At Westpoint last week, President Barack Obama announced a much awaited troop surge in the Afghan war he has inherited, and now expanded. Some 30,000 troops, and an untold number of contractors/support staff, would be sent to Afghanistan in the hopes of stabilizing the shattered country. What was lost to the many media pundits who discussed the speech later, is that this is hardly the first "surge" President Obama has implemented. A previous unremarked surge happened in March, when 21,000 U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan. There have been previous increases in intelligence members and private contractors steadily since November 2008.
In the following article Tom Engelhardt recounts what he calls the "9 Surges of Barack Obama." Time will tell if we'll see a 10th....
The Nine Surges of Obama’s War
How to Escalate in Afghanistan
By Tom Engelhardt
In his Afghan “surge” speech at West Point last week, President Obama offered Americans some specifics to back up his new “way forward in Afghanistan.” He spoke of the “additional 30,000 U.S. troops” he was sending into that country over the next six months. He brought up the “roughly $30 billion” it would cost us to get them there and support them for a year. And finally, he spoke of beginning to bring them home by July 2011. Those were striking enough numbers, even if larger and, in terms of time, longer than many in the Democratic Party would have cared for. Nonetheless, they don’t faintly cover just how fully the president has committed us to an expanding war and just how wide it is likely to become.
Despite the seeming specificity of the speech, it gave little sense of just how big and how expensive this surge will be. In fact, what is being portrayed in the media as the surge of November 2009 is but a modest part of an ongoing expansion of the U.S. war effort in many areas. Looked at another way, the media's focus on the president’s speech as the crucial moment of decision, and on those 30,000 new troops as the crucial piece of information, has distorted what’s actually underway.
In reality, the U.S. military, along with its civilian and intelligence counterparts, has been in an almost constant state of surge since the last days of the Bush administration. Unfortunately, while information on this is available, and often well reported, it’s scattered in innumerable news stories on specific aspects of the war. You have to be a media jockey to catch it all, no less put it together.
What follows, then, is my own attempt to make sense of the nine fronts on which the U.S. has been surging, and continues to do so, as 2009 ends. Think of this as an effort to widen our view of Obama’s widening war.
Full article here.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Obama's 9 Surges
Monday, November 30, 2009
That "Bitch of a War"
As President Obama prepares to announce what will most likely be an increase in troops in Afghanistan Tuesday night in the midst of a troubling economy, high unemployment and other domestic issues, I could not help but be reminded of the regretful lament of a previous leader, whose blind loyalty to a war ruined his more lofty ideals...
"I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucifed either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved-the Great Society-in order to get involved in that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs…. But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe."--LBJ on Vietnam
Tragic. Michael Moore has more to say...
An Open Letter to President Obama From Michael Moore
Dear President Obama,
Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.
Full letter here.
Friday, May 8, 2009
The Lies of War
An injured Afghan child at the hospital in Farah province.
This past Monday and Tuesday U.S. air strikes struck at "suspected militants" in the western province of Afghanistan. When the smoke cleared, perhaps over 130 Afghan civilians lay dead. What followed next were a series of denials by the Pentagon and a bizarre cover-up that ended in an eventual admission by U.S. officials by week's end. As the Obama administration moves along with plans for a "surge" in the region, this nexus of so-called "collateral damage" and military propaganda may be an ominous vision of what's to come for the people of Afghanistan and the American public.
On Monday and Tuesday, in the Western province of Farah in Afghanistan, following a U.S. air strike, some 130 or more people--civilian men, women and children--lay dead. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an apology for the bombing, but the U.S. maintained only 15 civilians were killed in the aerial bombardment. After the governor of the region however began speaking of "tractor trailers full of pieces of human bodies," the U.S. changed it's position--somewhat. The official Pentagon line became that the high death toll was carried out by the Taliban, staged in a way to frame the U.S. Late Wednesday it was being claimed that Marine special operations forces believed the Afghan civilians were "killed by grenades hurled by Taliban militants, who then loaded some of the bodies into a vehicle and drove them around the village, claiming the dead were victims of an American air strike." U.S. officials even managed to find evidence that a senior Taliban commander was said to order the grenade attack.
This bizarre claim, which would have been the first for the Taliban, went over like a lead brick in Afghanistan and much of the Middle East. Local villagers, and some decent foreign reporters, began to ask how Taliban guns and grenades could flatten houses and kill so many. And the International Red Cross reported on the devastation the bombings caused.
By Thursday, the Pentagon' version of events began to show cracks. And an official admitted to the New York Times that initial claims of a Taliban massacre was “thinly sourced.” In the meantime, thousands of Afghans have marched in the capital to protest the U.S. air strikes, the continuing occupation and the propped up government in Kabul. Afghan security forces of the emerging democratic state shot at the protesters, And the anger, along with continued denials by the U.S. government, is only growing. Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues undaunted with its plans to place 21,000 more troops on the ground and is seeking support to ramp up its war effort.
This scenario where Americans burn down villages to save them, and then blame civilian casualties on vicious enemy propaganda, is not a new tactic. Replace Afghanistan for Vietnam and Taliban for Vietcong, and it's 1968 all over again. Then, like now, even in the face of such horrors, the Pentagon war machine and the administration that authorizes it, continue along with their notions of expanding the fight which can only be won with more blood, treasure, "regrettable collateral damage" and firm moral resolve.
And we know how well that ended...
More on the lies of war below:
After U.S. Strikes, Afghans Describe 'Tractor Trailers Full of Pieces of Human Bodies'
By Jeremy Scahill, Rebel Reports. May 7, 2009.
Rage spreads in Afghanistan after a U.S. bombing kills some 130 people; Meanwhile the Pentagon spins a cover-up and Obama readies more troops.
Full story here.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Will the Afghan War Get You a Job?
The Afghan war currently runs some $2 billion a month. When all is said and done, with a current proposed "surge" in that Central Asian country, the cost could come to over $1 trillion. Above is the trailer to Cost of War, part three of the Rethink Afghanistan documentary by Robert Greenwald at the Brave New Foundation, which delves into the financial costs of a broadening war.
See full segment below. Read and see more at Rethink Afghanistan.
Friday, March 27, 2009
The "Good" War
A young Afghan boy stands among the ruined remains of his home after an August 2008 airstrike in Azizabad killed 33 civilians. Until UN and international pressure was brought to bear, the US military had previously claimed the number of dead was six.
Our war in Afghanistan began almost 3,000 days ago, on October 7, 2001. Our war in Afghanistan has lasted longer than World War I, World War II, the Civil War, the Korean War, the first Gulf War in Iraq and the second Gulf War in Iraq. If we are still fighting in Afghanistan a year from now, the war will have lasted longer than the American Revolution. Children who were born on the day the war began are now halfway through grammar school.
Sobering reflections like those offered by columnist William Rivers Pitt at Truthout speak to the ongoing unquestioned occupation and "war" of Afghanistan.
More after the fold...
That the hunt for al-Qaeda necessitated an invasion and regime change in the Central Asian country is at times so sacrosanct that to suggest otherwise is considered heresy if not treason. With the ruins of the twin towers and the broken hull of the Pentagon warship still smoldering in September of 2001, the US Congress rushed near unanimously to demand justice and vengeance, with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) the lone voice urging caution. And the repressive, über misogynist Taliban have only allowed the war's defenders to expand its mission beyond anti-terrorism, and instead as a crusade of democratic freedom and women's rights--which bombs that kill civilians should somehow bring about. The unthinkable notion that the war could expand, to include the unstable nuclear armed Pakistan, is now taken as normal. So common has this idea of Afghanistan as the "good war" become, that even the "progressive" think tank Center for American Progress has put out its own battle plans for how to bring "security" to Afghanistan--complete with a ramp up in military forces and an extended colonial occpuation well into a decade, or more.
Challenges to this "groupthink" have been made by the reasonable, but their voices are too often sidelined or ignored--particularly by the current administration, whose ears seem to be filled with the whispers of hawks who promise they can enforce peace. Never mind the current voices warning against "surges" in Afghanistan were the same warning against the Iraq War, while those urging more war in Aghanistan were cheerleaders or silent partners in 2003 for Bush's invasion plans; it seems in American foreign policy you can only fail up.
It leaves Pitt to ask a profound troubling question:
Is the Obama administration simply working with the hand it was dealt by George W. Bush, or are the same Bush administration mistakes about to be committed all over again?
I suppose time will tell.
Read the rest of the William Rivers Pitt article Enduring Freedom here.
Also check out Normon Solomon's These Colors Won't Run...Afghanistan that asks much the same.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Getting Afghanistan Right
So it's official. President Obama yesterday announced plans to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. The "undebated war," often referred to as the "good war," is about to get its very own "surge." This is nothing new from Obama. Throughout his campaign, he has long used Afghanistan and the surrounding region as his "look-and-talk-tough" Democratic issue, hoping to counter his more hawkish rivals. Many, including myself, disagreed heavily with this stance, but kept quiet (mostly) about it. That is, we voiced our disapproval but didn't make it a massive issue. Now it's reckoning day. And there's a sinking feeling as we watch a would-be progressive President try to subjugate a region that has left other would-be empires broken and scattered in its deserts. As if eight years isn't enough; as if US and NATO airstrikes haven't alienated the populace; as if a corrupt propped up government in Kabul hasn't helped Taliban recruiting efforts even more, we want to throw another 17,000 troops and a few billion dollars at it.
Attempting to form a constructive stance on the issue, writers and bloggers including Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, Alex Thurston and Jason Rosenbaum of The Seminal, and Howie Klein of DownWithTyranny, has put together a project termed "GetAfghanistanRight" whose purpose is to both talk directly to President Obama and inform the larger public.
More after the fold.
We oppose military escalation in Afghanistan and support non-military solutions to the conflict.
Get Afghanistan Right
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Media News Roundup- Sunday July 1st to Sat July 7th
Are You Enslaved by the Corporate Media ?
Keeping an eye on the failing Fourth Estate and looking for some TRUTH in journalism.
Media follows GOP talking point on Libby commutation furor being a partisan issue, failing to make connection to larger factors. Media under reports UN study showing more Afghans killed by NATO forces than Taliban. Bright spot of the week: Keith Olbermann at MSNBC speaks out strongly about Libby commutation and the White House administration.
Media Misses the Importance of the Libby Case and Commutation
President Bush's decision to commute the sentence of Vice President Cheney's former top aide I. "Scooter" Libby made a great deal of news this week, but fell shy of offering any context. Reducing the incident to merely "partisan" bickering, media pundits and journalists followed the White House and GOP talking point claiming Libby had only been charged with "lying." In reality, Libby was deeply embroiled in the question of who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's undercover status. The reason that he was charged with perjury and not any other charges, was because his very act of lying and obstruction of justice hindered the investigation of Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Whatever else Libby, and by extension his boss Vice President Dick Cheney were involved with, was impossible to uncover in full--and thus prosecute--because Libby continually lied. *That* was why he was charged with perjury and sent to jail. Furthermore, the entire matter of the outting of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent was the result of her husbands' (former Iraq ambassador Joseph Wilson) challenge of the White House's WMD claim involving now debunked claims of Saddam Hussein receiving uranium from Niger. This is the missing context that too many journalists seem willing to let fall to the wayside, thus denying their audiences from fully understanding the full meaning of these events.
Media Silence on UN Report: NATO Strikes Kill More Civilians Than Taliban
Buried far beneath the headlines, a UN report released this past Friday summarized that NATO air strikes--which have stepped up in the past year--have killed more Afghans than the Taliban insurgents they were intended to target. Over 500 Afghan civilians have been reported killed this year, and the rate has dramatically increased in the last month. Other accounts by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Associated Press offered different counts, but agreed that more civilians were killed by NATO troops than by Taliban militants thus far in 2007. The climbing death toll has inflamed tensions among regular Afghans, forcing even the NATO installed President Karzai to speak out. On June 23, in response to the deaths of more than 100 civilians in a single week at the hands of U.S. and NATO forces, President Karzai called for investigations. "Afghan life is not cheap," he stated angrily, "and it should not be treated as such." Other than a few online news sources, the story has gotten little traction in the larger American press.
Keith Olbermann at MSNBC Speaks Out Strongly About Libby and the White House Administration
Olbermann gives a refreshing reminder of the important role journalism should be playing in our social and political system:
