One of the concerns I've had about the president's upcoming decision on his commanders' recommendation to further escalate the Afghanistan occupation is that if we expect him to offer a different course than his hawks proscribe, where (in his administration) will he get that contrary advice and support? The president has willingly surrounded himself with a majority of Bush holdovers in his military leadership who are predictably advocating following their orchestrated conflict in Afghanistan all the way through to some 'win' or success. The future they envision for the U.S. military in Afghanistan is a decades-long commitment with an indefinite end. It doesn't appear that any dissenting voices have made their way to the top of the debate in the White House and the Pentagon which would counsel a reverse in course and a hasty exit from the eight-year-plus occupation. Where is the support in the administration for the exit that progressives in his party argue for? This is a time where I deeply wish the president had given as much consideration to having a progressive representative in a visible, elevated role in his military leadership as he apparently did in choosing to retain a majority of conservatives from the last administration.

My most important concern, however, is with the president's own reflexive tendency to compromise. The early reports (believable, if not conclusive) are that he intends to split the difference between his own inclination to pursue 'al-Qaeda' in Pakistan and his commanders' advice to garrison the Afghan enclaves (ala Bush's last stand in Baghdad) while provoking the Taliban resistance in the south with the rest of the increased forces.

That course is intended to satisfy both ambitions, but my fear is that the sole decision to remain offensively engaged in Afghanistan will irrevocably commit the U.S. to an end-game which has eluded invaders of Afghanistan throughout history who have sought to transform the country with their military. The entire NATO enterprise is balanced on bribes and dubiously conquered territory with a widely disliked and disregarded government we've enabled into power - Karzai's corrupt regime expected to lead the country away from the objectionable influences of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. This is the state of affairs which the military is busy assuring the president is 'necessary' to achieve his stated goals to 'dismantle and defeat' al-Qaeda in the country and the region.

It's no wonder why the militarized resistance in Afghanistan has been reported to be gaining power and influence, despite the efforts of the NATO forces. It won't matter to the rest of the country what form the central government we're feathering in Afghanistan takes on if it's influence is restricted to 'green-zoned' enclaves behind the protection of our military.

Gareth Porter reports today that the foreign troops' presence and activity in Afghanistan is dependent on exorbitant payments to warlords to facilitate their 'safe' movement around the country. When it's said that our forces are there defending the central government, it shouldn't be forgotten that American and NATO forces have played it fast and loose with opportunistic alliances with individuals and groups who almost certainly harbor elements which actively threaten that central authority.

Civilian officer Matthew Hoh, in his resignation letter, complained that our forces were defending a corrupt government against a Pashtun insurgency. That's much different from the description of the state of conflict the administration has defined as al-Qaeda-loving Taliban threatening the government we've enabled into power. It's no wonder the population is ambivalent about throwing their full support behind Karzai. With all of the money thrown around to these warlords and other regional leaders in Afghanistan, there's going to be an undue amount of influence they'll be able to wield in the provinces, quite independent and immune from any of the expectations we may demand from the central government.

It's a sure bet that our troops will eventually be fighting and dying at the hands of these insurgent groups that we're opportunistically giving aid and comfort to. Right now, the plan seems to be to create some sort of Potemkin state of 'stability' in Afghanistan with these payments (more included in the Defense bill the president just signed) to the warlords. The endurance of that purchased stability will depend on how long we can keep up the bribes and what happens when the payments stop.

It's just not credible to expect that our military forces can maintain and expand their operations in Afghanistan to some ideal end where our national security can't be defined as at-risk in some form by someone bent on winning something or other there. We could just as easily make up a definition of victory right now and proceed to leave. If not, any decision by the president to continue on in Afghanistan, in any form, will be an indefinite commitment which will certainly escalate the violence and instability before anyone will be able to manage to tamp all of that down.

Eugene Robinson argues in his column today that President Obama can't just split the difference in Afghanistan. He writes:



More to the point, I believe the president's intention is to string the Afghanistan occupation out to a point where he can find political consensus in Congress to withdraw, much like Bush and Iraq. It's instructive to observe how the president willingly embraced Bush's opportunistic agreement with the Iraqi government to leave the country (not until he was safely tucked away in Crawford). By accepting the premise and substance of Bush's autocratic agreement with the Iraqis, the president committed our troops another danger-filled wait for another round of meaningless Iraqi elections which were supposed to transform the enabled regime into a popular and influential item. To his credit, the president appears ready to declare victory for Bush's war of choice and eventually withdraw, but if you believe the U.S. has done anything more there than barely pull up it's pants to leave after it's brutal assault you haven't been paying attention.

If the president opts for that kind of eventual end to our grudging invasion of Afghanistan, he'll find that our military forces won't be regarded there as anything more than the self-interested occupiers that Iraq has been anxious to part with. As Mr. Robinson says, "It's time to raise or fold." In or out.

I saw the Sat. Nite Live skit last night where the pretend president is listing his challenges and marks the major ones as unfinished or undone. MTP played the clip and Gregory asks the panel to comment, and Maddow says it's ridiculous to expect the president to have ended Bush's wars in less than a year.

Fair enough. There is a reasonable dynamic where the president (and his defenders) are able to deflect criticism of his continued occupations by asserting that it's to be expected that he hasn't 'solved' these military missions.

But, most of the criticism from the left has been about the president's priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq than about some 'success' in whatever military missions the president has planned to pursue. The notion that there is some threat to the U.S. from these occupied nations which needs to be defended against with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops is far-fetched and misleading. There has been more of a threat from the hapless terror plot the Justice Dept. is prosecuting in the eastern U.S. than from the incidental and opportunistic resistance to the NATO and American assaults across sovereign borders in the Middle East and Asia.

The argument that I understand and accept from the 'left' is that our nation should not be staging these military defenses of either the government of Iraq or Afghanistan with the expectation of some 'political' solution that will bring about the 'elimination' or 'defeat' of al Qaeda. The argument that I've been supporting is that our very military presence and activity in these regions has 'fueled and fostered' violent resistance in these occupied nations in a self-perpetuating cycle of attacks and reprisals. That cycle of violence won't end without the most aggravating element of our foreign invasions removed completely.

The policy of the new president has been to double down (at least in the short term) and dig in (in Iraq), instead of following the logic that our very involvement in these escalated occupations has been folly and counterproductive to the stated goals. Just asserting that the president hasn't 'solved' these military missions ignores the assertions by the opposition to Bush (much of that opposition from the election campaign) that the entire military enterprise in Iraq was bogus and opportunistic, and that 'nation-building in Afghanistan was not a legitimate enterprise for our military forces.

The fact that this president has accepted most of the flawed premises about Bush's military missions and has now set out to make good on them is at the heart of the opposition to continuing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not a mere point about expecting some 'success' in what the president has embarked on in Iraq and Afghanistan. The point of the opposition is that this president has accepted flawed reasoning for these occupations and is intent on seeing that reasoning through to some expected end. 'We haven't yet furthered 'democracy' in Afghanistan' and the like.

But, the 'left' hasn't asked this president to try and further (or create) democracy behind the force of our military - in Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else. We've demanded an END to the military meddling abroad. Looking for some sort of 'success' out of all of this continued militarism is the expectation of our republican opposition, not our liberal left.

With the recent flurry of reports of requests by 'commanders in the field' for the deployment of more troops to Afghanistan - and the hesitation by the White House to offer any echo of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen's apparent desire to further escalate the occupation - there's a question as to where the notion actually originated. The lack of any clear sign that the recent escalation of force has gotten us any closer to either reconciliation or victory over our nation's opponents in Afghanistan may be what has caused President Obama to shy away from outright agreeing with the general, but he's going to be pressed, anyway, in the coming weeks, to (re)define the future of his mission there (in light of the consequences of the Afghan's disputed and widely discredited elections) in ways which will convince Americans that both his commitment and his approach are reasonable and doable. There are signs that instead of tripling the military commitment in Afghanistan, the president is considering focusing most of the military effort in the near future on 'defeating' al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

The president has made clear with his declaration of U.S. military goals in Afghanistan that he has increased the commitment of forces there in the belief that al-Qaeda and their Taliban supporters in the region can ultimately be "eliminated or "defeated". However, assessments in McChrystal's leaked memo and by others show the insurgency growing and gaining influence in Afghanistan, despite the increased U.S.-led military offensive and the completion of the elections there which were supposed to produce the political stability the administration has argued is essential to any successes assumed to be achieved by the escalated raids and assaults against the resistance forces.

In televised remarks Sunday on 'Meet the Press', Mr. Obama said the question he's asking those who are advocating increased military presence and action in Afghanistan is: "How does it make sure that al-Qaida and its extremist allies cannot attack the US homeland, our allies, our troops who are based in Europe?"

"If supporting the Afghan national government and building capacity for their army and securing certain provinces advances that strategy, then we'll move forward," the president said. "But if it doesn't, then I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face or, in some way, you know, sending a message that America is here for the duration."

That's as clear a statement of reservations from the president about military involvement in Afghanistan as he's offered, so far, as president. Most of his comments about Afghanistan (before the recent elections there) have appeared to be directed toward those who were looking to find some resolve from the new administration to continue the military campaign that candidate Obama had complained was inadequate to the task of confronting and eliminating any threat to U.S. from fugitive al-Qaeda and their allies in the region.

Indeed, even as the White House attempted to put the lid on escalation reports, the republican opposition in Congress looked to pressure the president into following through on his stated commitments to military action and to support the leaked calls for more troops. A "deeply troubled" House Minority Leader John A. Boehner said in a statement that, "It's time for the President to clarify where he stands on the strategy he has articulated," Boehner said, "because the longer we wait the more we put our troops at risk."

Despite his reticence though, to dig our troops in any further into the Afghan soil, it doesn't look at all like the president is ready to completely abandon his ambitious military campaign to "defeat" al-Qaeda. AP reported yesterday that one alternative to increasing the size of the U.S. military contingent in Afghanistan may be to step up the number of drone (unmanned) aerial attacks on targets in Pakistan. That strategy, however, has been hailed as a success by the military, but panned by the Pakistanis caught in the way of the seemingly arbitrary and tragically collateral U.S. air attacks across their sovereign borders from Afghanistan.

All of the speculation about troop increases stems from a report prepared for Gen. McChrystal from which he's expected to make recommendations for the way forward for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. What may be lost in all of the punditry is that U.S. policy regarding Afghanistan and the region in conflict will ultimately be directed from the White House, not the Pentagon. The president is looking at a number of options which may not necessarily center on the role of just the combat forces which have been deployed to facilitate the elections just held.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, yesterday, answered those anxious to promote the yet-to-be-announced requests for more troops, asserting that, "We have a process going on with respect to our strategy in Afghanistan. As the president has said, it's strategy before resources."

"We're soliciting and receiving advice and assessments from a broad range of those who are directly involved , and of course we welcome General McChrystal's thoughts. But that's a classified pre-decisional memo, and we are looking to integrate everything that we're doing, and then of course the president will make his decisions," she said.

Some of the individuals who are attempting to influence the president's Afghanistan policy are apparently having some success in acting outside of the administration. Spencer Ackerman at the 'Washington Independent' reports that neoconservative vigilantes, Fred and Kim Kagan contributed to the Pentagon review which reportedly calls for up to an additional 40,000 troops to be sent to Afghanistan, and are now issuing their own call for a 40,000 to 45,000 increase in an article Monday hawking their insider's view of the recommendations in McChrystal's leaked 66-page memo.

More troops to Afghanistan may well be inevitable. Even critics in Congress who have expressed reservations about sending additional troops to Afghanistan (like Democratic Sen. Carl Levin) have spoken about their desire to, nonetheless, provide more U.S. 'training' forces to speed the development of the Afghan military so they, in turn, can provide the future security for their government and their citizens.

Whatever the generals ultimately present to the president as a way forward for the military in Afghanistan, there will need to be an increased acknowledgment of the limits of military power in achieving even the modest political goals set out by the administration. The mixed results of the Afghan elections and the almost negligible effect on the balance of power outside of Kabul (a majority adhering to the tribal leadership of the Taliban and others over the influence and control of Afghanistan's central government) expose the administration's nation-building behind the force of our military as the crap-shoot almost everyone expected it to be.

Facing limited resources (both money and manpower) available to fulfill all of the desires to escalate the occupation of Afghanistan, President Obama is now challenged (either by process or deliberate manipulation of the leaked review) to be more specific about what our future military role is in Afghanistan. It looks, more and more, that our new president is not going to be willing to invest his political capital in defending a unpopular military campaign in Afghanistan at the expense of a focus on his domestic priorities and ambitions. His statement that, he's "not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face or, in some way, you know, sending a message that America is here for the duration," is encouraging. We'll see . . .

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you." -- Lincoln


THE Obama Justice Dept. has announced their decision to allow prisoners the U.S. military and other American intelligence agencies are holding at Bagram prison in Afghanistan to challenge their detentions. In an apparent step backward from their challenge of a district court ruling in April that granted some military prisoners in Afghanistan the right to file lawsuits seeking their release, the decision this week would provide an administrative panel comprised of military officers (not personal or military counsel) who would determine the merit of the prisoner's appeals. The plan is to provide an opportunity for those detained to call witnesses and present evidence in their defense, something our citizens take for granted in our own legal system.

In April, the Obama Justice Department asked the court to halt the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram, signaling their intention to continue the Bush administration practice of denying those detained by the U.S. at Gitmo and elsewhere basic rights to representation, trial, and appeal. The court had found that the cases at Bagram "closely parallel" those of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, "in large part because the detainees themselves as well as the rationale for detention are essentially the same." At Gitmo, similar Administrative Review Boards have been in place since the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 have to give these folks they'd tortured due process rights. Those grudging constructions are far from the representation Americans recognize as proper or necessary in our own defense against illegal or unreasonable detentions and haven't resulted in any significant reduction in the 'processing' of those still held under the anti-democratic constructions of the last administration, at Gitmo or anywhere else the U.S. is detaining the (mostly) political captives of their war on terror.

They call them terrorists, but only a fraction of the Arabs and Afghans held by the U.S. at the Guantanamo Bay or Afghanistan prisons have been charged with anything. You would think that if the U.S. had solid evidence against these prisoners they would bring charges against them. All the Bush regime and their Pentagon had actually wanted was permission to kill these Gitmo detainees, legal-like. They caught them on the 'battlefield' and they wanted to finish the job. Hell, when they caught these men (and boys) our soldiers had tanks, airstrikes, shock and awe . . . to them, all of this ducking around the Courts is an insult to all of the force and manpower they put behind capturing these prisoners.

Their greatest fear was that these prisoners would get their shot at what we take for granted here in America: a free and fair trial, due process, access to evidence against them with the right to challenge with witnesses, protection against use of coerced confessions . . . and that there won't be enough evidence to hold these prisoners, even though the military would fall over themselves to vouch for their guilt. That's why the Bush regime set up a tribunal with limited access to whatever evidence they classify, no redress against coerced 'evidence', and limited access to counsel (if any).

What the military and other intelligence agencies really want from Congress is a law allowing his lawyers to use hearsay evidence - like making one of our military or government's finest, testify about something someone else told them - to convict these men they tortured, and possibly have them executed. You'll take the government and military's word for it all. . . won't you?

That's the likely effect of the Obama administration's new court-dodging construction. The prisoners the Bush administration approved the torture of had to be coughed up from CIA custody, after the Supreme Court ruling that military commissions must be explicitly authorized by Congress. The new decision will merely put these prisoners in a roomful of military actors posing as counsels and advocates for the prosecution and the defense. The military and others have tortured them pretty severely after dragging them through the CIA's wild rendition tour - definitely illegal - and, they can't risk any of that coming out in any actual trial discovery. Bush wanted a closed 'trial' where 'evidence' would be presented in secret, without the ones we tortured (or their 'lawyers') having access to any of it; whatever there is of it. The Obama administration looks to want the same advantage.

Moreover, the primary effect of keeping the testimony of these prisoners out of open court is to suppress any evidence or testimony presented by the prisoners of torture of abuse which led to any of the 'confessions' that the U.S. is relying on to ultimately convict them or keep them in detention. Bush wanted from Congress legislation that would make everything he did in his terror war - every law he's broken, every individual he's ordered abused, every individual he's ordered detained indefinitely without charges, every cover-up and hiding of 'evidence' he's authorized - completely and retroactively legal. That way Bush would be able to continue on with impunity. That way, he'd be able to keep his main political props in place at Gitmo as a hedge against his failure to follow through on capturing the 9-11 perpetrators identified in the military force authorization he claimed gave him the power to ignore laws and the will of Congress.

The Obama administration has mirrored the Bush efforts in the defense of their own ongoing, escalated military build-up and activity in Afghanistan which is undoubtedly adding to the numbers of detainees at Bagram. Also, as a result of the disruption of the Bush administration's covert rendition program, caused by the change in the White House, there have been moves to transfer prisoners from the black holes of secret CIA prisons, to Bagram, and a plan to transfer prisoners to Afghanistan keep them away from any precipitating moves at Gitmo which would provide rights and accountability to those detained there. The decision to allow prisoners access to an administrative review panel of military officers looks to be the same sham that Bush provided at Gitmo, with no opportunity provided prisoners to actually see the charges against them, review evidence, or even present witnesses.

The new constructions are a mere pretense of justice for those detained, much like the pretense of democracy that our military is promoting and defending in their dual occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was an inexcusable political ploy for Bush to hold these Afghans and Arabs in his prisons - indefinitely, without charges - as substitutes for his inability to capture the perpetrators our government says are directly responsible for the 9-11 attacks: bin-Laden, and his accomplices. It's also an inexcusable political ploy for this administration to represent these administrative changes in their immoral detention policy as anything more than window dressing on their own flailing attempts to translate Bush's tyranny into their own anti-democratic terror war.

Stars and Stripes has published a report that the Obama Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group to screen journalists who seek to embed with U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Rendon Group is an outgrowth of the controversial, PNAC propaganda tool of Bush-era neocons, the Lincoln Group, which was created by PNAC neocons to spread and promote the lies used to justify the Bush administration's push to invade and occupy Iraq.

from Stars and Stripes: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section...



Almost on cue, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen worried aloud yesterday about eroding public support for the Afghanistan occupation. Even though the Obama administration closed down the Bush Pentagon's propaganda office earlier this year, there is still a desperation by the war hawks to keep the public on-board with their escalating military mission.

Fighting the 'war on terror' abroad is these militarists' bread and butter. They have a vested interest in seeing enemies everywhere. Anyone who they regard as an obstacle to their military priorities is treated as an enemy to their cause which they've wrapped up in familiar rhetoric about defending against what they've termed as a continuing or escalating threat from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

In January 2006, top Army general (and an Obama holdover from the Bush administration) Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute said that 21st century warfare is more about "will and perception, than taking territory or enemies killed."

He mused that information is critical as 'firepower' in 'long war'. The American people must remind themselves every day that the United States is at war, the general said.

Rumsfeld spoke on the need to control information surrounding their expansive wars. "U.S. military public affairs officers must learn to anticipate news and respond faster, and good public affairs officers should be rewarded with promotions," he said.

"The Pentagon's propaganda machine still operates mostly eight hours a day, five days a week while the challenges it faces occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week." he lamented. He then complained that the "vast media attention about U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq outweighed that given to the discovery of "Saddam Hussein's mass graves."

However, he was just upset that there were pictures, proof of their crimes. That's the control they wanted with the press that surrounded their imperialism. Their concern with the news wasn't just about protecting soldiers or catching al-Qaeda, although there were those things going on in the military planning room that may have involved legitimate security. The thrust of their efforts was to create a zone of 'good news' that would permeate the airwaves and print media, and obscure the bloody images and alarming reports which provide the public with a clear view of the realities of the disaster in Iraq.

Bush revealed his own desire to shade the news to reflect his rosy outlook on Iraq:

"It's -- confidence amongst the Iraqis is what is going to be a vital part of achieving a victory," he said, "which will then enable the American people to understand that victory is possible. In other words, the American people will -- their opinions, I suspect, will be affected by what they see on their TV screens . . ."

The Pentagon and Bush expected for the images that they paid for and fed into their purchased press in Iraq to trickle into the mainstream media to be quoted and disseminated around the world as a counter to the realities expressed by the daily images of violence and despair coming from the occupied nations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Obama Pentagon leadership is still filled with many of the same Bush-era hawks who are as desperate now, as they were then, to keep the public fearful of disengaging from their escalated military campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan/Pakistan. It's no mystery why the Rendon Group still has credibility among these occupation-loving dinosaurs.

The question for the Obama administration is to what extent the progress reports generated by the proven propagandists at Rendon reflect the actual realities surrounding the admittedly faltering military campaign against the Taliban. According to Stars and Stripes:



That 'message' the Obama Pentagon wants the American people to hear is nothing more than a cheerleading campaign for their opportunistic escalation of force in Afghanistan and for their continuing occupation of Iraq. Their embrace of the infamous Rendon Group is predictable in their need to prevent a total meltdown of support for their flailing of our forces against the militarized resistance to their opportunistic advance across Afghanistan and their self-serving assaults across the sovereign borders of Pakistan.

However, Rendon's attempts to separate journalists looking to embed with U.S. forces in Afghanistan into supporters and critics is anti-democratic and an anathema to the very criticisms against the occupation of Afghanistan that President Obama employed in his election campaign. Does he believe that support for his own escalation of the Afghanistan occupation can be managed by grouping those reporting on it into friends and enemies?

The most prescient concern is that the Rendon effort will result in a cherry-picking by the Obama administration of stories which are favorable to their military campaign, and a stifling of those reports which are critical or revealing - much like the Bush White House employed in their efforts to preserve public support for their own militarism. As Stars and Stripes reported, the military has moved, in the past, in Iraq, to bar reporters who they felt had reported negatively about their activities from accompanying soldiers on future tours.

from Stars and Stripes in June: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section...



The main complaint from the official who ordered the barring was that the reporter had refused to echo the 'positive news' the military had provided and had offered quotes 'out of context' of the talking points the Army was anxious to promote. That's the real danger in allowing the Pentagon and the WH to control the news. The reaction the Bush regime to the press was a direct response to the wave of initial protests against the Bush wars as they worked to change public attitudes and erode support for the occupations, and, as some in the media began to actually contradict what the WH and Pentagon had been insisting were matters of national security.

The propagandists in the Rendon Group, now employed by the Obama Pentagon, intend to transform the public debate on our escalated military involvement in Afghanistan into a one-sided hurrah by controlling the flow of information they receive from the embedded media they allow to follow them into the battle-zones. The pretense of democracy that President Obama expects to emerge from his nation-building efforts in Afghanistan are nothing but a lottery with a dwindling jackpot - a trillion to one shot at a democratic nation emerging from our foreign invasion and occupation. The realities of these military interventions don't support their rhetoric about defending democracy, spreading freedom, or defeating terror. All they are left with after years of U.S. military repression in Iraq and Afghanistan is more violence and more 'enemies' bent on our destruction. Cultivating 'good news' about the wars won't change that.

We can't expect the Pentagon to police themselves and reform their own anti-democratic meddling. With the full force of our nation's military deployed in a seemingly intractable conflict in Iraq, the rest stationed in Afghanistan and around the globe as mercenaries of the new American imperialism, and the president's continued refusal to rule out military action against Iran, there is no time to wait and see if they cross the line into suppressing dissenting views here in the US and abroad, or muddling them with disinformation abroad which ultimately ends up in the mainstream press here and elsewhere.

What happens when the public criticisms from the press and elsewhere actually begin to effectively disrupt the Pentagon's efforts to conduct their military campaigns with impunity? How will this thin-skinned military establishment react if the media actually succeeds in disrupting efforts that the Pentagon has declared are integral to protecting and defending our national security?

Well you know the people running round in circles
Don't know what they're headed for
Everybody's crying peace on earth
Just as soon as we win this war -Bonnie Raiit


I didn't really expect President Obama to be overtly critical of the American military effort in the Middle East and Asia, but I don't believe he accurately portrayed the problems created by the continuing U.S. military presence and action in Iraq, and consequences of the escalation of force in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In his Cairo address, the president immediately pointed to the threats he sees from ''violent extremists" who he says have 'exploited' tensions among Muslims in the region and elsewhere. Yet, despite the fleeting reference to the 'war of choice' in Iraq, the consequences and effects of the opportunistic military assault on the sovereign nation were ignored and unmentioned by Mr. Obama as he sought to rally his Muslim audience against what he described as common threats from attacks by al-Qaeda and their supporters on civilians.

Citing the numbers of innocent civilians killed in the original 9-11 attacks on our nation, the president sought to portray every violent offensive by combatants against American troops, our allies, and on the population in the way of our military advance on their territory, as a mere extension of that original crime.

"Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims," President Obama explained in his address. "The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. All this has bred more fear and more mistrust," he said.

"So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end."

However, it's clear that many of the violent attacks on the populations have been from the predictable and inevitable resistance against the nation-building efforts of the U.S. in their homeland, and against our allies who have aided in the overthrow and replacement of the sovereign governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, as well, there is a similar resistance to the efforts of the government there to support the U.S. military effort to keep the hundreds of thousands of individuals routed from Afghanistan from spilling back over the border from Pakistan and assuming their former role of dominance in the affairs of their exile nation.

Also involved in that resistance are warring elements who are continuing violent struggles for power and dominance which have, in many instances, been reignited and exacerbated by the removal of the controlling influence of the admittedly brutal dictatorships which our military knocked out of power.

As the president so eloquently expressed in his speech, there is a rich and complex Muslim history and legacy in the U.S. which is in stark contrast to the perceptions created around the region and the world that our opportunistic and grudging militarism is an American crusade against the Muslim community. That perception of an America bent on expanding empire across sovereign borders is going to take more than the president's demonstration of an understanding and appreciation of Islam in his address.

Any rapprochement between America and the communities and population which resides in these nations he's insisting need our military intervention will have to come from a reduction of that military presence and action, not the escalation and persistence of those assaults which Mr. Obama insists is necessary in the effort to 'defeat' the al-Qaeda nemesis.

While President Obama did acknowledge the limits of 'military power alone' in 'solving the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan', it's clear that his address was intended to enlist the support of Muslims for the ongoing military effort. The president's requisite homage in his speech to providing humanitarian aid and redevelopment assistance to Afghanistan and Pakistan is transparently overshadowed by the primacy and long-term prospects of the open-ended military mission he's chosen to pursue in the region which he describes as a battle against 'extremists.' But, it's not clear that citizens of these Muslim-dominated nations he wants to rollover and accept the military assaults on their territory actually share the U.S. interest in killing every individual who identifies their cause with al-Qaeda.

What these Muslim nations needed to hear from the American president is some indication of when our country is going to take our boots off the necks of those in the way of whatever ambition the White House decides to pursue behind the shock-and-awe of our military forces. It's not just a failure of those in the region to understand or appreciate the impetus behind the American assault on their homeland which is an obstacle to repairing the animosity among Muslims to the U.S. and our ambitions - it's the devastating reality of the ongoing, seemingly arbitrary exercise of our military forces which has dominated the landscape and made any humanitarian or diplomatic initiatives appear to be mere self-serving attempts to consolidate whatever power has been achieved behind those assaults and seizing of territory. It's difficult (if not impossible) to 'promote peace' in the face of an escalating grudge match.

"It's easier to start wars than to end them." President Obama said near the conclusion of his address. It's that ultimate end to the Americans' vengeful assaults on their homeland which the Muslim community was mostly looking to find in his speech.

What they got instead, was an invitation to either adopt that self-perpetuating grudge or stand down while the U.S. does it's dirty, nation-building work (albeit bearing gifts to help mitigate the damage done in the process). 'Assalaamu alaykum' was the greeting which the president graciously offered at the beginning of his address. Wishing his Muslim audience peace must now be followed by concrete efforts to move toward that enlightened state, to make his words of reconciliation more than patronizing and hollow in his insistence on continuing to adhere to the militarism which has divided us.

SO the lackey with writing skills who's playing bin Laden wants to portray himself and his band of murderous nutjobs as some sort of benevolent protector of Arabs and Muslims against the U.S. military deployment in the Middle East.

The hundreds of thousands of dead, maimed, and displaced as a result of their supporter's attacks on civilians are a testament to the 'seeds of hatred' planted by bin Laden from when he began his murderous attacks to the present violence committed by those who identify their own cause of resistance to the American advance on their territory with al-Qaeda. Fomenting hatred against the U.S. by drawing us into a tit-for-tat war to defend the invasions and occupations Bush was lured and goaded into has been 'al-Qaeda's' cynical game all along.

It is precisely the type of outreach to the Muslim community that President Obama is engaged in this week that the opportunistic terrorist organization fears the most. As the president noted this year, al-Qaeda isn't building schools, hospitals, or homes__they're just bent on destroying and tearing down. It's all they are able or willing to do in support of their manufactured jihad.

It is also, precisely, the type of military response the Bush administration postured as a defense against al-Qaeda, in Iraq - which the Obama administration has chosen to continue, in their rhetoric and in the extension of the occupation there (and the escalation of force in Afghanistan) - that has allowed the propaganda wing of the terrorist organization to portray the goals of new administration as akin to the last one's.

It will be the president's most important challenge in his address Thursday in Cairo, to convince Muslims that the U.S. is engaged in their military deployments against the forces of al-Qaeda, and not against the civilian community in the way of that grudging offensive. The prevalence of U.S.-led attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan during this administration in which civilians have been killed has provided an opening for detractors in the region to question the sincerity of the president when he expresses concern for the safety of the population.

Moreover, the entire thrust of the continuing and escalating U.S. military activity in the region has threatened to obscure and overshadow any diplomatic or humanitarian gestures which, by nature, aren't as easily or readily approved, deployed and implemented as the militarism. That predominance of military activity allows detractors (like the scribe portraying bin-Laden) to rally Muslims and others in the region to oppose the U.S. aims and ambitions.

What President Obama needs to communicate in his address Thursday, is that the U.S. is guileless in its defenses against its al-Qaeda nemesis. That effort will require the president to express how the security interests of Muslims and others in the region are threatened by that American nemesis and to enlist their help in pushing back the scourge. But it will also require the president to reaffirm the common interests between the U.S. and countries in the region which will require more to achieve than these grudging exercises of military force against any and every combatant who identifies their cause with the terrorists.

President Obama needs to begin to turn the focus of American involvement in the Middle East away from the military mission to the realization of their oft-stated diplomatic and humanitarian goals. If this trip and address are designed to do nothing more than make room for another round of unbridled militarism, it will fail miserably.

If the address and effort by the administration is designed to isolate al-Qaeda and turn the Muslim-dominated populations away from support and toleration of the terrorists and their allies the president will need to demonstrate (rhetorically, and later in actions) his commitment to independence and primacy of these nations in confronting what the U.S. now regards as their own responsibility to vengeance. The 'seeds of hatred' planted by the original 9-11 attackers have produced a harvest of self-perpetuating attacks and reprisals in the Middle East and Asia. It is the president's task to avoid feeding and watering that deadly growth with more arbitrary militarism.

Before leaving for the Middle East, the president spoke to the task ahead Thursday and beyond. "You know, there are misapprehensions about the West on the part of the Muslim world," he told the BBC. "And, obviously, there are some big misapprehensions about the Muslim world when it comes to those of us in the West."

"I think the thing that we can do, most importantly, is serve as a good role model. And that's why, for example, .. closing Guantanamo, from my perspective, as difficult as it is, is important," the president said. "The danger I think is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture."

This is an entirely new crop the president is hoping to sow in the region's scorched earth with his outreach. All the remnants of the original al-Qaeda can hope to do in response is to salt the ground before him with their goading hate. The opportunity to build and grow is all Mr. Obama's.

A garden has this advantage, that it makes it indifferent where you live. A well-laid garden makes the face of the country of no account; let that be low or high, grand or mean, you have made a beautiful abode worthy of man. -Emerson


IT"S Spring again, and, in proper fashion for this weekend I've abandoned my dedication to (obsession with) devouring and meddling in politics and world events to tending my woodland garden in the back of my house and the patch in front that I gradually substituted for my once perfect lawn. It's all perennials, bushes and trees throughout - except for the tomatoes we defiantly grow in front to thumb our noses at the community regulation against 'vegetables' in the front yard.

I put the majority of the hundreds of different plants in myself in the decade or so I've lived here. There was another garden head living in this 30-plus year-old house before me (another before that one), and there are always bulbs popping up in odd places where the ivy I dug up by hand with my aged dad I'd move in with used to thrive and dominate the yard. Hundreds of plants perished under my inexperienced watch, in the beginning, and many more have been lost to the weather, insects, or trampled underneath my size-13 foot. Some just fade away without explanation . . .

I remind myself that all plants have a life cycle, like everything else in this world. They grow and eventually die. I recall the oaks and other trees which produce more acorns and seeds in a desperate attempt to propagate as they falter and fade away. In my garden, it's easy to imagine that my hand in the mostly successful planting, propagating, and preserving of the life of the plants, bushes and trees in my garden makes me some praiseworthy servant of nature in the parental role I've assumed over my flora and the fauna which has adopted my yard as its refuge and home. I'm as careful as I can be to avoid any chemicals or any other agents of harm to the wildlife which passes through my garden all day and night. Nature is at ease around me, as I am at ease with it.

You can see my hand in every foot of space where I've pushed the roots of the aged trees aside to make room for the plants, trees, and bushes from our local garden centers (many gone now) that I greedily piled into the back of my pickup truck several times a week and self-consciously unloaded in the driveway. I've unloaded truckloads of dirt, sand, and gravel to conquer the clay and roots surrounding the small woods and give foundation to the plants which would find just enough sun through the canopy to persist and naturalize. But, aside from the ivy, the bulbs and some neon garden phlox, the garden is there at my own insistence, direction, and effort.





I'm certainly responsible for the plants that I've selfishly adopted for my yard. Certainly, they wouldn't have willing come to me on their own, if they were able. It is part of my own human obsession to have them close to me - to nurture and watch them grow and propagate - that is the dominate reason they are here. Some parent back where they originated, assigned to that task by none other than nature herself, produced the seed or cutting (or sacrificed their very domain) to enable me to collect and hold them here in front of me, in my own space. Yet, in my arrogance and need to have their beauty and magnificence gracing my pedestrian existence, I'm an accomplice in the opportunistic abduction.

Here in my garden, I am the ward, counselor, referee, doctor, nurse, protector, defender and companion. The plant life wraps around me as I walk through as if it knows me and I speak to it aloud and to myself as I separate one from the other, judiciously clip back eager branches to afford lesser ones' more sunlight, arbitrarily pluck weeds and crush tiny insects between my veteran fingers, and caresses me as I dig up and replant the baby 'volunteers' where I envision them thriving and fostering their own family someday. I don't actually speak their language, although I imagine I do. I also imagine the plants, bushes, and trees understand me and appreciate all I've done for them in bringing them here and manipulating them to stay and grow wherever I decide. They're saying all of the best things about my caretaking that I can imagine they would, or could, if they could talk. How magnificent they all look as I've arranged them and prodded them to grow and persist in their new home. How splendid I look in among them in my earthoned-toned garden-wear.

Truth is, in my garden I'm just a benevolent dictator, at best. I'm very typical in my American posture of superiority, as if all of these couldn't exist or sustain themselves outside of my docent influence and care. But, with every branch mistakenly broken in my clumsy hands, or with every innocent 'volunteer' trampled or plucked, it's clear that I'm mainly managing my own meddling harm in bring them here in the first place. I'll continue, though (out of the sheer momentum of the instigation of life I've encouraged in my garden), to assume my dominate role and manipulate all of them to their inevitable end. It definitely deserves the time and attention I've taken away from the effects and consequences of our nation's cares and ambitions to help remake my little abode in the image nature intended for someplace else in the world. Worthy of a man. Typical of an American.

PRESIDENT OBAMA, in an interview with Newsweek's Jon Meecham Wednesday, spoke about the burdens of office and described his sending of an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan as "extraordinarily difficult" in response to Meecham's question of "what was the 'hardest thing" he'd had to do in office so far.

Meacham: The theme here is what you've learned. What's the hardest thing you've had to do?

The President: "Order 17,000 additional troops into Afghanistan. There is a sobriety that comes with a decision like that because you have to expect that some of those young men and women are going to be harmed in the theater of war. And making sure that you have thought through every angle and have put together the best possible strategy, but still understanding that in a situation like Afghanistan the task is extraordinarily difficult and there are no guarantees, that makes it a very complicated and difficult decision."

It was an interesting answer because, as many presidents have described that task as their hardest one, most notably (improbably), George Bush made the same observation about his escalated deployments. "Committing troops “is the last option for me . . . It's the hardest thing a President does,” Bush had said.

Indeed, the burden on a president to be correct in his judgment and expertise in the exercise of our military forces as commander-in-chief is made even more critical because of the autocratic manner in which the Executive has chosen in the past (and also in this new administration) to make those decisions about the increased deployments mostly independent from the body of opinion of our elected representatives in Congress.

That autocratic exercise of power and authority by the president in those 'extraordinary decisions is accommodated and encouraged by the collective neglect and indifference of recent Congresses in assuming their constitutional role in managing or influencing the actions of the Executive through the power of the money they reflexively relinquish to the White House and Pentagon to fuel their military adventures.

This present, Democratic Congress is just slightly better than others in the past who have regularly provided the White House with a slush fund of cash without any significant restrictions or timelines on the continued occupations, or any demand for a clear strategy of purpose or end to the military operations. The Obama White House has been only slightly better than the last administration in providing Congress (and the American people) reasons for remaining engaged in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The president has plans for the occupations which are inherently political in their nature and application.That political consideration (both domestic and for the governments our military are protecting) makes up the bulk of the 'pragmatism' that's been attributed to the president's military policies. The rest looks to be a belief by Mr. Obama (or the influence on him by the military advisers and leadership he's chosen to surround himself with) in the nebulous theory of the prospect of success through the application of more military force - the Vietnam syndrome where 60-somethings are convinced that if we had just pressed harder and persisted with even more killing and even more destruction, that whatever goal or objective will succeed or prevail.

In the present dual-occupations, the goals and objectives have been defined in nation-building terms with political goals meshed with the grudging, vengeful, paranoid military offensive against remnants and ghosts of the original 9-11 fugitive terror suspects. Fealty given by this administration to the Bushian theory of 'fighting them there' is the hook which keeps us bogged down in the ridiculous defense against anyone who stands in the way of our advance across their sovereign homeland and identifies their cause with our al-Qaeda nemesis.

The fact is, we are still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan because there is an institutional insecurity in disengaging from battles where our military and government is well aware of the blowback effects from our years of reckless, flailing militarism. It's a weakness which began with Bush's simpering saber-rattling and swaggering threats which our collective asses had no real prospect of cashing. In the perpetuation of these occupations, you can see the limits in the exercise of our stunning military force in effecting the things that sustain societies and make them grow and prosper.

Yet, our present government and military leadership is still trying to convince us (through the acquiescence to more flailing militarism) that they can overtake the counter-productive effects and consequences which have graced our nation's military offensives in the region so far. Congress wants to 'give the new administration a year'. Obey said he gave Nixon a year, and that Obama deserved the same. That's as good an illustration as any of how little distance we've come in our thinking since that era.

What are the goals that the president wants to accomplish behind that deployment in Afghanistan? In his announcement of the decision to escalate the military force there, Mr. Obama described what is essentially an intention to defend Kabul against a retaking of the government there by the forces we ousted seven years ago - along with an escalated offensive against whatever remains of the original threat from 'al-Qaeda' can be found (along with whoever dares identify their resistance to the U.S. and NATO occupiers with the nemesis organization):

"Let me be clear." he said. " Al Qaeda and its allies -- the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks -- are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban -- or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged -- that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can."

In making such a sweeping and presumptive determination about the value and need to defend the Afghan government against the 'Taliban', the president told Meecham that he had relied on his band of advisers in the military and other agencies to set his course and determine the best way to travel it:

Mr. Obama: "We__ embarked on a strategic review that involved every aspect of our government's involvement—Defense, State Department, intelligence operations, aid operations. Once that strategic review had been completed, then I sat in a room with the principals and argued about it, and listened to various perspectives, saw a range of options in terms of how we could move forward; asked them to go back and rework their numbers and reconsider certain positions based on the fact that some of the questions I asked could not be answered. And when I finally felt that every approach—every possible approach—had been aired, that all the questions had either been answered or were unanswerable, at that point I had to make a decision and I did."

In that explanation, there is not one word from the president about seeking or heeding any recommendations from representatives in Congress - not even from members of his own party. It may be that he's convinced he has Congress in the bag over the almost $100 billion emergency' supplemental-to-end-all supplemental they're lining up to load up with their own obligatory goodies and pass on to his signature. It may have something to do with the easy hundreds-of-billions more cash contained in the general budget for his continuing and escalating military operations which promises to follow the same expedient route to his desk to help him on his decidedly autocratic way.

In the opportunity of Congress' own neglectful bow to the prerogatives of the Executive, Mr. Obama says the 'difficult' decisions regarding the deployment and operation of our troops are his to make, alone, after regarding the insular counsel of his subordinates:

"I think that it certainly helps to know the broader strategic issues involved," Mr. Obama told Meecham. "I think that's more important than understanding the tactics involved because there are just some extraordinary commanders on the ground and a lot of good advisers who I have a lot of confidence in, but the president has to make a decision: will the application of military force in this circumstance meet the broader national-security goals of the United States?"

Well, that's the question, for sure. Those 'broader national security goals" are certainly a matter for national debate. Too bad neither the majority of Congress, nor the president, seem willing to set a clear strategy, together, to determine or accomplish those goals with measurable objectives or a clear end-point to our military forces' role in all of that.

Last week, the president's 'emergency supplemental' for the occupations passed the House with only 60 "no" votes, 51 came from Democrats, almost all of them members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who, this week, published their own findings and recommendations for Afghanistan and Pakistan, a six-part series entitled, “Afghanistan: A Road Map For Progress.”

That's not nearly enough to garner any attention from a White House so sure of it's own intentions and ability. So sure, in fact, that it seems almost effortless in its decision-making and the implementation of its policy. It certainly doesn't seem the 'hardest' thing to have decisions formulated entirely within your own appointed set of advisers, and to make those decisions virtually unchallenged by the folks who fund the militarism with our borrowed cash.


http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama-s-H...

THEY'RE probably complete with hoods and captors brandishing their weapons over the heads of their wards. That must be why they're being withheld. They make America look just like the ones we like to call terrorists.

Richard Holbrooke, our envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said something testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the other day which sounded much like the last administration as they defined their view of the state of their 'war on terror'.

Holbrooke said about our efforts in Pakistan: “We are developing a strategic communications plan to counter the terror information campaign, based in part on a strategy that proved successful in Iraq . . . This is an area that has been woefully under-resourced," he said, "The strategic communications plan - including electronic media, telecom, and radio - will include options on how best to counter the propaganda that is key to the insurgency’s terror campaign.”

“Concurrent with the insurgency is an information war. We are losing that war,” he said. "We can't succeed, however you define success, if we cede the airways to people who present themselves as false messengers of a prophet," said Holbrooke. "We need to combat it."

There was another 'information war' waged from the Bush/Cheney White House which also sought to influence opinion toward their own opportunistic military advance across foreign territory. It was in December 2005 that the stories surfaced of Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm, which was being paid over $100 million by the Pentagon to plant administration propaganda in the Iraqi news media; and also of an effort to pay Iraqi journalists to write favorable stories about the occupation.

In fact, the NYT pointed out that the Government Accountability Office had found that year that, despite the legality in America of spreading propaganda outside of the U.S. "the Bush administration had violated the law by producing pseudo news reports that were later used on American television stations with no indication that they had been prepared by the government."

Then-defense chief Rumsfeld addressed public criticism in the press and elsewhere of his Iraq propaganda program in a speech, as having a "chilling effect" on the Pentagon departments which work to get their opinion into the public debate.

"In Iraq, for example, Rumsfeld said, "the U.S. military command, working closely with the Iraqi government and the U.S. embassy, has sought nontraditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of aggressive campaign of disinformation. Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate; for example, the allegations of someone in the military hiring a contractor, and the contractor allegedly paying someone to print a story—a true story—but paying to print a story. For example, the resulting explosion of critical press stories then causes everything, all activity, all initiative, to stop, just frozen. Even worse, it leads to a chilling effect for those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field."

The "chilling effect" that Rumsfeld attributed to scrutiny of his unlawful attempts to manipulate the media coming from Iraq, was in fact, exactly what the administration wanted to hold over any independent reporting coming from and about Iraq as they dangerously characterized everything coming from U.S. government and military officials as "truth," and casting the rest of the reporting and analysis unconnected to their administration as some dangerous distortion directed by their "enemies."

The Bush administration and their Pentagon were able to carry on their propaganda enterprise with impunity, despite the "chilling" scrutiny. It was revealed by the AP that an internal memo from Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, about her new efforts to organize and manage an office within the Pentagon which would provide U.S. propaganda on Iraq 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week to coincide with the anticipated release of the Petraeus' report on their 'surge' in Iraq.

Will the information "war" which is to be waged this time around by the Obama administration (and likely still, the Pentagon) be an indirect assault on the material and opinion independent of their own manipulated reporting? In the shadow of the efforts by the Bush administration to control American's perceptions of their increasingly unpopular occupation there's a queasy feeling hearing talk again of an 'information war' to promote and defend their 'long war' in the region.

Consider Bush's initial justification for his own propaganda. He complained regularly about "images of violence" from our television screens to the degree that they would, themselves, influence Americans away from his occupations. Yet, Bush couldn't change our perceptions of the bloody tragedy of his invasion and (escalated) occupation by merely changing the subject.

What is the message then that the Obama administration is sending to the populations in the way of our grudging advance against 'al-Qaeda' or the 'Taliban'? 'Sit still while we rummage and wreck and kill wherever we choose, whenever we choose?'

'Sit still while we round-up and arbitrarily detain (and interrogate) your countryfolk by the thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq - holding them indefinitely in prison, without charges, counsel, or trial - defining everyone we engage with our military offensive as 'militants' or enemies?'





In announcing the decision to fight the release of the torture photos in court, President Obama spoke of the negative effect he believes the images would have on the perception of our country's troops in the field, while, at the same time, downplaying any speculation they might be graphic and grotesque.

"I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib, but they do represent conduct that did not conform with the Army Manual," Mr. Obama said in a press appearance Wednesday.

"In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger," he said.

It's interesting to hear the president and Holbrooke talk about influencing the 'opinion' of the populations of the countries we've invaded, occupied, and are bombing across their sovereign borders as if our goals were benevolent and benignly altruistic. The entire military operation in that region has been defined in military terms, with military objectives carried over from the last administration's blundering militarism.

The intent and the effect of this administration's efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan is an escalation of the military offensive against any and all who we determine to be against our military objectives. Those military objectives dominate, no matter how much money and foodstuffs we offer to the population destabilized by the self-perpetuated cycle of our attacks and reprisals.

The 'collateral' killings and destruction by our forces - and by those opposing the American's strident, opportunistic advance across their homeland - are the images which persist in the view of the besieged populations the administration is looking to influence. No amount of reparations and aid (no matter how much it's actually needed) can repair the division and resentment the recipients of our military advance associate with the U.S. involvement in their nations affairs.

These folks aren't going to change their hearts and minds about all of that just because of some staged and orchestrated images of what they've experience from American soldiers and contractors for years and years. Unless that reality changes, and until America releases their countries and their people, there will be no rapprochement. The withholding of images of our militarism won't shift 'anti-American opinion' to accommodate and welcome the U.S. and their grudging militarism across sovereign borders, but it just might keep those still in blind or willing support of the military action from reacting in horror to the realities these target nations know from memory.

That's who this reluctance to release the torture photos is really directed toward. It's not just 'anti-American' opposition the White House is worried about inflaming. It's also American, European and other supporters of their continuing militarism that they intend to keep in the dark about the extent of their recklessness and abuses associated with their occupations. The new gang in town doesn't want their militarism branded with the images of the past, but I'll bet we can put up a few images of this administration's militarism, already out there, that can rival these torture pics. Maybe that was also on the president's mind.

THE news that Pentagon will replace the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. General David McKiernan with Rumsfeld buddy, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal was met with speculation that the change represented a shift away from the reckless, scattershot raids and airstrikes which have so inflamed the Afghan population for their collateral killings.

McKiernan was said to have been pushing for more troops for Afghanistan since Bush was his boss, and that fact was presented, by some, as evidence that the Obama administration was shifting it's Afghan strategy to the more comprehensive approach (by replacing him) which would combine economic and diplomatic efforts (hearts and minds) with the defense of the Afghan government, rather than the arbitrary, blustering militarism which has resulted in so many collateral killings of civilians. Yet, the escalation of force by Obama of 21,000 troops to be completed later this year (combined with the 6,000 or so McKiernan got from Bush) is pretty close to the 30,000 troops the outgoing commander had requested.

McChrystal has been presented as a perfect fit for the new focus by the Pentagon on 'counterinsurgency', which is essentially a combination of approaches which intends to transform the besieged population into a grateful partner in our nation-building efforts against the insurgency and resistance. But, his background in Special Forces actually suggests an intention to move away from the comprehensive approach of a combining diplomacy with the militarism to the expediency of even more 'pinpoint' strikes which intend to stifle and eliminate the leadership of the militarized resistance.

from Gareth Porter: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=468...



In fact, U.N. envoy for Afghanistan Kai Eide said in an interview in Islamabad today that the new commander should take heed of the measures McKiernan had been implementing to help protect the Afghan population against the collateral effects of the militarism of the coalition forces (despite the latest round of tragic collateral killings).

from Reuters: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/I...



Certainly there is much to be desired from the U.S. command in limiting or eliminating the types of airstrikes and raids which have produces so many collateral killings of innocents in Afghanistan. McKiernan should definitely be held to account for those instances where the U.S. force has recklessly targeted the population centers in their pursuit of the 'enemy.' Yet, there were recent moves by the outgoing commander to connect with the communities in an effort to mitigate and lessen the devastating consequences and effects of the NATO occupation on Afghans who inhabit the villages and provinces which are targets of the U.S.-dominated forces' offensive attacks.

from the AP in April: http://www.wlwt.com/politics/19145115/deta...



Here's hoping that the new head broom in the U.S. command in Afghanistan isn't abandoning these comprehensive intentions of the outgoing commander for some expedient attempt to put a lid on the insurgency with some sort of decisive, military campaign ('targeted' or not). It would be typical for this leadership at the Pentagon to place belief in some big military strike, to end all military strikes. That's what the 'old-boy' selection of Rumsfeld's buddy looks like to me.

We'll just have to wait and see if his promotion to the Afghanistan command produces change in the policy there like the Pentagon and others are spinning it. The way defenders of the administration's Afghanistan policy are presenting the move, we're to expect an outcome more in line with the sweeping declarations made in the announcement of his 'new' strategy for 'success'. We'll see.

AFTER nearly a week of denials and counter accusations, an anonymous U.S. military official admitted today that their airstrikes Monday in Afghanistan killed at least 50 civilians. Despite that conclusion, local authorities still insist that as many as 140 innocent civilians were savagely bombed in their own homes as they took refuge from an unraveling battle between Taliban and Afghan/coalition forces.

Initially, the U.S. military gave their standard (infuriating) denial that civilians were killed, as they have in all of the many instances where civilians have been killed by the collateral effects of U.S. dominated raids and bombings (several deliberately targeted, only to find later that 'faulty intelligence' led them to kill the wrong people). Later, when local police and other Afghan officials protested loudly and produced bodies of the women and children who had been caught in the way of the deliberate bombing, Pentagon officials immediately strained to find some way to blame the Taliban - by the weekend settling on claiming that it was actually the Taliban who had killed the civilians in an effort to generate protests from the Afghan population.

The anatomy of this latest in a string of collateral and bad intelligence-driven killings of Afghan civilians provides a perfect view of the state of the military mission there and its predictable effects on the population, and on the level of acceptance of our presence by Afghans. The airstrikes which destroyed a community of homes was preceded by a typically fierce firefight between Afghan/coalition forces and Taliban combatants who had gotten the better of the skirmish, managed to destroy some vehicles, and had killed a number of soldiers, including one American. It's at that point that reports say that U.S. airstrikes were called in to help in the pursuit of the fighters.

According to Patrick Cockburn, reporting from Herat for The Independent, the airstrikes were neither pinpoint nor brief:



After reports from the Red Cross and others confirmed that civilians had been slaughtered in the three villages - Gerani, Gangabad and Koujaha - which sustained the brunt of the hours of bombardments, Mr. Gates (and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well, in a statement with Karzai in D.C.) did indeed express 'regret' over the deaths. However, his comments implicating the Taliban suggest a new tactic from the Pentagon which would deflect from criticism and stifle the growing movement among Afganis who are insisting that the U.S. dominated forces stand down from these reckless and deadly raids and airstrikes.

"We regret any, even one, Afghan ... innocent civilian casualty. And we will make whatever amends are necessary," Gates said in Afghanistan Thursday. "We all know that the Taliban use civilian casualties and sometimes create them to create problems for ... the United States and our coalition partners. We will have to wait and see what happened in this particular case."

His subordinates at the Pentagon didn't wait, however, to float to the press what they admitted were "loosely sourced" rumors which suggested the combatants had taken the time during the hours of bombings to stage the killings of villagers in the Taliban stronghold to make it appear as a result of the U.S. airstrikes.

Despite admitting that, "This is not looking good," (referencing the tension between the U.S. and Karzai's Afghan regime) a 'senior military official
told CNN that, the U.S. military believed the insurgents were holding people in the homes as a means of causing civilian casualties.

Tech Sergeant Chuck Marsh repeated the accusation to VOA: "The investigation suggests that villagers had taken refuge in a number of houses in each village," he said. "Reports also indicate that Taliban fighters deliberately forced villagers into houses from which they then attacked ANSF and Coalition forces."

However, other reports show that civilians took refuge in the homes after news of the 12 hour battle between Taliban and government forces. "We know that those killed included an Afghan Red Crescent volunteer and 13 members of his family who had been sheltering from fighting in a house that was bombed in an air strike," the ICRC's head of delegation in Kabul, Reto Stocker said.

CNN also reported that 'U.S. officials' told them there is 'some information' that some civilians were beheaded by insurgents in the area during the several hours of heavy fighting." But, investigations into the killings have not supported any of the accusations that the Taliban combatants targeted members in their own villages as they fled. The investigations have, however, found many Afghans who have reported the deaths of family members and neighbors as a result of the sustained bombing numbering over 140 in total. Riots broke out Thursday after the bodies of more than a dozen of the civilians killed were brought by protesters to Farah City, with angry Afghans throwing stones at police__ who, in return, opened fire on the crowd, wounding several.

from Patrick Cockburn:



The protests were elevated by the reaction of the Afghan government to the deadly airstrikes. INN reportedthat Afghanistan Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament, Mohammad Younus Qanoni warned the Afghan government to submit the ’legalisation plan’ of foreign military presence within a week to the parliament. Some MPs were said to suggest 'sealing off' the parliament as a protest.

Afghan President Karzai on Friday finally put some substance behind his repeated demands the U.S. end the bungling raids and check the collateral killings of his countryfolk. "We believe strongly that air strikes are not an effective way in fighting terrorism. That's not good for the US, that's not good for Afghanistan, that's not good for the conducting of the war," Mr. Karzai told CNN in an interview.

"We demand the proper conduction of operations. We demand an end to these operations," Karzai said. "We cannot justify in any manner, for whatever number of Taliban or for whatever number of significantly important terrorists, the accidental or otherwise loss of civilians," he said.

Karzai, upbraiding the entirety of tactics that the escalated NATO forces have been employing in their presumed 'defense' of Kabul, complained that, "the air strikes, especially, and sudden bursts into homes at night are not in any way good for this war."

Silly puppet . . . the U.S. military doesn't give a damn about what you want.

"If there's one lesson I draw from the past, it is the importance of our staying engaged," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Friday at Forward Operating Base Airborne in northern Afghanistan. "And if there's a lesson for Americans and the international community, it's that we don't dare turn our backs on Afghanistan. This will work if we stay engaged."

That was basically the attitude back at the Pentagon today as U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias disputed the 140-plus that the Afghans are insisting were killed in the airstrikes. She told reporters that, "The investigators and the folks on the ground think that those numbers are extremely over-exaggerated." "We are definitely nowhere near those estimates."

The Pentagon responded with their own over-exaggeration, trotting out an 'anonymous' military official to insist the airstrikes were done in broad daylight and were actually for the Afghan's own good. "This was not a night raid, this was not a scheduled operation, we came to their assistance," the official said on condition of anonymity. "We were supporting our Afghan partners," anonymous told AFP.

If this is the best our forces have to offer in 'defense' of the Afghan regime, it's understandable why the protected head is looking to pull the plug on the military forces' most destructive tactics. Mr. Karzai has to realize, though, that the defense of his precarious regime is not the primary mission of the U.S. dominated NATO force. America is engaged in a war on an ideology in the Middle East which the leadership at the Pentagon believes can and should be 'won' in Afghanistan.

Mr. Gates last May, cast the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan as the same kind of 'ideological' battle that Bush had promoted in defense of his unbridled military aggression across sovereign borders:

"Afghanistan and Iraq are the most important battlefields in the fight today, Gates said, and his priority has been “getting us to a point where our strategic objectives are within reach in those two countries . . . America’s best opportunity to discredit and deflate the extremist ideology is in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gates said.

“Just as the hollowness of communism was laid bare by the collapse of the Soviet Union, so too would success in those countries strike a decisive blow against the ideological underpinnings of extremist movements,” Gates argued.

The best evidence, so far, has not pointed to any 'collapse' of the ideology of resistance to U.S. aggression and expansionism across sovereign borders. If anything, the self-perpetuating cycle of attacks and reprisals has provided text and substance for the militarized resistance and their recruiting of Afghans driven to violent expressions of self-determination and liberty. Is anyone at the White House paying attention?

from Roll Call: (http://www.rollcall.com/issues/54_125/news... )


HOUSE Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) on Monday outlined a $94 billion war spending bill — $9 billion more than President Barack Obama has requested — without a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq or binding restrictions on the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obey also refused to provide $80 million for closing the detainee facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying the plans for doing so are not yet ready. And he did not give Obama the authority to invest $100 billion in the International Monetary Fund.

Many left-leaning Members had signed letters in previous years refusing to support any more funding for Iraq unless a timeline for withdrawal was included, and many have expressed concern both at the lack of binding benchmarks for Afghanistan and Pakistan and the emphasis on military spending over economic and humanitarian aid.

Obey said he wanted to give Obama a year to show what he can do on the war front just as he gave President Richard Nixon a year to start getting out of Vietnam.

“If I gave Richard Nixon a year to show what he could do, I certainly don’t see why I wouldn’t give Barack Obama a year,” Obey said.

____________

from WaPo: (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/0... )


TWO weeks ago, David Obey warned that the war in Afghanistan might "devour" President Obama's policy agenda, turning into "a problem that nobody knows how to get out of." Yesterday, the House Appropriations chairman unveiled a $94 billion supplemental bill to pay for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and funnel economic aid to rapidly deteriorating Pakistan.

The measure has funding for other purposes as well, but the "Af-Pak" region -- where Obey said yesterday he was "very dubious" of U.S. prospects for success -- is the bill's primary focus, and "Mr. Obama's war" may well become the primary focus of the president's first term.

The always-outspoken Obey says he'll give Obama a year to deal with the Af-Pak mess (http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/200... ), just as he gave Richard Nixon a year to figure out Vietnam when he arrived at the White House. (Yes, Obey has been in Congress a long time, and no, the Obama administration does not want to see more Democrats mention "Afghanistan" and "Vietnam" together.) With many antiwar Democrats all-but-certain to oppose this funding measure because it doesn't include a firm withdrawal timeline for either Iraq or Afghanistan, Obama will be forced to rely on a bipartisan coalition of supporters to get the money he wants. And he can only hope that the situation looks better in a year, when he comes back to the Hill to ask for more.

___________


from The Hill: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/obey-w...


HOUSE Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) signaled he might not be so generous in funding the Afghanistan war next year unless significant progress is made — progress that could be difficult to achieve.

“The president feels obligated to give it a shot . So fine. We’ll help him give it a shot for a year,” Obey said on Monday. “But at the end of the year, I want to have a hardnosed, realistic evaluation based on the performance standards that we’re talking about. … I’m not going to be looking at those standards like I’m the permanent president of an optimists club.”

Asked if he envisioned Congress cutting off funding for the war altogether, Obey said: “If it becomes a fool’s errand, I would hope so.”

__________

excellent summary at Counterpunch: (Obama's War Budget - http://www.counterpunch.org/leys05042009.h... )

5/4/09 - 2009 Supplemental for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Pandemic Flu:

Summary: http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/FY09Su...

Obey Statement: http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/ObeySu...

Pelosi Statement: http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseC...

OUR military is still staging arbitrary and ignorant raids on the Iraqi population. Our forces there haven't seen any substantial decrease. The mission is still bogged down in fighting the resistance; claiming as Bush did that there is some national interest in 'succeeding' in their perpetual defense of the increasingly independent and partisan Maliki regime as if it was some direct reflection of all of the rhetoric used by the Obama Pentagon to justify staying.

I think the folks who've beat those who've complained about business as usual in Iraq under Obama over the head with his rhetoric have essentially walked away from the pressure which compelled the politicians to move away from their support of the occupation in the first place.

It's all so convenient to go back to Obama's flowing rhetoric in announcing his withdrawal plan and insist that we WAIT and wait for the promised disengagement, but there has been virtually NO effort from those defenders of the Obama administration's Iraq policy and activity to hold them to account for even their own reasons for continuing the military operation there. All we get are those nebulous excuses about pottery barns and our supposed responsibility to secure some sort of pretty ending to America's anti-democratic use of force against the Iraqi population.

The Iraq occupation is still as immoral and wrong as it was before we put a Democrat in the White House. In effect, and until the promised reduction of force after the Iraqi 'elections', our military is still engaged in an abomination of humanity. It's hard for me to find any meaningful difference in the blithe way that abomination is being defended by Democrats from the manner in which the occupation was defended under the last administration.

Pointing to Obama's full embrace of Bush's cynical 'agreement' with the Maliki regime (forced through at the end of his presidency to enhance his 'legacy'), as evidence of a 'change' in Iraq policy, is an insult to our years of advocacy and activism against the illegal invasion and occupation.

It may not be as surprising, as I may think, though, to see the dumbfounded silence from defenders of Obama policy toward Iraq in response to the arrogant abrogations of the petty treaty in the persistent American command and control of our military forces in the continuing, collaterally deadly raids against the supposedly sovereign population. It has to burn, somewhere deep in the soul of their original opposition to the Bush regime's self-perpetuating militarism.

This morning's opportunistic raid and tragic killings by U.S. military forces was almost immediately met with charges of criminality by the Iraqi government and demands that those responsible stand accountable before the Iraqi courts; including two senior Iraqi commanders to be held accountable for their (illegal under the SOFA) role in allowing the unauthorized assault.

The military initially gave their standard defenses for the tragedy - which took the life of an innocent woman and resulted in the release later in the day of those detained in the raid and an apology from the U.S. command - citing an interest in capturing alleged 'financiers' of the Shiite resistance with 'ties to Iran'. Here's how the NYT described the raid and the resulting clusterfuck:



Along with the promise to withdraw, Obama has included in his justifications, much of the same nonsense as the last bunch about fighting 'terrorists' and 'defending' our interests' in Iraq that the last administration used as their own political cover through the elections to avoid ending the occupation and admitting the utter defeat and failure of Americans there to secure even many of their own imperialist interests and ambitions. It's unclear what the bottom line will be for the Obama administration in their pursuit of the same; albeit with better rhetoric and a more realistic prospect of some sort of disengagement from Iraq in the (near?) future.

What is our national interest in shooting innocent Iraqis dead on their doorstep?

What's clear is that, whatever rhetoric that's been offered to convince that we're ultimately leaving Iraq remains subordinate to the justifications for remaining engaged that have been cut-and-pasted from the Bush playbook. In fact, the two rationales (leaving eventually and defending our 'interests') are actually polar opposites. In order for one ambition to 'succeed', the other must be abandoned. To expect that sort of decisiveness from the prevaricating establishment (and their wistful support) which perpetuates the militarism in Iraq is, perhaps, a pipe dream, but, that doesn't mean we shouldn't still insist they make that ideological leap into action without delay.

The example which is nagging me is within the explanation yesterday for releasing the torture memos.

First, it should be remembered that the administration wasn't actually responding to any of the long-standing congressional requests and demands for the information the Justice Dept. provided. They were compelled to release the memos because of developments in the ACLU lawsuit.


Adriel Bettelheim at CQ politics makes this case today: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/balance_of_pow...



Certainly, the Obama administration deserves credit for moving beyond the Bush WH's stonewalling and putting these directives out there in compliance with the court action, but they are still couching their disclosures in language defending the 'protection' of classified information "for purposes of national security," much like the Bush administration did in refusing to hand over the documents.

The difference in the administrations' approach to the issue of 'state secrets' is in the degree of Executive privilege they're asserting rather than any outright openness and accountability for actions which may fall under the heading of 'national security' or 'state secrets.' That's what this legalistic statement yesterday was all about - preserving that 'extra constitutional' authority the Bush administration assumed in their opportunistic response to the 9-11 killings.

from the statement: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office... /

"While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security. I have already fought for that principle in court and will do so again in the future."

We saw the outlines of that 'fight' in the last few months in the Obama Justice Dept. defense of Bush obstructions to lawsuits and congressional demands for information surrounding their detention practices. There really isn't any new principle being established in the Obama administration's actions in defense of Bush's assumed authority, or even in their acquiescence to the ACLU lawsuit which will outlast the president's term.

We still have the president deciding where the Executive feels it's proper to obey or disregard laws of disclosure, or, as the statement yesterday implies, to disregard the law whenever they feel our 'national security' is at risk.

Again, from the statement:

"Going forward, it is my strong belief that the United States has a solemn duty to vigorously maintain the classified nature of certain activities and information related to national security. This is an extraordinarily important responsibility of the presidency, and it is one that I will carry out assertively irrespective of any political concern. Consequently, the exceptional circumstances surrounding these memos should not be viewed as an erosion of the strong legal basis for maintaining the classified nature of secret activities. I will always do whatever is necessary to protect the national security of the United States."

That doesn't sound like we should have full confidence that the administration will exercise as much transparency as we demanded the last WH, albeit still holding the obvious expectation that they'll operate light years away from the abhorrent, power-grabbing autocracy of Bush/Cheney and company.

It may well be that it's really not their job to set those thresholds of accountability. Indeed, it has been the abdication of authority and responsibility by Congress which allowed the last administration to assume as much power and 'extra constitutional' authority as they pleased - and they never knew any bounds at all to their overreaches and assumptions of authority. "9-11 changed everything" for them. It allowed them to operate in their own bubble of impunity.

Congress will either step up and set the boundaries for this administration (and future WHs) - and actually enforce them - or the Executive will continue to assume as much power and authority as they deem necessary and proper. Who can blame them?