In the following article, Joshua Holland responds to Andrew Exum's recent op-ed in the New York Times. Exum sees little new information in the 92,000 or so "military field reports lead by the whistle-blower site Wikileaks." He is dismissive of their impact on US Afghanistan policy or on pubic opinion. Holland writes that the information in the documents may not be new to people who study or have followed closely the occupation and war in Afghanistan.
But it is new (news) for most Americans and the documents help to confirm that the war has been ineffectually waged, civilian and military casualties have continued to be high, and the ISI in Pakistan have been undercutting US war efforts in Afghanistan, etc. Additionally, the documents may have the effect of increasing the number in US Congress who are willing to speak up against additional funding for the Afghanistan occupation/war, and perhaps even vote against the funding.
As the Wikileak documents get media attention, they plant seeds of opposition and reinforce opposition among a war-weary and economically strapped US citizenry.
Why Wikileak's Doc-Dump Is Such a Big Deal (Even if There’s Nothing New Within)
Posted by Joshua Holland on @ 9:19 am
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/27/why-wikileaks-doc-dump-is-such-a-big-deal-even-if-theres-nothing-new-within/
There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know.
That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this:
ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.
That paragraph was from an op-ed piece by Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) — a pro-Afghanistan war think-tank — in The New York Times. Exum’s message seems to be, ‘move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.’ Understandable — CNAS, according to a WaPo report last year, “may emerge as Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs” in the Obama era. CNAS staff have “filled key posts in the new administration (such as former CNAS president Michele Flournoy, who is now undersecretary of defense for policy), and its top people include John Nagl, who helped draft the Army’s counterinsurgency manual, and David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus.”
And his suspicion that everyone already knows this stuff is bullshit. In 1997, the government conducted a huge survey on American adults’ civic participation. Almost a third of the public couldn’t say what “job or political office” Al Gore held — after he had spent five years serving as vice-president. Around a third didn’t know which party held the majority in Congress at the time. Perhaps most shockingly, at least to political buffs like myself, was that 49 percent of Americans surveyed didn’t know “which party is more conservative at the national level.” That’s domestic politics — a subject that Americans tend to have a better grasp on than foreign affairs. Two years after the attacks of 9/11, 70 percent of the public believed in a conspiracy theory which held that Saddam Hussein had had a connection to the attacks.
I haven’t gone through those 92,000 field reports myself. And I have no problem buying that there’s nothing in the pile that would surprise anyone who not only reads the entirety of their hometown paper’s foreign coverage but also reads those stories all the way through to the 17th paragraph, where the real news — the ugly news of American war-making — tends to be buried. What is that — one percent of the population? I’d guess that’s overstating it.
So, this document dump pushes what a few war-nerds may have grasped from a thousand stories on page B-6 onto the front page, revealing not a series of “unfortunate incidents” but a pattern of disregard for civilian casualties that disproves a central tenet of our COIN strategy — that war can be fought in a kinder, gentler, more progressive way thus helping win the hearts and minds of the local population.
Here’s a report from the Times’ news section that completely contradicts Exum’s ‘ho-hum’ narrative:
The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
Exum isn’t alone arguing that ‘there’s no there there,’ but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. Recent history certainly suggests it won’t:
The [Pentagon] papers revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corpsattacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US. The revelations widened the credibility gap between the US government and the people, allegedly hurting President Richard Nixon’s war effort.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.
Showing posts with label US congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US congress. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Six more facts for why Congress should vote against supplemental funding for Afghan occupation
David Swanson, the author of the following article, is a cofounder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ProsecuteBushCheney.org, Washington director of Democrats.com, and a board member of Progressive Democrats of America. Last year (2009), he published Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. Thom Hartmann said of the book, "Daybreak offers a powerful and compelling picture of what real change in America could look like. The world needs more true advocates of democracy like David Swanson."
Here David Swanson offers six facts for why the minority of Americans who support the Afghan war should reconsider their support and why the majority who oppose it should strengthen their opposition. The costs of the war are exorbitant, often wasteful, counterproductive (e.g., strengthening the Taliban and other insurgent groups), adding to the US debt, and heart-breaking for the relatives and friends of American soldiers who give their lives.
Swanson writes that now is the time to contact our congressional representatives in Washington, D.C., telling them to oppose the supplemental war funding now being considered by them. The numbers in brackets in the article refer to "links" at the end of the article.
Six Facts No War Supporter Knows
By David Swanson
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54175
Created 2010-07-24
This coming week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on $33 billion for war. A majority of Americans opposes this, but a sizable minority of Americans supports it. No one who supports it can be aware of any of the following six facts.
1. For many months, probably years, at least the second largest and probably the largest source of revenue for the Taliban has been U.S. taxpayers. We are giving the Taliban our money instead of investing it in useful things at home or abroad. "WARLORD, INC.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan [1]," is a report from the Majority Staff of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives. The report documents [2] payoffs to the Taliban for safe passage of U.S. goods, payoffs very likely greater [2] than the Taliban's profits from opium, its other big money maker. And this is neither new nor unknown [3] to top U.S. officials. But it must be unknown to Americans supporting the war. You can't support a war where you're funding both sides unless you want both sides to lose. We lock people away [2] for giving a pair of socks to the enemy, while our own government serves as chief financial sponsor.
2. Our top consumer of oil is the U.S. military. We don't just fight wars in areas of the globe that are coincidentally rich in oil, but fighting those wars is the single biggest way [4] in which we burn oil. We pollute the air in the process of poisoning the earth with all variety of weaponry. According to the 2007 CIA World Fact Book, when oil consumption is broken down per capita, the U.S. military ranks fourth in the world, behind just three actual nations. There's no way to care about the environment while allowing the money that could create renewable energy to be spent instead on an operation whose destructiveness is rivaled only by BP. We could have 20 green energy jobs at $50 K each for what it costs to send one soldier to Afghanistan. We're fighting wars for the fuel to fight wars, even though the process is eating up the funds we could use to try to survive its side-effects.
3. Over half of every U.S. tax dollar is spent on wars, the military, and payments on debt for past wars and military spending. Here's a pie chart [5] that breaks it down for you. If you're concerned about government spending, you can't just be concerned with the minority of it that is carefully funded with taxes and off-setting cuts elsewhere. You have to also consider the single biggest item, the one that takes up a majority of the budget, large chunks of which are routinely funded off the books, borrowed from China, and passed with so-called "emergency supplemental" bills of the sort now before the House of Representatives, the sole purpose of which is to keep the money outside the budget. Numerous economic studies [6] have shown that investing in the military, even at home, does less for the economy than tax cuts, which do less for the economy than investing in education, energy, infrastructure, and other areas. Its wars or jobs, we can't have both. The labor movement has mostly (with some good exceptions) been silent on war spending, in part because jobs spending has been packaged into the same bill. Now it's not. Now the House is confronted with a bill that spends on war the money that is needed for jobs, for housing, for schools, for green energy, for retirement. Will advocates of these raise their voices this week?
4. A leading, and probably the leading, cause of death in the U.S. military is suicide. U.S. troops are killing themselves in record numbers [7]. One central reason for this is likely that these troops have no idea what it is they are risking their lives, and taking others' lives, for. Can we expect them to know, when top officials in Washington don't? When the President's special representative to Afghanistan testified in the Senate recently, senators from both parties asked him repeatedly what the goal was, what success would look like, for what purpose the war went on. Richard Holbrooke had no answers. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told the Los Angeles Times: "A lot of folks on both sides of the aisle think this effort is adrift. A lot of folks you'd consider the strongest hawks in the country are scratching their heads in concern." Corker complained that after listening for 90 minutes to Holbrooke he had "no earthly idea what our objectives are on the civilian front. So far, this has been an incredible waste of time."
5. The $33 billion about to be voted on cannot possibly be needed to continue the war in Afghanistan, because it is exclusively to be used for escalating that war. The President was publicly pressured by his generals several months ago to begin an escalation, but Congress has yet to fund it. To the extent that it has been begun unfunded, it can be undone. CNN reports: "Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned senators in June that military operations will need to be reduced for the rest of the year unless Congress approves additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." This is nonsense. If this escalation funding were blocked, the war would remain at the level it was at before. And that's if the Pentagon respects the authority of the Congress. The other alternative, openly indicated by Gates, is that the Pentagon will fund the escalation out of its standard budget. Congressman Alan Grayson has a bill called "The War Is Making You Poor Act" which would require that wars be funded out of the military budget, which would eliminate federal taxes on the first $35,000 anyone earned and reduce the national debt. How horrible would that be?
6. War would be the greatest evil on earth even if it were free. Watch this new video [8] of a man whose father was shot and killed while sleeping in bed. More of our tax dollars at work. How many of these stories of what our military does can we write off? Our drones kill both civilians and "insurgents," as do our night raids and check points. Or, maybe not the check points. General Stanley McChrystal said that of the amazing number of people we've killed at check points, none of them have been any threat. And the damage lasts in the places we destroy. Look at this new report [9] on the damage done to the children of Fallujah. This is not because U.S. soldiers aren't brave or their parents didn't raise them well. It's because these wars don't involve pairs of armies on battlefields. We're occupying countries where the enemies look like everyone except us.
Well, maybe our representatives know all of this and still fund wars because people who fund them tell them to. But what can we do about it? We vote whenever there's an election, or at least some of us do. Isn't that our role? What does this have to do with elections? It should have everything to do with them. When we call our congress members this week we should not just ask them to vote No on war money, we should demand it, and we should let them know that we will work to unelect them, even replacing them with someone worse (since you can't get much worse), if they vote for this money. And we should spend August rewarding and punishing accordingly. Here are 88 candidates for Congress this year [10] who have committed to not voting a dime for these wars. They are from every party and political inclination. They should be supported.
If this war funding can be blocked for another week it will be blocked until mid-September and perhaps for good. If we can get closer to doing that than we have before, we will have something to build on. Just holding a straightforward vote in which war opponents vote No and war supporters vote Yes, no matter how close or far we are from winning, will identify who needs to keep their job and who doesn't. If most of the Yes votes are Republican, we will be able to confront the President with the opposition of his own party. We're moving toward peace.
Get resources from http://defundwar.org [11]
FCNL has a toll-free number to call your representative: 1-888-493-5443. Use it.
Source URL: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54175
Links:
[1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2010_rpt/warlord-inc_100622.htm
[2] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/53988
[3] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54151
[4] http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-transport/planet-biggest-gas-guzzler.html
[5] http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
[6] http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Publications/NPP_Security_Spending_Primer.pdf
[7] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54004
[8] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54118
[9] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54173
[10] http://caws.us
[11] http://defundwar.org
Here David Swanson offers six facts for why the minority of Americans who support the Afghan war should reconsider their support and why the majority who oppose it should strengthen their opposition. The costs of the war are exorbitant, often wasteful, counterproductive (e.g., strengthening the Taliban and other insurgent groups), adding to the US debt, and heart-breaking for the relatives and friends of American soldiers who give their lives.
Swanson writes that now is the time to contact our congressional representatives in Washington, D.C., telling them to oppose the supplemental war funding now being considered by them. The numbers in brackets in the article refer to "links" at the end of the article.
Six Facts No War Supporter Knows
By David Swanson
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54175
Created 2010-07-24
This coming week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on $33 billion for war. A majority of Americans opposes this, but a sizable minority of Americans supports it. No one who supports it can be aware of any of the following six facts.
1. For many months, probably years, at least the second largest and probably the largest source of revenue for the Taliban has been U.S. taxpayers. We are giving the Taliban our money instead of investing it in useful things at home or abroad. "WARLORD, INC.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan [1]," is a report from the Majority Staff of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives. The report documents [2] payoffs to the Taliban for safe passage of U.S. goods, payoffs very likely greater [2] than the Taliban's profits from opium, its other big money maker. And this is neither new nor unknown [3] to top U.S. officials. But it must be unknown to Americans supporting the war. You can't support a war where you're funding both sides unless you want both sides to lose. We lock people away [2] for giving a pair of socks to the enemy, while our own government serves as chief financial sponsor.
2. Our top consumer of oil is the U.S. military. We don't just fight wars in areas of the globe that are coincidentally rich in oil, but fighting those wars is the single biggest way [4] in which we burn oil. We pollute the air in the process of poisoning the earth with all variety of weaponry. According to the 2007 CIA World Fact Book, when oil consumption is broken down per capita, the U.S. military ranks fourth in the world, behind just three actual nations. There's no way to care about the environment while allowing the money that could create renewable energy to be spent instead on an operation whose destructiveness is rivaled only by BP. We could have 20 green energy jobs at $50 K each for what it costs to send one soldier to Afghanistan. We're fighting wars for the fuel to fight wars, even though the process is eating up the funds we could use to try to survive its side-effects.
3. Over half of every U.S. tax dollar is spent on wars, the military, and payments on debt for past wars and military spending. Here's a pie chart [5] that breaks it down for you. If you're concerned about government spending, you can't just be concerned with the minority of it that is carefully funded with taxes and off-setting cuts elsewhere. You have to also consider the single biggest item, the one that takes up a majority of the budget, large chunks of which are routinely funded off the books, borrowed from China, and passed with so-called "emergency supplemental" bills of the sort now before the House of Representatives, the sole purpose of which is to keep the money outside the budget. Numerous economic studies [6] have shown that investing in the military, even at home, does less for the economy than tax cuts, which do less for the economy than investing in education, energy, infrastructure, and other areas. Its wars or jobs, we can't have both. The labor movement has mostly (with some good exceptions) been silent on war spending, in part because jobs spending has been packaged into the same bill. Now it's not. Now the House is confronted with a bill that spends on war the money that is needed for jobs, for housing, for schools, for green energy, for retirement. Will advocates of these raise their voices this week?
4. A leading, and probably the leading, cause of death in the U.S. military is suicide. U.S. troops are killing themselves in record numbers [7]. One central reason for this is likely that these troops have no idea what it is they are risking their lives, and taking others' lives, for. Can we expect them to know, when top officials in Washington don't? When the President's special representative to Afghanistan testified in the Senate recently, senators from both parties asked him repeatedly what the goal was, what success would look like, for what purpose the war went on. Richard Holbrooke had no answers. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told the Los Angeles Times: "A lot of folks on both sides of the aisle think this effort is adrift. A lot of folks you'd consider the strongest hawks in the country are scratching their heads in concern." Corker complained that after listening for 90 minutes to Holbrooke he had "no earthly idea what our objectives are on the civilian front. So far, this has been an incredible waste of time."
5. The $33 billion about to be voted on cannot possibly be needed to continue the war in Afghanistan, because it is exclusively to be used for escalating that war. The President was publicly pressured by his generals several months ago to begin an escalation, but Congress has yet to fund it. To the extent that it has been begun unfunded, it can be undone. CNN reports: "Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned senators in June that military operations will need to be reduced for the rest of the year unless Congress approves additional funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." This is nonsense. If this escalation funding were blocked, the war would remain at the level it was at before. And that's if the Pentagon respects the authority of the Congress. The other alternative, openly indicated by Gates, is that the Pentagon will fund the escalation out of its standard budget. Congressman Alan Grayson has a bill called "The War Is Making You Poor Act" which would require that wars be funded out of the military budget, which would eliminate federal taxes on the first $35,000 anyone earned and reduce the national debt. How horrible would that be?
6. War would be the greatest evil on earth even if it were free. Watch this new video [8] of a man whose father was shot and killed while sleeping in bed. More of our tax dollars at work. How many of these stories of what our military does can we write off? Our drones kill both civilians and "insurgents," as do our night raids and check points. Or, maybe not the check points. General Stanley McChrystal said that of the amazing number of people we've killed at check points, none of them have been any threat. And the damage lasts in the places we destroy. Look at this new report [9] on the damage done to the children of Fallujah. This is not because U.S. soldiers aren't brave or their parents didn't raise them well. It's because these wars don't involve pairs of armies on battlefields. We're occupying countries where the enemies look like everyone except us.
Well, maybe our representatives know all of this and still fund wars because people who fund them tell them to. But what can we do about it? We vote whenever there's an election, or at least some of us do. Isn't that our role? What does this have to do with elections? It should have everything to do with them. When we call our congress members this week we should not just ask them to vote No on war money, we should demand it, and we should let them know that we will work to unelect them, even replacing them with someone worse (since you can't get much worse), if they vote for this money. And we should spend August rewarding and punishing accordingly. Here are 88 candidates for Congress this year [10] who have committed to not voting a dime for these wars. They are from every party and political inclination. They should be supported.
If this war funding can be blocked for another week it will be blocked until mid-September and perhaps for good. If we can get closer to doing that than we have before, we will have something to build on. Just holding a straightforward vote in which war opponents vote No and war supporters vote Yes, no matter how close or far we are from winning, will identify who needs to keep their job and who doesn't. If most of the Yes votes are Republican, we will be able to confront the President with the opposition of his own party. We're moving toward peace.
Get resources from http://defundwar.org [11]
FCNL has a toll-free number to call your representative: 1-888-493-5443. Use it.
Source URL: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54175
Links:
[1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2010_rpt/warlord-inc_100622.htm
[2] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/53988
[3] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54151
[4] http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tech-transport/planet-biggest-gas-guzzler.html
[5] http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
[6] http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Publications/NPP_Security_Spending_Primer.pdf
[7] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54004
[8] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54118
[9] http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54173
[10] http://caws.us
[11] http://defundwar.org
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Afghanistan - Holbrooke's ambiguous pipe-dream
Medea Benjamin identifies some of the highlights of Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke's testimony before and exchanges with members of the Foreign Relations Comittee. Her observations are incisive.
Holbrooke paints a rosy portrait of developments in Afghanistan, though he doesn't identify a timetable for the withdrawal of troops. He also doesn't give up the notion that the US would like to have access to some of Afghanistan's considerable mineral wealth. Sen. Kerry and others on the committe see parallels in Afghanistan with our terrible and failed war on Vietnam. If true, and it seems true, the US-led occupation of Afghanistan means more loss of Afghanistan and American lives and an enormous squandering of resources before it ends in defeat.
Afghan Envoy Holbrooke and Senate in La La Land
by Medea Benjamin, July 15, 2010
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/15/afghan-envoy-holbrooke-and-senate-in-la-la-land/
“Man, those dudes are in La La Land,” a young intern said to me on the way out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan on June 14, his eyes rolling. “You can’t win in Afghanistan. Don’t they read history?”
It had been hard to sit through hours of Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke’s storytelling about some far-off land he called Afghanistan. In his Afghanistan, there were new gains in agriculture and a reduction on poppy production for opium. We were empowering women and rebuilding everything from the rule of law to the electrical grid. President Karzai was really intent on tackling corruption. There was an exciting soon-to-be-unveiled program to integrate the lower-level Taliban. We were making significant gains in training the Afghan security forces, and we had real commitments from the Pakistani government to crush Al Qaeda.
We’ve heard this tall tale for the past eight years, which made some of the Senators a bit skeptical—although not skeptical enough to stop funding the war.
The most skeptical were the Republicans, who also happen to be the most anxious to keep fighting there, indefinitely. Senator Bob Corker said that despite more than an hour of testimony by Holbrooke, “I have heard nothing, nothing” about how progress will be measured. “I have no earthly idea what our objectives are on the civilian front.”
Ranking Republican Richard Lugar was also confused about our objectives. Sometimes, he said, it seems that we are trying to “remake Afghan economic, political and security culture”, which is “beyond our resources and powers.” Other times it seems the goal is simply to prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for terrorists. Either way, Lugar didn’t think we could accomplish the President’s desire to begin withdrawal by July 2011.
Holbrooke, while trying to support the President, admitted that he was leery of setting a date certain for leaving. This is, after all, “not where you would choose to defend the American homeland…It’s the most remote and logistically difficult place the U.S. has ever fought in our history,” Holbrooke said, adding that “Fate and destiny have put us there.”
Senator John Kerry, the Committee chair, showed his imperial stripes when he complained that the Afghans weren’t stepping up to the plate. “The problem is that the key element of this strategy is the one over which we have the least control, and that is the willingness and ability of Afghans to assume ownership of the efforts,” Kerry lamented. All the billions and our best efforts are irrelevant, he said, if the Afghans continue to be bystanders in what they perceive as a fight between the West and Al Qaeda.
Holbrooke chided his predecessors who had trained Afghan security forces for years, at enormous costs, without realizing that we had to also teach them to read and write. Literacy, he assured the senators, is now part of our training. No one asked why the Taliban fighters, who are also illiterate, were outmaneuvering both the Afghan security forces and U.S. military.
Referring to the pending U.S. offensive in Kandahar, Kerry admitted that the presence of the U.S. military whips up the insurgency. “Prior to American troops announcing they were going to go in (to Kandahar), there were not assassinations. There was not a level of violence,” Kerry said. “The mere announcement has now brought on the process of assassination and intimidation, and I doubt that we are going to have enough troops to be able to pacify the city.”
Several times during the hearing Holbrooke insisted that Afghanistan was not the unwinnable war of Vietnam, and that we had real security issues in Afghanistan. Ironically, on the very same day of the hearing, Senator Kerry released—for the first time ever—some 1,200 pages of transcripts from private meetings 40 years ago of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Vietnam War. They showed the Senators expressing the same concerns about not having a reliable partner, getting overly-rosy reports from the administration, wondering how much the war would cost in lives and dollars, and having hard time picturing what victory might look like.
“Some of the parallels are almost eerie,” Kerry said, insisting the lawmakers should learn from the past. But that learning has escaped Kerry himself, who continues to support what has now become Obama’s Vietnam and America’s longest war.
The most concrete rationale for staying in Afghanistan emerged when the senators asked about recent reports of enormous mineral wealth such as copper and lithium. Holbrooke said the mineral wealth not a new discovery, but there were now modern techniques that now allowed the minerals to be more easily mined. Holbrooke assured the senators that we are helping Afghans develop their resources and strengthen their economy. Oh yes, he added, we want to make sure that the U.S. has “a level playing field” in getting access to those minerals.
Meanwhile, on the ground in Afghanistan, young soldiers are assuring that “level playing field” with their lives. On the day of the hearing, eight soldiers were killed, bringing to 33 the number of American troops killed this month amid the worst bloodshed of the nine-year conflict.
The young intern who spoke to me about La La Land has more sense than Obama, Holbrooke or the Congress that continues to fund this disaster. Or maybe he is just less jaded than politicians like Senator Lugar who supports the war but remarked, during the hearing, that the U.S. had become stuck in a “slow-motion caravan to ultimate failure.” La La Land, it seems, is not poor Afghanistan, but Washington DC, where politicians send our youth off to fight and die in an endless war they themselves don’t believe in.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK (www.codepink.org) and Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org).
Holbrooke paints a rosy portrait of developments in Afghanistan, though he doesn't identify a timetable for the withdrawal of troops. He also doesn't give up the notion that the US would like to have access to some of Afghanistan's considerable mineral wealth. Sen. Kerry and others on the committe see parallels in Afghanistan with our terrible and failed war on Vietnam. If true, and it seems true, the US-led occupation of Afghanistan means more loss of Afghanistan and American lives and an enormous squandering of resources before it ends in defeat.
Afghan Envoy Holbrooke and Senate in La La Land
by Medea Benjamin, July 15, 2010
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/15/afghan-envoy-holbrooke-and-senate-in-la-la-land/
“Man, those dudes are in La La Land,” a young intern said to me on the way out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan on June 14, his eyes rolling. “You can’t win in Afghanistan. Don’t they read history?”
It had been hard to sit through hours of Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke’s storytelling about some far-off land he called Afghanistan. In his Afghanistan, there were new gains in agriculture and a reduction on poppy production for opium. We were empowering women and rebuilding everything from the rule of law to the electrical grid. President Karzai was really intent on tackling corruption. There was an exciting soon-to-be-unveiled program to integrate the lower-level Taliban. We were making significant gains in training the Afghan security forces, and we had real commitments from the Pakistani government to crush Al Qaeda.
We’ve heard this tall tale for the past eight years, which made some of the Senators a bit skeptical—although not skeptical enough to stop funding the war.
The most skeptical were the Republicans, who also happen to be the most anxious to keep fighting there, indefinitely. Senator Bob Corker said that despite more than an hour of testimony by Holbrooke, “I have heard nothing, nothing” about how progress will be measured. “I have no earthly idea what our objectives are on the civilian front.”
Ranking Republican Richard Lugar was also confused about our objectives. Sometimes, he said, it seems that we are trying to “remake Afghan economic, political and security culture”, which is “beyond our resources and powers.” Other times it seems the goal is simply to prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for terrorists. Either way, Lugar didn’t think we could accomplish the President’s desire to begin withdrawal by July 2011.
Holbrooke, while trying to support the President, admitted that he was leery of setting a date certain for leaving. This is, after all, “not where you would choose to defend the American homeland…It’s the most remote and logistically difficult place the U.S. has ever fought in our history,” Holbrooke said, adding that “Fate and destiny have put us there.”
Senator John Kerry, the Committee chair, showed his imperial stripes when he complained that the Afghans weren’t stepping up to the plate. “The problem is that the key element of this strategy is the one over which we have the least control, and that is the willingness and ability of Afghans to assume ownership of the efforts,” Kerry lamented. All the billions and our best efforts are irrelevant, he said, if the Afghans continue to be bystanders in what they perceive as a fight between the West and Al Qaeda.
Holbrooke chided his predecessors who had trained Afghan security forces for years, at enormous costs, without realizing that we had to also teach them to read and write. Literacy, he assured the senators, is now part of our training. No one asked why the Taliban fighters, who are also illiterate, were outmaneuvering both the Afghan security forces and U.S. military.
Referring to the pending U.S. offensive in Kandahar, Kerry admitted that the presence of the U.S. military whips up the insurgency. “Prior to American troops announcing they were going to go in (to Kandahar), there were not assassinations. There was not a level of violence,” Kerry said. “The mere announcement has now brought on the process of assassination and intimidation, and I doubt that we are going to have enough troops to be able to pacify the city.”
Several times during the hearing Holbrooke insisted that Afghanistan was not the unwinnable war of Vietnam, and that we had real security issues in Afghanistan. Ironically, on the very same day of the hearing, Senator Kerry released—for the first time ever—some 1,200 pages of transcripts from private meetings 40 years ago of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Vietnam War. They showed the Senators expressing the same concerns about not having a reliable partner, getting overly-rosy reports from the administration, wondering how much the war would cost in lives and dollars, and having hard time picturing what victory might look like.
“Some of the parallels are almost eerie,” Kerry said, insisting the lawmakers should learn from the past. But that learning has escaped Kerry himself, who continues to support what has now become Obama’s Vietnam and America’s longest war.
The most concrete rationale for staying in Afghanistan emerged when the senators asked about recent reports of enormous mineral wealth such as copper and lithium. Holbrooke said the mineral wealth not a new discovery, but there were now modern techniques that now allowed the minerals to be more easily mined. Holbrooke assured the senators that we are helping Afghans develop their resources and strengthen their economy. Oh yes, he added, we want to make sure that the U.S. has “a level playing field” in getting access to those minerals.
Meanwhile, on the ground in Afghanistan, young soldiers are assuring that “level playing field” with their lives. On the day of the hearing, eight soldiers were killed, bringing to 33 the number of American troops killed this month amid the worst bloodshed of the nine-year conflict.
The young intern who spoke to me about La La Land has more sense than Obama, Holbrooke or the Congress that continues to fund this disaster. Or maybe he is just less jaded than politicians like Senator Lugar who supports the war but remarked, during the hearing, that the U.S. had become stuck in a “slow-motion caravan to ultimate failure.” La La Land, it seems, is not poor Afghanistan, but Washington DC, where politicians send our youth off to fight and die in an endless war they themselves don’t believe in.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK (www.codepink.org) and Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org).
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
We need to plan for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan
Robert Naiman, Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy, writes in support of an explicit timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. We applaud his position. He responds to President Obama's statement that too many citizens are "obsessed with a timetable," by pointing out that a timetable, and withdrawal of troops is in the best interests of the US because it will help to reduce anger and violence in Central Asia against the US. Additionally, Naiman makes two other points. One, he refers to evidence that there is a growing number of Democrats in the US Congress who want a timetable. Two, there are more Democrats who recognize that we are neglecting domestic programs as we spend so much on the Afghanistan war/occupation. With no end in sight. This latter point may imply growing support among Democrats for alternatives to war in US foreign relations and growing congressional resistance against the ever-increasing military spending.
3/5 of House Dems "Obsessed" with Afghan Withdrawal Timetable
By Robert Naiman
Source: CommonDreams.org
Tuesday, July 06, 2010A+
Robert Naiman's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
"Obsession" isn't just "a fragrance for men." According to our Commander-in-Chief, "obsession" now also characterizes the widespread interest in the timeline for bringing home 100,000 American boys and girls safely from Afghanistan so they can grow old with their sweethearts and lead economically productive lives, rather than becoming Pentagon statistics or lifelong burdens on their family members and the public purse.
President Obama said there's "a lot of obsession" about the withdrawal date for U.S. troops from Afghanistan, AP reported Sunday.
This "obsession" has so afflicted the body politic that Thursday night, three-fifths of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted for an amendment on the war supplemental that not only tried to lock in the July 2011 timetable for the beginning of the drawdown that President Obama promised last year, but also would have required the President to establish a timetable for the completion of the drawdown.
Are some of us "obsessed" with a withdrawal timetable for U.S. forces from Afghanistan? Damn straight we are. Advocacy of a withdrawal timetable is the principal means by which Americans outside of the military can act politically to protect the lives of our fellow citizens who are being deployed. Every day by which we can shorten the war is a day on which our fellow citizens won't have the opportunity to be blown up in Afghanistan.
And as for the people of Afghanistan, the withdrawal timetable is our ticket to freedom from having the same relationship with Pashtun residents of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan as the Israeli army has with Palestinian residents of Hebron in the southern West Bank. The withdrawal timetable is the little patch of blue that we prisoners call the sky.
The group of Americans afflicted by this "obsession" is surely going to continue to grow in numbers and influence. The 162 who voted for a timetable for withdrawal yesterday represented almost a 20% increase over those who voted for an exit strategy last June. The three-fifths of the Democratic caucus in the House who voted for a timetable for withdrawal yesterday featured many members of the Democratic leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA], who usually doesn't vote on the floor (her statement backing her vote for the amendment is here), David Obey [D-WI], chair of Appropriations, who co-sponsored the amendment; John Larson [D-CT], chair of the Democratic Caucus; Chris Van Hollen [D-MD], assistant to the Speaker; George Miller [D-CA], chair of Education and Labor; Barney Frank [D-MA], chair of Financial Services; and Henry Waxman [D-CA], chair of Energy and Commerce.
And crucially, important Democratic players have begun to violate the Washington consensus that pretended that war spending had nothing to do with unmet domestic needs. David Obey tied funding for teacher's jobs to the war supplemental, and labor unions, by insisting on money for teachers in the House bill, have helped to jam up Congressional approval of the war money. MoveOn called out House Republican leader John Boehner [R-OH] for suggesting that we should cut Social Security benefits - including raising the normal retirement age to 70 - while saying no limit can be placed on war spending. And Speaker Pelosi told the Huffington Post: "It just can't be that we have a domestic agenda that is half the size of the defense budget...in terms of the war now in Afghanistan, which is a growing part of it...we have to say how can we carry this and can we carry this on the backs of children's nutrition."
Once the artificial wall between consideration of war spending and consideration of domestic spending is thoroughly breached, every Republican, Wall Street and corporate Democratic attack on Social Security and on spending to support domestic employment under the guise of "deficit reduction" is likely to provoke a counter-attack from important Democratic players on war spending and the Pentagon budget. That's going to drive even more Democrats and Independents into the "timetable for withdrawal" camp.
Time is running out on the Obama Administration's ability to maintain politically a large-scale deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Even solely from the point of view of its own narrow self-interest, the Administration should get busy pursuing serious peace talks with the Afghan Taliban, because there's no reason to expect that the Administration's leverage in the future will be any greater than its leverage today.
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy
3/5 of House Dems "Obsessed" with Afghan Withdrawal Timetable
By Robert Naiman
Source: CommonDreams.org
Tuesday, July 06, 2010A+
Robert Naiman's ZSpace PageJoin ZSpace
"Obsession" isn't just "a fragrance for men." According to our Commander-in-Chief, "obsession" now also characterizes the widespread interest in the timeline for bringing home 100,000 American boys and girls safely from Afghanistan so they can grow old with their sweethearts and lead economically productive lives, rather than becoming Pentagon statistics or lifelong burdens on their family members and the public purse.
President Obama said there's "a lot of obsession" about the withdrawal date for U.S. troops from Afghanistan, AP reported Sunday.
This "obsession" has so afflicted the body politic that Thursday night, three-fifths of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted for an amendment on the war supplemental that not only tried to lock in the July 2011 timetable for the beginning of the drawdown that President Obama promised last year, but also would have required the President to establish a timetable for the completion of the drawdown.
Are some of us "obsessed" with a withdrawal timetable for U.S. forces from Afghanistan? Damn straight we are. Advocacy of a withdrawal timetable is the principal means by which Americans outside of the military can act politically to protect the lives of our fellow citizens who are being deployed. Every day by which we can shorten the war is a day on which our fellow citizens won't have the opportunity to be blown up in Afghanistan.
And as for the people of Afghanistan, the withdrawal timetable is our ticket to freedom from having the same relationship with Pashtun residents of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan as the Israeli army has with Palestinian residents of Hebron in the southern West Bank. The withdrawal timetable is the little patch of blue that we prisoners call the sky.
The group of Americans afflicted by this "obsession" is surely going to continue to grow in numbers and influence. The 162 who voted for a timetable for withdrawal yesterday represented almost a 20% increase over those who voted for an exit strategy last June. The three-fifths of the Democratic caucus in the House who voted for a timetable for withdrawal yesterday featured many members of the Democratic leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA], who usually doesn't vote on the floor (her statement backing her vote for the amendment is here), David Obey [D-WI], chair of Appropriations, who co-sponsored the amendment; John Larson [D-CT], chair of the Democratic Caucus; Chris Van Hollen [D-MD], assistant to the Speaker; George Miller [D-CA], chair of Education and Labor; Barney Frank [D-MA], chair of Financial Services; and Henry Waxman [D-CA], chair of Energy and Commerce.
And crucially, important Democratic players have begun to violate the Washington consensus that pretended that war spending had nothing to do with unmet domestic needs. David Obey tied funding for teacher's jobs to the war supplemental, and labor unions, by insisting on money for teachers in the House bill, have helped to jam up Congressional approval of the war money. MoveOn called out House Republican leader John Boehner [R-OH] for suggesting that we should cut Social Security benefits - including raising the normal retirement age to 70 - while saying no limit can be placed on war spending. And Speaker Pelosi told the Huffington Post: "It just can't be that we have a domestic agenda that is half the size of the defense budget...in terms of the war now in Afghanistan, which is a growing part of it...we have to say how can we carry this and can we carry this on the backs of children's nutrition."
Once the artificial wall between consideration of war spending and consideration of domestic spending is thoroughly breached, every Republican, Wall Street and corporate Democratic attack on Social Security and on spending to support domestic employment under the guise of "deficit reduction" is likely to provoke a counter-attack from important Democratic players on war spending and the Pentagon budget. That's going to drive even more Democrats and Independents into the "timetable for withdrawal" camp.
Time is running out on the Obama Administration's ability to maintain politically a large-scale deployment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Even solely from the point of view of its own narrow self-interest, the Administration should get busy pursuing serious peace talks with the Afghan Taliban, because there's no reason to expect that the Administration's leverage in the future will be any greater than its leverage today.
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Additional reasons to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan
Here are parts of what you can find today (July 1, 2010) on Juan Coles' award-winning blog, Informed Comment. One focuses on rising US troop deaths in Afghanistan, which appear to be the result of growing aggressiveness by group identified as Taliban. The other part reports that the US Congress has cut $4 billion out of civilian aid to Afghanistan.
In short, Gen. Patraeus maintains that rising troop casualties are to be expected as the counter-insurgency strategy is implemented. The Congress justifies its reduction in civilian aid to Afghanistan by saying that too much of it ends up in the wrong hands and for unintended purposes.
From our perspective, these two examples provide additional evidence that the US occupation of Afghanistan is mired in chaotic conditions, that US troops are suffering from the make-it-up-as-you-go occupation and interventions. And, further, the White House and US Congress should withhold additional funding for Afghanistan and affirm their support for a substantial and continuing withdrawal of troops no later than in July 2011,
Posted on July 1, 2010 by Juan
As the Senate confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as commander of US troops in Afghanistan, CNN estimated that 101 NATO troops (including Americans) were killed in June, the highest total ever since the NATO presence began in 2001. The Pentagon maintains that such a spike in troop deaths is to be expected given the counter-insurgency push that began this winter, in which troops were given the task of ‘taking, clearing, holding and building’ in Pashtun territory.
Taliban guerrillas boldly attacked a NATO air base at the eastern Pashtun city of Jalabad on Tuesday. A Taliban spokesman said that the operation was intended to send a signal to Gen. Petraeus, that they considered him no different from any other general. At least one NATO soldier was killed in the assault becoming death number 101 for June). A Taliban spokesman said that six of them detonated their payloads or were killed, while 4 escaped. NATO said that there were 6-8 attackers and all were killed. The Pajhwok News Agency reports, “A top Afghan army official on the base, Col. Jahangir Azimi, said six attackers, equipped with two machine guns, automatic rifles and a rocket launcher, stormed the airbase from its northern gate. One bomber blew himself up at the gate and the rest of the attackers infiltrated the camp, he added. Two of the bombers were killed by Afghan soldiers and three others were hunted by NATO choppers which were immediately called after the explosion, Col. Azimi further said.”
Aljazeera English has video:
The battle of Marawara in the eastern Kunar province between NATO forces and Taliban continued on Wednesday. It began on Sunday, when two US troops and a third NATO soldier were killed.
Meanwhile, Congress cut $4 billion out of civilian aid to Afghanistan, owing to fears that it was just being eaten up by corruption. Afghanistan is listed as the second most corrupt country in the world after Somalia by Transparency International, and reports have circulated for months about mysterious large shipments of cash out of Kabul airport to Dubai. It has also been alleged that money paid to security contractors in Afghanistan who oversee the safety of US convoys is often in turn paid out to Taliban as a bribe not to attack the convoys. Still, the civilian aid money is crucial to the Obama administration’s counter-insurgency campaign, and it had been hoped that providing, e.g., more electricity to Pashtun areas such as the city of Qandahar might help NATO and the Karzai government blunt the appeal of the Taliban there. Apparently, though, the money was not so much denied as put in escrow until a better general accounting system can be put in to keep track of it.
In short, Gen. Patraeus maintains that rising troop casualties are to be expected as the counter-insurgency strategy is implemented. The Congress justifies its reduction in civilian aid to Afghanistan by saying that too much of it ends up in the wrong hands and for unintended purposes.
From our perspective, these two examples provide additional evidence that the US occupation of Afghanistan is mired in chaotic conditions, that US troops are suffering from the make-it-up-as-you-go occupation and interventions. And, further, the White House and US Congress should withhold additional funding for Afghanistan and affirm their support for a substantial and continuing withdrawal of troops no later than in July 2011,
Posted on July 1, 2010 by Juan
As the Senate confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as commander of US troops in Afghanistan, CNN estimated that 101 NATO troops (including Americans) were killed in June, the highest total ever since the NATO presence began in 2001. The Pentagon maintains that such a spike in troop deaths is to be expected given the counter-insurgency push that began this winter, in which troops were given the task of ‘taking, clearing, holding and building’ in Pashtun territory.
Taliban guerrillas boldly attacked a NATO air base at the eastern Pashtun city of Jalabad on Tuesday. A Taliban spokesman said that the operation was intended to send a signal to Gen. Petraeus, that they considered him no different from any other general. At least one NATO soldier was killed in the assault becoming death number 101 for June). A Taliban spokesman said that six of them detonated their payloads or were killed, while 4 escaped. NATO said that there were 6-8 attackers and all were killed. The Pajhwok News Agency reports, “A top Afghan army official on the base, Col. Jahangir Azimi, said six attackers, equipped with two machine guns, automatic rifles and a rocket launcher, stormed the airbase from its northern gate. One bomber blew himself up at the gate and the rest of the attackers infiltrated the camp, he added. Two of the bombers were killed by Afghan soldiers and three others were hunted by NATO choppers which were immediately called after the explosion, Col. Azimi further said.”
Aljazeera English has video:
The battle of Marawara in the eastern Kunar province between NATO forces and Taliban continued on Wednesday. It began on Sunday, when two US troops and a third NATO soldier were killed.
Meanwhile, Congress cut $4 billion out of civilian aid to Afghanistan, owing to fears that it was just being eaten up by corruption. Afghanistan is listed as the second most corrupt country in the world after Somalia by Transparency International, and reports have circulated for months about mysterious large shipments of cash out of Kabul airport to Dubai. It has also been alleged that money paid to security contractors in Afghanistan who oversee the safety of US convoys is often in turn paid out to Taliban as a bribe not to attack the convoys. Still, the civilian aid money is crucial to the Obama administration’s counter-insurgency campaign, and it had been hoped that providing, e.g., more electricity to Pashtun areas such as the city of Qandahar might help NATO and the Karzai government blunt the appeal of the Taliban there. Apparently, though, the money was not so much denied as put in escrow until a better general accounting system can be put in to keep track of it.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Oppose supplemental funding request for wars
The following message is from Democrats.com. It asks for people to oppose the Obama administration's request for a $33 billion supplement to the wars/occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq. See the reasons for the position taken by Democrats.com.
The "war" in Afghanistan is now the longest "war" in U.S. history. For what?George W. Bush let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora way back in 2001, and then pulled troops and supplies out of Afghanistan so he could conquer Iraq.Since then, we've been "fighting" the Taliban, not the few remaining Al Qaeda. But we're not really "fighting" them, we're actually paying them protection money to let supply trucks reach our troops.
Rather than pay extortion to the Taliban - with our tax dollars! - it's time to bring our troops safely home.Tell Congress to vote NO on the $33 Billion supplemental for Afghanistanhttp://www.democrats.com/oppose-33-billion-war-supplemental-for-2010
To make matters worse, Gen. Stanley McChrystal made headlines with insubordinate attacks on his superiors. One year ago, Gen. McChrystal was put in charge of the "war" to devise a "winning" strategy. One year later, his strategy isn't "winning" because Afghanistan remains as massively corrupt as ever, under the hopelessly corrupt leadership of Hamid Karzai.
Tell Congress to vote NO on the $33 Billion supplemental for Afghanistanhttp://www.democrats.com/oppose-33-billion-war-supplemental-for-2010
American taxpayers can't afford the endless occcupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. We've already "spent" (actually just borrowed) over $1 trillion and sacrificed over 5,535 brave soldiers.
As our national debt spirals out of control, President Obama's Deficit Commission is secretly plotting cuts in Social Security and Medicare - instead of ending the disastrous "wars."
Under the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to fund wars. After eight disastrous years, it's time for Congress to use its power to bring our troops safely home from Afghanistan.
Tell Congress to vote NO on the $33 Billion supplemental for Afghanistanhttp://www.democrats.com/oppose-33-billion-war-supplemental-for-2010
Thanks for all you do!
Bob Fertik
Democrats.com Activist Alerts.
The "war" in Afghanistan is now the longest "war" in U.S. history. For what?George W. Bush let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora way back in 2001, and then pulled troops and supplies out of Afghanistan so he could conquer Iraq.Since then, we've been "fighting" the Taliban, not the few remaining Al Qaeda. But we're not really "fighting" them, we're actually paying them protection money to let supply trucks reach our troops.
Rather than pay extortion to the Taliban - with our tax dollars! - it's time to bring our troops safely home.Tell Congress to vote NO on the $33 Billion supplemental for Afghanistanhttp://www.democrats.com/oppose-33-billion-war-supplemental-for-2010
To make matters worse, Gen. Stanley McChrystal made headlines with insubordinate attacks on his superiors. One year ago, Gen. McChrystal was put in charge of the "war" to devise a "winning" strategy. One year later, his strategy isn't "winning" because Afghanistan remains as massively corrupt as ever, under the hopelessly corrupt leadership of Hamid Karzai.
Tell Congress to vote NO on the $33 Billion supplemental for Afghanistanhttp://www.democrats.com/oppose-33-billion-war-supplemental-for-2010
American taxpayers can't afford the endless occcupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. We've already "spent" (actually just borrowed) over $1 trillion and sacrificed over 5,535 brave soldiers.
As our national debt spirals out of control, President Obama's Deficit Commission is secretly plotting cuts in Social Security and Medicare - instead of ending the disastrous "wars."
Under the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to fund wars. After eight disastrous years, it's time for Congress to use its power to bring our troops safely home from Afghanistan.
Tell Congress to vote NO on the $33 Billion supplemental for Afghanistanhttp://www.democrats.com/oppose-33-billion-war-supplemental-for-2010
Thanks for all you do!
Bob Fertik
Democrats.com Activist Alerts.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Momentum in US Congress for the beginning of the end of Afghan war
Mark Weisbrot suggests that the US-led war in Afghanistan will end when a majority of the members in the US House and Senate go on record as favoring a clear timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. Weisbrot's article was included today, April 27, 2010, at: http://www.zcommunications.org/how-wars-are-ended-rebellion-in-u-s-congress-could-mark-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-afghan-war-by-mark-weisbrot
Weisbrot writes that a "rebellion" in congress is happening. He writes:
"...a rebellion is growing in Congress against the war. Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, House Democrat Jim McGovern from Massachusetts, and House Republican Walter Jones from North Carolina have introduced legislation that would require President Obama to establish a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The bill has quickly picked up 29 co-sponsors, and could reach 100 within the next few weeks."
The movement in favor of withdrawal in Congress is being influenced by changes in the larger climate of opinion in both Afghanistan and the US, and probably by sheer economics. Weisbrot points out that in Afghanistan, which will be spending and unsustainable 61% of its projected 2011 GDP for the army and police, a poll sponsored by the US Army found that "94% of Kandahar residents support negotiations with the Taliban, rather than military confrontation."
In the US, Weisbrot writes, "The majority of Americans are against the war, and every week thousands of Americans continue to put pressure on their representatives in Congress...."
If the shift in the US Congress against the war maintiain's its momentum, then, along with pressures from the voters - and with mounting costs and casualties and high unemployment- the "end" of the US-led war in Afganistan may end sooner than we have thought. How great that would be!
Weisbrot writes that a "rebellion" in congress is happening. He writes:
"...a rebellion is growing in Congress against the war. Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, House Democrat Jim McGovern from Massachusetts, and House Republican Walter Jones from North Carolina have introduced legislation that would require President Obama to establish a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The bill has quickly picked up 29 co-sponsors, and could reach 100 within the next few weeks."
The movement in favor of withdrawal in Congress is being influenced by changes in the larger climate of opinion in both Afghanistan and the US, and probably by sheer economics. Weisbrot points out that in Afghanistan, which will be spending and unsustainable 61% of its projected 2011 GDP for the army and police, a poll sponsored by the US Army found that "94% of Kandahar residents support negotiations with the Taliban, rather than military confrontation."
In the US, Weisbrot writes, "The majority of Americans are against the war, and every week thousands of Americans continue to put pressure on their representatives in Congress...."
If the shift in the US Congress against the war maintiain's its momentum, then, along with pressures from the voters - and with mounting costs and casualties and high unemployment- the "end" of the US-led war in Afganistan may end sooner than we have thought. How great that would be!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
War Resisters Leaque urges actions against funding for Afghanistan war and occupation
Important New Anti-War Legislation Call today!
Dear Friends,
In a time when there is such urgent need here in the U.S. we need to continue to pressure our elected officials to reduce the outrageous military budget. Please call your Representatives and Senators and urge them to vote NO on the upcoming supplemental that will provide an additional $33 billion for war and occupation in Afghanistan.
In addition to asking them to vote against this funding and instead support the swift and safe removal of all of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, we now have new legislation to let them know about. Last week, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and U.S. Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Walter Jones (R-NC) announced they are introducing legislation requiring President Obama to develop a timetable to draw down U.S. troops from Afghanistan.Senate bill: S. 3197House bill: H.R. 5015
There are over 20 national organizations mobilizing for a call-in week. Please help make it a success!1. Call the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121. If you want to call your Representative or Senator directly you can easily find them here. 2. Forward this message to your friends and family, and ask them to make a call as well.
What you can say to your representatives:"I urge you to vote against the $33 billion supplementary spending bill to pay for the escalation of troops in Afghanistan and the continuation of this war and occupation! I also want to let you know about the Afghanistan Timeline for Withdrawal Bill, Senate: S. 3197 and House: H.R. 5015 and ask you to do everything you can to insist that President Obama develop a rapid, real and complete plan to bring our troops home now." PLEASE CALL TODAY: 202-224-3121
Thank you for your work for peace!
War Resisters League339 Lafayette Street New York, NY 10012212.228.0450 wrl@warresisters.org
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Interview excerpts - Daniel Ellsberg on Obama's good war in Afghanistan
Below I quote some points made on Democracy Now by Daniel Ellsberg, interviewed by Anjali Kamat and Amy Goodman, March 30, 2010. Ellsberg drew parallels between the war in Afghanistan and the Vietnam War. In the excerpts from the interview that follow I focus on some of his responses on Afghanistan – for the most part. Ellsberg’s position on the Afghanistan War is to bring it to an end as soon as it is reasonable to do so. (Go to democracynow.org for the full interview.)
A little background on Daniel Ellsberg - We [Democracy Now] are joined by a man who played a major role in efforts to end the Vietnam War in the 1970s. In 1971, the then-RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked to the media what became known as the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified history outlining the true extent of US involvement in Vietnam. After avoiding a life sentence on espionage charges, Daniel Ellsberg has continued to speak out against US militarism until the present day.
Daniel Ellsberg - [excerpts from interview follow]
Obama’s war - President Obama is taking every symbolic step he can to nominate this as Obama’s war, just as the Vietnam War became Nixon’s war in November of 1969, just about the time I was copying the Pentagon Papers in hopes of forestalling that, and Johnson made Vietnam his war, Johnson’s war, and McNamara’s war in June of 1965…with very much the same results in the end, tragic results.
Secret cables - Secret cables from the US ambassador in Kabul, Lieutenant General, retired, Karl Eikenberry were leaked by someone in January…He’s describing the President, Karzai, to whom he’s accredited and who he just visited with President Obama. And Karzai has presumably read Eikenberry’s assessment of him as—that he is not an adequate strategic partner for the United States, and for reasons of corruption and inefficiency.
Drugs are necessary to Afghan government- Allegedly, we hear that Obama’s reason for going seventeen hours over to Afghanistan was to convey in person our desire that he clean up his government….In Karzai’s government, as in the Mafia, corruption are us, drugs are us. Corruption is his government. That’s his constituency, his source of income. There is no chance whatever that he’ll, for instance, root out his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, from Kandahar, which is our next base of operations, despite the fact that our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says no success is possible in Kandahar while corruption is still the heart of that, while drug dealing is the heart of that, so long as Wali, the President’s, Karzai’s brother, is in charge there.
Counterinsurgency will not work - What it ignores is that the recruiting tool of our adversaries there is predominantly the presence of foreign troops. And when we add more foreign troops, we are sustaining that recruiting tool. And for every enemy trying to eject foreigners from his country that we kill, and especially his families, the wedding parties, and the funeral parties after we’ve hit the wedding parties, all of those recruit more people in a way that will—assures us that, contrary to what President Obama is saying, we will not prevail. When he does say we aren’t going to quit, in the short run, at least, he’s right, unfortunately. We have many years ahead of us.
Additional US troops will make the problem worse - ….when we have those extra 30,000 to 40,000 troops there and are up to the level of 100,000, which, with NATO troops, will bring us up to the level at which the Soviets occupied Afghanistan and failed after ten years, the thought that that’s the last request by McChrystal is simply absurd. McChrystal himself was asking for 80,000 troops at this point, and that, too, was a first installment.
Training of Afghans for Afghan army [and police] will continue to go badly - ….That is not going to come from the Afghan troops, who desert about as fast as we recruit them and who are not very highly motivated working for foreigners, like the government of Vietnam soldiers we worked with. They are not going to fill that gap.
The number of US troops in Afghanistan will not be drawn down next year - ….four years from now we will have more troops in Afghanistan than we have two years from now.
Afghan civilian casualties -….He [Gen. McChrystal] also, for the first time, talks about wanting to reduce civilian casualties. But by increasing the number of US troops over there greatly and increasing the number of engagements, even if you reduce the rate of civilian deaths per engagement, the overall effect is going to be that you’re killing the relatives of people who are going to enlist in the insurgency.
Congress will have to withhold funding for the war to end, but that’s unlikely - ….The head of the Appropriations Committee, David Obey, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, Harry Reid in the Senate have all said they oppose further escalation, just like Eikenberry, the general who is our ambassador in Afghanistan. But does that mean they will vote against the appropriations that send those people over there to die and to kill? No, very, very unlikely
A little background on Daniel Ellsberg - We [Democracy Now] are joined by a man who played a major role in efforts to end the Vietnam War in the 1970s. In 1971, the then-RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked to the media what became known as the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified history outlining the true extent of US involvement in Vietnam. After avoiding a life sentence on espionage charges, Daniel Ellsberg has continued to speak out against US militarism until the present day.
Daniel Ellsberg - [excerpts from interview follow]
Obama’s war - President Obama is taking every symbolic step he can to nominate this as Obama’s war, just as the Vietnam War became Nixon’s war in November of 1969, just about the time I was copying the Pentagon Papers in hopes of forestalling that, and Johnson made Vietnam his war, Johnson’s war, and McNamara’s war in June of 1965…with very much the same results in the end, tragic results.
Secret cables - Secret cables from the US ambassador in Kabul, Lieutenant General, retired, Karl Eikenberry were leaked by someone in January…He’s describing the President, Karzai, to whom he’s accredited and who he just visited with President Obama. And Karzai has presumably read Eikenberry’s assessment of him as—that he is not an adequate strategic partner for the United States, and for reasons of corruption and inefficiency.
Drugs are necessary to Afghan government- Allegedly, we hear that Obama’s reason for going seventeen hours over to Afghanistan was to convey in person our desire that he clean up his government….In Karzai’s government, as in the Mafia, corruption are us, drugs are us. Corruption is his government. That’s his constituency, his source of income. There is no chance whatever that he’ll, for instance, root out his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, from Kandahar, which is our next base of operations, despite the fact that our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says no success is possible in Kandahar while corruption is still the heart of that, while drug dealing is the heart of that, so long as Wali, the President’s, Karzai’s brother, is in charge there.
Counterinsurgency will not work - What it ignores is that the recruiting tool of our adversaries there is predominantly the presence of foreign troops. And when we add more foreign troops, we are sustaining that recruiting tool. And for every enemy trying to eject foreigners from his country that we kill, and especially his families, the wedding parties, and the funeral parties after we’ve hit the wedding parties, all of those recruit more people in a way that will—assures us that, contrary to what President Obama is saying, we will not prevail. When he does say we aren’t going to quit, in the short run, at least, he’s right, unfortunately. We have many years ahead of us.
Additional US troops will make the problem worse - ….when we have those extra 30,000 to 40,000 troops there and are up to the level of 100,000, which, with NATO troops, will bring us up to the level at which the Soviets occupied Afghanistan and failed after ten years, the thought that that’s the last request by McChrystal is simply absurd. McChrystal himself was asking for 80,000 troops at this point, and that, too, was a first installment.
Training of Afghans for Afghan army [and police] will continue to go badly - ….That is not going to come from the Afghan troops, who desert about as fast as we recruit them and who are not very highly motivated working for foreigners, like the government of Vietnam soldiers we worked with. They are not going to fill that gap.
The number of US troops in Afghanistan will not be drawn down next year - ….four years from now we will have more troops in Afghanistan than we have two years from now.
Afghan civilian casualties -….He [Gen. McChrystal] also, for the first time, talks about wanting to reduce civilian casualties. But by increasing the number of US troops over there greatly and increasing the number of engagements, even if you reduce the rate of civilian deaths per engagement, the overall effect is going to be that you’re killing the relatives of people who are going to enlist in the insurgency.
Congress will have to withhold funding for the war to end, but that’s unlikely - ….The head of the Appropriations Committee, David Obey, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, Harry Reid in the Senate have all said they oppose further escalation, just like Eikenberry, the general who is our ambassador in Afghanistan. But does that mean they will vote against the appropriations that send those people over there to die and to kill? No, very, very unlikely
Monday, November 23, 2009
Congressional rep call for increased taxes to pay for any troop surge in Afghanistan
Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc) wants any additional troops to Afghanistan paid for by a "war surtax." (See article below after comments.)
There at least two implications of this viewpoint. One is that the threat of a surtax may help to discourage the Obama administration from implementing an escalation of troops. The second calls our attention to how spending on an escalation, $30-$40 billion or more, means less for important domestic programs such as a program to create jobs. I suppose that there is not much hope for a congressional passage of a surtax (or other tax related measures connected to the war), but Obey's warning may get some public attention and help to raise the issue of the sheer economic costs of this war and related lost opportunities at home. Probably not much.
The problem is that the US Congress has been largely a rubber stamp for war-connected expenditures, regardless of the "war." The long-standing reality of Military-Keynisianism and a militarized foreign-policy goes back to the late 1940s and continues to the present. C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite (published in 1956) was my first introduction to the great influence of domestic warlords and weapon makers over the government, and overall congressional subservience to them.
It will take a lot more than warnings from a few congresspersons to significantly change this. However, it is good for congressional representatives to raise questions about any aspect of the deeply-rooted status quo, this huge and powerful (parasitic and wasteful) military-industrial sector of our capitalist (waste-generating, ecologically-devastating, corporate-dominated) economy. It takes personal courage to buck the tsunami.
Bob Sheak
------------------------------------------------
Published on Monday, November 23, 2009 by The Hill
Reprinted by Common Dreams. Org (see URL after article)
Obey Wants 'War Surtax' to Fund Afghan Effort
by Michael O'Brien
WASHINGTON, DC - Any troop increase for Afghanistan should come with a "war surtax" on high income Americans, a top House chairman said Monday.
Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, warned that if President Barack Obama decides to send additional troops to Afghanistan, it should be funded with the new tax.
"If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well," Obey told ABC News [1] in an interview, "by having a war surtax."
Obey said his proposed tax would be a "graduated" tax on income that would help offset the roughly $40 billion in new costs needed to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, a cost estimated by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag. "I want the president and every American to think ahead of time about what it means if you do add to our involvement in Afghanistan," Obey told ABC [1], pointing to the war costs that affected the presidencies and domestic agendas of Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson.
The call for a new tax mirrors a similar demand over the weekend from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on funding the war effort in Afghanistan. Levin told Bloomberg News [2] that he favored an "additional income tax" on incomes over $200,000 or $250,000 to finance any troop surge. "If we don't pay for it, then the cost of the Afghan war will wipe out every other initiative that we have to try to rebuild our own economy," he said. "I'm going to be fighting to get whatever they do paid for."
© 2009 The Hill
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/23-3
There at least two implications of this viewpoint. One is that the threat of a surtax may help to discourage the Obama administration from implementing an escalation of troops. The second calls our attention to how spending on an escalation, $30-$40 billion or more, means less for important domestic programs such as a program to create jobs. I suppose that there is not much hope for a congressional passage of a surtax (or other tax related measures connected to the war), but Obey's warning may get some public attention and help to raise the issue of the sheer economic costs of this war and related lost opportunities at home. Probably not much.
The problem is that the US Congress has been largely a rubber stamp for war-connected expenditures, regardless of the "war." The long-standing reality of Military-Keynisianism and a militarized foreign-policy goes back to the late 1940s and continues to the present. C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite (published in 1956) was my first introduction to the great influence of domestic warlords and weapon makers over the government, and overall congressional subservience to them.
It will take a lot more than warnings from a few congresspersons to significantly change this. However, it is good for congressional representatives to raise questions about any aspect of the deeply-rooted status quo, this huge and powerful (parasitic and wasteful) military-industrial sector of our capitalist (waste-generating, ecologically-devastating, corporate-dominated) economy. It takes personal courage to buck the tsunami.
Bob Sheak
------------------------------------------------
Published on Monday, November 23, 2009 by The Hill
Reprinted by Common Dreams. Org (see URL after article)
Obey Wants 'War Surtax' to Fund Afghan Effort
by Michael O'Brien
WASHINGTON, DC - Any troop increase for Afghanistan should come with a "war surtax" on high income Americans, a top House chairman said Monday.
Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, warned that if President Barack Obama decides to send additional troops to Afghanistan, it should be funded with the new tax.
"If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well," Obey told ABC News [1] in an interview, "by having a war surtax."
Obey said his proposed tax would be a "graduated" tax on income that would help offset the roughly $40 billion in new costs needed to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, a cost estimated by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag. "I want the president and every American to think ahead of time about what it means if you do add to our involvement in Afghanistan," Obey told ABC [1], pointing to the war costs that affected the presidencies and domestic agendas of Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson.
The call for a new tax mirrors a similar demand over the weekend from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on funding the war effort in Afghanistan. Levin told Bloomberg News [2] that he favored an "additional income tax" on incomes over $200,000 or $250,000 to finance any troop surge. "If we don't pay for it, then the cost of the Afghan war will wipe out every other initiative that we have to try to rebuild our own economy," he said. "I'm going to be fighting to get whatever they do paid for."
© 2009 The Hill
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/23-3
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