Tag Archives: Pakistan

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

News jam.

Lots going on, my friend. I’m just going to blow through a few stories and see what comes out on the other end.

Missile Envy. I’m thinking they should declare April international missile month, since we started with North Korea’s failed launch of their three-stage Galaxy-3 rocket, which they claimed was intended to send a satellite into orbit, and we’ve closed out the month with shots in India and Pakistan both. The first incident, of course, had officials, politicians, and commentators practically foaming at the mouth with both outrage and derision, plus plenty of snark when the thing broke into pieces (like many of our early missiles did). There would be consequences! they intoned righteously, joining in near universal condemnation and promises of further isolation.

Jump forward about a week. India launches its AGNI-V A5 ICBM, what is indisputably a ballistic missile. Their officials brag that it is capable of carrying nuclear warheads and that it can reach Beijing or Shanghai – two major cities in a nation India fought a war with in 1962.  The reaction over here? Crickets. Serious crickets. Ho-hum. Boys will be boys. Now this week, Pakistan (which has fought three wars with India) launches their latest ballistic missile. Here is the report from the Daily News:

The United States declined to criticise Pakistan too for test-firing a nuclear-capable missile less than a week after India tested a long range missile, but considered it “most important” that Islamabad had informed New Delhi beforehand.

Once again – a collective yawn. So let me get this straight… when the nation that got annihilated (by our bombs) back in the 1950s launches a satellite, it’s a huge problem. But when two nuclear-power allies launch openly offensive ballistic missiles and brag about their destructive capabilities … that’s okay. Got it.

Gingrich Wins. Actually not, but the way he talks about it, it’s hard to tell. I’m going to miss the Newtster, frankly. He brought a certain element of unpredictability to a pretty bland late primary season, once the more entertaining contenders dropped out and it was left to Old Bland Willard and Rick (Man-On-Dog) St. Bore-em.  That mouth – there’s always something dropping out of it. Though the convention is still months away, so there still may be an opportunity for him to inject a little more color into a very drab coronation.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Getoutistan.

The first question I asked myself when I heard about the Koran burning incident in Afghanistan was, how could anyone make this mistake? What were the circumstances of the burning? For chrissake, everyone knows what the consequences of such an act are likely to be. When that crackpot preacher in Florida was ostentatiously threatening to burn the Muslim holy book, diplomats, generals, political leaders, clergy … people all across the country and around the world were applying pressure on him not to do this. It is deeply inflammatory – this is widely known.

My second thought was, this is not simply about burning Korans. This incident followed ten years of war and all the evils that are contained within that fact. It occurred during a stretch of weeks in which we saw cell-phone video of American soldiers laughing and joking as they pissed on the corpses of Afghans; our military personnel adopting an SS-type insignia for one of their units; our Defense Department persisting in its robotic Drone war on both sides of the Pakistani border. Now Afghans are turning their guns on our people. Is anyone really surprised?

Here’s the problem: we just cannot see this issue clearly. Even on liberal MSNBC, it becomes a question of those ungrateful Afghans, railing against their funders and protectors from the U.S. It is portrayed as a component of Karzai’s corruption, a favorite meme of the mainstream political culture, leaving aside the inconvenient fact that he was planted in the country by the Bush administration, had been an exile Afghan fixer for fossil fuel industry prior to his tenure as head of a severely ailing country. We need to get past this idea that they owe us something. The Afghans owe us nothing. We screwed them severely during the years of the Soviet war, back in the 1980s. We screwed them afterwards, leaving them to an internecine struggle that tore what was left of the country apart. Then came 9/11, which we laid at their door, though the cave-dwelling Bin Laden was only the head of an al Qaeda snake that coiled from Saudi Arabia to Germany to Florida and beyond.

Bin Laden is dead. He wasn’t even in Afghanistan. He was safe and dry in Pakistan, laughing at our folly. What the hell are we still doing there?

luv u,

jp