The Fog of War, Rediva

Afghanistan: The war logs

The Fog of War, Rediva
John Louis Lucaites

The release of the “Afghan War Diaries” has been meet with expressions of outrage from both those who oppose the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan as well as the administration that must now lay claim to the war as its own, but truth to tell, very little has thus far been revealed that we didn’t already know … or at least could have reasonably surmised from the available evidence.

Although it began in the shadow of our occupation in Iraq, our presence in Afghanistan now marks the single longest military expedition in US history—bar none: World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam … you name it. Is it a surprise, in this context, that hundreds (if not thousands) of civilians have been killed or wounded under the sign of “collateral damage”? Or that “friendly fire” has taken the lives of both US troops and its allies? Or that there are special black-ops units that operate under “dubious circumstances” with “capture/kill” lists? Or that the microchip technology that was supposed to provide us with a “bloodless victory” has turned out to be less effective than we imagined? Or that drone missions being executed by private contractors sitting safely before computer monitors in remote locations like Nevada are actually putting troops in the field at greater rather than lesser danger when they fail and have to be retrieved before the enemy finds them? Or that the Afghani military is underpaid and unreliable? Or—revelation of revelations—the US military has misled the public regarding the sophistication of the weaponry being employed against us by the Taliban, such as the use of heat seeking missiles to bring down helicopters? Or that Pakistan is not a trustworthy ally? And on and on and on.

The fact of the matter is that we have been shown evidence of virtually every one of these concerns over the past, long, ten years and we have chosen not to see them. Or perhaps the problem is that the reports of such incidents have been fragmented and piecemeal, and thus easily mitigated as “accidents” animated by human or technological error (take your choice), or rationalized as the “necessary and tragic” cost of a war fought to preserve our freedom. Like the soldier in the photograph above, caught in the rotor wash of a MEDEVAC helicopter and thus incapable of seeing the landscape that is directly in front of him, perhaps we have been caught in the swirl of government and mass media reports—too often indistinguishable from one another—to the point of not seeing (or trusting) what is directly before our eyes: a failed war that daily costs us ever more in dollars and human lives with no end or reversal of fortune in sight.

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Death Squads in Afghanistan

Surprise! US Using death squads in Afghanistan.




I just can't imagine what Obama & Co. Think they're accomplishing by this. Dozens of women and children killed a few days ago...Are we winning hearts and minds yet Barack?

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Petraeus Endeavors to "Win" in Afghanistan

Of course by "win" he means stalemate forever:

Petraeus takes over Afghan fight, vows to win it

Has anything been going on in Iraq lately?

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The Big Caption, Mad Max...Updated

The Big Caption.



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Google Ads May Not Be My Friend? End Of Empires?

Okay, why does Google Ads(above), for the last month or so think I'm conservative Republican? I'm not even sure why I still have them up.
I installed them shortly after I was laid off(7+ months ago) along with the "donate" button as desperate income measures. AND just like the donate button I've yet to make a dime on them. At least the "donate" button just sits there and doesn't actually throw up stuff I often disagree with. So keep this in mind when viewing my page...and those ads.
If(yes if not when) I can get a job AND if I'm still Blogging I'll dump the ads at least. The donate button at least provides some sad amusement.

And speaking of money; While the states have gone broke, Barack Obama is going to be spending another $1 million dollars per soldier per year per 30,000+ in the "Killer of Empires". WAY TO GO CORPORATE WAR machine!

Today's Headline:
The Kentucky Department of Education plans to cut its spending by about $20 million over the rest of this fiscal year, which could affect many programs in local school districts around the state.

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Afghanistan: America's Eternal "War On Drugs" Meets It's Eternal Occupation

With our killer drones and our DEA we'll have their hearts and minds in no time...well, maybe a few decades anyway. Let's ask Russia again how this all worked out for them.

DEA agents among 14 Americans dead in Afghanistan

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Raw Video | Afghan Insurgents Die With Their Bomb

From Current_



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Afghanistan | Walking Into An Ambush

I knew we shouldn't be invading Iraq in 2003 and though I hated the Taliban I didn't really think we should have invaded Afghanistan(other than going in to pluck out Osama Bin Ladin). Years later it's turning into another pointless meatgrinder.
Here's McClatchy's excellent combat reporter Jonathan S. Landay who barely made it out of an ambush that took 4 American marines, 8 Aghan soldiers and an interpreter:

'We're pinned down:' 4 U.S. Marines die in Afghan ambush

"..Four U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday, the most U.S. service members assigned as trainers to the Afghan National Army to be lost in a single incident since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Eight Afghan troops and police and the Marine commander's Afghan interpreter also died in the ambush and the subsequent battle that raged from dawn until 2 p.m. around this remote hamlet in eastern Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border..."

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Obama Fires Top General McKiernan

One other quick note. I see that President Obama just fired the General in charge of the Afghanistan hornet.

Photo here.

It's going to be interesting to see what the "new approach" is and if it'll work. How many of these wars will they have to have(I know, I know, how many wars period) of winning hearts and minds by slaughtering civilians, and then absolving themselves of any blame?

"..Gates went on to insist on the moral superiority of the American military, whose killing of civilians he described as “accidental” as opposed to “deliberate” killing by the Taliban. He went on to charge that the insurgents “mingle with civilians” and use them as “human shields.” Similar claims have been made by every military power engaged in a dirty colonial-style war.."

"..There is overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that the deaths were caused by a US bombardment, including the testimony of survivors as well as photographs and videos that have been taken at the scene, showing demolished houses and villagers picking pieces of US bombs from the rubble.."

Anyway we'll see what it amounts to. Night all

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Winning Hearts and Minds | Afghanistan

Trying to kill flies with sledgehammers.












Photo-Associated Press, Jason Straziuso

"..Afghan officials say an overnight raid Jan. 7 in the village of Masmoot in Laghman killed 19 civilians. A raid in Kapisa on Jan. 19 killed 15 people, mostly civilians. And a second Laghman raid Jan. 23, in Guloch village, killed 16, they say.."

Firedoglake

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Empires Never Learn

I saw this little tidbit in today's paper. Apparently our Afghanistan war is going down the drain faster than we thought. We're pulling troops back to Kabul and losing the countryside?

NYTimes:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Most of the additional American troops arriving in Afghanistan early next year will be deployed near the capital, Kabul, American military commanders here say, in a measure of how precarious the war effort has become.

And

Booman.
the American Empire is repeating the mistakes of the Soviet Empire. And the British Empire before it. Empires never learn, I guess.

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Letters From Afghanistan #1

From Scholars and Rogues here's Connor O'Steen a correspondent who's also working in Afghanistan for PARSA, a non-governmental organization (NGO) specializing in microeconomic development with an emphasis on women and children.

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Dogs, generals, and orphans
by Connor O’Steen

One of the things we have no shortage of in Kabul is dogs. Marnie Gustavson, the executive director of PARSA and the person who’s been nice enough to put me up in Afghanistan, currently has seven dogs living under her roof. It wasn’t exactly that she wanted this many; it was just how it turned out, really...

Continue.

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Barack Obama Lays Out His Foreign Policy

Tuesday in Washington D.C. Barack Obama spelled out his foreign policy concentrating on Iraq and Afghanistan.



Linked.


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Trapped In Afghanistan?

Juan Cole has a great article up(Go read it) about Obama's Iraqi plan and his recent comments about how he wants to shift American troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan's ancient bloody trap:

Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan: A Friendly Critique

"..Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai's army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. "Al-Qaeda" was always Bin Laden's hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.."

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I'd only comment that if our plan becomes how to set up an Afghani "strongman" then we'd need to walk a fine line between the Afghan government and the rights of the people of Afghanistan.

Thanks dday at Hullabaloo.

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Taxi To The Dark Side-Academy Award Winner

Taxi To The Dark Side Won the Oscar for best Documentary last night. In your face Discovery Channel!
















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HBO Will Air "Taxi To The Dark Side"

HBO will air documentary "Taxi To The Dark Side" That the corporate cowards Discovery Channel backed out of.



Taxi to the Dark Side, a documentary about an innocent Afghan taxi driver tortured to death by U.S. officials at Bagram Air Base, has received wide critical acclaim since its debut in April at the Tribeca Film Festival. The New York Times’s A.O. Scott said, “If recent American history is ever going to be discussed with the necessary clarity and ethical rigor, this film will be essential.”

Linked From CandL.

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Now I'll Worry About Malalai Joya

Malalai Joya, grace and courage.

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The US has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan
Malalai Joya

Joya at McGill University in September 2006. The youngest and most outspoken MP in the Afghan parliament, Joya has survived 4 assassination attempts.
Photo: Dru Oja Jay

"..The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the “Northern Alliance”, which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban.

The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our wounded land.

Today the Northern alliance leaders are the key power holders and our people are hostage in the hands of these ruthless gangs of killers. Many of them are responsible for butchering tens of thousands of innocent people in the past 2 decades but are in power and hold key positions in the government.

Let me list few of the key power-holders of Afghanistan:
Karim Khalili, the vice-president, is leader of a pro-Iran party called Wahdat, responsible for killing thousands of innocent people, and named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Ismael Khan, another killer warlord and lackey of the Iranian regime is the minister of water and power.
Izzatullah Wasifi, Afghanistan’s anti-corruption chief has been a convicted drug trafficker who has spent around 4 years in a Nevada state prison in the US.
General Mohammed Daoud, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister in charge of the anti-drug effort, is a former warlord and famous drug-trafficker.
Rashid Dostum, the chief of staff of the Afghan army, is a heartless killer and warlord, named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Qasim Fahim, former defense minister and now a Senator and adviser to Mr. Karzai is the most powerful warlord of the Northern Alliance, and accused of war crimes.

And this list has hundreds of men on it, including Sayyaf, Ulomi, Golabzoi, Rabbani, Qanooni, Mohaqiq, Mullah Rocketi, etc. They should all be removed from power and put on trial for war crimes. In fact all the major institutions in Afghanistan are occupied by warlords and drug-lords. How can we talk about democracy when our legislative, judicial and executive bodies are infected with the viruses of fundamentalism and drug mafia?.."

Continue:

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Remember Afghanistan?

From Matthew Cole at Salon.com.

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Photo here.

Watching Afghanistan fall

.."In November, I traveled with the Army's 10th Mountain Division to Afghanistan's Kunar and Nuristan provinces, the region where Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have been sighted over the past three years, to see how American forces were fighting the "other" war. What I learned is that the war in Afghanistan is going badly. Three years after U.S. forces secured much of the country and helped 10 million Afghans vote in a presidential election, the country has slid back into a dangerous power vacuum, with the Taliban again competing for control of significant sections of the country. Last November, a CIA analysis of the Karzai government found it was losing control, and American ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann warned then that the U.S. would "fail" if the plan for action didn't include "multiple years and multiple billions." Our gains, once held firmly, have been lost and the coming year may portend Afghanistan's future, with ominous rumors floating down from the mountains about a spring offensive by insurgents"..

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.."The Kamdesh base is the northernmost American outpost in Afghanistan, in an area of Nuristan so remote that local villagers asked American troops in August, when they arrived, if they were Russian. The base itself is not more than a quarter-mile wide, on a valley floor, next to a clear, trout-filled river. Three-thousand-foot mountains rise above the base on both sides of the river. A row of Humvees, all mounted with grenade-filled Mark-19 machine guns, face the closest mountain, which nearly hangs over the front of the base. When I was there the soldiers hadn't yet named the base, and had made up their own name, Warheight, for the imposing peak. From Kamdesh, a small outpost near the Pakistani border, to Naray, a larger base 25 miles south, to another border outpost called Camp Lybert, the 10th Mountain Division's 3rd Squadron, 71st Cavalry -- the so-called 3-71 -- was supposed to control a 220-square-mile triangle of territory"..

More: