Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Political Rants

Next up.

I can’t decide whether the Syrian conflict is becoming more like the Afghan war of the 1980s or the Lebanon civil war (1975-90). It certainly has elements of both. Great and regional power proxies. A U.S. ally that is also a conduit for extremists (Pakistan in the 1980s Afghan war; Turkey in today’s Syria). Multiple armies running up against one another in a relatively small space (Lebanon when the Israelis, Syrians, and U.S. were all operating there at once). Rich Saudis bankrolling fanatical foreign fighters (Afghanistan). Now Syria has the misfortune of having drawn the interest of two great powers, one the global hegemon (us), the other its former and increasingly current rival (Russia).

When THEY do it, it's wrong. Got that?It is a bit maddening to see Defense Secretary Ash Carter denounce the Russians for being the gang that can’t shoot straight (which they apparently are) when only days ago our forces in Afghanistan blew up a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital – an accident, of course (we seem to have a lot of them). While we’re railing against Putin, we might pause to remember that we have been in Afghanistan for fourteen years, and that the place is still ungovernable. We’ve been in Iraq for 12 years at some level or another, and large swaths of it are under the control of a group we profess to hate – ISIS or ISIL, nurtured in the government-free zone we carved out in the cradle of civilization, supported by Saudi and Turkey. (I guess the friends of our friends are somehow our enemies. And the enemies of our enemies … also our enemies. Have we no friends?)

When you invade countries without cause or a thought to the consequences, you shouldn’t expect to make any friends. When you pursue policies that undermine the stability of an entire region, you shouldn’t be surprised when the whole place starts caving in. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating – sometimes things are broken so badly that they cannot be put back together. As Americans, we can’t get our heads around that concept. We always think there’s something we can do. Basically, the one thing we can do right now is to stop actively making things worse. Once that’s pursued, other solutions may present themselves.

Speakerstakes. Speaking of ungovernable, there will be no Speaker McCarthy and, hell, maybe no speaker anybody for a while. The bug-fuck-nuts conference in the House must be high-fiving one another over yet another victory. Word to the wise: when you put government haters in charge of government, bad things will happen.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Bodies count.

Though you probably didn’t hear about it on the evening news or NPR, the group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (of which Physicians for Social Responsibility is a member) released a report on casualties of the so-called “war on terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The toll is conservatively estimated at 1.3 million in total, with 1 million in Iraq killed as a result of our 2003 invasion. Anyone familiar with the figures breezily tossed around by the last two administrations might be surprised by this total. (I recall W. Bush casually offering 30,000, as if guessing the number of marbles in a jar.) Actually, the number is roughly in line with what the Iraq Study Group estimated in 2005-06.

This is what hegemony looks likeNo matter – this wasn’t worthy of comment, except on Democracy Now! That’s not surprising. We can’t acknowledge the magnitude of our own crimes, only those of our official enemies. Assad is an execrable mass murderer, right? Sure he is. But has he killed as many as we have over the past fifteen years? Not nearly. How about ISIS? Killer crackheads, to be sure. But pikers next to us. Absolute freaking amateurs. We have a long tradition of outdoing those we criticize. No one denounced the Russians for their invasion of Afghanistan more than we did; and yet here we are, 14 years into our own Afghan war, no end in sight. Noble mission vs. international crime. Curiously, the former has a higher body count.

This is nothing new. We’ve just passed the fiftieth anniversary of our invasion of South Vietnam – the arrival of the first contingent of combat units in the country. If they think about it at all, most Americans generally think the number of dead in the Vietnam war as being in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps – maybe 300,000. Given that millions were killed, millions more gravely wounded, this is akin to holocaust denial. Kind of sickening. It’s estimated that about 40,000 Vietnamese have died since the war due to unexploded ordinance alone – see this recent article in the Nation.

Unless we come to terms with this as a people, we will be condemned to repeat it. We already have, and we will again. But we don’t have to. It’s up to us.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Christmas bot.

Oh, Christmas bot, oh, Christmas bot! It’s hard to see just what you’ve got!

heres-bobYes, yes … we’re polishing up the holiday songs here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. T’is the season and all that. What, you’re not familiar with the dirge of the Christmas Bot? Small wonder. We just made it up. What kind of songwriters would we be if we resorted to used Christmas Carols? It would be a total cop out. So we are resolved to write lame Christmas numbers each and every December, five minutes before we hastily record them and throw them up on the internet. You’re welcome!

Legend has it that every year around this time, the sound of holiday ridiculousness wafts out of the old abandoned mill by the old abandoned canal in this old abandoned town. What an asinine legend. Just the sort of thing you’d expect in this lame backwater. Whoops – should have closed the window before I said that. Now all the neighbors know that I have NOTHING BUT CONTEMPT FOR THIS NEIGHBORHOOD!

Okay, well …. It’s probably obvious to all of you that I not only do not like having neighbors here at the mill. And it may seem to you that I am trying to drive them away with my obnoxiousness. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. We are trying to drive them away with the obnoxiousness of our raucous Christmas music. That’s probably the best way to scare away undesirables. Trouble is, we can’t keep it up for long enough to reach critical obnoxiousness mass, so we resort (as we always do) to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who makes a fairly decent stereo system when he really tries. He just plugs his sorry ass into a couple of stereo speakers, plugs a memory stick into his ear, and cranks it up to twelve.

Unethical? Not a bit of it. We have no ethics, no code. That’s what Big Green is all about. THAT’S WHY WE’RE ABOARD HER. Do I hear a “no” vote?