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Category: War

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Drugs, the CIA and Afghanistan
By Brynn Jacobs on October 27th, 2009

Drugs, the CIA and Afghanistan

Covert government by defense contractor means corrupt wars of conquest, government by dope dealer. When the world’s traditional inebriative herbs become illegal commodities, they become worth as much as precious metal, precious metal that can be farmed. … Illegal drugs, solely because of the artificial value given them by Prohibition, have become the basis of military power anywhere they can be grown and delivered in quantity. … To this day American defense contractors are the biggest drug-money launderers in the world.— Drug War: Covert Money, Power and Policy, p.318.

Revelations from today’s New York Times that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of president of Afghanistan, has been on the payroll of the CIA for years should be utterly unsurprising to anyone that has followed the history of either the CIA or drugs in Afghanistan. In a considerable understatement, the Times story says “The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.” Far from “doing everything in its power” to end the drug trade, Afghan poppies are also a major source of revenue for the CIA. As Noam Chomsky said: The close correlation between the drug racket and international terrorism (sometimes called “counterinsurgency,” “low intensity conflict” or some other euphemism) is not surprising. Clandestine operations need plenty of money, which should be undetectable. And they need criminal operatives as well. The rest follows.”

Current Events • History • Military
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By Erich Vieth on October 25th, 2009

Israel’s criticism of Iran’s nuclear program

Israel is one of the countries most fervently criticizing Iran in Iran’s quest for nuclear research (see here and here). Al Jazeera English notes, however, that Israel hasn’t even signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Current Events • Military
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Remote control war - a look at the daily grind of Predator pilots
By Erich Vieth on October 22nd, 2009

Remote control war - a look at the daily grind of Predator pilots

What’s it like to kill human beings by dropping bombs with the push of buttons on your computer keyboard 7,000 miles away? Imaging doing this every work day, then driving home to hug your wife and kids every night. This video from FrontLine will give you a good idea of what it’s like. Whatever your emotional reaction to this form of “warfare,” you will find someone agreeing with you (and disagreeing with you) in the comments following the video.

If our enemies were using robotic planes to drop bombs on American soil, I suspect that we’d be outraged, much more than by conventional warfare. This is certainly a sterile way of war, no matter how much the supervisors remind the pilots that they are killing human beings.

If I understood why we are at “war” in Afghanistan and Iraq, maybe then I could understand whether these drones are furthering our “war objectives.”

Featured • Good and Evil • Military • The Middle East
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The unspoken reality of “Peak Oil”
By Brynn Jacobs on October 20th, 2009

The unspoken reality of “Peak Oil”

THE world will have to find four Saudi Arabias by 2030 if it wants to maintain its oil dependency, the International Energy Agency says.

The reality of peak oil is fast approaching, and more must be done to develop and encourage the use of alternatives including solar and nuclear, the agency’s chief economist has warned.

“My main motto never changes, the era of low oil prices is over,” Dr Fatih Birol said.

That’s the verdict reported today in The Australian. I thought I’d check to see what other sources had to say about Birol’s assertion, but I cannot find a single U.S.- based source reporting it, other than blogs that are dedicated to peak-oil issues. This is rapidly becoming a crisis, and almost nobody is discussing it in America. Not just here, of course– study groups in Britain have been trying to get their government to begin planning for the reality of peak oil for years, and now they are saying it’s simply too late. (see this also).

Current Events • Economy • Featured • War
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By Erich Vieth on October 18th, 2009

Dan Choi: Love is worth fighting for.

Dan Choi is a well-decorated combat veteran who was dismissed from the military because was gay. His message at the National Equality March rally was simple and compelling. Choi made it clear that he is done asking and he is now telling. Don’t ask, don’t tell must be repealed immediately.

Bigotry • Military
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By Erich Vieth on October 13th, 2009

America’s paranoid irrationality

How paranoid have we become? Here’s what Allison Kilkenny of Alternet has to say:

The culture itself is sick, which is why America has a military budget that is almost as much as the rest of the world’s defense spending combined, and is over nine times larger than the military budget of China, and yet Americans feel more afraid, and more paranoid, than ever. Everyone is against us, we’re told. Everyone hates our freedom, and our amazing culture. China wants to overtake us. The entire Middle East wants us dead. Europeans laugh at us, and think we’re stupid. Emperor Penguins are plotting something. Canada is about to attack.

And then there’s Iran. Don’t even get us started on Iran. Until Americans decide to break this addiction to “The List,” this cycle of irrationality will continue into the foreseeable future.

And see this post, for the best friend of America’s politicians: peddling nightmares.

Military • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on October 06th, 2009

Guantanamo guard converts to Islam

Put on your psychologist hat and figure this one out. Terry Holdbrooks, one of the Guantanamo guards converted to Islam six months after being assigned to guard duty there. While working at Guantanamo, he was ostracized by the other guards because he was too nice to the prisoners. He didn’t have a very good impression of them either, claiming that they often “indulged in alcohol, porn and sports”:

“I didn’t have a very high impression of my colleagues,” he says. Many of them were “ridiculous Budweiser-drinking, cornbread-fed, tobacco-chewing drunks, racists and bigots” who blindly followed orders, and within months he had stopped talking to them altogether.

Holdbrooks was discharged from the military, still practices Islam, but seems to be struggling with life. This article presents an interesting personality profile.

Military • Psychology Cognition
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14
Right wing calls for military coup
By Brynn Jacobs on September 30th, 2009

Right wing calls for military coup

Occasionally, items in the news make me sit up and take notice of how far from a constitutional republic we really have come. Like this:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

That’s the opening salvo from John Perry, a regular columnist with the right-wing website Newsmax, in an article entitled “Obama risks a Domestic Military ‘Intervention’”. I would like nothing more than to provide you with a link to the whole article, but it has apparently disappeared down the memory hole. Perhaps the editors at Newsmax realized it would be inconvenient to have an article speculating on the potential for a military coup at the same time they are trumpeting the peacefulness of the tea-party protestors and wondering why anyone would accuse them of encouraging dangerous, violent extremism. The quote I harvested above came from Mediamatters.org, which detailed this story yesterday. Unfortunately, the did not reproduce the full column. I managed to grab a screenshot of the Newsmax website search function, which proves that the article really did exist, although the hyperlink for the article now returns visitors to the main Newsmax page.

Law • Military
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By Erich Vieth on September 28th, 2009

The need to really look at the evidence in Iran.

Amidst new reports that Iran has not been forthcoming about its nuclear program, Glenn Greenwald urges that we do what the Chinese are doing, as reported by the NYT:

The Chinese, one administration official said, were more skeptical [of recent reports], and said they wanted to look at the intelligence, and to see what international inspectors said when they investigated.

What Greenwald is suggesting is common sense. He might need to repeat his advice endlessly, though, because we live in a country where the gold standard for the news media is hyped up conflict and because we are a country that doesn’t seem to “get” common sense anymore.

Media • Military • The Middle East
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By Erich Vieth on September 27th, 2009

How to not-audit a DOD contractor

Listen to the scolding being delivered by Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri with regard to what appears to be a fraud committed by a major Department of Defense contractor and subsequent incompetence by the GAO. How many other millions and billions of tax dollars are being wasted by the pentagon and its contractors? Where are the tea-parties protesting pentagon fraud?

Fraud • Military
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Discharged gay soldier receives Harvard award
By Erich Vieth on September 23rd, 2009

Discharged gay soldier receives Harvard award

Lt. Dan Choi, who was discharged from the military because he had come out as a gay man, received a Service to Humanity award from the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. As part of his eloquent speech, Choi burned his discharge letter at the podium.

My initial reaction: Any society that can’t rectify a situation involving this much gross injustice probably can’t get much of anything done. Hint to Congress: Simply write a law that says you won’t kick highly competent soldiers out of the military just because they are gay.

Bigotry • Featured • Military
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9/11: An Observation
By Mark Tiedemann on September 11th, 2009

9/11: An Observation

Comparisons of the disaster of 9/11 to Pearl Harbor break down in the aftermath. What I remember is getting a phone call from my wife to turn on the news, any news, and then seeing the images on CNN. I then called several people, including some on the west coast, early as it was.

It was a binding experience.

Then the silence of the skies for next few days. All planes grounded. We don’t pay attention to all that background noise until it disappears.

And I remember wanting to strike back.

But at who?

I am not a reflex pacifist. I do not believe in turning the other cheek as an automatic gesture. The world, in the aggregate, does not yield to such gestures until much blood is spent, and disgust comes to the aid of the peaceful intent. Strike at me, hurt my family and friends, threaten my home, I have no compunction about the use of violence.

But not thoughtless lashing out, flailing, blind retaliation. That does less good than the habitual use of peaceful surrender. If we were to find these people, we needed to be smart about it, and move carefully. When caught, punishment must be determined accordingly.

That was not to be. I watched our so-called leaders turn this event into a justification for major abuse globally. The sympathy we had from the entire world evaporated as the United States began stomping around acting like a pissed off child whose lunch money had been taken by a bully. But we were not small and weak, so embracing the automatic response of schoolyard tactics resulted in calamity. I was horrified by the unfolding nightmare of the Bush years, all done supposedly in my name as a citizen.

American Culture • Culture • Current Events • Featured • History • Politics • War
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3
By Tim Hogan on September 10th, 2009

Not another Charlie Wilson’s War

I think there will never NOT be a “Taliban” or some such other indigenous, nationalist Afghan movement without an Islamic base. It is by the very nature of the diverse peoples in Afghanistan that Islam is the focus which unites all Afghans. Any nationalistic movement in Afghanistan will necessarily have an Islamic base.

It is by the very nature of the diverse peoples in Afghanistan that we cannot hope to quell all inter-tribal or inter-nationality violence in and across Afghanistan. That being said, what chance does any foreign nation have of completely stopping any Afghan insurgency which is indigenous rather than foreign in its base?

Certainly, we might see ourselves at being successful at cutting off the re-arming of Afghanistan from Pakistan if we could trust that the indigenous Afghan national and local security forces were sufficient in numbers and training to do so within some reasonable time period. We would also need the co-operation of the Pakistani authorities, which are fighting the Taliban at home. And Pakistan is now more amenable to support efforts against the Taliban and al Qaida along the joint borders between Pakistani and Afghanistan. But, there are some other borders and issues to be concerned about which will always take up the time of any national security forces, Iran (sectarian) and the North (opium trade).

It is not known how long it would take to build a national Afghan army or security force sufficient for this effort.

The Afghan people pride themselves on their ability to oust foreign occupiers. US and NATO forces are more and more being viewed as foreign occupiers, given the rising toll of civilian deaths, notwithstanding any causalities by the Taliban (the last I heard, the Taliban doesn’t have any fast-movers or aerial bombs).

The Middle East • War
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