Tag: Tora Bora

A girl from Tora Bora

Who is this green-eyed child from Nangarhar Province? Why is she wearing so much make-up? Why are her face and hands so dirty?

In December 2001 American invaders almost captured Usama bin Laden in Tora Bora, a system of caves in the Pachir Wa Agam District of Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan, and all sorts of silly explanations supposedly explain how bin Laden got away, but after nine long years of total failure in every district of every province from Nimruz to Nuristan, the real explanation is obvious enough.

We Americans don’t understand fuck-all about Afghanistan, or any of the people in it.  

I’ve always loved the little-known Maurice Hinchey, from New York State.

Back in 2005, I wrote about him in one of my very first Dailykos essays.     Here’s what he said then:

New York congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) delivered a fiery critique of the Bush Administration’s drive to war in Iraq, labeling the push part of a “conspiracy” to deceive Congress and occupy the country.

(snip)

Speaking of the four protesters who spilled their own blood at a military recruiting center, Hinchey said “what they were protesting was the conspiracy of the Administration of George W. Bush to bring about an attack and then an occupation of the country of Iraq, and as a result making the world a much more dangerous and difficult place than it was prior to those actions.”

“It is that conspiracy,” he added, “that conspiracy which has now been documented by among other things official British documents called the Downing Street Memo which are communications between the highest ranking officials of the British government – the head of the British Intelligence, the foreign officer, the prime minister himself.”

Hinchley’s remarks break ranks with most Democrats in Congress, who have been critical of the leadup and operations surrounding the Iraq war, but who have been loath to deliver stinging perorations. The New York Democrat said he saw the trial as somewhat Orwellian — a move towards curtailing speech.

“We do not want to see an end to this democratic republic,” Hinchey quipped. “We want it to be strengthened. We want it to go on forever. We don’t want it to be ended by people who are telling us, or who would like to tell us, what we can do and say and even think. But that’s what this Administration is engaged in.”

No wonder this guy doesn’t get any press.

But check out what he said today:

Rep. Hinchey: Bush ‘intentionally let Bin Laden get away’

Every time Osama bin Laden’s vile visage reappears on America’s television screens, the pundits hyperventilate with excited anticipation of the political benefits for Bush. John Kerry blames his 2004 defeat on bin Laden’s sudden reappearance, on tape, in the days before the election. The calcified conventional wisdom persists that when Americans are reminded of bin Laden and terrorism, they quiver in fear and cower for the cover of their big bad Republican protectors. This is, of course, at best, absurd. In 2004, some right wing shrillmongers even insisted that bin Laden was openly hoping for a Kerry victory. That exact presumptive political calculus actually explains bin Laden’s true motives.

When Bush needs a boost, bin Laden is there to lend a hand. Bin Laden is no fool, and he understands the foolishness of the American media. He understands that they will comply with his true desire, which is to bolster Bush and to help facilitate the continuance of Bush’s national security policies. Unlike the idiots in the American punditocracy, bin Laden is mockingly confident that whatever Bush does will be to bin Laden’s benefit. Never in American history has an American administration’s ineptitude so consistenly benefited America’s enemies.

Once again, because they need be continually explicated, these are the facts: