Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Occult Means Hidden » Fri Dec 24, 2010 11:55 pm
by Jeff » Sat Dec 25, 2010 1:54 pm
"We celebrate wealth," said President Obama in his year-end press briefing Wednesday afternoon.
in January 2008, Candidate Obama wrote:I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
by Plutonia » Sun Dec 26, 2010 7:59 pm
POLITICO Live
December 26, 2010
Bush officials: Obama terror policies echo Bush's
While Vice President Dick Cheney and other prominent conservatives have faulted President Barack Obama for going slack in the war on terror, two top Bush administration intelligence officials are arguing that the Obama team has been just as tough--if not tougher.
"The new administration has been as aggressive, if not more aggressive, in pursing these issues, because they're real," former Director of National Intelligence and retired Navy Admiral Michael McConnell said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"You commend them for that?" host Candy Crowley asked.
"I do commend them for that," McConnell said.
Former Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden also argued that the Obama approach has been by and large the same--regardless of campaign rhetoric.
"When one is in office, it's -- as the admiral has suggested, when one is in office, that responsibility weighs pretty heavily. And so we've seen a powerful consistency between two administrations trying to deal with this problem," Hayden said. "Actually, I've seen it over two administrations and I thank god every day for the continuity."
"Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you come from or what your political views might be, these threats are very real and very serious. And we have to -- have to deal with them in a very serious way," McConnell added.
by Bruce Dazzling » Thu Dec 30, 2010 4:36 pm
by Nordic » Sun Jan 02, 2011 9:20 pm
by justdrew » Sun Jan 02, 2011 9:55 pm
His star power would certainly help him pursue a political career -- there has even been talk about him joining the Obama administration in some environmental role.
by Nordic » Wed Jan 05, 2011 4:47 am
Chutzpah
Oh boy – so now he’s really gone and done it. President Barack Obama has (as widely predicted) “caved-in” to Republican demands for the preservation of George W. Bush’s arch-plutocratic, deficit-driving tax cuts for the wealthy few (at a cost of $900 billion to the federal treasury) in a tax “deal” that accommodates Republicans (and their wealthy paymasters) on the federal estate tax and cuts payments into Social Security. (Democratic congressman Gary Ackerman rightly calls the “tax deal” the GOP’s “Wet Dream
Act”).1 Adding insult to injury, Obama has (with what the New York Times calls “uncharacteristic emotion”2) accused those on his left (not hard to be) of being “unrealistic” and of “playing politics” with the American peoples’ lives because of their (he thinks) dysfunctional "purist" and selfish desire to see him fight against – instead of compromise with – concentrated wealth.. How dare we insist that he use his office and bully pulpit to resist those who held unemployment benefits and “middle class tax cuts” hostage to the a plutocratic agenda? “In this case,” Obama proclaimed, “the hostage was the American people, and I was not willing to see them get harmed.” 3
Many liberals and progressives are “enraged.” “Disappointed” in Obama’s continuing business-friendly direction, they accuse him of “moral collapse” and criticize his “spineless” failure to “act on the courage of his [supposedly progressive] convictions.” But “collapse” from what previous real progressive convictions? Obama (who first achieved public notoriety by cutting a deal with the far-right Federalist Society to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review[4]) isn’t being cowardly in his tax “deal for the American people” (well, for plutocrats) anymore than he’s been spineless while advancing an auto-restructuring plan that raided union pension funds and rewarded capital flight, pushing through a health “reform” bill that only insurance and drug companies could love, undermining serious global carbon emission reduction efforts at Copenhagen, prosecuting whistleblowers and harassing antiwar activists, and prosecuting and expanding criminal overt and covert wars in South Asia and around the world.5 No, he’s acting boldly and with chutzpah in accord with his longstanding: “deeply conservative” instincts, and giving the finger and occasional smack to “the left” along the way. Yes, chutzpah – the sort of thing you might expect from a guy who could make a speech in defense of war while (absurdly) receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.6
Here is yet one more opportunity for frustrated left and liberal Obama supporters/ex-supporters to consider the early and ominous wisdom of the eminent left political scientist Adolph Reed Jr.’s take on an unnamed Obama at the beginning of the future president’s political career in early 1996:
“In Chicago, for instance, we’ve gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices: one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable credentials and vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program – the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle class reform in favoring form over substances. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics here, as in Haiti and wherever the International Monetary Fund has sway.”7
Ten years later, Ken Silverstein’s fall 2006 Harpers’ essay, “Obama, Inc.” included the following notable passage: “It’s not always clear what Obama’s financial backers want, but it seems safe to conclude that his campaign contributors are not interested merely in clean government and political reform…On condition of anonymity, one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn’t see him as a ‘player.’ The lobbyist added: ‘What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?’”8 It wasn’t for nothing that Obama set new Wall Street and corporate fundraising records in the last presidential election cycle.
“We Don’t Need More Heat”
Disappointed progressives might also want to consult Larissa MacFarquhar’s in-depth account of presidential candidate in May of 2007. “In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly,” MacFarquhar found, “Obama is deeply conservative.”9 Also worth reviewing is my widely liberal-ignored 2008 book (out well before the election) Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Paradigm, 2008), which offered a detailed, blow-by-blow account of Obama’s longstanding (back to Harvard Law and up through his U.S. Senate career and presidential campaign) deep deference (accompanied by no small condescension and mean-spirited dismissal of the left) to existing dominant domestic and imperial hierarchies and doctrines. The sorry story continues in my recent book The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Paradigm, 2010) – the perfect Christmas gift for that not-so liberal know-it-all fake-progressive partisan Democrat cousin or uncle or sister-in-law who can't stop making excuses for the center-right Obama administration's abject service to the rich and powerful.
Obama’s “deeply conservative” nature wasn’t detected early on only by “hard leftists” like me. MacFarquhar, no radical, made her observations in the centrist New Yorker. Many of candidate Obama’s conservative standpoints on domestic social and economic issues were noticed and criticized by the establishment center-left economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. Along with the non-radical John Edwards (a major party candidate, after all) and others, Krugman repeatedly disparaged Obama’s “big table fantasy” (mocked by Edwards as “singing Kumbaya”) that meaningful progressive transformation could be achieved by negotiating with, instead of engaging in a historic conflict with concentrated economic power and the Republicans. “Mr. Obama is widely portrayed, not least by himself, as a transformational figure who will usher in a new era,” Krugman wrote in the spring of 2008. “But his actual policy proposals…tend to be cautious and relatively orthodox.”10 In a July 2008 issue of The New Yorker, the mildly liberal journalist Ryan Lizza noted almost casually that Obama’s political “marked at every stage” by “an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them.”11
“Disappointed” progressives might want to recall the contrast between Obama and the ill-fated Edwards in the pivotal 2007-08 Iowa primary campaign, when the latter candidate won approval from Ralph Nader and electrified town hall audiences by saying (with sincerity or not) that only an “epic fight” with corporate power and corporate politicians of both parties could achieve meaningful progressive change. In a debate in Des Moines, Obama retorted with typical “eloquent evasion” (as Mike Davis put it) by proclaiming that “we don’t need more heat, we need more light.”
We’ve seen who his bringers of light are: people like Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner of Goldman Sachs, Ben Bernancke of the Wall Street aristocracy, Republican Defense Secretary Robert Gates and numerous other lovely embodiments of Adam Smith’s warning that “the architects of policy protect their own interests, no matter how grievous the effect on others.” “And they are the architects of policy,” Chomsky add. “Obama made sure to staff his economic team with advisors from [the financial] sector.”12
“Bigger Issues Than Politics”
Moving closer to the present moment, “disappointed” progressives could also look at the speech Obama gave at a community college in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on the same day he announced his “tax deal” in the White House. While it received little attention compared to the drama surrounding his “bipartisan” (Republican) tax deal, this oration nicely exemplified the “vacuous to repressive neoliberal” world view informing Obama’s tax “cave-in.” Sloughing off media focus on the recent right-wing mid-term elections, the president announced that he “came to Winston-Salem because I believe that right now there are bigger issues at stake for our country than [mere] politics.” The real issue, Obama said, was to develop a “broader vision that will keep our economy strong and growing and competitive in the 21st century.” Consistent with his pledge to “meet with business leaders and others to develop specific policies and budget recommendations for the coming year,” the vision presented in the speech was strictly neoliberal. The real problem, Obama argued, is that the United States is in danger of falling behind in the global economy, out-paced by up and coming competitors like China and India.” The problem is:
‘“fierce competition among nations for the jobs and industries of the future… You’ve got a billion people in India who are suddenly plugged into the world economy. You’ve got over a billion people in China who are suddenly plugged into the global economy. And that means competition is going to be much more fierce and the winners of this competition will be the countries that have the most educated workers, a serious commitment to research and technology, and access to quality infrastructure like roads and airports and high-speed rail and high-speed Internet…. [in the previous century, Obama explained,] The business of America was business. Our economic leadership in the world went unmatched. Now it’s up to us to make sure that we maintain that leadership in this century. And at this moment, the most important contest we face is not between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between America and our economic competitors all around the world. That's the competition we've got to spend time thinking about.” [12A]
At the core of this passage lay the belief that the dictates of the market – really its masters the giant corporations – must trump the odious twaddle of (what passes for) democratic debate and contestation. Petty and silly partisanship and angry “politics” – the sin of liberal and progressive Democrats (and others) who insist on more reasonably progressive taxation in the industrialized world’s most unequal and wealth-top-heavy society by far – is beside the point and counter-productive, the president believes. The real thing is for all good market-based Americans to pull together in a big common effort to maintain national capitalist leverage in flat-world competition with low-wage information workers in India and China we have been pitted against by the march of globalization. And that means putting away childish things like “partisan politics” and morel concern over savage American wealth inequality (see below) and social injustice.
The solutions offered in Obama’s Winston-Salem lecture were all business- and wealth- friendly. The president said nothing about the economically (not to mention socially and politically) depressing impact of the shocking upward mal-distribution of resources (reinforced by the tax “deal” he cut “for the American people”) in the U.S. (where the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined) – the most unequal and wealth-top-heavy society in the industrialized world by far. He said nothing about the need to re-legalize and expand the American labor (union) movement, rightly described by Edwards (during the last presidential election cycle) as “the single greatest anti-poverty program in American history” (Obama has refused to lift a finger on behalf of his campaign promise to advance long-overdue labor law reform). He said nothing about developing a coherent national industrial policy and regulating financial behavior and capital flows in accord with democratic and sustainable principles or about international agreements for decent labor and environmental standards (Obama recently cut a regressive, NAFTA-like trade deal with South Korea). He made no case for restoring any of the key public family assistance benefits slashed by the last neoliberal Democrat in the White House (Bill Clinton). He offered no case to act on the necessity (amidst a functional unemployment rate of 16 percent) for large-scale federal job creation and related major green jobs and public works programs to stimulate the economy, preferring to advance economically dysfunctional business nostrums about the supposedly urgent for deficit reduction. He cynically trumpeted his demand-depressing pay freeze for federal workers as a solution to the supposedly overwhelming deficit problem. He said nothing about the huge economic and social cost paid by Americans for “their” nation state’s vastly expensive and historically unparalleled military empire (itself a great boon to high tech corporations like Boeing and Raytheon). He trotted out timeworn bourgeois rhetoric about the need for a more educated, technically adapted workforce, leaving out the real problems: capital’s abandonment of American working people and the elite business class’s continuing top-down class war on labor, workers, the common good, democracy, the social safety net, and public welfare.13 Obama was naturally sure to identify the educational progress required in his view with his deeply conservative, corporate-backed assault on the public schools and teacher unions, spearheaded by his arch-neoliberal education secretary Arne Duncan.14
It is quite fitting that he found time to praise the multinational corporation Caterpillar (lauded for agreeing to set up a plant in Winston-Salem) in his address. Caterpillar was the first large U.S. manufacturer in decades to break a major strike with permanent strikebreakers (scabs) and is therefore one of the most loathed corporations among what’s left of an organized and militant working class in this country.15
Obama is all about boldness and chutzpah, not spinelessness – boldness and chutzpah on behalf of the masters, not the people: their boldness, not ours. The sooner this finally sinks in with “disappointed” liberals and progressives, the sooner this country will the emergence of what a recent left statement calls “the climate for larger and increasingly disruptive expressions of dissent - a development that is sorely needed and long overdue.”16
Paul Street (www.paulstreet.org)is the author of many articles, chapters, speeches, and books, including Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007; Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008); and The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2010). Street is currently completing a book titled Crashing the Tea Party, co-authored with Anthony Dimaggio. He can be reached at paulstreet99@yahoo.com
by Bruce Dazzling » Wed Jan 05, 2011 10:33 am
"The sorry story continues in my recent book The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Paradigm, 2010) – the perfect Christmas gift for that not-so liberal know-it-all fake-progressive partisan Democrat cousin or uncle or sister-in-law who can't stop making excuses for the center-right Obama administration's abject service to the rich and powerful."
by vanlose kid » Thu Jan 06, 2011 9:09 am
by dqueue » Thu Jan 06, 2011 11:21 pm
This is the 5th case in which the Obama Adminsitration has charged a current or former government official with leaking classified information.
by Jeff » Fri Jan 07, 2011 2:00 am
Published on Thursday, January 6, 2011
Obama: No Whistleblowing on My Watch
The US Military Should Be Ashamed of Its Treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning
by Ann Wright
Candidate Obama said "Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal."
As a U.S. presidential candidate in 2008, in referring to the Bush Administration's use of phone companies to illegally spy on Americans, Barack Obama said, "We only know these crimes took place because insiders blew the whistle at great personal risk ... Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal." Candidate Obama was referring to the Bush Administration's use of phone companies to illegally spy on Americans.
President Obama says No whistleblowing on my watch!
Yet, Obama, as he has on so many issues as President, is taking a 180 degree turn from his comments as a candidate, comments on which the American people relied and elected him.
Now, the Obama administration's warning to Bradley Manning and to other whistle blowers is this: blow the whistle on government criminal actions and we will put you in solitary confinement before you are charged, much less go to trial. You will be treated as an "enemy combatant," in America's ongoing wars on about everything, including the truth.
...
If indeed, Manning did give the video [of the Apache strike on civilians and journalists] to Wikileaks, his actions show clearly that he reasonably believed that war crimes were being covered up, and that he took action based on that belief. Exposing criminal actions done under the cover of government orders is a responsibility and duty of military personnel as codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as the Geneva conventions and the Nuremberg Principles.
...
by Laodicean » Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:16 pm
From Wall Street to the White House: Obama Taps JPMorgan Exec William Daley for Chief of Staff
President Obama appointed William Daley, a top financial executive and former Clinton administration official, as his new White House chief of staff. Daley is the Midwest chair of JPMorgan Chase, a board member of Merck, and former head of SBC. Obama will also reportedly name former Goldman Sachs consultant Gene Sperling to head the National Economic Council.
by elfismiles » Sat Jan 08, 2011 1:17 pm
by Bruce Dazzling » Mon Jan 10, 2011 3:34 pm
Silent Surge: A Shocking Act of Political Violence
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 10 January 2011 00:29
Americans showed their remarkable collective wisdom once again last week, when a shocking act of violence was met with a steady calm across the political spectrum. Indeed, it seemed the entire country was united in a steadfast effort to downplay any disturbing implications of the despicable act and to keep doggedly to business as usual.
We speak of course of Barack Obama's latest "surge" in Afghanistan: his third such escalation of the murderous militarist misadventure in that ravaged land, now heading toward its 10th year of American occupation. Yes, while everyone -- including our leading progressives -- were occupied first with the sight of the orange vulgarian John Boehner waggling the sacred Speaker's gavel then with the latest mass shooting by an American following what George Bush called "the path of action" (i.e., the pursuit of politics by deadly violence) -- the Nobel Peace Laureate was sending 1,400 more troops into the killing fields of Afghanistan.
This move guarantees that there will be an "uptick" in civilians deaths, to borrow the hideous argot of Vice President Joe Biden during the very first Obama "surge" -- which took place less than a month after Obama's inauguration. More killing, more resistance, more extremism, more grief and hatred, more corruption and war-profiteering -- but what of that? These have been the results of every "surge" in the Terror War, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia to Yemen to Pakistan -- and to the many other fronts in the "secret war" of death squads, bombings, kidnappings, gun-running and other terrorist acts that Obama has escalated to mind-boggling heights, and which he is now further entrenching and consolidating with a brand-new HQ for "Special Ops." ("Wetwork Central," perhaps?)
But let us not, in this moment of national grief -- when the Laureate is linking hands across the aisle with the orange vulgarian, putting aside political vitriol in a new spirit of comity (which will doubtless culminate in the bipartisan gutting of Social Security and other such acts of "serious," savvy governance)-- be too critical of our leaders. For surely the main intent of this latest "surge" is not the increase in killing, corruption, chaos and sorrow in Afghanistan (although that will be the inevitable result). No, the primary goal of this act of violence by the Peace Laureate is to provide cover for his political posterior later this year, when he announces the beginning of the long-promised, much-vaunted "drawdown" of troops in the Bactrian satapry.
Can't you see it now? The deadline for the July 2011 "drawdown" approaches. There are earnest articles in the New York Times and Washington Post and other establishment redoubts examining the "internal battles" within the administration on whether Obama will keep his promise to begin winding down the war or else acquiesce to the desire of the "hawks" to maintain troop levels. The agonizing moral debates in the inner circle will be judiciously leaked to favored reporters. Progressive bloggers will enter the fray, calling on the president to be true to his word -- or else this time they really, really, really will be .... really sort of upset with him. The deadline arrives, Obama steps into the pressroom, or into the Rose Garden, or onto the stage at a military base, and he announces .... "The drawdown has begun. Our promise to the American people has been kept."
Then there is rejoicing throughout the progressivosphere ("I've criticized Obama a lot and I'm sure I will again, but you have to give the man credit on this one!") and raging throughout the rightosphere ("Another act of treason by the surrender monkey -- and no, that phrase is not racist!"), and judicious nodding of centrist heads ("We'll just have to wait and see how this plays in Peoria, Jim."). Then you will read down to the fifth or sixth or seventh paragraph in the Times story on the drawdown, and you'll see something like this:
"The first drawdown might be small in overall numbers -- Pentagon officials say that approximately 1,400 troops will be withdrawn over the next two months -- but it is a highly significant milestone. Administration officials are already calling it a political 'home run' for the president ..." And so on and so forth in the usual manner.
In other words, this latest "surge" is a way to increase troop numbers now so that a few troops can be withdrawn later in a symbolic act that will still leave the pointless war-profiteering boondoggle operating in high gear until the cows come home.
It is the kind of bloodsoaked cynicism that only a Nobel Peace Laureate could pull off. And it will doubtless be greeted with hosannas from our progressives ... who in any case will still be ranting about crosshairs on a website -- while ignoring the innocent people being blown and shot to bits by their champion in Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere in his relentless surging of the Terror War.
Note: To understand the deeper implications of this latest escalation, see this remarkably powerful article by Arthur Silber on Obama's last surge. It is a deeply informed and moving essay. And while you are there, please consider contributing to Silber's website. He is in very poor health, and the website is his only means of support. His voice is vital; help him if you can.
DISQUS...
by Nordic » Fri Jan 14, 2011 2:48 pm
Tom Ricks ran a guest-post today by Paula Broadwell, a former adviser to General Petraeus and current PhD candidate at King’s College London, who is touring the war on a research trip. It is, in a word, abhorrent.
Start with the title: “Travels with Paula (I): A time to build.” It’s so… hopeful. So upbeat. The soldiers and Marines are building a glorious new future! The photos and story, however, tell a different story.
After suffering the tragic losses and the horrific daily amputees throughout week, the men were terrified to go back into the pomegranate orchards to continue clearing their AO; it seemed like certain death. The Taliban had planted IEDs in a dense pattern throughout their AO, and even the commander, LTC David Flynn, was concerned about the potential loss of life, but they could not afford to lose momentum.
Keep that bolded bit in the back of your head as you read on: these soldiers are scared, and they’re worried about momentum (which is, yes, that thing no one can describe or measure but is nevertheless somehow very important). Best I could tell, that is their only excuse for destroying these non-combattants’ homes.
The artillery unit, acting as a provisional infantry battalion, went on the offensive to clear a village, Tarok Kalache, where the Taliban had conducted an intimidation campaign to chase the villagers out, then create a staging base to attack 1-320th’s outposts. The village of Tarok Kalache was laden with IEDs and homemade explosives (HME) comprised of 50-gal drums of deadly munitions. Special Operations forces conducted a successful clearing raid on the village. Then Flynn introduced the Mine Clearing Line Charge (MICLIC), a rocket-projected explosive line charge which provides a “close-in” breaching capability for maneuver forces. The plan was for one team to clear a 600-meter path with MICLICs from one of his combat outposts to Tarok Kalache. “It was the only way I could give the men confidence to go back out.”
On October 6, Flynn’s unit approved use of HIMARS, B-1, and A-10s to drop 49,200 lbs. of ordnance on the Taliban tactical base of Tarok Kalache, resulting in NO CIVCAS. Their clearance of Babur, Khosrow Sofla, Charqolba Sofla, and other villages commenced October 7, aided by USSF, ABP, and an additional infantry company from B/1-22 IN.
Translated from obnoxious mil-speak, she is describing the village being intimidated by the Taliban, who are chased away by soldiers, then “cleared” by special forces, and leveled by massive aerial bombardment, apparently with no casualties. Nowhere in this account is there a sense that the villagers felt any ill-will toward the Americans beforehand—rather, Broadwell explicitly describes the village as being victimized by the Taliban first, then being completely obliterated by the Americans. In other words, rather than actually clearing the village—not just chasing away the Taliban but cleaning up the bombs and munitions left over—the soldiers got lazy and decided to destroy the entire settlement… “to give the men confidence.” This sounds bad enough—like a nightmare from before there was a Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibited the collective punishment and expulsion of civilians from conflict zones—but it gets worse.
Immediately after, the soldiers are told to rebuild the villages. The American commander had a neat idea, I guess, in that he’d like the villagers to participate in some way in the rebuilding of their village. But look at what he does:
Flynn also wanted a true GIRoA solution, demanding that all the Afghans from the village work this issue together, led by their malik. His concern was that the Afghans would run away with CERP funding and no homes would be rebuilt with the funds they had handed over. The build and compensation initiatives required careful oversight.
They wound up vetting all supplicants through the district governor, which basically means whoever paid him off got whatever land they wanted and any poor people in the village lost their homes forever. Broadwell then profiles a “doubter” (as she calls him) from the village, “Mohammed,” who complains that the destruction of this village ruined his life. Rather than expressing regret at the destruction of his home, Broadwell writes him off as engaging in theatrics, because reacting negatively to losing your entire home and all your possessions is for pussies (obviously).
An Afghan government commission led by Mohammad Sadiq Aziz, an adviser to Hamid Karzai, has determined this and other, similar “clearing” operations has cost the Kandahar area more than $100 million in damages—from lost crops, destroyed orchards, obliterated property. Naturally, the U.S. disagrees, and accuses all those greedy Afghans of bitching about nothing to squeeze some more money from the International Community. It cannot be disputed that the damage to homes, livelihoods, and whatever else have you is horrendous, though. It is a subject worthy of at least the motions of regret and solemnity. Broadwell, though, has other ideas.
Indeed, clearing operations are a necessary evil to weed out the Taliban, and they often leave devastating destruction in the wake. But what Aziz failed to note is the tremendous effort some units, like 1-320th, have made to rebuild his country. As of today, reconstruction efforts are well on track for Tarok Kalache and others in his AO. Mosque construction is underway, the irrigation canals and culverts are being restored, and the local government has been an active participant in the process of assisting the people of the village in rebuilding their homes.
Basically, she thinks they should stop their bitching and appreciate the earnest efforts the U.S. is making to repair some of the damage they did by burning everything to the ground to begin with. Not only that, she is basically arching her eyebrows and wondering why those whiny Afghans don’t thank the Americans for their largess in rebuilding a village they destroyed for the sake of their own safety and—don’t forget—”momentum.”
Look, war is hell. I have no illusions about that. But what is happening right now in Southern Afghanistan is inexcusable. There were rumors of this policy of collective punishment in the Arghandab before (see this overwrought Daily Mail story that stops right before the village actually was destroyed for an idea of what is going on), and I’m really struggling to see how such behavior does not violate Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention—that is, how this behavior is not a war crime, especially given the explicit admission that such behavior is merely for the convenience of the soldier and not any grander strategy or purpose.
This sort of abhorrent behavior is not limited to the Arghandab, either. Broadwell explicitly states that it has the Petraeus stamp of approval, and Pahjwok has reported U.S. Marines in Helmand province explicitly warning local villagers of collective punishment if insurgents hide out in their settlements. It is probably a safe assumption to say that this is a widespread phenomenon.
What baffles me is, why the hell is Broadwell so pleased with this? Will she ever write a follow up post about where these villagers will be able to live while they wait for the magnanimous soldiers to rebuild the town they erased? The callousness of this account is, literally, breathtaking: if soldiers are razing entire villages to avoid a few IEDs and to preserve their momentum, that should be triggering even token expressions of regret or even concern. Instead, it prompts her to mock the Afghans for complaining about it… as well they should. Those soldiers will be damned lucky if they escape their deployment without any suicide bombs or nasty IED incidents. Because they have certainly earned the fatal, burning wrath of every single Afghan living nearby.
I cannot comprehend why the deliberate destruction of villages seems to be an official, sanctioned ISAF policy in the South. Is is abhorrent, an atrocity, and there is no excuse for it (nor are there words for the anger it’s stirred in me, reading about it from afar; I suspect Broadwell would sniff at me to stop whining as well, were we to discuss it in person). This should outrage and infuriate everyone who reads about it. But, and this is where I move from rage to despair: how could we ever possibly hope to stop it?
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