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.
Showing posts with label US military power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US military power. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
US relies more on military as its hegemony declines
Published on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 by Foreign Policy in Focus
Imperial Overkill and the Death of US Empire
by Francis Shor
The main point of Shor’s article is that US foreign policy is a militarized foreign policy. This reflects a faltering US economy, the rising power of the Pentagon within the US, and a last ditch effort to avoid the decline of US hegemony around the world. You can go back to C. Wright Mills' book, The Power Elite (published 1956) to get an idea of the some of the roots of the military elites and US policy. Seymour Melman, now deceased, provided a monumental account in his books of how "the permanent war economy" was leading to a decline in "American capitalism. His books include: Out Depleted Society (1965), The Permanent War Economy (1974), Profits Without Production (1983), among others.
While the centrality of the Pentagon and military spending has long been prominent in US affairs, Shor argues that, unlike the past, it is not the cold war that spurs US militarism at home and abroad but the decline of and growing challenges to US imperialism.
Here are excerpts from the article.
“... beyond Afghanistan and the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian basin region, the imperial projects of the United States are, more and more, a commitment to Pentagon aggression and profligacy.”
[Imperial overkill] reflects: “The compulsion to rely even more heavily on the military to compensate for a waning hegemony in other domains - and to contend with shrinking resources (especially hydrocarbons), rising adversaries (especially China) and growing resistance (especially non-state Islamic militants and Latin American national-popular governments) - led to a record number of direct U. S. interventions. In turn, two of the most massive interventions, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, underscored the inability of Washington to realize all of its imperial goals.”
[....]
The Obama administration has expanded [2] the role of Special Operations forces from 60 to 75 countries, and given these forces the go-ahead to "get more aggressive much more quickly." In the process, the Obama administration has ramped up the extrajudicial assassinations first approved by the previous administration and added on a nearly 6 percent increase in the Special Operations budget.”
Shor adds:
...with special operations planting the seeds for eventually larger military engagements, the Pentagon has to plan for permanent war. This doctrine of "Long War" has bipartisan support in Washington, and is key to the forms of disaster capitalism that enrich the military-industrial complex and private contractors like Halliburton, Blackwater, and DynCorp, among many others.
Garrisoning the Globe [Shor’s section heading.]
The US efforts to maintain its military superiority is indicated by the fact that “the Pentagon still manages to receive the equivalent of what all of the other nations around the globe spend on their militaries,” continues to be “the overwhelming leader in military exports to the tune of 70 percent of the weapons market,” flouts “ international treaties, such as those on cluster bomb,” thus eroding “international legal standards,” and has over 700 military based positioned around the world.
[....]
“ This imperium is under attack not only by adversaries, but also by those who no longer accept U. S. economic and ideological models, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007.” Shor gives the following examples. “Continuing resistance in Okinawa has roiled Japanese politics. In Latin America, leftist leaders from Rafael Correa in Ecuador to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have challenged the United States....
“....Chavez has replaced U.S. military contracts with those of Russian and Chinese companies, and created a new military alliance with Russia that brought Russian naval vessels to Venezuela.”
The End of Indispensability
Shor quotes Emmanuel Todd, who maintains that the US "is pretending to remain the world's indispensable superpower by attacking insignificant adversaries," but[6] "this America... is hardly the indispensable nation it claims to be and is certainly not what the rest of the world really needs now."
Still it has the effect of creating “perpetual war.” “Such perpetual war is no longer about achieving victory, whatever that means, but perpetrating military imperialism. Although that imperialism is anchored in protecting economic prerogatives, it's also an obsession with a matrix of control and destruction, resulting in imperial overkill.”
[....]
Addicted to War
“.... Using a multiplier effect, the economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the long-term expenses for those wars to be in excess of three times the expended amount. This is all part of a growing debt [9] of $13 trillion dollars. Moreover, with U. S. casualties rising in Afghanistan and with a record number of closed head injuries among American soldiers, the costs in human terms are enormous. And still, the Pentagon is seeding future wars by the extensive operations of Special Forces.”
In Afghanistan, US contractors...contribute money [10] to Taliban warlords in order to guarantee safe delivery of U. S. supplies over Afghan routes. These payoffs also allow an unending cycle of violence that stokes the military machine and its imperial enablers.
[....]
“....Many voices on the left and the right are calling for Washington to admit it cannot "win" in Afghanistan. However, like other empires of the past, those in power remain convinced that they have a global mission to perform, even if it leads to self-destructive imperial overkill.”
© 2010 Foreign Policy in Focus
Francis Shor teaches history at Wayne State University. A contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, he is the author of Dying Empire: U. S. Imperialism and Global Resistance [11].
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/27-7
Imperial Overkill and the Death of US Empire
by Francis Shor
The main point of Shor’s article is that US foreign policy is a militarized foreign policy. This reflects a faltering US economy, the rising power of the Pentagon within the US, and a last ditch effort to avoid the decline of US hegemony around the world. You can go back to C. Wright Mills' book, The Power Elite (published 1956) to get an idea of the some of the roots of the military elites and US policy. Seymour Melman, now deceased, provided a monumental account in his books of how "the permanent war economy" was leading to a decline in "American capitalism. His books include: Out Depleted Society (1965), The Permanent War Economy (1974), Profits Without Production (1983), among others.
While the centrality of the Pentagon and military spending has long been prominent in US affairs, Shor argues that, unlike the past, it is not the cold war that spurs US militarism at home and abroad but the decline of and growing challenges to US imperialism.
Here are excerpts from the article.
“... beyond Afghanistan and the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian basin region, the imperial projects of the United States are, more and more, a commitment to Pentagon aggression and profligacy.”
[Imperial overkill] reflects: “The compulsion to rely even more heavily on the military to compensate for a waning hegemony in other domains - and to contend with shrinking resources (especially hydrocarbons), rising adversaries (especially China) and growing resistance (especially non-state Islamic militants and Latin American national-popular governments) - led to a record number of direct U. S. interventions. In turn, two of the most massive interventions, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, underscored the inability of Washington to realize all of its imperial goals.”
[....]
The Obama administration has expanded [2] the role of Special Operations forces from 60 to 75 countries, and given these forces the go-ahead to "get more aggressive much more quickly." In the process, the Obama administration has ramped up the extrajudicial assassinations first approved by the previous administration and added on a nearly 6 percent increase in the Special Operations budget.”
Shor adds:
...with special operations planting the seeds for eventually larger military engagements, the Pentagon has to plan for permanent war. This doctrine of "Long War" has bipartisan support in Washington, and is key to the forms of disaster capitalism that enrich the military-industrial complex and private contractors like Halliburton, Blackwater, and DynCorp, among many others.
Garrisoning the Globe [Shor’s section heading.]
The US efforts to maintain its military superiority is indicated by the fact that “the Pentagon still manages to receive the equivalent of what all of the other nations around the globe spend on their militaries,” continues to be “the overwhelming leader in military exports to the tune of 70 percent of the weapons market,” flouts “ international treaties, such as those on cluster bomb,” thus eroding “international legal standards,” and has over 700 military based positioned around the world.
[....]
“ This imperium is under attack not only by adversaries, but also by those who no longer accept U. S. economic and ideological models, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007.” Shor gives the following examples. “Continuing resistance in Okinawa has roiled Japanese politics. In Latin America, leftist leaders from Rafael Correa in Ecuador to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela have challenged the United States....
“....Chavez has replaced U.S. military contracts with those of Russian and Chinese companies, and created a new military alliance with Russia that brought Russian naval vessels to Venezuela.”
The End of Indispensability
Shor quotes Emmanuel Todd, who maintains that the US "is pretending to remain the world's indispensable superpower by attacking insignificant adversaries," but[6] "this America... is hardly the indispensable nation it claims to be and is certainly not what the rest of the world really needs now."
Still it has the effect of creating “perpetual war.” “Such perpetual war is no longer about achieving victory, whatever that means, but perpetrating military imperialism. Although that imperialism is anchored in protecting economic prerogatives, it's also an obsession with a matrix of control and destruction, resulting in imperial overkill.”
[....]
Addicted to War
“.... Using a multiplier effect, the economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the long-term expenses for those wars to be in excess of three times the expended amount. This is all part of a growing debt [9] of $13 trillion dollars. Moreover, with U. S. casualties rising in Afghanistan and with a record number of closed head injuries among American soldiers, the costs in human terms are enormous. And still, the Pentagon is seeding future wars by the extensive operations of Special Forces.”
In Afghanistan, US contractors...contribute money [10] to Taliban warlords in order to guarantee safe delivery of U. S. supplies over Afghan routes. These payoffs also allow an unending cycle of violence that stokes the military machine and its imperial enablers.
[....]
“....Many voices on the left and the right are calling for Washington to admit it cannot "win" in Afghanistan. However, like other empires of the past, those in power remain convinced that they have a global mission to perform, even if it leads to self-destructive imperial overkill.”
© 2010 Foreign Policy in Focus
Francis Shor teaches history at Wayne State University. A contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, he is the author of Dying Empire: U. S. Imperialism and Global Resistance [11].
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/27-7
Sunday, March 28, 2010
American-led or -only wars, preparation for wars, out-of-the-limelight wars
Chalmers Johnson documents the extension of the US military across the third world in his book, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. He estimates that by 2004 the Defense Department ackowledged some 725 military bases in other countries. He writes: "The bases in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and elsewhere served primarily as high-ranking officers' watering spots and comfortable sites for their remote-contro command posts" (p. 24).
The US bases are not confined to the Middle East, but also exist in parts of Europe, Central Asia,
South America, and increasingly in Africa. He notes: "The American network of bases is a sign not of military preparedness but of militarism, the inescapable companion of imperialism" (24).
The American military, by far the largest in the world, has been built, expanded, and sustained by a number of imperatives. The American industrial-complex generates its own momentum. Military chiefs want the opportunities to use their vast armies. Corporate executives producing weapons or supplies want to keep expanding. The communities with military bases or other facilities want them kept open. The elected officials in Washington, D.C., are exposed to great lobbying pressure from the weapons-makers and the communities in their districts or states that have military installations.
Another great and growing imperative for the imperalistic reach of the US military is identified by Michael T. Klare in his books, the most recent of which is titled Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (pub. 2008). His basic point is that there is increasing demand for diminishing resources of all kinds (e.g., oil). Out of this intensifing competition, US military bases serve to offer some protection, if only symbolic, of how the US government will use every means to protect and advance the interests of her corporations in the competition to control increasingly scarce resources, wherever they are located. Indeed, the US economy, as it is presently organized, is ever-more dependent on these foreign resources.
There is also the imperative of national hubris, the pride elites have for being a superpower, if only in symbolic terms. America first, the nurturing of patriotism of a certain kind among many Americans, is an extension of this hubris of the higher circles. The alliances that foster domination of friendly nations over their own citizens or others residing in their vicinity is a paramount considertion (e.g., Israel over Palestinians).
In the following article, renown documentarian, journalist, and author John Pilger calls our attention to some of these imperatives. They all have relevance for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other potential wars. Pilger's hope is that US power and the power of its allies (e.g., the United Kingdom) will be increasingly challenged by their own citizens. If this does not happen, we will face ever-emergent wars, or "permanent war."
Bob
-----------------------------------
Barack Obama, Britain and the age of permanent war - http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/18021/1/
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys". The candidates are almost identical political mummies, shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite love America because America allows them to barrack and bomb the natives and call themselves "partners". We should interrupt their fun.
By John PilgerNew Statesman26 March 2010
Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, "bunker-buster" bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of "defence", Robert Gates, complains that "the general [European] public and the political class" are so opposed to war, they are an "impediment" to peace. Remember, this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a "war of perception". Thus, the recent "liberation of the city of Marjah" from the Taliban's "command-and-control structure" was pure Hollywood. Marjah is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, the poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and the parades of flag-wrapped coffins through Wootton Bassett were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
Silent witness
“War is fun", the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is shown to have no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by comparing the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one "who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to 'values'" (Hugo Young, the Guardian) to the public reckoning today of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are threatened not by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the anti-war instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested against Israel's assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police "kettled" thousands, first offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry a custodial sentence. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, such as Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of well-known writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the "market" or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them has spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq's clean water system and lead to "increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease". So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, Unicef noted, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Partners in crime
Norman Mailer once said he believed the US, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a "pre-fascist era". Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. "Fascism" is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the American cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is "more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent".
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state within the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced, perhaps, but the results are unambiguous. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior UN officials in Iraq during the US- and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys". The candidates are almost identical political mummies, shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite love America because America allows them to barrack and bomb the natives and call themselves "partners". We should interrupt their fun.
The US bases are not confined to the Middle East, but also exist in parts of Europe, Central Asia,
South America, and increasingly in Africa. He notes: "The American network of bases is a sign not of military preparedness but of militarism, the inescapable companion of imperialism" (24).
The American military, by far the largest in the world, has been built, expanded, and sustained by a number of imperatives. The American industrial-complex generates its own momentum. Military chiefs want the opportunities to use their vast armies. Corporate executives producing weapons or supplies want to keep expanding. The communities with military bases or other facilities want them kept open. The elected officials in Washington, D.C., are exposed to great lobbying pressure from the weapons-makers and the communities in their districts or states that have military installations.
Another great and growing imperative for the imperalistic reach of the US military is identified by Michael T. Klare in his books, the most recent of which is titled Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (pub. 2008). His basic point is that there is increasing demand for diminishing resources of all kinds (e.g., oil). Out of this intensifing competition, US military bases serve to offer some protection, if only symbolic, of how the US government will use every means to protect and advance the interests of her corporations in the competition to control increasingly scarce resources, wherever they are located. Indeed, the US economy, as it is presently organized, is ever-more dependent on these foreign resources.
There is also the imperative of national hubris, the pride elites have for being a superpower, if only in symbolic terms. America first, the nurturing of patriotism of a certain kind among many Americans, is an extension of this hubris of the higher circles. The alliances that foster domination of friendly nations over their own citizens or others residing in their vicinity is a paramount considertion (e.g., Israel over Palestinians).
In the following article, renown documentarian, journalist, and author John Pilger calls our attention to some of these imperatives. They all have relevance for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other potential wars. Pilger's hope is that US power and the power of its allies (e.g., the United Kingdom) will be increasingly challenged by their own citizens. If this does not happen, we will face ever-emergent wars, or "permanent war."
Bob
-----------------------------------
Barack Obama, Britain and the age of permanent war - http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/18021/1/
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys". The candidates are almost identical political mummies, shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite love America because America allows them to barrack and bomb the natives and call themselves "partners". We should interrupt their fun.
By John PilgerNew Statesman26 March 2010
Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, "bunker-buster" bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of "defence", Robert Gates, complains that "the general [European] public and the political class" are so opposed to war, they are an "impediment" to peace. Remember, this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a "war of perception". Thus, the recent "liberation of the city of Marjah" from the Taliban's "command-and-control structure" was pure Hollywood. Marjah is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, the poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and the parades of flag-wrapped coffins through Wootton Bassett were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
Silent witness
“War is fun", the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is shown to have no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by comparing the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one "who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to 'values'" (Hugo Young, the Guardian) to the public reckoning today of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are threatened not by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the anti-war instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested against Israel's assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police "kettled" thousands, first offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry a custodial sentence. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, such as Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of well-known writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the "market" or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them has spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq's clean water system and lead to "increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease". So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, Unicef noted, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Partners in crime
Norman Mailer once said he believed the US, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a "pre-fascist era". Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. "Fascism" is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the American cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is "more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent".
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state within the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced, perhaps, but the results are unambiguous. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior UN officials in Iraq during the US- and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys". The candidates are almost identical political mummies, shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite love America because America allows them to barrack and bomb the natives and call themselves "partners". We should interrupt their fun.
Friday, March 19, 2010
US and NATO allies prepare for attacks on Kandahar and Kunduz
The article below (after comments and quote) is from Aljazeera-English, http://english-aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/03/2010318152734763348.html
Al-Jazeera reports on the initial forays of US-led military actions around Kandahar in the south and the preparation of NATO (German) troops for offensives in the northern province of Kunduz. The goals of the military actions, as reported by Al Jazeera, are to "shape, take, hold, and build." So far, the military strategy of the US/NATO has not demonstrated that targeted towns and areas can be held and then built up through reconstruction projects. One criticism from right-wing politicians in the US is that the Obama government needs to put even more troops in the country to achieve the goals. We who are opposed to the US intervention and escalation of the "war" in Afghanistan, and who question the rationality of the very notion of a "war on terrorism," remain hopeful that there will be a government commitment to withdrawing combat troops by 2011. We also hope that some reconstruction of what the US government military as helped to destroy, directly and indirectly over the last 30 years, will actually be implemented.
In his book Revolution at the Gates, Philosopher Slavoj Zizek suggests that this war on terrorism in Afghanistan seems the height of hubris, misguided at that, and an economic drain on US resources. Still, as Zizek asks, why Afghanistan?
"The ridicule of America attacking Afghanistan cannot fail to strike us: if the greatest power in the world destroys one of the world's poorest countries, in which peasants barely survive on barren hills, will this not be the ultimate case of impotent acting out? In many ways, Afghanistan is an ideal target: a country that is already reduced to rubble, with no infrastructure, repeatedly destroyed by war for the last two decades...we cannot avoid the surmise that the choice of Afghanistan will also be determined by economic considerations: is it not best procedure to act out one's anger at a country for which no one cares, and where there is nothing to destroy" ( p. 234).
But there are economic reasons to propel this tragic US-led assult that shore up some of the underpinnings of the US empire. It is good for the inflated US military to be able to use its "assets" somewhere in the world. It is profitable for US weapons' producers. It is profitable for US contractors. It is useful for US Afghan allies who endorse the military focus on the Taliban and who benefit from US aid and lack of attention otherwise to how they govern. It helps to distract attention away from the corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and elsewhere in the Middle East and in Central Asia.
Bob
----------------------------------
Al Jazeera reports:
Major Afghan offensive 'under way'
McChrystal said efforts to gradually retake control of Kandahar will "ramp up" in coming weeks [Reuters]
The US has said a new offensive to drive the Taliban from the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar is under way and will steadily "ramp up" in the months ahead.The military and political efforts against the Taliban around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, are the next step in the US-led strategy to end a war now in its ninth year.
General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, said the offensive had begun with initial military and political efforts, including operations to secure key roads and districts."Kandahar is already being shaped," McChrystal said on Thursday, adding that efforts will "ramp up" in the coming weeks and months ahead, lasting "a significant time".
A major offensive in Kandahar, once a Taliban stronghold, would follow the current military operation in neighbouring Helmand province,which appears to have largely pushed back the Taliban and given the government a chance to take control.'Reversing momentum'"What you are going to see in the months ahead, without giving too much detail, is a number of activities to shape the political relationships in and around Kandahar," he said.
McChrystal said there would also be a "series of activities" to boost security, like more partnering with Afghan police inside Kandahar city and boosting troop levels in the surrounding areas.
"If you control the environs around Kandahar, you go a long way to controlling Kandahar," he said.
To win over Afghans, US must listen
McChrystal has not given a timeline for the operation but said last week in Kabul that troops would be at full force for Kandahar operations by the early summer.
Kandahar is the next target in major military operations to eradicate the Taliban from areas they have controlled, in many cases in tandem with drug cartels, over the years since their regime was overthrown in 2001.
Operation Moshtarak- "together" in Dari and Pashto - is the first major test of the strategy of Barack Obama, the US president, to take on the Taliban and end the eight-year conflict with one of the biggest offensives since the 2001 US-led invasion.It is designed to clear Taliban fighters from the Marjah region of the southern province and hold it so that the civilian administration can establish itself.
The strategy comprises military, political and civilian approaches in four stages dubbed "shape, take, hold and build" and aims to ensure that once eradicated, the Taliban threat does not re-emerge.
Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kabul, the Afghan capital, said: "These are the very early stages of the Kandahar offensive.
"We are at the 'shape' phase of the operation, however, there are military offensives being carried out around the city of Kandahar to facilitate a larger offensive in the coming weeks."The campaign in Kandahar is seen as a crucial test of Obama's strategy to reverse Taliban momentum after more than eight years of war.
Initial stages of the strategy aimed at speeding up the war's end began in Kandahar province around November, a Western official told the AFP news agency, on condition of anonymity.
"The emphasis increased last November, and most of it is invisible because it is aimed at understanding the situation on the ground, the political landscape and the human terrain," he said.
"We all understand how important and iconic Kandahar is for the Taliban - it was their first foothold."Taliban stronghold
Zalmai Ayobi, a spokesman for Kandahar governor Turyalai Wisa, said consultations had begun with tribal elders and community leaders as the long-term goal was to "expand good governance to all districts and villages".
Kandahar city, is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul and the birthplace of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until their overthrow in the 2001 US-led invasion.
Suicide attacks are frequently carried out in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold [Reuters]
The Taliban claimed responsibility for a multiple suicide bomb attack on the city last Saturday that killed 35 people,saying it was intended to sabotage the planned offensive.
Bruno Kasdorf, chief of staff at the International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) said there would "definitely" be an operation in the northern province of Kunduz, where most of Germany's 4,300 troops in Afghanistan are based.
He declined to give details but Lieutenant Colonel Michael Kaemmerer, an Isaf spokesman, said it would be similar in "type not the scale" to Moshtarak.
The number of foreign troops under US and Nato command is set to rise to 150,000 by August, with most of the new deployment heading to the south.
The 15,000 US, Nato and Afghan troops currently deployed to Helmand's Marjah and Nad Ali areas for Operation Moshtarak will remain in the province for other offensives there, the spokesman said.
Newly arrived troops would be sent to Kandahar, he said, adding that foreign troops would remain in both provinces to ensure security was maintained and the Taliban did not re-emerge.
But in the battle to win the support of local people, perceptions that Kandahar's leaders are corrupt could be an obstacle to long-term success, military officials have said.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the elected leader of Kandahar's provincial council, has long denied allegations that he has ties to the three-billion-dollar-a-year illicit drug trade.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Al-Jazeera reports on the initial forays of US-led military actions around Kandahar in the south and the preparation of NATO (German) troops for offensives in the northern province of Kunduz. The goals of the military actions, as reported by Al Jazeera, are to "shape, take, hold, and build." So far, the military strategy of the US/NATO has not demonstrated that targeted towns and areas can be held and then built up through reconstruction projects. One criticism from right-wing politicians in the US is that the Obama government needs to put even more troops in the country to achieve the goals. We who are opposed to the US intervention and escalation of the "war" in Afghanistan, and who question the rationality of the very notion of a "war on terrorism," remain hopeful that there will be a government commitment to withdrawing combat troops by 2011. We also hope that some reconstruction of what the US government military as helped to destroy, directly and indirectly over the last 30 years, will actually be implemented.
In his book Revolution at the Gates, Philosopher Slavoj Zizek suggests that this war on terrorism in Afghanistan seems the height of hubris, misguided at that, and an economic drain on US resources. Still, as Zizek asks, why Afghanistan?
"The ridicule of America attacking Afghanistan cannot fail to strike us: if the greatest power in the world destroys one of the world's poorest countries, in which peasants barely survive on barren hills, will this not be the ultimate case of impotent acting out? In many ways, Afghanistan is an ideal target: a country that is already reduced to rubble, with no infrastructure, repeatedly destroyed by war for the last two decades...we cannot avoid the surmise that the choice of Afghanistan will also be determined by economic considerations: is it not best procedure to act out one's anger at a country for which no one cares, and where there is nothing to destroy" ( p. 234).
But there are economic reasons to propel this tragic US-led assult that shore up some of the underpinnings of the US empire. It is good for the inflated US military to be able to use its "assets" somewhere in the world. It is profitable for US weapons' producers. It is profitable for US contractors. It is useful for US Afghan allies who endorse the military focus on the Taliban and who benefit from US aid and lack of attention otherwise to how they govern. It helps to distract attention away from the corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and elsewhere in the Middle East and in Central Asia.
Bob
----------------------------------
Al Jazeera reports:
Major Afghan offensive 'under way'
McChrystal said efforts to gradually retake control of Kandahar will "ramp up" in coming weeks [Reuters]
The US has said a new offensive to drive the Taliban from the southern Afghanistan city of Kandahar is under way and will steadily "ramp up" in the months ahead.The military and political efforts against the Taliban around Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, are the next step in the US-led strategy to end a war now in its ninth year.
General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, said the offensive had begun with initial military and political efforts, including operations to secure key roads and districts."Kandahar is already being shaped," McChrystal said on Thursday, adding that efforts will "ramp up" in the coming weeks and months ahead, lasting "a significant time".
A major offensive in Kandahar, once a Taliban stronghold, would follow the current military operation in neighbouring Helmand province,which appears to have largely pushed back the Taliban and given the government a chance to take control.'Reversing momentum'"What you are going to see in the months ahead, without giving too much detail, is a number of activities to shape the political relationships in and around Kandahar," he said.
McChrystal said there would also be a "series of activities" to boost security, like more partnering with Afghan police inside Kandahar city and boosting troop levels in the surrounding areas.
"If you control the environs around Kandahar, you go a long way to controlling Kandahar," he said.
To win over Afghans, US must listen
McChrystal has not given a timeline for the operation but said last week in Kabul that troops would be at full force for Kandahar operations by the early summer.
Kandahar is the next target in major military operations to eradicate the Taliban from areas they have controlled, in many cases in tandem with drug cartels, over the years since their regime was overthrown in 2001.
Operation Moshtarak- "together" in Dari and Pashto - is the first major test of the strategy of Barack Obama, the US president, to take on the Taliban and end the eight-year conflict with one of the biggest offensives since the 2001 US-led invasion.It is designed to clear Taliban fighters from the Marjah region of the southern province and hold it so that the civilian administration can establish itself.
The strategy comprises military, political and civilian approaches in four stages dubbed "shape, take, hold and build" and aims to ensure that once eradicated, the Taliban threat does not re-emerge.
Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Kabul, the Afghan capital, said: "These are the very early stages of the Kandahar offensive.
"We are at the 'shape' phase of the operation, however, there are military offensives being carried out around the city of Kandahar to facilitate a larger offensive in the coming weeks."The campaign in Kandahar is seen as a crucial test of Obama's strategy to reverse Taliban momentum after more than eight years of war.
Initial stages of the strategy aimed at speeding up the war's end began in Kandahar province around November, a Western official told the AFP news agency, on condition of anonymity.
"The emphasis increased last November, and most of it is invisible because it is aimed at understanding the situation on the ground, the political landscape and the human terrain," he said.
"We all understand how important and iconic Kandahar is for the Taliban - it was their first foothold."Taliban stronghold
Zalmai Ayobi, a spokesman for Kandahar governor Turyalai Wisa, said consultations had begun with tribal elders and community leaders as the long-term goal was to "expand good governance to all districts and villages".
Kandahar city, is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul and the birthplace of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until their overthrow in the 2001 US-led invasion.
Suicide attacks are frequently carried out in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold [Reuters]
The Taliban claimed responsibility for a multiple suicide bomb attack on the city last Saturday that killed 35 people,saying it was intended to sabotage the planned offensive.
Bruno Kasdorf, chief of staff at the International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) said there would "definitely" be an operation in the northern province of Kunduz, where most of Germany's 4,300 troops in Afghanistan are based.
He declined to give details but Lieutenant Colonel Michael Kaemmerer, an Isaf spokesman, said it would be similar in "type not the scale" to Moshtarak.
The number of foreign troops under US and Nato command is set to rise to 150,000 by August, with most of the new deployment heading to the south.
The 15,000 US, Nato and Afghan troops currently deployed to Helmand's Marjah and Nad Ali areas for Operation Moshtarak will remain in the province for other offensives there, the spokesman said.
Newly arrived troops would be sent to Kandahar, he said, adding that foreign troops would remain in both provinces to ensure security was maintained and the Taliban did not re-emerge.
But in the battle to win the support of local people, perceptions that Kandahar's leaders are corrupt could be an obstacle to long-term success, military officials have said.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the elected leader of Kandahar's provincial council, has long denied allegations that he has ties to the three-billion-dollar-a-year illicit drug trade.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Major military offensive in Helmand provice - the effects?
A major test of President Obama’s “surge” policy in Afghanistan is in the offing. The surge, already underway in Helmand province, will add 30,000 additional US troops in Afghanistan, raising the total US troop level to about 100,000. This does not include the additional private contractors who will provide services for the new troops. The principal mission of the additional force, combined with Afghan soldiers and NATO allies, is to find and eliminate the Taliban from areas they control and take measures to keep these areas from falling back into the hands of the Taliban. Once these goals are achieved, so the theory goes, reconstruction and economic development can begin. These are all of the elements of the counterinsurgency strategy that has been adopted by the US generals in Afghanistan and endorsed by the Obama administration.
As reported by Rod Norland in an article for the New York Times today (Feb. 4th), “NATO and the Afghan army are about to launch their biggest joint offensive of the war….” Tony Perry reports for the Los Angeles Times on February 3rd that “US Marines and the Afghan army plan a major assault on Taliban fighters in Marja, the last main community under the militants’ control in what had been a largely lawless [Taliban-controlled] area of the Helmand River Valley….”
According to Wikipedia, “Marjah is a town in the province of Helmand…south-west of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.” Helmand itself is in the southern part of Afghanistan. We also learn that Marja has a population of 85,000 and that there are 1,700 [or so] insurgents in the town.
The Pakistan newspaper, The Nation, reports in its February 4th online issue that “Col. George ‘Slam’ Amland says that the offensive is be a showpiece of the ‘clear, hold, build and transition’ counterinsurgency strategy, in which Taliban fighters are forced out of a region and then a ‘civilian surge’ begins to rebuild war-ravaged community and bolster confidence of Afghan villagers in their provincial and national governments.”
The upcoming attack has been publicized in the hope that the Taliban insurgents in Marja will withdraw without a fight. Nordland’s writes in his New York Times report: “The deliberate publicizing of the offensive – with news conferences, press releases and public pronouncements – is relatively unusual for the military.”
All of this reporting leaves us with serious questions.
If the Taliban fighters leave the city before the US-led offensive begins and the US military can ascertain that they have left, then perhaps Marja and its citizens will be spared the devastation and death that accompanies military battles. But if the US forces face resistance or assume there will be resistance, then the city and its citizens may suffer massive damage. The destruction in 2004 of Fallujah in Iraq is an example of how a city can be laid to waste.
It is also not clear whether the citizens of Marja know about the looming assault. Will they be spared the destruction of an attack or not? Will they flee the city, becoming refugees? Withal, there appears to be no planning for the disruption and harm that may afflict them. The Israelis dropped leaflets in Gaza right before they bombed the strip, but there were no safe places for the Gazans to go.
In his report in the Los Angeles Times, Tony Perry refers to Col. Amland’s optimistic scenario:
“Though the military part of the Marja operation is the most dramatic, the role of US civilian employees, including those from the US Agency for International Development and the Agriculture Department will be even more significant, Amland said. The Afghan government is ready to install local officials to begin reopening schools and clinics and polling residents about what they want their government to do.”
Four points. First, to be more consistent with the evidence, 80% or more of the money spent on the Afghan war – and the Iraq war - has gone to support warfare, not reconstruction and economic development. What such wars do produce are refugees and casualties and more hatred toward the occupiers. Second, the Karzai government has been corrupt and ineffective. Third, insurgents are mobile - and they can withdraw to safer areas and still do harm to occupying forces and unprotected civilian populations. Fourth warlords dominate many of the towns and villages that have long been outside of Taliban control. What about them?
As reported by Rod Norland in an article for the New York Times today (Feb. 4th), “NATO and the Afghan army are about to launch their biggest joint offensive of the war….” Tony Perry reports for the Los Angeles Times on February 3rd that “US Marines and the Afghan army plan a major assault on Taliban fighters in Marja, the last main community under the militants’ control in what had been a largely lawless [Taliban-controlled] area of the Helmand River Valley….”
According to Wikipedia, “Marjah is a town in the province of Helmand…south-west of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.” Helmand itself is in the southern part of Afghanistan. We also learn that Marja has a population of 85,000 and that there are 1,700 [or so] insurgents in the town.
The Pakistan newspaper, The Nation, reports in its February 4th online issue that “Col. George ‘Slam’ Amland says that the offensive is be a showpiece of the ‘clear, hold, build and transition’ counterinsurgency strategy, in which Taliban fighters are forced out of a region and then a ‘civilian surge’ begins to rebuild war-ravaged community and bolster confidence of Afghan villagers in their provincial and national governments.”
The upcoming attack has been publicized in the hope that the Taliban insurgents in Marja will withdraw without a fight. Nordland’s writes in his New York Times report: “The deliberate publicizing of the offensive – with news conferences, press releases and public pronouncements – is relatively unusual for the military.”
All of this reporting leaves us with serious questions.
If the Taliban fighters leave the city before the US-led offensive begins and the US military can ascertain that they have left, then perhaps Marja and its citizens will be spared the devastation and death that accompanies military battles. But if the US forces face resistance or assume there will be resistance, then the city and its citizens may suffer massive damage. The destruction in 2004 of Fallujah in Iraq is an example of how a city can be laid to waste.
It is also not clear whether the citizens of Marja know about the looming assault. Will they be spared the destruction of an attack or not? Will they flee the city, becoming refugees? Withal, there appears to be no planning for the disruption and harm that may afflict them. The Israelis dropped leaflets in Gaza right before they bombed the strip, but there were no safe places for the Gazans to go.
In his report in the Los Angeles Times, Tony Perry refers to Col. Amland’s optimistic scenario:
“Though the military part of the Marja operation is the most dramatic, the role of US civilian employees, including those from the US Agency for International Development and the Agriculture Department will be even more significant, Amland said. The Afghan government is ready to install local officials to begin reopening schools and clinics and polling residents about what they want their government to do.”
Four points. First, to be more consistent with the evidence, 80% or more of the money spent on the Afghan war – and the Iraq war - has gone to support warfare, not reconstruction and economic development. What such wars do produce are refugees and casualties and more hatred toward the occupiers. Second, the Karzai government has been corrupt and ineffective. Third, insurgents are mobile - and they can withdraw to safer areas and still do harm to occupying forces and unprotected civilian populations. Fourth warlords dominate many of the towns and villages that have long been outside of Taliban control. What about them?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
US marines facing a deadly war against Taliban's unconventional tactics
Jason Gutierrez reports for Agence France-Presse on US marine thoughts on their situation in the southeast of Marjah in Afghanistan. The marines who are quoted describe very dangerous conditions and also how they think about just getting back to their families in the states. There is no reference here to larger military goals, although one is left with a sense of pessimism. Marjah is the town the Marines hope to take from the Talabin. It is a town where the farmers grow poppy and and the Talabin intimidate local people from in any way supporting the foreign troops. In short, this appears to be another Afghan locale that will be affected by military assaults from both sides, leaving the people and farmers in worse conditions than they have had.
Bob
-------------------------------
Published on Sunday, January 31, 2010 by Agence France-Presse
US Marines Facing a 'Different War' in Afghanistan
by Jason Gutierrez
SOUTHEAST OF MARJAH, Afghanistan - For the US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, life is fragile and thoughts focus on the day they see their families again, but something about this war is different.
An Afghan farmer watches on as US Marines patrol near a military base near Marjah, central Helmand. For US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, the war is changing with a major offensive on the Taliban urban stronghold of Marjah where the militants are offering stiff resistance.(AFP/Christophe Simon)They are preparing for an offensive on Marjah, one of the Taliban's big urban strongholds in the southern province of Helmand, but progress is slow with the militants apparently preferring fight to flight.
The Marines will soon be joined by tens of thousands more soldiers, the lion's share of the 30,000-strong troop surge promised by US President Barack Obama in December to try and turn around the grinding Afghan war.
A foot patrol for one platoon of Marines ends with a dash under a hail of bullets across a heavily-mined poppy field.
The soldiers have been pinned down in a muddy mound, the thorny weeds cutting through skin. They recover soon enough, however, manoeuvring away from the Taliban's crosshairs and driving them away with heavy machine-gun fire.
"I pray in the morning and at night, hoping that someone up there is looking after me," says Lance Corporal Justin Blancas, serving with the Marines 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment Alpha Company's 2nd Platoon.
"I have already made my peace with God because this war is different, it's not conventional," the 23-year-old bespectacled Chicago native says.
"These Taliban have learned their lesson. They adapt as fast as we do, but we are bound by our strict rules. They are not," he adds, panting after a 100-metre dash for cover behind an abandoned mud house.
"It can be a death run like this every day."
The US and NATO troop surge is set to swell the foreign force to 150,000 this year, but Afghan and Western officials are also talking about a political solution to end the Taliban-led insurgency as its enters its ninth year.
To force the Taliban leadership to the negotiating table however, US military officials have said there needs to be greater success on the battlefield -- and this is where the Marines come in.
But the challenges on the ground are immense. Fields are littered with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) responsible for most of the deaths of foreign troops in Afghanistan, which hit a record 520 fatalities last year. Related article: January Afghan death rate signal of tough 2010
The Taliban are also entrenched in their strongholds holding sway over the population and setting up shadow governments across the country, meaning they have the local intelligence that the Marines desperately need.
"Marjah has also been a stronghold by the Taliban for some time. They know where we are coming and can stage ambushes anytime," says one sergeant who asks not to be named.
Five Marines were killed in southern Afghanistan in two days of January alone in IED blasts and ambushes.
Platoon commander Lieutenant David Emison, a Virginia native and the first Marine in his family, still sports a busted lip and chipped teeth sustained from a recent bomb blast that killed a sergeant.
"They (the Taliban) make very powerful IEDs out here. If you step on them, you don't get a second chance," says Emison, the group's tactician, whose 25-year-old wife is pregnant with their second child back home.
He says that after the incident, he has tried to become more careful about where he treads, but knows that a blast could take any of them anytime.
The ex-college wrestler pushes away ugly thoughts and believes the unpopular war Obama inherited from the past administration will have a positive outcome.
"It does not pay to be scared," he says.
Blancas, meanwhile, arms himself with his assault rifle, two rosaries and prayer cards stuffed in his pockets as the Marines prepare a full-on assault on Marjah in the coming weeks or months.
Marjah has a population of at least 60,000. Built in the 1950s with US government help, it was intended to be a model agricultural town with an irrigation system flowing from the Helmand river.
But instead of legitimate crops, poor farmers plant opium poppy, the trafficking and sale of which bankrolls the Taliban movement.
The Marines' mission is to show US strength, assist in installing government control in Helmand province and let the local population know they have arrived.
The challenge however is huge. Taliban militants harass the villagers at night, warning them of trouble if they help US troops. Under the cover of darkness, they also plant IEDs in fields the Marines have to cross.
For father-of-one Blancas, it all comes down to one simple thing.
"We do what we have to do, but I plan to be out of the corps soon and be daddy. I just have to stay alive till then."
© 2010 Agence France-Presse
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/31-1
Bob
-------------------------------
Published on Sunday, January 31, 2010 by Agence France-Presse
US Marines Facing a 'Different War' in Afghanistan
by Jason Gutierrez
SOUTHEAST OF MARJAH, Afghanistan - For the US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, life is fragile and thoughts focus on the day they see their families again, but something about this war is different.
An Afghan farmer watches on as US Marines patrol near a military base near Marjah, central Helmand. For US Marines deployed to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan, the war is changing with a major offensive on the Taliban urban stronghold of Marjah where the militants are offering stiff resistance.(AFP/Christophe Simon)They are preparing for an offensive on Marjah, one of the Taliban's big urban strongholds in the southern province of Helmand, but progress is slow with the militants apparently preferring fight to flight.
The Marines will soon be joined by tens of thousands more soldiers, the lion's share of the 30,000-strong troop surge promised by US President Barack Obama in December to try and turn around the grinding Afghan war.
A foot patrol for one platoon of Marines ends with a dash under a hail of bullets across a heavily-mined poppy field.
The soldiers have been pinned down in a muddy mound, the thorny weeds cutting through skin. They recover soon enough, however, manoeuvring away from the Taliban's crosshairs and driving them away with heavy machine-gun fire.
"I pray in the morning and at night, hoping that someone up there is looking after me," says Lance Corporal Justin Blancas, serving with the Marines 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment Alpha Company's 2nd Platoon.
"I have already made my peace with God because this war is different, it's not conventional," the 23-year-old bespectacled Chicago native says.
"These Taliban have learned their lesson. They adapt as fast as we do, but we are bound by our strict rules. They are not," he adds, panting after a 100-metre dash for cover behind an abandoned mud house.
"It can be a death run like this every day."
The US and NATO troop surge is set to swell the foreign force to 150,000 this year, but Afghan and Western officials are also talking about a political solution to end the Taliban-led insurgency as its enters its ninth year.
To force the Taliban leadership to the negotiating table however, US military officials have said there needs to be greater success on the battlefield -- and this is where the Marines come in.
But the challenges on the ground are immense. Fields are littered with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) responsible for most of the deaths of foreign troops in Afghanistan, which hit a record 520 fatalities last year. Related article: January Afghan death rate signal of tough 2010
The Taliban are also entrenched in their strongholds holding sway over the population and setting up shadow governments across the country, meaning they have the local intelligence that the Marines desperately need.
"Marjah has also been a stronghold by the Taliban for some time. They know where we are coming and can stage ambushes anytime," says one sergeant who asks not to be named.
Five Marines were killed in southern Afghanistan in two days of January alone in IED blasts and ambushes.
Platoon commander Lieutenant David Emison, a Virginia native and the first Marine in his family, still sports a busted lip and chipped teeth sustained from a recent bomb blast that killed a sergeant.
"They (the Taliban) make very powerful IEDs out here. If you step on them, you don't get a second chance," says Emison, the group's tactician, whose 25-year-old wife is pregnant with their second child back home.
He says that after the incident, he has tried to become more careful about where he treads, but knows that a blast could take any of them anytime.
The ex-college wrestler pushes away ugly thoughts and believes the unpopular war Obama inherited from the past administration will have a positive outcome.
"It does not pay to be scared," he says.
Blancas, meanwhile, arms himself with his assault rifle, two rosaries and prayer cards stuffed in his pockets as the Marines prepare a full-on assault on Marjah in the coming weeks or months.
Marjah has a population of at least 60,000. Built in the 1950s with US government help, it was intended to be a model agricultural town with an irrigation system flowing from the Helmand river.
But instead of legitimate crops, poor farmers plant opium poppy, the trafficking and sale of which bankrolls the Taliban movement.
The Marines' mission is to show US strength, assist in installing government control in Helmand province and let the local population know they have arrived.
The challenge however is huge. Taliban militants harass the villagers at night, warning them of trouble if they help US troops. Under the cover of darkness, they also plant IEDs in fields the Marines have to cross.
For father-of-one Blancas, it all comes down to one simple thing.
"We do what we have to do, but I plan to be out of the corps soon and be daddy. I just have to stay alive till then."
© 2010 Agence France-Presse
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/31-1
Monday, January 25, 2010
Gen. Patraeus says no timetable for ending US occupation of Afghanistan
The important point in the following article on an interview with Gen. Patraeus, the commander of CENTCOM (e.g., including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc), is that Patraeus seems not to acknowledge that President Obama has set a target for the beginning of a withdrawal of US troops in the summer of 2011. Rather, the report suggests that any withdrawal of US troops will not likely begin until some unspecified years after that.
One implication: This is a stark example of the power of the military in US foreign policy. It is also a failure to accept the limits of American military power, a central theme of Andrew J. Backvich's widely read book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.
At the same time, Afghanistan is important to US leaders and advisers because it is located in an oil-rich part of the Casbian-Sea region and close to the biggest reserves of oil that lie in the Middle East. The US, as presently organized, needs this oil for herself and for her strategic allies in Europe and Japan. But there are now other countries who are bidding on or gaining access to the oil reserves in Central Asia and the Middle East, particularly China and Russia.
If the US loses her privileged access to these sources of oil, US international hegemony, already on the wain, would continue to decline. On this point, there is no better source than the work of Michael T. Klare. His most recent book is titled Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.
The upshot: Without her military power, the US is sunk and the capitalist economy is then in deep trouble, that is, unless there is a transformation of its political and economic structure based on a green economy and new cooperative international agreements.
Bob
------------------------------
Gen. Patraeus: Afghan War Will Take Longer Than Iraq
CENTCOM Commander Hasn't Heard Any Talk of a Timetable
by Jason Ditz, January 24, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/24/gen-petraeus-afghan-war-will-take-longer-than-Iraq
In an in-depth interview with the Times of London gearing up for the London Conference on Afghanistan later this week, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus again cautioned that the war was going to “get harder before it gets easier.”
Likening the January 2007 surge in Iraq to President Obama’s December escalation, the general said he thought that the war in Afghanistan was going to take longer than the war in Iraq.
Perhaps even more troubling over eight years after the war began, Gen. Petraeus insisted he still hasn’t heard any talk of setting a timetable for the end of the war, and said any predictions would be “premature.” Several nations had hoped to use the London Conference to set out some sort of exit strategy for the seemingly endless conflict.
In fact, Petraeus suggested that the London Conference would not so much focus on setting a timetable for a transition, but on deciding “what transition actually means.” Though he provided little in the way of detail, it does suggest that officials have abandoned the pretense of starting the pullout in 2011.
One implication: This is a stark example of the power of the military in US foreign policy. It is also a failure to accept the limits of American military power, a central theme of Andrew J. Backvich's widely read book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.
At the same time, Afghanistan is important to US leaders and advisers because it is located in an oil-rich part of the Casbian-Sea region and close to the biggest reserves of oil that lie in the Middle East. The US, as presently organized, needs this oil for herself and for her strategic allies in Europe and Japan. But there are now other countries who are bidding on or gaining access to the oil reserves in Central Asia and the Middle East, particularly China and Russia.
If the US loses her privileged access to these sources of oil, US international hegemony, already on the wain, would continue to decline. On this point, there is no better source than the work of Michael T. Klare. His most recent book is titled Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.
The upshot: Without her military power, the US is sunk and the capitalist economy is then in deep trouble, that is, unless there is a transformation of its political and economic structure based on a green economy and new cooperative international agreements.
Bob
------------------------------
Gen. Patraeus: Afghan War Will Take Longer Than Iraq
CENTCOM Commander Hasn't Heard Any Talk of a Timetable
by Jason Ditz, January 24, 2010
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/24/gen-petraeus-afghan-war-will-take-longer-than-Iraq
In an in-depth interview with the Times of London gearing up for the London Conference on Afghanistan later this week, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus again cautioned that the war was going to “get harder before it gets easier.”
Likening the January 2007 surge in Iraq to President Obama’s December escalation, the general said he thought that the war in Afghanistan was going to take longer than the war in Iraq.
Perhaps even more troubling over eight years after the war began, Gen. Petraeus insisted he still hasn’t heard any talk of setting a timetable for the end of the war, and said any predictions would be “premature.” Several nations had hoped to use the London Conference to set out some sort of exit strategy for the seemingly endless conflict.
In fact, Petraeus suggested that the London Conference would not so much focus on setting a timetable for a transition, but on deciding “what transition actually means.” Though he provided little in the way of detail, it does suggest that officials have abandoned the pretense of starting the pullout in 2011.
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