is that the US is still in Afghanistan at this late date mainly to shore up the central government of President Hamid Karzai.
“But Karzai is himself extremely problematic. According to cables released by Wikileaks, and summarized by the Guardian, Karzai is prone to paranoid conspiracy theories, believes that the US is animated by sinister motives such as breaking up Pakistan and undermining Afghanistan, and is erratic and corrupt. He blithely just released 5 notorious drug runners captured by the US and turned over to him. He accused the US of funding the presidential campaign of his rival, Abdallah Abdallah, in the fall of 2009.
“Gen. David Petraeus is quoted as admitting that Karzai is “weak” but saying it is better to leave him there.
“But the problem with Karzai is not that he is weak. Rather it is that he is corrupt and believes in conspiracy theories, and the combination of the two causes him to act high-handedly and improperly.
“And here is the moral question: Is it right to ask US warriors to fight and die to prop up the administration of Hamid Karzai?
“And, how likely is it that Afghanistan National Army officers and troops are going to risk their lives for someone who is paranoid, erratic and corrupt?
“In short, the whole strategy of the US, of rapidly training Afghan security forces who could establish order in the country, assumes that the Afghanistan National Army and the police will be loyal to Karzai. But how likely is that?
“PS Wikileaks was down Thursday evening but went live with a new dns early Friday morning. The 600 or so State Department cables so far releasedcan be searched here.”
There is nothing wrong with this first level of analysis. As in Cole’s many posts, they are absolutely necessary to help us keep abreast of events in this war-torn and devastated country. Another level of analysis, which Cole well understands and writes about in some other posts, articles, and a book, deals with more fundamental strategic and political-economic forces. David Williams and Phyllis Bennis provide an example of this perspective in their book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, which is an outstanding reference book for learning about a host of important questions and answers on Afghanistan. They write as follows.
“While Afghanistan has only relatively small reserves of strategic resources, it is located smack in the middle of the oil- and gas-rich Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin region. Land-locked Afghanistan has a millennial history as part of the trade and cultural exchange of the Silk Road, and in the modern world remains a strategic transit point for its resource-rich neighbors to get oil and gas to far-off markets. The US relationship with Afghanistan both pre- and post-9/11…has been grounded in the potential for these oil and natural gas pipelines.
“Afghanistan’s neighbors are also almost all of strategic interest to the US. US tensions with Pakistan and Iran dominate the southern east-to-west arc of Afghanistan’s frontier. Dependence on airbases, access to natural gas and oil, and especially competition – resource-driven and otherwise – with an ascendant Russia…shape US relations with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan on Afghanistan’s northern borders” (pp. 44-47).
Additionally, one should bear in mind that both Pakistan and India have major interests in how Afghanistan is governed, there are great tensions between them (e.g., Kashmir), and they both have nuclear weapons, along with the capacity to deliver them on each other’s territory. Also recall that the US has played a significant role in the development of their nuclear capacities. The reasons go on. US leaders also want to do everything they can to persuade India not to develop relations with China that may further undermine US hegemonic aspirations in Asia. It’s all bewildering, but real.
So what’s the point of all this. We shouldn’t get entirely lost in the rapid-fire and changing events that are covered by the media and delivered in policy-statements by the White House. And we should never forget that all wars are based on lies, the manipulation of public opinion, destruction and huge numbers of civilian deaths and casualties in the affected countries, our own troop casualities, the waste of US resources, the weakening of diplomatic and other peace-oriented approaches to conflict, the strengthening of conservative and reactionary forces in the US itself, justifications for yet more military spending and a distortion of budget priorities, etc. It all adds up to a no-win, no-win, even worst, unfolding and tragic process.
For a provocative and useful defense of the claim that “War is a Lie,” read the book by that title, authored by David Swanson.
Post for stopafghanwar
There are two levels for understanding the US-led and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan.
One level deals with news and analysis about current developments and debates about US troop casualties, whether troop levels are sufficient, whether US forces are making military progress (or is there light at the end of the tunnel), whether the Afghan elections are honest (or just how dishonest), whether the Karzai government is totally corrupt or only partially so, whether the special forces and unmanned drones and other destructive tactics are counterproductive with the goals of counterinsurgency, whether and to what extent the “Taliban” is gaining the support of the Afghan people, whether or how much private contractors are exploiting US taxpayer funds, whether the US military is forced to pay lucrative bribes to Taliban forces and certain tribal groups just to allow military supplies to get to their destinations, how long the US-led occupation will last, whether there will be a need for additional “surges,” and so forth, like, what’s with the training efforts of Afghan police and army and what is Pakistan up to. US think tanks and policy advisers are constantly offering ideas on how to deal with one or more of these problems.
Here is an example of analysis at this level. Juan Cole, the expert commentator on the Afghanistan situation – and much more – provides the following post on Dec 3, 2010, from his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. The title: “The Karzai Problem in Afghanistan: Wikileaks”
“The bodies of the six US troops — killed Monday by a newly recruited Afghan border guard who turned Taliban — arrived back in the United States late Wednesday. That 6 US soldiers were killed in one day was generally not news on the so-called news networks, though of course the major print media reported it.
“The troubling question is what they died fighting for. My own hypothesis is that the US is still in Afghanistan at this late date mainly to shore up the central government of President Hamid Karzai.
“But Karzai is himself extremely problematic. According to cables released by Wikileaks, and summarized by the Guardian, Karzai is prone to paranoid conspiracy theories, believes that the US is animated by sinister motives such as breaking up Pakistan and undermining Afghanistan, and is erratic and corrupt. He blithely just released 5 notorious drug runners captured by the US and turned over to him. He accused the US of funding the presidential campaign of his rival, Abdallah Abdallah, in the fall of 2009.
“Gen. David Petraeus is quoted as admitting that Karzai is “weak” but saying it is better to leave him there.
“But the problem with Karzai is not that he is weak. Rather it is that he is corrupt and believes in conspiracy theories, and the combination of the two causes him to act high-handedly and improperly.
“And here is the moral question: Is it right to ask US warriors to fight and die to prop up the administration of Hamid Karzai?
“And, how likely is it that Afghanistan National Army officers and troops are going to risk their lives for someone who is paranoid, erratic and corrupt?
“In short, the whole strategy of the US, of rapidly training Afghan security forces who could establish order in the country, assumes that the Afghanistan National Army and the police will be loyal to Karzai. But how likely is that?
“PS Wikileaks was down Thursday evening but went live with a new dns early Friday morning. The 600 or so State Department cables so far releasedcan be searched here.”
There is nothing wrong with this first level of analysis. As in Cole’s many posts, they are absolutely necessary to help us keep abreast of events in this war-torn and devastated country. Another level of analysis, which Cole well understands and writes about in some other posts, articles, and a book, deals with more fundamental strategic and political-economic forces. David Williams and Phyllis Bennis provide an example of this perspective in their book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, which is an outstanding reference book for learning about a host of important questions and answers on Afghanistan. They write as follows.
“While Afghanistan has only relatively small reserves of strategic resources, it is located smack in the middle of the oil- and gas-rich Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin region. Land-locked Afghanistan has a millennial history as part of the trade and cultural exchange of the Silk Road, and in the modern world remains a strategic transit point for its resource-rich neighbors to get oil and gas to far-off markets. The US relationship with Afghanistan both pre- and post-9/11…has been grounded in the potential for these oil and natural gas pipelines.
“Afghanistan’s neighbors are also almost all of strategic interest to the US. US tensions with Pakistan and Iran dominate the southern east-to-west arc of Afghanistan’s frontier. Dependence on airbases, access to natural gas and oil, and especially competition – resource-driven and otherwise – with an ascendant Russia…shape US relations with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan on Afghanistan’s northern borders” (pp. 44-47).
Additionally, one should bear in mind that both Pakistan and India have major interests in how Afghanistan is governed, there are great tensions between them (e.g., Kashmir), and they both have nuclear weapons, along with the capacity to deliver them on each other’s territory. Also recall that the US has played a significant role in the development of their nuclear capacities. The reasons go on. US leaders also want to do everything they can to persuade India not to develop relations with China that may further undermine US hegemonic aspirations in Asia. It’s all bewildering, but real.
So what’s the point of all this. We shouldn’t get entirely lost in the rapid-fire and changing events that are covered by the media and delivered in policy-statements by the White House. And we should never forget that all wars are based on lies, the manipulation of public opinion, destruction and huge numbers of civilian deaths and casualties in the affected countries, our own troop casualities, the waste of US resources, the weakening of diplomatic and other peace-oriented approaches to conflict, the strengthening of conservative and reactionary forces in the US itself, justifications for yet more military spending and a distortion of budget priorities, etc. It all adds up to a no-win, no-win, even worst, unfolding and tragic process.
For a provocative and useful defense of the claim that “War is a Lie,” read the book by that title, authored by David Swanson.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Americans are anxious about war in Afghanistan, but willing to see it extended
A recent poll by USAToday/GallupPoll on American attitudes on the Afghanistan war finds increasing skepticism and anxiety among the majority of respondents. Some of the main results of the poll are presented in graphic form in USA Today, December 1, 2010. The full source is: Julie Snider, "Americans view Afghanistan war with skepticism, anxiety," USA Today.
There are three findings from the poll that strike me as important, though disheartening. On the positive side for those of us who would like to see the war ended soon (say, by the end of 2011), the poll does find that:
(1) fifty-four percent of those interviewed agree that the war is going "moderately badly" (38%) or "very badly" (16%.);
(2) sixty-eight percent are concerned about the costs of the war, including those who responded "very worried" (31%) and those who responded "somewhat worried" (38%).
At first glimpse, these findings suggest that the majority of American people are ready to support a relatively expeditious withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Think again.
At the same time, on the negative side from my perspective as an opponent of the war and occupation, sixty percent agree that the war should be extended beyond 2011, with 20 percent agreeing with "Obama's 2014 time table," and forty percent agreeing that the troops should remain "until the job is done."
So, more people worry that the war in Afghanistan is not going so well, and worry about the costs of the war, but still go along with the idea that the war and occupation should be extended until the end of 2014, when a withdrawal of troops would begin, or believe that it should go on until military leaders and defense officials tell them that we have achieved some yet not clearly defined goal or goals.
What this means is that the war/occupation, already in its tenth year, could continue for even another 5-10 years. Ask yourself who benefits. One big winner is that the US military-industrial complex keeps Afghanistan as a major justification for enormous "defense" budgets, contracts, and, yes, jobs. Another winner are those who believe that the US should have a huge military to maintain some sort of US hegemony, hundreds of military bases worldwide, and military interventions in countries that are not friendly to US interests, as defined by certain elites. Who loses? Those who want and need opportunities at home for jobs, health care, pension benefits, a decent safety net, and those who are ready to jump start and advance a truly green economy.
Stop the Afghanistan War stumbles on and the American people, more or less, go along, even when it is not in their interests to do so.
There are three findings from the poll that strike me as important, though disheartening. On the positive side for those of us who would like to see the war ended soon (say, by the end of 2011), the poll does find that:
(1) fifty-four percent of those interviewed agree that the war is going "moderately badly" (38%) or "very badly" (16%.);
(2) sixty-eight percent are concerned about the costs of the war, including those who responded "very worried" (31%) and those who responded "somewhat worried" (38%).
At first glimpse, these findings suggest that the majority of American people are ready to support a relatively expeditious withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Think again.
At the same time, on the negative side from my perspective as an opponent of the war and occupation, sixty percent agree that the war should be extended beyond 2011, with 20 percent agreeing with "Obama's 2014 time table," and forty percent agreeing that the troops should remain "until the job is done."
So, more people worry that the war in Afghanistan is not going so well, and worry about the costs of the war, but still go along with the idea that the war and occupation should be extended until the end of 2014, when a withdrawal of troops would begin, or believe that it should go on until military leaders and defense officials tell them that we have achieved some yet not clearly defined goal or goals.
What this means is that the war/occupation, already in its tenth year, could continue for even another 5-10 years. Ask yourself who benefits. One big winner is that the US military-industrial complex keeps Afghanistan as a major justification for enormous "defense" budgets, contracts, and, yes, jobs. Another winner are those who believe that the US should have a huge military to maintain some sort of US hegemony, hundreds of military bases worldwide, and military interventions in countries that are not friendly to US interests, as defined by certain elites. Who loses? Those who want and need opportunities at home for jobs, health care, pension benefits, a decent safety net, and those who are ready to jump start and advance a truly green economy.
Stop the Afghanistan War stumbles on and the American people, more or less, go along, even when it is not in their interests to do so.
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