The McChrystal interview is now online

Rolling Stone serves the public here.

A God has cursed it

Afghanistan will never again know freedom

The New York Times provides us with the grim news:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.

The Afghanis have long known bitter war even though their place was believed to be little more than an impoverished wasteland. The wasteland, it appears, can yield a better fruit than opium. It is thus not hard to imagine the fate that awaits Afghanistan now that the Superpower can plunder it without organized opposition. If one believed riches to be a good without qualification, Afghanistan's future will likely debunk that belief.

Alan Grayson’s latest bill

His bill is entitled The War is Making You Poor Act (H.R. 5353). Grayson introduced H.R. 5353 on May 20, 2010. It was referred to the Ways and Means Committee and to the Armed Services Committee the same day. The purpose of the bill:

To reduce the $159.3 billion from the discretionary overseas contingency operations funds in the President's fiscal year 2011 budget for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (without preventing use of mandatory funds from the Department of Defense budget to execute the War on Terror), and amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide individuals a 'War is Making You Poor' tax credit against the savings attributable to the overseas contingency operations reduction.

The intent of the bill is clear both from its title and its introduction: It links war-making and thus war-spending to the taxes Americans pay. By connecting the dots, so to speak, Grayson and his co-sponsors mean to make America's empire and the imperial sorties it inspires a tangible reality for the common man and woman, one that they can experience directly. Currently, only America's veterans, their relatives and friends along with the institutions charged with serving their needs are aware only part of the human cost caused by these wars, albeit only in part. This points to the bill's didactic purpose. Its intended institutional effects are also clear: It means to eliminate taxes for the lowest brackets by forcing the Pentagon and its contractors to pay for these wars out of the Pentagon's budget and the guaranteed profits most defense contractors enjoy. Together, one may hope, both will place strong constraints on the President, Congress and the security-surveillance apparatus when it comes time to looting the fisc to prepare for or to actually make a war.

Update

The following is a video of Grayson presenting his bill:

Last updated May 26, 2010 at 4:11PM

And it’s one, two, three…what are we fighting for

King Barack the Careful ordered additional troops to Afghanistan, according to the New York Times:

President Obama has issued his order to send more troops to Afghanistan, communicating his decision to military leaders late Sunday afternoon during a meeting in the Oval Office, and will spend Monday speaking with foreign leaders to share with them the broad outlines of his new strategy, the White House said.

"The commander-in-chief has issued the orders," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at the White House at the outset of what will be a two-day effort to sell the new strategy to the American people, Congress and American allies.

Afghanistan was the "right war," according to candidate Obama. Yet, for whom was it right? Candidate Obama in 2008 and, eventually, in 2009, for he must prove his worth as a president by sending Americans off to die needlessly while also fulfilling one of his campaign promises. For the Pentagon as long as the commander-in-chief adequately funds the effort. For the American empire which needs to play and win the new great game in order to remain an empire long after it lost its modern economic system. For the corrupt president Karzai who needs the United States to remain in power. Or, right for the Americans who will pay for the war with their lives and their futures.

This is another ghastly mistake, although it is consistent with the unreal realism that brought the United States to this point.

War criminals beware

The Guardian warns that:

Ehud Olmert, Israeli prime minister during the Gaza war, would probably face arrest on war crimes charges if he visited Britain, according to a UK lawyer who is working to expand the application of "universal jurisdiction" for offences involving serious human rights abuses committed anywhere in the world.

Neither Olmert nor Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister during the Cast Lead offensive, and a member of Israel's war cabinet, would enjoy immunity from prosecution for alleged breaches of the Geneva conventions, predicted Daniel Machover, who is involved in intensifying legal work after the controversial Goldstone report on the three-week conflict. Neither are ministers any longer.

Prosecutions of Israeli political and military figures remain likely despite the failure to obtain an arrest warrant for Ehud Barak, the defence minister, when he visited the UK earlier this month, he said. In the Barak case a magistrate accepted advice from the Foreign Office that the minister enjoyed state immunity and rejected an application made on behalf of several residents of the Gaza Strip.

"This needs to be tested at the right time and in the right place," Machover said. "One day one of these people will make a mistake and go to the wrong country and face a criminal process — and then it'll be a matter for the courts of that country to give them a fair trial: that's what the Palestinian victims want."

One can only hope that Olmert, George Bush, Dick Cheney and others of their ilk will one day face the finite justice to be found in this world.

Happy anniversary!

Wednesday, October 7 marks the eighth anniversary of America's Operation Enduring Freedom and Britain's Operation Herrick in Afghanistan.

Establishment essayist talks turkey about Obama’s war

Bob Herbert of the New York Times recently pointed out that:

A clash is coming [over the Obama administration's Afghanistan policy]. President Obama may be reconsidering his idea of substantially increasing the number of American troops, but no one at the higher echelons of government is suggesting that anything other than a long, hard, tragic and expensive campaign lies ahead — with no promise of ultimate victory, or even a serious definition of what would constitute victory.

According to Herbert, Americans will have another pointless war to endure, one which the elite who authorized and will prosecute the war cannot rationally justify. And, it will likely produce annoying blowback events just as it predecessors had.

Herbert continues:

The public has not been prepared for a renewed big-time, long-haul effort in Afghanistan. And if American casualties increase substantially, support for the war will diminish that much more. There is very little tolerance in the U.S. for the reality of war, which is why the images in the media are so sanitized. The public's concept of warfare, for the most part, is the product of Hollywood movies about the heroics of the so-called Greatest Generation, and video games.

This disconnect between what the public is expecting, or willing to accept, regarding the war in Afghanistan and what the White House and the Pentagon are in fact planning is vast. Americans want their politicians to concentrate on the economy here at home. After the long, sad experience in Iraq, and the worst economic shock since the Depression, they are not up for extended combat and endless nation-building in Afghanistan.

In other words, Herbert believes that American public in general wants its sitting government to produce outcomes which enhance its quality of life. How unrealistic they are! So many Americans despised the second Bush regime because of its inept war-mongering; they could not trust the McCain-Palin ticket to avoid additional disasters. The polls seemed to point to these conclusions. Why is it, then, that America's political elite cannot learn from its experiences? Why do Obama and the Pentagon believe they must compound the mistakes of their predecessors?

More money and soldiers for Afghanistan

Make a mistake, then repeat

The Obama administration has indicated that it will augment America's Afghanistan and Pakistan commitments, according to The Washington Post.

Obama plans to announce a "simple, clear, concise goal — to disrupt, dismantle and eventually destroy al-Qaeda in Pakistan," said… [an administration] official, one of three authorized to anonymously discuss the strategy. The president will describe his plan in a White House speech to a group of selected military, diplomatic and development officials and nongovernmental aid groups.

Yet, as Patrick Cockburn points out:

The US troop surge in Afghanistan can probably prevent further erosion of the Afghan government's position if enough troops are deployed and money spent. But there are limits to what the US can do. The Taliban is never going to be defeated so long as it has its bases in the Pushtun belt inside north-western Pakistan. Nor is it likely that the Pakistani military will act against the Taliban so long as it sees them as one of its few allies against India. American drone attacks on Taliban and al-Qa'ida within Pakistan may kill some leaders but further anger ordinary Pakistanis. The ISI may not directly control the insurgency in Afghanistan but it can determine its intensity. This in turn gives Pakistan leverage over the US to prevent the Americans going too far in supporting India.

One of the main achievements of the surge in Iraq was that it gave the US public the impression that a victory had been won which in turn allowed the Americans to agree to withdraw their forces. President Bush was able to sign a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government at the end of last year which included a timetable for a US pull-out which Washington had furiously rejected in the past.

The surge may play a similar role in Afghanistan. One of the main reasons for keeping American and British forces there is because it would be humiliating to withdraw. But the role of foreign military forces has always been ambivalent. They prop up the Karzai government but they also de-legitimise it as a puppet administration. Their use of firepower, originally designed for use against the Soviet army, against mud-brick compounds in Afghan villages means an inevitable flow of civilian casualties and builds support for the Taliban. And despite all these efforts Mr Obama says military victory is not feasible. The Americans are finding, as the British did in the 19^th century and the Russians in the 20^th, that the effort of keeping an army in Afghanistan is not really worth it.

Once again human beings will die so that Uncle Sam can save his face…