How to Tell When a War is Over

Modern wars are messy affairs, and since they rarely involve two standing armies going against one another trying to gain territorial advantage anymore, it sometimes can be difficult to tell when they are effectively over and your side has no chance of winning even though it is still conducting military operations. In Vietnam, one of the key indicators that the war was effectively over for the United States was when soldiers began to "frag" their superiors rather than follow their orders. Once that started happening, the pressure on the country's "leadership" to find an "honorable" way out of that jungle quagmire became overwhelming.

We have now reached a similar moment in the stalemated war in Afghanistan, as reported yesterday by the Atlantic Wire:

After yet another green-on-blue attack left four Americans dead on Sunday, U.S. troops have suspended their joint operations with Afghan security forces. And who could blame them? Afghans are responsible for about 15 percent of all coalition deaths, and efforts to promote better cultural understanding are suffering with the recent surge of anti-American sentiment in the region due to the anti-Islam film that's been making its way around the Internet.

Truth is, Americans have been ordered to keep bullets in their chambers at all times and are looking over their shoulders at every turn. "We're to the point now where we can't trust these people," a senior military official told NBC News. "It's had a major impact on our ability to conduct combat operations with them, and we're going to have to back off to a certain degree." The suspension of join operations are indefinite, one official said, and "could last three days or three months."

Again, it's not terribly surprising that Americans taking a step back. It was a particularly messy weekend for coalition forces. On Friday night and into Saturday morning, insurgents disguised in U.S. Army uniforms snuck into the British-run Camp Bastion, where Prince Harry is stationed, through a hole in the fence. Once inside, they took out six (very expensive) AV-8B Harrier jets, "significantly damaged" two more and totally destroyed six refueling stations. They also killed two U.S. Marines. Then, on Sunday, U.S. airstrike killing eight Afghan women gathering firewood on a hillside, and the Taliban took out $150 million worth of plans and equipment in the most expensive insurgent attack of 11-year-long conflict.

Let us re-emphasize the fact that nobody is very happy with how things are going in Afghanistan. The U.S. military stopped training members of the Afghan Local Police earlier this month, a tough move since those are the guys who are supposed to take control of the country's security when coalition troops leave at the end of 2014. As such, experts have grown pretty pessimistic about the handoff. "It looks like what we're going to be handing off is a stalemated war," Stephen Biddle, an international affairs professor at George Washington University told the Associated Press on Monday, "which means the U.S. Congress will be asked to write these checks (to support Afghan forces) for years and years and years with no plausible argument that we're going to bring this to a successful conclusion, at least on the battlefield."

Just like with the fragging incidents in Vietnam, when an occupying army can no longer engage in military operations or even conduct training exercises with their supposed local "allies" the occupation is effectively finished. This is the end result of Obama's insane military surge in Afghanistan, which we must remember was done for no other apparent reason other than to prove that he was a tough guy.


Bonus: Those who forget the past...

The Punishment for Collecting Firewood: Death

Ho-hum, just another sad, sorry day in the graveyard of empires:

Kabul - According to Afghan officials a NATO air strike has killed eight Afghan women and girls gathering firewood. At first International Security Assistance Force officials claimed that 45 insurgents were targeted but later admitted possible civilian casualties.

As is often the case, NATO at first claimed that the targets were insurgents and that initial reports showed that only insurgents were killed in the strike. However this report was contradicted by information coming from Afghan officials who said that victims included eight women and girls who were out gathering firewood before dawn.

Once the Afghan officials contradicted the NATO report Jamie Graybeal a NATO spokesperson said that NATO took any charges of civilian deaths seriously. No doubt the charges were taken even more seriously after villagers from the Alingar district in Lagham province brought bodies of those killed to the governor's office in the provincial capital.

So why should anyone in America care? After all, the NFL season is underway again and we all have far more important things to occupy our minds. Well, there is this:

Sarhadi Zewak, a spokesperson for the provincial government, said:

“They were shouting ‘Death to America!’ They were condemning the attack."

A provincial health director said that there were also seven females injured who were brought to area hospitals for treatment. Some of the injured were as young as ten years old.

So what is the rationale that our brilliant military "leaders" used to justify this senseless attack?

U.S. officials say that these missile attacks are very precise and that civilian casualties are rare. However, what are called signature attacks are now used. In these attacks people are targeted simply on the basis of suspicious behavior. Apparently people moving in the countryside before dawn arouse enough suspicion to be classified as suspected terrorists. There were probably never any insurgents targeted. The women collecting firewood were just classified as suspected insurgents.

Yesterday, I wrote that there is no hope that we can possibly work our way out of our collective predicament. Part of my justification for such a belief is seeing on almost a daily basis such insanity as that of American officials justifying wantonly killing Afghan civilians for the "suspicious behavior" of collecting firewood when there is no justification that any thinking person who is not a raging psychopath could bring forth that makes any sense whatsoever. Even had these women and girls been carrying AK-47s instead of logs and sticks they would represent exactly ZERO threat to the American homeland.

But go ahead, America, convince yourselves that the recent wave of anti-American demonstrations and attacks on our embassies and consulates are happening because all Muslims are easily excitable, irrational whack-a-toons. They couldn't POSSIBLY have any legitimate grievances against the utterly exceptional "shining city on the hill" after more than a decade of such senseless violence.

No, there is no logical reason given the above for the embassy attacks or for this kind of thing to happen:

Elsewhere in Afghanistan four more soldiers were killed in an apparent insider attack. The four killed were American troops. The killings happened at an observation post operated jointly with 6 coalition troops together with 6 Afghan National Police.. One of the Afghan members was found dead at the scene while the other five had disappeared. Over 50 NATO troops have now been killed so far this year in "insider" attacks.

Yep...those frggin' Muslims...they must be crazy.

Addendum: As yet another example of just how badly compromised even the so-called "liberal" media is these days, check out this account in the hideous progressive online "news" rag, The Atlantic Wire, about the killing of the four American troops that completely whitewashes the slaughter of the Afghan women and girls, describing it merely as: "a NATO airstrike that angered locals."

Damn, those silly locals, always getting all worked up about utterly harmless NATO airstrikes. You just can't reason with some people.


Bonus: "One day, something fell from the sky"

Smells Like 1968

The recent attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens was just the highlight of a series of escalating violent demonstrations taking place outside U.S. embassies all across the Middle East and South Asia this past week. The attacks reportedly even spread all the way to the consulate in Channai, India, a country that is supposed to be a steadfast U.S. ally. Clearly, something is afoot in the world that goes far beyond mere popular outrage over an obscure, cheaply made anti-Muslim cinematic diatribe. Those condemning idiot pastor Terry Jones and the producer of the inflammatory low budget film are missing the point, for it is entirely likely that if it wasn’t this movie inflaming passions among the world’s Muslims it would probably be something else. The Jones-linked film merely represents the spark that set off an explosion that has been building up for a very long time.

In order to really understand what is going on in the Middle East right now, one must do what Americans are absolutely loathe to ever do—namely put themselves in the shoes of the average denizen of Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Pakistan. Eleven years ago, a tiny Muslim splinter group nestled in the caves of eastern Afghanistan pulled off a spectacular (and spectacularly lucky) terrorist attack on American soil in part because the administration of George W. Bush was (at best) completely asleep at the switch, and ever since that time the U.S. and its NATO allies have been engaged in a systematic campaign of collective punishment against the population of numerous Muslim countries while continuing to support brutal authoritarian dictatorships from Cairo to Riyadh.

For more than a decade, Muslims have had to stand by largely helpless while many of their fellow religionists, most guilty of nothing worse than residing at the wrong place at the wrong time, have been slaughtered as America has taken its chunk of flesh in retaliation for 9/11. And while it is true that many of the killings that have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan have been at the hands of other Muslims, it was the American invasion and occupation of those two unfortunate countries that destabilized them and created the conditions for the massive amounts of violence and (in the case of Iraq) even ethnic cleansing that have been occurring there.

Looking back over this sad, sorry recent history, the wonder isn’t that our embassies are being attacked but that all this didn’t start happening sooner. It’s like all of the green-on-blue shootings that have been going on in Afghanistan lately in which our so-called military “leaders” are shocked, SHOCKED to discover that after more than a decade of occupation even supposedly friendly Afghanis would like to see us gone and are willing take their chances against the Taliban, who may be brutal thugs but at least look, dress, speak and worship as they do and don’t randomly drop drone missiles on assorted wedding parties.

It is particularly telling that the worst violence to date has erupted in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, three countries where the U.S. either stood aside while their longtime dictators fell or gave them an active shove. While abandoning the pro-Western Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia probably would not have been the U.S. government’s preferred choice of action, we were at least smart enough to recognize that the Arab Spring had gathered far too much momentum to smother. We were just hoping to contain it short of the Arabian Peninsula, and for a while it looked like we might have succeeded without drawing too much popular ire upon ourselves.

Not anymore. The irony of all this is that it is happening on the watch of President Hopey-Changey, who has tried so hard in recent years to play the “good cop” representing America’s brutal foreign policies to Bush and Cheney’s “bad cop.” Obama has just learned that there is an absolute limit to how much sunshine you can blow up the skirts of a certain group of people to try and deflect attention from your bad acts against them before they get fed up and tell you to go fuck yourself. One could make a comparison of how decades of American support for the vile Shah of Iran blew up on the watch of President Jimmy Carter, but Carter at least did more than just pay lip service to respecting human rights.

So where is all of this headed? Time will tell, of course, but we should not underestimate just how ominous these developments are for the continuation of American hegemony in the Middle East and South Asia. Obama’s political advisors must be sweating bullets right now as short of a major market meltdown before election day, which with Benny and the InkJets just announcing the latest round of quantitative easing seems highly unlikely, the one “October surprise” that could unseat the incumbent is the eruption of region-wide anti-American conflagration in the middle of the planet’s most important oil fields. In fact, this whole mess seems to have real “Tet Offensive Potential,” in that it could be the “unexpected” foreign policy event that ends up driving a warmongering Democratic president from power (to also be replaced by a Republican who may be even worse, but that, as they say, is a whole ‘nother story). Obama, it seems, is about to discover that it takes more than just a lot of fancy-but-empty rhetoric and the symbolism of being the first black president to keep blinding people to the unpleasant realities of America’s seemingly endless imperial wars.


Bonus: "I shall not seek...and I will not accept...the nomination of my party for another term as your president"

The War Nerd Explains Why Obama Gets So Little "Credit" for His Warmongering

You almost have to feel for President Hopey-Changey. No matter how many innocent civilians he butchers in pursuit of a foreign policy that in its way is even more bloodthirsty than Chimpy Bush's, he just doesn't ever seem to get the credit as evidenced by the way that Willard tried to used the killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens to score political points against him this past week.

So why is that, exactly? Well, Gary Brecher, author of the always entertaining and informative War Nerd column for The Exiled, explains it in an essay published on this most recent September 11th. The whole thing is well worth a read, but here is the relevant excerpt:

When you look back at Obama’s wars, you get a pretty clear idea what went wrong over the last four years. It wasn’t the way Obama’s team handled the wars. Truth is, they did damn well at that, better than I ever thought they would.

The real problem is that they don’t know what world they’re living in. These are people who’ve spent their lives getting straight A’s, collecting gold stars, avoiding mistakes. And they think war is just like all those other little hurdles you face in life.

That’s why they’ll never get credit for any of it. They have this delusion that sanity matters, and they’ve run their wars as sanely and boringly as an exterminator going after termites.

It’s sensible, it’s semi-effective, and it irritates the life out of the 99%. I don’t mean the Occupy 99%, all those “goodhearted ordinary Americans”; that’s a totally made-up imaginary species invented by people just as naive as Obama’s crew. I mean the real 99% of us living our rotten lives out there, mean and dumb and miserable, just waiting for some gore we can really get behind.

Obama just doesn’t understand his job as war chief of this big crazy tribe. A war chief doesn’t have to win; only a wonk’s view of the world would see things that way. A war chief has to look like a war chief and talk like one. And yell a lot. Obama just can’t manage that, and when he tries, he makes us feel stupid. He embarrasses us, trying to sing along to a tune you know he thinks is just dumb.

It’s a shame in a way, because his war wonks did a pretty good job actually running the wars. I like to think of them grumbling about it now, a bunch of youngish dressy-casual technocrats drowning their sorrows in frappucinos at some suburban DC Starbucks, counting off their so-what accomplishments: “We got out of Iraq … not one American killed there this year; we took down Qaddafi without one single American casualty; we killed bin Laden right in front of the Pakistani Army and got away with it; what does a C-in-C have to do to get a little respect around here?”

The answer is: He has to look convincing when he holds our enemy’s head up on a stick and shows it to the crowd, all drippy and drawing flies. That’s what we want, and Obama, with all that creepy self-control, is the last guy you’d pick for that job.

It was obvious, after he ordered the hit on bin Laden. For ten years Americans had been seeing that big long bearded face in their dreams, blasting it on gun-range targets, printing it on toilet paper, waiting for the big day when we could see the bastard in a pool of his own blood.

And boom, at last, Osama was dead. On Obama’s watch. Whoo-hoo! Let the victory parades begin!

Except there weren’t any. I remember real well the weird queasy hush after bin Laden died. Nobody ever tells the truth in this country, so nobody could talk about why Obama never got the cheers he expected, but we all know why. It’s simple: There are two tribes in America and neither one was in a mood to cheer. Obama’s liberal fans couldn’t cheer because they have some taboo about parading around with your enemy’s head on a stick. They think it’s crude or something, “a regrettable necessity”—you know that NYT editorial jabber they use.

And the other tribe, the flyover state white glob I come from, would sooner comp bin Laden a suite in Vegas than give Obama any creds for taking him down. They sulked through it like a confused, hungover Pillsbury doughboy; the way they saw it, Obama got bin Laden on a technicality. There’s always been a lot of Osama/Obama blur in the way they see things, and they might’ve been happier if it’d been Osama zapping that snotty Hawaiian instead of the other way around.

War always comes down to demographics — even this slow cold war we’re having in the US now. And Obama is stuck in the crotch of big demographic forked stick, between the sullen majority and the queasy coastals. The coastals don’t want a war chief, and the sullen doughboys can’t see him in the job.

As for me, admitted antiwar zealot that I am, I really don't know which aspect of Obama is more appalling...that he is as big a thug as Bush and Cheney, or that he is so damn cool about it. But go ahead, Democrats, keep convincing yourselves that he is morally superior to Willard Mitt Romney so you can spend the next four grueling years in just as much denial as you've spent the past four.


Bonus: "And now you do what they told ya, now you're under control"

Gary Johnson Hates Liberty and Freedom

Quick question: which of the current candidates running for President of the United States issued the following statement last year on the 10th anniversary of 9/11?

“As we all pause this weekend to remember the events of September 11, 2001, our thoughts are with those who lost their lives, those who saved so many lives, and a nation that showed its greatness in countless ways. 9/11 and the days after were a time when ordinary Americans did extraordinary things. Our thoughts and our gratitude are also with the amazing men and women of our military who are putting themselves on the line every day to keep us safe. The fight against those who would do us harm continues today, and it is a fight we must carry out with the same determination that was so magnificently displayed by the heroes of 9/11.

“America is about liberty. Ten years ago, liberty was attacked. To those who lost their lives and those many more whose lives were forever changed, our deep obligation is to insure that liberty prevails not just today, but for generations to come.”

So was it job-exporting, Wall Street oligarch Willard Mitt Romney? Or was it Patriot Act-loving, American-citizen assassinating President Hopey-Changey? Wrong, Natch. It was, in fact, Libertarian candidate for president and supposed lover of human freedom Gary Johnson.

Whatever else you may think about the events of 9/11, and I am not here to get into a debate about whether it was an inside job or anything like that, it must be stated that no singular event in American history has caused a greater curtailment of civil liberties and human freedom than our government's out of control reaction to it. Two unnecessary wars of choice that have massacred hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians, the establsihment of concentration camp in Gunatanamo Bay, a world wide campaign of assassination without trial, the acceptance of torture as a legitimate use of government power, drone missile strikes abroad, drone surveillance at home and the enactment of the Patriot Act are merely the highlights of a systemic program representing a far greater attack on "liberty" than anything Osama bin Laden and his minions could have whipped up in their wildest dreams.

I've been on record here stating that I do not plan to participate in the upcoming sham election this November, but if I did go to the polls it would be to at least cast a ballot against the two oligarch-approved candidates by voting third party. With a statement like the one above, however, that could have come from one of the horrible speeches at the recently concluded Republican and Democratic National conventions, Gary Johnson has placed himself squarely on the side of our oppressors and thus is unworthy of support by anyone who REALLY cares about liberty.

So what should Governor Johnson have said instead? How about something along these lines:

"As we pause to remember the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States and to appreciate again the actions of the heroic first responders who gave their lives on that awful day, we must also reexamine ourselves and question whether our nation's collective response during this past decade to those attacks have been appropriate or consistent with a nation that supposedly values liberty.

"We must strive to curtail the abuse of liberty by immediately ending all foreign occupations, closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, vigorously prosecuting the use of torture, repealing the Patriot Act, ending assassinations without trial and stopping the use of drone missiles to carry out random attacks abroad and drone aircraft to conduct domestic surveillance. Only by respecting the human rights and dignity of all of the world's people and the Constitutional rights of our own citizens here at home may we possibly hope to maintain the ideals of liberty and freedom that the founders of this great nation bestowed upon us."

After all, if you can't trust the Libertarian Party to support liberty, whom can you trust?


Bonus: "Whether your state is red or is blue...always be wary of people who rule"

Bipartisanship Strikes Again: House Overwhelmingly Rejects Afghanistan Withdrawal Measure

When it comes to issues of real importance, those involving unwavering support for big business war and empire, there is absolutely no difference between the two parties. This obvious but far too little acknowledged truth was on full display yet again this past week when the House of Representatives voted down a measure that would have resulted in an immediate exit of combat troops from Afghanistan. Here is Common Dreams with the story:

By a vote of 303-113, the US House of Representatives rejected an amendment by California's Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) on Thursday that would have swiftly ended combat operations in Afghanistan by limiting funds only to the "safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops and military contractors from Afghanistan."

Congresswoman Lee (D-CA) discussing her amendment to end the war in Afghanistan.

The amendment was among dozens debated during passage of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

"The American people are far ahead of Congress. It's past time to end the war and bring the troops home," Lee said ahead of the vote. "My amendment allows Congress the opportunity to stand squarely with the war-weary American people who want to bring our troops home. The call has been growing across this land to bring this war to an end. It's time now for the Congress to answer the call here today." It was not to be.

An Associated Press-GfK poll released last week showed that backing for the war has hit a new low and is on par with support for the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Only 27 percent of Americans say they support the war effort, and 66 percent oppose it, according to the survey.

So, 66% of the American public oppose the continuation of the Afghanistan war and yet over 56% of their supposed Representatives voted to continue the war anyway. Some great democracy we have going here.

One thing the article failed to mention was just how many Democrats voted against the measure. So I went to the House website to find out. All told, 79 House Democrats cravenly voted to keep the war going and 10 more were too chickenshit to vote (including the Democratic party chairwoman, the hideously obnoxious Debbie Wasserman-Shultz). In fairness, 12 Republicans, including Ron Paul, actually voted in favor of the amendment. With this number of "aye" Democratic votes, it wouldn't have mattered if that sellout party was still in control of the House, the measure would still have failed.

All we keep hearing in the mainstream media is how hopelessly gridlocked Washington is these days and how bipartisanship is dead. Great line to sell to the idiots who don't pay attention. Unfortunately, it isn't true at all. For when it comes to supporting the true agenda of the billionaires who really run the country, you can absolutely count on a bipartisan majority to emerge every single time.


Bonus: From my You Tube channel - "Another day to face up...another day to wake up...on the feed kill chain"

Newt Gingrich Calls For The U.S. To Leave Afghanistan

Okay, I realize that pointing out the many hypocrisies and inconsistencies of Newt Gingrich is a bit like casting a fishing line in a goldfish bowl. The man has proven time and again that he is capable of saying pretty much anything in his never-ending quest to pander to whatever audience he is standing in front of at that particular moment. Nevertheless, his recent criticism of Obama for apologizing after some of our servicemen burned a bunch of Korans over in Afghanistan was really pretty stunning in its implications.

First, lets set the stage. As reported by Reuters, the Afghans are just a little bit honked off by the Koran burnings:

Seven U.S. military trainers were wounded on Sunday when a grenade was thrown at their base in northern Afghanistan, police said, as anti-Western fury deepened over the burning of the Koran at a NATO base.

Despite an apology from U.S. President Barack Obama, riots raged across the country for a sixth day on Sunday against the desecration of the Muslim holy book at a NATO air base at Bagram. Some protesters hoisted the white Taliban flag.

The Afghan Interior Ministry identified one of its employees as a suspect in the fatal shooting of two U.S. officers in its headquarters a day earlier, an attack that prompted NATO to recall its staff from ministries.

One civilian was killed, 15 more were wounded and three policemen injured in riots near the NATO base in northern Kunduz province, where the blast that wounded the Americans took place, regional police chief Samihullah Qatra told reporters.

NATO confirmed there had been an explosion outside one of its bases in northern Afghanistan, but declined to comment on casualties.

The protests have killed 30 people and wounded 200, including two other U.S. troops who were shot dead by an Afghan soldier who joined rallies in the country's east.

Sure is funny how you can occupy a country for over a decade and wantonly drop drone missiles and otherwise indiscriminately bomb its citizens for years, but it isn't until you burn a bunch of holy books that the population begins to rise up en masse against you. However insincere Obama's apology obviously was, he really had no other choice than to at least try to calm things down.

But that isn't how the Angry Little Attack Muffin sees it. Here's the story from Russia Today:

Gingrich responded to the president’s attempt to qualm anti-American sentiment by insisting that Obama is in the wrong for trying to make peace with people whose religion has been ridiculed by US troops. Americans official are calling the Koran incident inadvertent, and, nonetheless, Gingrich says there is no point in the president saying he’s sorry.

“There seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama’s attention in a negative way and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States period,” Gingrich told supporters during a campaign stop Thursday in Washington State.

Blah...blah...blah. So typical of Gingrich, a man who was great for his party when he was a sniping backbencher in Congress, but an absolute disaster when he was elected Speaker of the House and had to, you know, actually run things. But the real stunner came in this next series of quotes:

"It is Hamid Karzai who owes the American people an apology, not the other way around,” said the speaker.

“And, candidly, if Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, doesn’t feel like apologizing then we should say good bye and good luck, we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn’t care,” he added.

I never could have imagined that anything would ever pop out of Gingrich's stinking pie hole that I could agree with, but damn if didn't finally happen. Not the part about Karzai apologizing. That I couldn't give a shit about. It's the "we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money" part that is true now and has been true for more than a decade ever since President George Bush the Lesser became impatient with the Osama Bin Laden manhunt and misdirected the military's attention towards Iraq instead.

Obama should jump at the political cover he was just given by the Newster and announce that since Karzai hasn't apologized to the United States, all NATO forces will be immediately withdrawn from Afghanistan. And when the Republicans shriek in horror and try to call Obama an appeaser, he can then say that he is merely following the wise and sage advice of one Newt Gingrich.