War In Our Time

In July a BBC reporter in Afghanistan was killed during a battle between NATO forces and Taliban insurgents. NATO, of course, claimed that he was killed by the Taliban. Now an official inquiry has confirmed his family's belief that Ahmed Omed Khpalpan was shot by a NATO soldier. Eleven times.

Naturally, the Professional Left has been spreading this news around. Here's the response from a pro-Obama "grassroots political action committee established to aide [sic] in getting out the vote in 2012."

This is about as viciously demented as anything you'd see from the Republican Right. (This, for instance. I'm counting down until RWA1 links to it.) But after all, Greenwald has blasphemed the Obama devotees' God-king so many times, it's not surprising. It's a good reminder that for so many Democrats the trouble with Bush's crimes was that he was a Republican; once a Democrat commits them, they're not crimes anymore. Therefore it was perfectly legitimate for Democrats to criticize Bush, but not for anyone of any party to criticize Obama.

War In Our Time

In July a BBC reporter in Afghanistan was killed during a battle between NATO forces and Taliban insurgents. NATO, of course, claimed that he was killed by the Taliban. Now an official inquiry has confirmed his family's belief that Ahmed Omed Khpalpan was shot by a NATO soldier. Eleven times.

Naturally, the Professional Left has been spreading this news around. Here's the response from a pro-Obama "grassroots political action committee established to aide [sic] in getting out the vote in 2012."

This is about as viciously demented as anything you'd see from the Republican Right. (This, for instance. I'm counting down until RWA1 links to it.) But after all, Greenwald has blasphemed the Obama devotees' God-king so many times, it's not surprising. It's a good reminder that for so many Democrats the trouble with Bush's crimes was that he was a Republican; once a Democrat commits them, they're not crimes anymore. Therefore it was perfectly legitimate for Democrats to criticize Bush, but not for anyone of any party to criticize Obama.

He's One of Them

I'm still swamped with other things I have do, so I thought I'd pass this along:



Thanks to this very funny review by Band of Thebes --

Give or take, it's about two pretty dancers in 140 A.D. (the stars of Step Up and Billy Elliot) both of whom are into leather (thus the title) and fight about who's going to be whose slave. In the first half, the buffer, more built 30 year-old muscle stud Marcus rescues the skinnier, cuter 24 year-old Esca from a brutal top in a helmet mask and makes him his slave. Fine. Lucky them. But -- and this is always a mistake -- they decide to go to Scotland a Burning Man Festival except they don't have a car or a place to stay and it rains a lot and everybody's high and howling and covered with mud or blue paint and mohawks or really dirty long hair and the bonfire isn't that much fun and the food is bloody awful, so nerves are frayed, right? When they could have gone to Rome? Well, Esca's not having it. He totally flips and is all NO, you're MY slave now! So hot, hot Marcus gets tied up and led around on a leash by a twink. Fine. Lucky them again.

-- (and there's more!) I now realize I have to see it.

And while I'm at it, Whatever It Is I'm Against It shreds Obama's Afghanistan speech. A sample:

WHAT WE STAND NOT FOR: “We stand not for empire, but for self-determination. That is why we have a stake in the democratic aspirations that are now washing across the Arab World. We will support those revolutions with fidelity to our ideals, with the power of our example, and with an unwavering belief that all human beings deserve to live with freedom and dignity.” Unless they live in Bahrain or someplace with oil or US military bases, obviously.

WHAT WE MUST RECAPTURE: “And most of all, after a decade of passionate debate, we must recapture the common purpose that we shared at the beginning of this time of war.” Revenge?

ITMFA.

He's One of Them

I'm still swamped with other things I have do, so I thought I'd pass this along:



Thanks to this very funny review by Band of Thebes --

Give or take, it's about two pretty dancers in 140 A.D. (the stars of Step Up and Billy Elliot) both of whom are into leather (thus the title) and fight about who's going to be whose slave. In the first half, the buffer, more built 30 year-old muscle stud Marcus rescues the skinnier, cuter 24 year-old Esca from a brutal top in a helmet mask and makes him his slave. Fine. Lucky them. But -- and this is always a mistake -- they decide to go to Scotland a Burning Man Festival except they don't have a car or a place to stay and it rains a lot and everybody's high and howling and covered with mud or blue paint and mohawks or really dirty long hair and the bonfire isn't that much fun and the food is bloody awful, so nerves are frayed, right? When they could have gone to Rome? Well, Esca's not having it. He totally flips and is all NO, you're MY slave now! So hot, hot Marcus gets tied up and led around on a leash by a twink. Fine. Lucky them again.

-- (and there's more!) I now realize I have to see it.

And while I'm at it, Whatever It Is I'm Against It shreds Obama's Afghanistan speech. A sample:

WHAT WE STAND NOT FOR: “We stand not for empire, but for self-determination. That is why we have a stake in the democratic aspirations that are now washing across the Arab World. We will support those revolutions with fidelity to our ideals, with the power of our example, and with an unwavering belief that all human beings deserve to live with freedom and dignity.” Unless they live in Bahrain or someplace with oil or US military bases, obviously.

WHAT WE MUST RECAPTURE: “And most of all, after a decade of passionate debate, we must recapture the common purpose that we shared at the beginning of this time of war.” Revenge?

ITMFA.

Who's On First?

You know, I have trouble nowadays keeping up with the revolving-door series of supreme US commanders in Afghanistan, but apparently it is presently General David Petraeus who's directing the killing of women and children and goats over there to keep America safe.

Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution passed along this charming story today, though. In a closed-door session, Petraeus suggested to some of Hamid Karzai's aides that "Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in northeastern Afghanistan might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties, according to two participants at the meeting."

That's a perfect incitement to liberal handwringing over how we're ever going to win hearts and minds over there if such things keep happening. But what I liked best in the article was a comment by the reporter, Joshua Partlow: "The anger greeting this message showed the political challenges inherent in dealing with allegations of civilian casualties, particularly in remote and dangerous areas where investigations prove difficult."

It's all about us, you see. Remember that. It's all about us, and the challenges we face in a remote and dangerous country. If only the Afghanistanis would think for a moment about somebody other than themselves, and give some consideration to us and the sacrifices we are making for them! General Petraeus said he was sorry. What more do they want from him?

Who's On First?

You know, I have trouble nowadays keeping up with the revolving-door series of supreme US commanders in Afghanistan, but apparently it is presently General David Petraeus who's directing the killing of women and children and goats over there to keep America safe.

Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution passed along this charming story today, though. In a closed-door session, Petraeus suggested to some of Hamid Karzai's aides that "Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in northeastern Afghanistan might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties, according to two participants at the meeting."

That's a perfect incitement to liberal handwringing over how we're ever going to win hearts and minds over there if such things keep happening. But what I liked best in the article was a comment by the reporter, Joshua Partlow: "The anger greeting this message showed the political challenges inherent in dealing with allegations of civilian casualties, particularly in remote and dangerous areas where investigations prove difficult."

It's all about us, you see. Remember that. It's all about us, and the challenges we face in a remote and dangerous country. If only the Afghanistanis would think for a moment about somebody other than themselves, and give some consideration to us and the sacrifices we are making for them! General Petraeus said he was sorry. What more do they want from him?

The Destruction Was Mutual

An excellent article at Counterpunch by William Blum. Here's what he has to say about the US and Afghanistan:

In their need to defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many Americans have cited the severe oppression of women in that desperate land and would have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor ladies. However, in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they'll ever have under the current government, more perhaps than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning women: “provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men”; “abolished forced marriages”; “bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs”; “extensive literacy programs, especially for women”; “putting girls and boys in the same classroom”; “concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics”.

The overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of an Islamic fundamentalist regime, followed by the awful Taliban. And why did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Mainly because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire -- "We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War”, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser.

The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

Brzezinski has denied this allegation, but it's certain that the US sided with the Islamists against the modernizers in Afghanistan.

The whole article is worth your attention -- see especially the section on Cuba.

The Destruction Was Mutual

An excellent article at Counterpunch by William Blum. Here's what he has to say about the US and Afghanistan:

In their need to defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many Americans have cited the severe oppression of women in that desperate land and would have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor ladies. However, in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they'll ever have under the current government, more perhaps than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning women: “provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men”; “abolished forced marriages”; “bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs”; “extensive literacy programs, especially for women”; “putting girls and boys in the same classroom”; “concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics”.

The overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of an Islamic fundamentalist regime, followed by the awful Taliban. And why did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Mainly because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire -- "We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War”, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser.

The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

Brzezinski has denied this allegation, but it's certain that the US sided with the Islamists against the modernizers in Afghanistan.

The whole article is worth your attention -- see especially the section on Cuba.

When Corruption Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Be Corrupt

(image)

We hear a lot about how corrupt Hamid Karzai's government is, and I imagine much of it is true: Karzai is, after all, our creature, our man in Kabul. Almost by definition, a leader installed by invaders is going to be corrupt. If the US had thought Karzai would have too much of a mind of his own, we'd have looked for someone else. It's also useful that such a person should be at least somewhat dirty, so we'll have an excuse for taking him down (or letting him fall) when we choose to do so.

So, when Democracy Now reported this morning that

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into a recent NATO air strike that reportedly killed as many as fifty-two civilians, including women and children. Karzai called on NATO troops to "put into practice every possible measure to avoid harming civilians during military operations." Afghan officials say the civilians died when a NATO helicopter gunship opened fire on a compound where they had taken shelter after fleeing an expected firefight between Taliban fighters and NATO troops. US military officials have rejected the claims of the Afghan government, saying there is no evidence civilians were injured or killed.

I had to snicker derisively. The US denial is of course tantamount to an admission of guilt, since the US military always lies about its atrocities. (So does every military and every government, of course, but there's all this American Exceptionalism around.)

The same thing goes for the Obama administrations's efforts to downplay this weekend's release by Wikileaks of a huge batch of documents about the US war in Afghanistan, which "provide a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how a secret black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial, how Taliban attacks have soared, and how Pakistan is fueling the insurgency." The White House first complained that this was a threat to US security, citing a "potential national security concern" and then declaring that "there’s no broad new revelations in this". All quite familiar. (It's not just the White House, of course. The AP reports that Senator Jane Harman, D-CA, claimed (via) that "Someone inadvertently or on purpose gave the Taliban its new 'enemies list.'" That's a lie, since no one in the US government could have vetted all the material in the time before Harman's remark, and the newspapers which reported on it collaborated with the White House to remove identifying details. Not that I could get all that excited if it were true, since those collaborators provide the US with information for our atrocities.)

(P.S. July 28: The London Times claims that it found identifying details in the documents; Julian Assange of Wikileaks denies it; "Robert Riegle, a former senior intelligence officer, said: "'It's possible that someone could get killed in the next few days.'" Of course, people are getting killed in Afghanistan all the time, often by US troops or predator drones using intelligence given by Afghan informants.)

Amy Goodman's interview with Guardian editor editor David Leigh shows another familiar pattern: the White House worried that the released material would endanger Afghan collaborators, people who had worked with the US. But as Leigh says,

Well, I’ll say it again: we had already decided, on Spiegel, on the New York Times and on The Guardian, what we were going to do, and we were going to take out names that we thought might be in danger of reprisals. And we decided not to publish certain intelligence reports that describe that kind of thing. So all those decisions had been taken. So the White House was pushing at an open door when it said, "We don’t want people to be in danger." So they’re not—they’re congratulating us for something we had already decided to do.

As Glenn Greenwald says, "Yes, leaking classified information is against the law - so is improperly classifying evidence of crimes or other wrongdoing" (via).

But best of all was DN's report of an appearance by former hacker Adrian Lamo, who'd turned in Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower for Wikileaks' earlier release of the video of a US massacre in Iraq. Lamo spoke at a Hackers on Planet Earth conference and got a rough reception:

ADRIAN LAMO: I think that the government behaved themselves better than a lot of people would give them credit for. To set the record clear, I am not an informant. I’m a witness in a criminal case. It’s not that different, in my eyes, from being a witness in any other case that could involve potential loss of life.


EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN: Adrian, I mean, you say it’s—you know, it’s been a pleasant experience for you, you know, working with the government on this, I guess. But Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker, is currently sitting in prison in Kuwait, I believe, and he could be locked up for the rest of his life. How do you feel about that?


AUDIENCE MEMBER: Tortured!


ADRIAN LAMO: I think that it’s a little bit ludicrous to say that Bradley Manning is going to be tortured. We don’t do that to our citizens.


AUDIENCE MEMBER: Guantánamo!


ADRIAN LAMO: I mean, obviously it’s been much worse for him, but it’s certainly been no picnic for me. And I knew from the get-go that it was going to be a low point in my interactions with the community. And I—


UNIDENTIFIED: Yet you could have ignored him. When he first contacted you, you were not obliged to ever answer him. You could have simply ignored him, and none of this would have ever happened.


ADRIAN LAMO: And Mr. Manning could have ignored the diplomatic cables, and he could have ignored the collateral murder video, but he followed his conscience, as I did mine.


AUDIENCE MEMBER: From my perspective, I see what you have done as treason.

It's best if you watch the clip and hear it for yourself, though. When I listened, I echoed the audience response to Lamo's claim that the US doesn't torture its citizens:

When Corruption Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Be Corrupt

(image)

We hear a lot about how corrupt Hamid Karzai's government is, and I imagine much of it is true: Karzai is, after all, our creature, our man in Kabul. Almost by definition, a leader installed by invaders is going to be corrupt. If the US had thought Karzai would have too much of a mind of his own, we'd have looked for someone else. It's also useful that such a person should be at least somewhat dirty, so we'll have an excuse for taking him down (or letting him fall) when we choose to do so.

So, when Democracy Now reported this morning that

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into a recent NATO air strike that reportedly killed as many as fifty-two civilians, including women and children. Karzai called on NATO troops to "put into practice every possible measure to avoid harming civilians during military operations." Afghan officials say the civilians died when a NATO helicopter gunship opened fire on a compound where they had taken shelter after fleeing an expected firefight between Taliban fighters and NATO troops. US military officials have rejected the claims of the Afghan government, saying there is no evidence civilians were injured or killed.

I had to snicker derisively. The US denial is of course tantamount to an admission of guilt, since the US military always lies about its atrocities. (So does every military and every government, of course, but there's all this American Exceptionalism around.)

The same thing goes for the Obama administrations's efforts to downplay this weekend's release by Wikileaks of a huge batch of documents about the US war in Afghanistan, which "provide a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how a secret black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial, how Taliban attacks have soared, and how Pakistan is fueling the insurgency." The White House first complained that this was a threat to US security, citing a "potential national security concern" and then declaring that "there’s no broad new revelations in this". All quite familiar. (It's not just the White House, of course. The AP reports that Senator Jane Harman, D-CA, claimed (via) that "Someone inadvertently or on purpose gave the Taliban its new 'enemies list.'" That's a lie, since no one in the US government could have vetted all the material in the time before Harman's remark, and the newspapers which reported on it collaborated with the White House to remove identifying details. Not that I could get all that excited if it were true, since those collaborators provide the US with information for our atrocities.)

(P.S. July 28: The London Times claims that it found identifying details in the documents; Julian Assange of Wikileaks denies it; "Robert Riegle, a former senior intelligence officer, said: "'It's possible that someone could get killed in the next few days.'" Of course, people are getting killed in Afghanistan all the time, often by US troops or predator drones using intelligence given by Afghan informants.)

Amy Goodman's interview with Guardian editor editor David Leigh shows another familiar pattern: the White House worried that the released material would endanger Afghan collaborators, people who had worked with the US. But as Leigh says,

Well, I’ll say it again: we had already decided, on Spiegel, on the New York Times and on The Guardian, what we were going to do, and we were going to take out names that we thought might be in danger of reprisals. And we decided not to publish certain intelligence reports that describe that kind of thing. So all those decisions had been taken. So the White House was pushing at an open door when it said, "We don’t want people to be in danger." So they’re not—they’re congratulating us for something we had already decided to do.

As Glenn Greenwald says, "Yes, leaking classified information is against the law - so is improperly classifying evidence of crimes or other wrongdoing" (via).

But best of all was DN's report of an appearance by former hacker Adrian Lamo, who'd turned in Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower for Wikileaks' earlier release of the video of a US massacre in Iraq. Lamo spoke at a Hackers on Planet Earth conference and got a rough reception:

ADRIAN LAMO: I think that the government behaved themselves better than a lot of people would give them credit for. To set the record clear, I am not an informant. I’m a witness in a criminal case. It’s not that different, in my eyes, from being a witness in any other case that could involve potential loss of life.


EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN: Adrian, I mean, you say it’s—you know, it’s been a pleasant experience for you, you know, working with the government on this, I guess. But Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker, is currently sitting in prison in Kuwait, I believe, and he could be locked up for the rest of his life. How do you feel about that?


AUDIENCE MEMBER: Tortured!


ADRIAN LAMO: I think that it’s a little bit ludicrous to say that Bradley Manning is going to be tortured. We don’t do that to our citizens.


AUDIENCE MEMBER: Guantánamo!


ADRIAN LAMO: I mean, obviously it’s been much worse for him, but it’s certainly been no picnic for me. And I knew from the get-go that it was going to be a low point in my interactions with the community. And I—


UNIDENTIFIED: Yet you could have ignored him. When he first contacted you, you were not obliged to ever answer him. You could have simply ignored him, and none of this would have ever happened.


ADRIAN LAMO: And Mr. Manning could have ignored the diplomatic cables, and he could have ignored the collateral murder video, but he followed his conscience, as I did mine.


AUDIENCE MEMBER: From my perspective, I see what you have done as treason.

It's best if you watch the clip and hear it for yourself, though. When I listened, I echoed the audience response to Lamo's claim that the US doesn't torture its citizens:

Compare, Contrast, Liquefy

This status was posted by one of my Facebook friends from high school:

A Soldier is missing their family while caring for yours. In the minute it takes you to read this, Soldiers all over the world are saving lives. It's Military appreciation week....Repost if you are a Military, love a Military member, hold memories of a Fallen Hero or appreciate the Military

Or rather, re-posted, since it's evidently another one of those chain texts that people pass along. It took me less than a minute to read it, and only twenty-five muscles to start typing up this post.

I wonder if this person noticed that the word "American" is missing from the text. Would she agree that Taliban soldiers are saving lives? Soldiers are "all over the world", right? I didn't think about it right away myself, because my blood pressure went right up at "saving lives." Yeah, right.

The US military has reprimanded six operators of an unmanned drone, which mistakenly attacked a civilian convoy in Afghanistan killing at least 23.
Warnings that the convoy was not an attacking force were ignored or played down, while the ground-force commander was not sure who was in the vehicles, an investigation found.
The deadly assault took place in Uruzgan Province in February.
Civilian deaths in strikes have caused widespread resentment in Afghanistan. ...
The commander of the international forces in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, said letters had been issued reprimanding four senior and two junior officers in Afghanistan.
He said: "Our most important mission here is to protect the Afghan people; inadvertently killing or injuring civilians is heartbreaking and undermines their trust and confidence in our mission.
"We will do all we can to regain that trust."
The botched strike happened despite Gen McChrystal's introduction of much tougher rules of engagement in a bid to minimise such casualties.

Militaries don't save lives, they take lives. Can Americans be excused for ignoring this basic fact just because it's Memorial Day there? Anyway, General McChrystal said he was heartbroken, and the perpetrators have received letters of reprimand; the President says he takes civilian deaths very seriously. Remember, it's about us, it's all and only about us.

Compare, Contrast, Liquefy

This status was posted by one of my Facebook friends from high school:

A Soldier is missing their family while caring for yours. In the minute it takes you to read this, Soldiers all over the world are saving lives. It's Military appreciation week....Repost if you are a Military, love a Military member, hold memories of a Fallen Hero or appreciate the Military

Or rather, re-posted, since it's evidently another one of those chain texts that people pass along. It took me less than a minute to read it, and only twenty-five muscles to start typing up this post.

I wonder if this person noticed that the word "American" is missing from the text. Would she agree that Taliban soldiers are saving lives? Soldiers are "all over the world", right? I didn't think about it right away myself, because my blood pressure went right up at "saving lives." Yeah, right.

The US military has reprimanded six operators of an unmanned drone, which mistakenly attacked a civilian convoy in Afghanistan killing at least 23.
Warnings that the convoy was not an attacking force were ignored or played down, while the ground-force commander was not sure who was in the vehicles, an investigation found.
The deadly assault took place in Uruzgan Province in February.
Civilian deaths in strikes have caused widespread resentment in Afghanistan. ...
The commander of the international forces in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, said letters had been issued reprimanding four senior and two junior officers in Afghanistan.
He said: "Our most important mission here is to protect the Afghan people; inadvertently killing or injuring civilians is heartbreaking and undermines their trust and confidence in our mission.
"We will do all we can to regain that trust."
The botched strike happened despite Gen McChrystal's introduction of much tougher rules of engagement in a bid to minimise such casualties.

Militaries don't save lives, they take lives. Can Americans be excused for ignoring this basic fact just because it's Memorial Day there? Anyway, General McChrystal said he was heartbroken, and the perpetrators have received letters of reprimand; the President says he takes civilian deaths very seriously. Remember, it's about us, it's all and only about us.