Phi Beta Iota: This is a good initiative, something we should have been doing for decades. However, it does not go far enough. No such study can be credible without the participation of Brazil, China, Iran, Israel, and Pakistan, as well as major “interested parties” such as South Africa and Turkey. In short, we are long over-due for a Multinational Decision-Support Centre that does M4IS2 on all topics.
But as US action around the world aimed at eliminating the recently won right to self-determination for the peoples of Asia and Africa under the guise of “Western democracy” fighting “totalitarian communism”, which left a trail of millions murdered by the US and its allies (starting with Korea and moving to the Congo, to Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and from Guatemala to Brazil to Argentina, Uruguay, El Salvador, and Chile, to Southern Africa and the Middle East), the cruel US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade have hardly changed this anti-democratic trend. Yet two important victories are always touted by supporters of US foreign policy on the democratic front: namely, the fall of the Soviet Union and the ensuing “democratisation” of Eastern Europe, and the end of Apartheid in South Africa. The US hopes that its policies in both places will guide it to achieve similar ends for those uprisings of the Arab world that it cannot crush.
Joseph Massad is Associate Professor for Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York.
Revelations of secret bombing in Yemen bring President Obama closer to Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon and their secret bombings of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War than is appropriate for any Nobel Peace Laureate. How many wars is this President going to start? As many as the American people will allow.
Der Spiegel reports that the Pentagon released the remaining papers of the Pentagon Papers while admitting that lies were told about the war. We know that. But here it is from them. The four volumes of the Gravel Papers can be accessed through Der Spiegel by clicking on the link below. How many more lies will the U.S. government tell the American people and the international community? As many as the American people will allow.
Are NATO's allies child soldiers? Isn't that against the law? So what else is new with this war? How long will war crimes and crimes against humanity be committed by NATO? As long as the American people allow these crimes to be committed.
This blaster is intended to bring two very important reports and a short third report to your attention. The three should be thought about together.
1 is an essay by Robert ParryConsortium News. It is an excellent summary of the last 10 years of perpetual war and the debacle wrought by the Neoconmen. It also explains why these wars are now un-winnable and how President Obama has walked merrily into the Aftrap and is being set up as the fall guy to the Neconmen's debacle. (My essay, which appeared in the Jan-Feb issue of Challenge, explaining the domestic politics underpinning the Pentagon's need for perpetual war can be found here.)
2 is a more narrowly focused but deeply disturbing essay in Counterpunch by Gareth Porter, who reports on a recent book by Saleem Shahzad, the distinguished Pakistani journalist whose body was found outside Islamabad last week. As Porter explains, Shahzad has laid out how Al Qaeda, especially Dr. Ayman Zawahiri (the brains of the outfit), laid out a strategy that played President Bush (and his fellow travellers) like like a violin. Porter describes how the name of the game has been to dupe the cowboys in America to overreact to generate blowback in the Muslim word. He explains why Zawahiri wants the US mucking around in Afghanistan. But Belogolova's report does raise a valid concern. If Shahzad is right in his assessment of Zawahiri, the good Dr must be laughing his rocks off … because from his perspective, Afghanistan may turn out to be the gift that keeps on giving.
3 is Olga Belogolova's report on a new Senate study in the 8 June issue of National Journal …. She tells the reader that the Senate report suggests we can not even leave Afghanistan without collapsing the economy. This is kind of thinking can be used as yet another pretext for signing up to Zawahiri's script of the U.S. staying in Afghanistan forever, enraging the Muslim world — and in the near term for scaring Obama into not withdrawing significant forces in July as he has promised to do. I am not so sure this concern over the economic effects of reducing aid is that important. If so much of the aid money goes into the swamp of corruption, a large part of the collapse may be related to corruption. Is eliminating the honey pot stoking corruption that bad for the Afghan people (or the Americans for that matter)? Will Afghanistan really collapse? Who knows? But I doubt it.
The real subject of these essays, however is the sorry state of the United States and its political elites who are either working for the benefit of other countries (i.e., see Parry's discussion of the Neoconmen and Israel) or are brain dead strategists in Versailles on the Potomac, who, as we used to say in the Pentagon, “went for the cape — right off the cliff.” An now the numbskulls who got the United States into these messes are suggesting we must stay the course. Which brings us back to the Colonel's lament in my last blaster.
Chuck Spinney
La Ciotat, France
Phi Beta Iota: Integrity might be lost at the top, but it is the failure of integrity among all ranks that enables the corruption at the top to persist. We swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the chain of command, but all of our officers, with few exceptions, appear at this time to be in violation of their oath to the Constitution.
This email is from an active duty colonel who travels all over Afghanistan. He actually goes on foot patrols with troops to see things for himself. Here is his latest report. His message is bad Ju Ju, I am afraid.
Chuck Spinney
La Ciotat, France
To All,
The mendacity is getting so egregious that I am fast losing the ability to remain quiet; these yarns of “significant progress” are being covered up by the blood and limbs of hundreds – HUNDREDS – of American uniformed service members each and every month, and you know that the rest of this summer is going to see the peak of that bloodshed.
The article by Michael O'Hanlon last week (i.e. Success worth paying for in Afghanistan) and the one in today's WSJ by Kagan and Kagan (i.e., We Have the Momentum in Afghanistan) made me sick to my stomach – especially the latter. Have you seen it yet? It is the most breathless piece of yellow journalism I’ve seen in the entire OIF-OEF generation.
Phi Beta Iota: This 27:37 film focuses on a Serbian organization that claims to have provided peaceful non-violent training to 36 countries, with five successes including Ukraine, Georgia, Tunesia, Egypt, and the Maldives. The film strives to suggest that the US Government is funding this organization–more likely is that it is privately funded by a mix of George Soros, the Ayn Rand network, and related movements. Not to be confused with the Private Military Contractors and related quasi-criminal networks (e.g. Brown & Root) with close ties to clandestine elements of the U.S. Government. This is not “Shock Capitalism.” Russia and Venezuela are said to fear the concepts and organizational teaching represented by this group and its network of young learners. The film concludes that Globalization BENEFITS from revolutions by the young, over-throwing opponents of the New World Order such as Iran, Libya, and Venezuela. On balance, we are impressed. We do not believe that the awakening of the young will prolong predatory capitalism, virtual colonialism, and unilateral militarism. We welcome any initiative that empowers the young.
Real danger of chemical weapons falling into hands of radical Islamists — and potential of NATO creating chemical disaster
TRIPOLI, LIBYA — Chemical weapons and chemical weapons precursor materials that were declared by Libya to the United Nations and United States but not yet destroyed are stored in warehouses at facilities adjacent to Libyan military bases now being attacked by U.S. and NATO forces. Libyan chemical and environmental engineers now warn that if NATO and the U.S. manage to force Libyan security forces to abandon their positions around the military bases and chemical weapons storage facilities, chemical weapons could end up in the hands of the radical Islamist Salafist forces that make up part of the Libyan rebel coalition force.
One Libyan chemical engineer was blunt in his warning about the chemical weapons and their current lack of security. He said, “the U.S. and U.N. took over responsibility for protecting these weapons, which include mustard gas canisters . . . now, the U.S. and U.N. are placing these weapons in danger of being captured by the “Al Qaeda” forces, being sold on the black market, or being used against the United States after the alliance between “Al Qaeda” and the United States terminates after a rebel takeover of Libya.” The engineer added, “the last time America allied itself with “Al Qaeda” in Afghanistan, they attacked you country. After Libya, they will attack you again.”
