Tag: Afghanistan

By Kathy Kelly

January 8, 2010

There’s a phrase originating with the peace activism of the American Quaker movement: “Speak Truth to Power.” One can hardly speak more directly to power than addressing the Presidential Administration of the United States. This past October, students at Islamabad’s Islamic International University had a message for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. One student summed up many of her colleagues’ frustration. “We don’t need America,” she said. “Things were better before they came here.”

The students were mourning loss of life at their University where, a week earlier, two suicide bombers walked onto the campus wearing explosive devices and left seven students dead and dozens of others seriously injured. Since the spring of 2009, under pressure from U.S. leaders to “do more” to dislodge militant Taliban groups, the Pakistani government has been waging military offensives throughout the northwest of the country. These bombing attacks have displaced millions and the Pakistani government has apparently given open permission for similar attacks by unmanned U.S. aerial drones.

Every week, Pakistani militant groups have launched a new retaliatory atrocity in Pakistan, killing hundreds more civilians in markets, schools, government buildings, mosques and sports facilities. Who can blame the student who believed that her family and friends were better off before the U.S. began insisting that Pakistan cooperate with U.S. military goals in the region?

I have reached a personal turning point at the beginning of 2010, a year when I was young, I was certain I would meet George Jetson. I’ve been involved in political blogging for about two years now. Certainly not long compared to the impressive seven or so years some can claim, but enough to have brought me to my turning point. I’m a pretty quick study and in some ways this whole experience, among my life experiences, is similar to my dabbling with Christianity in my twenties. A couple years of that and I was also saying, “OK, I get it, what’s next?”

Why have I reached a turning point? I guess the number one reason would be effectiveness. I like to be effective in what I do and I don’t like to waste my time. I don’t need these blogs as a hobby or to feel part of a community. Life is too short. Reason number two is that I am just not into electoral politics. I’ve never campaigned for a candidate, donated money, or been involved in electoral politics in any way other than this brief interlude on the toobs. Since my anti-establishment days in the late sixties to early seventies, I just never bought into the system. Donating money in particular has always seemed sacreligious to me in a way, in how it acquiecses to that system. That isn’t going to change for me.

Life took over since those days and family and career prevented me from investing much time in politics. For those that denigrate the hippies for losing their mojo and joining the establishment, I can just say, the times were a changing after the Vietnam war. The pace of society and the machinations of the political propaganda system simply didn’t allow for another common rallying point after the war, other than the environment. As with many, I got married and had kids. What then were my choices? Go live in a commune and name my kids Moonbeam and Sunshine, or go ahead and get my piece of the American pie. I chose the pie, not that I don’t have regrets.

Then, American dream accomplished, kids grown and out of the house, I had time to check out politics on the internet. From Atari Pong to political blogging in the blink of an eye. Quite an interesting experience for sure, and certainly very educational. Not just from what I learned from other people, but how it instigated me to learn more on my own.

CHEMICAL ALI IRAQ INQUIRY OFFER

Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, will give evidence at the inquiry into the Iraq War

THREE of Saddam Hussein’s most hated henchmen have volunteered to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War.

A lawyer acting for Saddam’s former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, his ex-interior minister Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali ,and his private secretary Humad Humadi wrote to Sir John Chilcot last week.

Giovanni di Stefano said his clients were all prepared to testify and be cross-examined via video link from their prison cells in Iraq….>>>>>

How many people in America are at all aware of this?

Afghans burn Obama effigy over civilian deaths

By Samoon Miakhail (AFP) – 3 days ago

JALALABAD, Afghanistan – Protesters took to the streets in Afghanistan on Wednesday, burning an effigy of the US president and shouting “death to Obama” to slam civilian deaths during Western military operations.

Hundreds of university students blocked main roads in Jalalabad, capital of eastern Nangahar province, to protest the alleged deaths of 10 civilians, mostly school children, in a Western military operation on Saturday.

“The government must prevent such unilateral operations otherwise we will take guns instead of pens and fight against them (foreign forces),” students from the University of Nangahar’s education faculty said in a statement.

Marching through the main street of Jalalabad, the students chanted “death to Obama” and “death to foreign forces”, witnesses said.

The protesters torched a US flag and an effigy of US President Barack Obama in a public square in central Jalalabad, before dispersing.

“Our demonstration is against those foreigners who have come to our country,” Safiullah Aminzai, a student organiser, told AFP.

“They have not brought democracy to Afghanistan but they are killing our religious scholars and children,” he added.

Man, these people have no appreciation whatsoever.  We come to their country, spend trillions of dollars doing it, just trying to help them.   If only these people would change, dude!

I really don’t see what they’ve got to be angry about.

US forces ‘kill 8 children’ in night raid on village in Afghanistan

UNITED States troops have been accused of dragging innocent Afghan civilians from their beds and shooting them at close range, in a night raid that left ten people dead.

Government investigators said eight schoolchildren had been killed and all but one of the victims was from the same family. Locals said some had been handcuffed before they were killed.

But western military sources insisted the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have claimed countless soldiers’ and civilians’ lives.

I am outraged, OUTRAGED, that the CIA should have to put up with a few deaths in their ranks, when they have recently been planning raids that kill Afghan children.  

We kill eight of their children, they kill eight of our CIA guys.  

And the CIA just can’t believe it happened.  

Yes, how DARE they.  

Meanwhile, Americans have absolutely no idea that any of this happened.   Except for the CIA guys actually getting whacked.   Just like in Iraq, when the Iraqis dragged those Blackwater guys from their car and burned them and hung their bodies from a bridge, Americans had NO IDEA that that was in response to Abu Ghraib.   None.  And they still don’t.

Meanwhile, CNN continues with its round the clock “TERRORGASM”.  

Yeah, who’s the terrorist again?   We are.  

Happy New Year.    

Sure hope it’s an improvement over 2009.

This will be short.  

I don’t know how to deal with this piece except to quote from Chris Floyd himself:

Here is another story in the news: in an isolated rural province in Afghanistan, 10 people were killed in a raid by American-led forces. The Afghan government, installed and sustained in power by the United States, said the victims were all civilians — including eight schoolboys.

But there was no international outcry about this incident; it barely garnered a few mentions in the global press. And even these were quickly shunted aside after a NATO official denied the claims of the Afghan government, and affirmed that all those killed in the raid were evil-doers. As the NYT reports:

A senior NATO official with knowledge of the operation said that the raid had been carried out by a joint Afghan-American force and that its target was a group of men who were known Taliban members and smugglers of homemade bombs, which the American and NATO forces call improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s. … “When the raid took place they were armed and had material for making I.E.D.’s,” the official added.

Local officials on the scene in Kunar Province said otherwise. They said 10 civilians had been killed. They said eight of the dead were children:

The governor of Kunar, Fazullah Wahidi, said that “the coalition claimed they were enemy fighters,” but that elders in the district and a delegation sent to the remote area had found that “10 people were killed and all of them were civilians.”

But the NATO official said the Afghans were lying. We will never know the whole truth, of course, for the story will ultimately be controlled by the very force that carried out the attack: the American-led military occupation.

But what an instructive contrast. In one story, an attack which did not happen and which killed no one shakes the entire world. In another story, ten human beings, including eight children, were slaughtered in a sneak attack by night — and the world can scarcely be bothered to notice.

I should start by saying this essay focuses on money, not the number of US military lives spent or those of the Iraq and Afghanistan citizens, and not the horrendous cost to the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan.  If I had my way, that would be the true cost and the ultimate reason to end the wars.  But the American public has become so apathetic to the sins of war, it seems the only thing that may awaken them enough to stop the madness is to appeal to their greed.

The United States military, NATO, and it’s hired guns will be in the Middle East and Central Asia for at least ten more years.   Regardless the promises made by Obama, or the SOFA agreement with Iraq, there is no way military forces will be out of, or even drawing down from, either country by the end of 2011.   The counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts currently being deployed as ordered by CINC Obama and directed by Generals Petreaus, Odierno and McChyrstal in both countries are generally agreed upon by experts as tactics that could take decades.  

But probably not here in the states, for we’re a Nation of Arrogance and Apathy, but Fear and what we call our Politics rules our critical thoughts and common sense and especially fear of bringing possible extreme criminal leaders, and their support groups, to justice!

The Chilcot Iraq War Inquiry is on a break for the holidays. Holidays of celebrating the birth of the ‘prince of peace’ from one religious ideology as well as other celebrations from this worlds other religious ideologies, all of these based on a number of religious themes and teachings but one stands out that isn’t followed ‘tolerance’ of each other and even outside of religions the racial and religious makeup of others.

There are many for if there is an end it doesn’t come for decades later for those invaded and occupied by others. The innocent are the ones who suffer the most and in greater numbers by the destruction and death from the moment of invasion and decades later with what’s left behind by those who are ordered to invade and then occupy in these Wars of Choice based on lies or for reasons of material worth a small country can add to a power that wants to control.

This is just one of many of the long running destructive remnants of our generations War of Choice, an extremely destructive Weapon of Mass Destruction, Dioxin, Agent Orange and the others used as we occupied a small country Vietnam for over a decade. Destructive not only to the Vietnamese Civilians, then and now, but also to many soldiers who served in country and elsewhere, where it was stored and packaged for shipment to Vietnam and stored at bases to be sprayed over the country at the whim of the commanders of war.