Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Political Rants

Kill zones.

Back when I was knee high to an antelope, in the scented 1960s, the U.S. was engaged in what is now described as “limited war” in Vietnam. Our concept of limitation is, well, somewhat limited, as it amounted to an all-out attack on Vietnamese society, particularly in the South Vietnam hinterlands, which took the brunt of the bombing, defoliation, and other depredations. Part of that policy was establishment of “Free-fire zones” – when night fell and the friendlies were inside the wire of the strategic hamlet, anything that moved beyond the wire was fair game. Hence the shooting, the bombing, etc.

This is our target?Our drone war in Pakistan-Afghanistan, and essentially everywhere else, runs on a similar principle. It isn’t as all-out, of course, but it appears to be nearly as random. And just as every living thing in the Vietnamese countryside was assumed to be Viet Cong, every military age male in the tribal areas of Pakistan is, by definition, an extremist, a combatant, a terrorist, and therefore the target of killer drones, piloted by some dude who works at a terminal in a trailer about fifty miles from where I’m sitting right now.

That definition of “military aged male” appears to be expansive enough to include the 67-year-old grandmother of Rafiq Rehman, a school teacher in North Waziristan. She was killed by a drone-fired  missile while tending her crop. (Rehman and his family were interviewed on Democracy Now! a couple of weeks ago.)

This policy is not only criminal, it’s stupid, unless of course the objective is to generate future conflicts. People in these tribal areas live under the buzz of killer drones every day of their lives. There is simply no telling when you, your father, your daughter, your best friend will be blown to bits at random by an unaccountable power, an out-of-control empire pressing its advantage against people who cannot defend themselves against this deadly technology. As an American of a certain age, I grew up under the threat of nuclear war. There was a sense of danger that attended every day of my generation’s childhood. This drone war is much more tangible, much more immediate, but psychologically corrosive in a similar way.

We are investing in a generation of people who hate our guts. We need to stop this now.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Justice in America.

Bradley Manning is guilty, per his military proceeding. That’s the way it’s going to be. The government did not manage to pin the “aiding the enemy” charge on him, but because we live in the era of massive prosecutorial over-charging, he was convicted on about 20 other counts. It’s likely that, on top of abusive pre-trial detention amounting to at least psychological torture (and probably physical torture as well – exposure to extreme temperature, sleep deprivation, etc.) Manning will be treated to decades in prison for the crime he committed; that dastardly crime for which there can be no excuses given, no quarter offered. “Justice” has been served.

Guilty of telling us the truth about us.What was the crime again? Oh, yes. Exposing the sprawling criminality of our foreign policy, namely the Iraq war and the Afghan war, plus releasing a raft of diplomatic cables relating to prosecution of the global war on tactics … I mean, terror. Heinous indeed. Perhaps someone needs to remind me again why the man who informed us of the war’s true impact is going to jail while the men who started the war are living a comfortable – and loudly opinionated – retirement. Rank has its privileges, to be sure.

One thing Manning reminded us of was the fact that, to the federal government – the permanent national security state that persists through administrations of both parties – we are the enemy. Manning was accused of aiding the enemy, and that’s what he did. He gave us the information we need to fully understand the global war being fought in our names. Armed with that knowledge, we could compell our government to stop the killing, the torturing, the endless detentions, etc., because we live in a formal democracy. That makes us a threat to the persistence of the national security state. That makes us the “enemy”.

I know a medical professional whose son is in the military. He had four tours in Iraq, was knocked around by IED explosions. He lives in pain. He’s had his neck operated on, the doctors fusing his vertebrae together. He’s losing his sight. Worse yet, he can’t work but he can’t get decent disability benefits unless he stays in the Army for another 150 days. He’s a very young man with two young children, and his life is ruined. I hear about him, the many thousands like him, the many, many more thousands killed, and I see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pearl, Wolfowitz, Feith, and the rest of them, and their comfortable retirements.

That’s justice? Not quite.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Into the fray.

The Bush… I mean, Obama administration announced today that it would be providing arms to the Syrian opposition, whoever that may be. Not too hard to see that coming, I suppose. When a man draws a red line, it’s because he’s already all too eager to step across it. The Syrian conflict is like that shiny new car our government and our corporate media (including its NPR/PBS sidecar) just want, want, WANT more than anything. They’re ready to let the old Afghan clunker go, were able to pawn off their Iraqi wreck, and they just keep driving by that showroom lot, looking at that awesome Syrian number.

Already, I have heard more about the numbers of killed in Syrian than I ever heard about the Iraq catastrophe. Again, no surprise. The government and the press meticulously count the victims of official enemies, but when it comes to the corpses generated by our misguided policies, we don’t do body counts. They still won’t put a realistic number on the lives lost in Iraq, hovering around the casual 30K guess Bush made in 2007 or so. I suppose once we have both legs in the mire of this conflict they will stop counting again. But for now, the statistics are useful – they are trying to push the American people closer to intervention, and it’s evident that the effort isn’t working very well. Less than one in four is in favor of intervention.

Not hard to see why. Two wars over the past twelve years, with more than 6,700 Americans killed. The very real probability that our sophisticated and destructive weapons will wind up in the hands of fanatical militants. Skepticism over the case for chemical weapon use by the regime. Who can blame us, right? The scare talk about Hezbollah is probably a bridge too far for most, as well. Frankly, they are engaged in something close to an existential struggle. If their patron Assad falls and is replaced by a Sunni-dominated regime, that puts an enemy on their eastern flank. They already have Israel to their south. Forget religion, politics, propaganda for a minute – if you were one of their strategists, what would you do?

Then there’s the small matter of the overwhelming majority of Americans being against this. But then, we were in favor of background checks, too. So long as McCain is happy, we can pound salt, apparently.

luv u,

jp