Summary: We were ejected from Iraq, gaining nothing we sought. No oil, no ally against Iran, no unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East. All but the mad hawks realize we gained nothing in Afghanistan. Now comes the post-game show, as our military’s boosters attempt to fog our vision and erase our memories, preparing us for more wars. The truth is out there, if only we would make an effort to see.
Contents
We lose because we’re ignorant of history and refuse to learn
Bitter fruit from our failure to learn
The history of counterinsurgency by foreign armies, a history of failure
A more detailed explanation of why foreign armies fail at COIN
Summary: Today we examine yet another example of agitprop by well-funded organizations inciting hatred of Muslims in America. Will we fall for this, again? A divided and fearful people are an easily led flock, a gift to their rulers. Please push back against this propaganda, and those that believe it. Being sheep is a choice.
Recently I noticed a post on a social media site honoring Rosa Parks for her refusal to move out of her seat on a segregated bus. Someone commented underneath, that in fact another individual deserved credit for having done the same thing first. What happened next was entirely predictable. Post after post by various people brought out the names of all kinds of forerunners of Parks, pushing the date of the first brave resister to segregated buses back further and further — many decades — into the past.
What we understand as the civil rights movement was successfully started after a great many failed attempts — by organizations as well as individuals. The same goes for the suffragette movement or the labor movement or the abolition of slavery. Even the Occupy movement was the umpteenth time a lot of activists had attempted such a thing, and chances are that eventually the Occupy movement will be seen as one in a long line of failed predecessors to something more successful.
I've been discussing with people whom I consider key organizers of such a project the possibility of a newly energized movement to abolish war. One thing we're looking at, of course, is failed past attempts to do the same. Some of those attempts have been quite recent. Some are ongoing. How, we must ask ourselves, can we strengthen what's already underway, learn from what's been tried before, and create the spark that this time, at long last, after over a century's preliminaries, catches fire?
One of my readers in Greece, an economist, now working in a drug store since his university department was closed wrote to tell me that the rise of the Rightist Golden Dawn movement in Greece can be directly attributed to the government's austerity policies imposed upon Greece by their German lenders. That made me think about the rise of Rightist militia movements as well as! the tea baggers here in the U.S.
These are the people who are destroying the American democracy, aided by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and the decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act. Basically it is now possible for a small group of rich sociopaths to commandeer the U.S. government at the Federal and state level. Click through to see photocopies of actual documents.
Here is a fascinating report on new research being done at Stonehenge.
Click through to see the pictures, video, and to actually hear the sounds the stones make
I have a number of Millennials who are regular SR readers, and one of them sent me this, explaining that both he and his girl friend had $50,000 worth of debt between them, and still had graduate work to go. I find it hard to even conceive of what that must be like to get your degree face a dead job market and have $6-700 a month payments stretching out as far as the eye can see. This is just another way we are failing our children, and cutting the legs off the country's future.
This is intriguing – an obviously historical construction meant to create a strong vortex in flowing water drawn from a river – which reminds very much of a small vortex hydro power plant constructed some years ago by an Austrian engineer, which I reported on at the time…
Kurt Van Wijck at the Green School in Bali presents to Ken Morgan of Venger Wind the Water Vortex Generator that will soon provide clean and fish safe hydro power to the school. For more information please contact Kurt at tailoredcom@bigpond.com
The Warsaw conference demonstrated that the “climate summit” model is broken and, more importantly, that capitalism itself is driving us to the brink. Protests are not the solution — it's time to fight the system using its own weapons.
Corporate Copyright Ubber Alles
The municipal utility company in the city of Potsdam is currently wooing new customers with a special “BabyBonus” offer. The slogan reads, “We value little energy robbers! Welcome to the world!” Every newborn receives a credit of 500 kilowatt hours of electricity, allowing him or her to revel from the start in a world where everything, especially energy, will always be available in abundance. These babies may later find they're in for a surprise.
A nuclear arms race is now arising in the Middle East, starting with an Iranian nuke, then a Saudi and Egyptian one. Nobody knows the end game. Obama's biggest legacy may be worldwide instability for years to come.
Funding The Syrian Insurgency was written almost five months ago and it references a 2006 paper by economist Paul Coller, Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and their Implications for Policy. Summarizing to a single sentence, insurgencies market themselves to claim moral high ground, but they always have an illicit network exploiting local opportunity, and they often devolve into regional mafias (think: Colombia’s FARC) once their political objectives are met.
National Defense University’s Convergence is a collected series of papers on the nature of illicit networks that support insurgencies. Afghanistan has a variety of such entities, from the Haqqani Network, which may or may not be cozy with Pakistan’s ISI, to Iranians on the opposite side of the country, more focused on revenue than any political objective.
Here’s a map of Afghanistan’s opium poppy production by province:
Afghanistan Opium Prodution
Here’s a map of coalition casualties in Afghanistan, with a highlight of Waziristan, where drone strikes are most prevalent.
Afghanistan Casualties
Kandahar and Helmand are the gold mine, they are where coalition troops were most at risk. The area being droned is Waziristan, home to the political leadership of the bi-national Haqqani network. Afghan Logistics Just Got Much Harder describes the added distance and costs we face in our withdrawal due to the slaughter of 24 Pakistani troops in 2011. We are simply not wanted in Afghanistan, and the residents have the temperament to make that decision, and then make it stick.
This will never work politically, but if we intended to reduce the hazard Afghanistan poses the right thing to do would have been a short, sharp action against radicalized Arabs in the country, then spending our dollars facilitating legal use of the country’s opium crop. Global Access to Pain Relief Initiative is just one many efforts that could use opium derivatives, relieving the suffering of both Afghans and cancer victims worldwide.
Funding The Syrian Insurgency was written almost five months ago and it references a 2006 paper by economist Paul Coller, Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and their Implications for Policy. Summarizing to a single sentence, insurgencies market themselves to claim moral high ground, but they always have an illicit network exploiting local opportunity, and they often devolve into regional mafias (think: Colombia’s FARC) once their political objectives are met.
National Defense University’s Convergence is a collected series of papers on the nature of illicit networks that support insurgencies. Afghanistan has a variety of such entities, from the Haqqani Network, which may or may not be cozy with Pakistan’s ISI, to Iranians on the opposite side of the country, more focused on revenue than any political objective.