Soon to be at the Harper's website, at http://harpers.org/, is the attached article by Andrew Cockburn. “Tunnel Vision: Will the Air Force Kill Its Most Effective Weapon?” is sure to generate howls of protest from officialdom in the Air Force and its mouthpieces.
The article makes numerous important, indeed key, points. They involve not just the unique capabilities of the supposedly too old, too slow, too primitive and too cheap A-10, but also about the real limitations of wonder weapon technologies that have a strong appeal to those who don't bother to look beyond the glitz and the many that have a material and dogmatic vested interest in them.
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Please pay close attention to the incident that Cockburn, a friend and colleague, uses to open the article–and to the denouement of the incident related at the end. Also, central to the article is the destruction of the notions that the F-35 will ever be able to perform the close air support mission of the A-10 or that the Air Force's leadership cares about that in the slightest.
When you read this think of the hundreds of thousands of individuals, particularly young people and, most particularly, Black and Brown kids whose lives, and the lives of whose families, were derailed by arrest and incarceration for years or decades for tiny amounts of drugs, while this government supported dope trade was going on. You have to ask yourself: who are the real crimi! nals?
Is it any wonder that American's now see their government as the country's leading problem.
The Afghan adventure is ending in a disaster. The outsiders are again leaving with their tails between their legs. This will be the fourth time for the Brits. For the U.S. Afghanistan is just another disaster in what what is becoming a dreary pattern of military failures at ever higher costs. Predictably, President Obama's surge in 2010 failed to stem the downward spiral, largely because its central premise: namely the plan to rapidly build up competent professional Afghan security forces was a logically flawed. Now, according to recent polls, a larger percentage of Americans oppose the war than was the case in VietNam. Yet in contrast to Vietnam, the American people are not angry — they seem to be disinterested, tired, and want to move on; one thing is clear, however, they show no sign of energizing a political desire to hold the military accountable for the Afghan or Iraq disasters.
Today, Versailles on the Potomac is far more lathered up by former defense secretary Robert Gates attempt to protect the Bush clan and to distract attention away from the Pentagon's culpability by fingering Obama for the Afghan failure. To be sure Obama deserves a great deal of blame for the debacle, particularly the consequences of his bungled decision to escalate what he said was the “good war.” Moreover, Obama can not say he was not warned about the dangers of escalating well before the fact. On the other hand, as Patrick Cockburn explains below, the roots of the Afghan mess go back to the failure to defeat the Taliban in 2002 and the toxic mix of corruption and warlordism in the regime we imposed on the Afghan people — and those are problems Obama inherited. In short, there is plenty of blame to go around, not to mention the warmongers in Congress, like John McCain and his infantile sidekick Lindsey Graham.
Cockburn' essay gives the reader an idea of the dire state of affairs in Arghanistan. He summarizes a devastating 30 December 2013 report written by Thomas Ruttig of the esteemed Afghan Analysts Network, also attached in PDF format [below the line after the article] for your convenience. I urge you to read Ruttig's report.
For those who have right-wing extremist friends who complains about welfare for the poor, especially for the dark-skinned ones, share this article with them. Here's the first three:
“There are actually thousands of tax breaks and subsidies for the rich and corporations provided by federal, state and local governments but these ten will give a taste.
One. State and Local Subsidies to Corporations. An excellent New York Times study by Louise Story calculated that state and local government provide at least $80 billion in subsidies to corporations. Over 48 big corporations received over $100 million each. GM was the biggest at a total of $1.7 billion extracted from 16 different states but Shell, Ford and Chrysler all received over a billion dollars each. Amazon, Microsoft, Prudential, Boeing and casino companies in Colorado and New Jersey received well over $200 million each.
This month the US Congress could pass legislation that would make sure that complex trade agreements favored by multinational corporations – like the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) – would be pushed through Congress with little debate and little information provided to the public. This so-called “fast-track” authority – and the trade agreements it is designed to facilitate – would seriously undermine what remains of US democracy. We invite you to act on this matter soon as your conscience dictates.
Dear friends,
In my blog post The rapid growth of serious responses to climate disruption I mentioned the movement to protest the secretly negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) that could have profound impacts on democracy, on public health and welfare, and on the fate of the planet.
I did not think I would see the day. Bloomberg Businessweek informs us that the “New York Times Grudgingly Embraces Branded Content.” Though other news outfits have adopted the controversial money-making trend, it somehow seemed like the Times would prefer to shutter its doors before blurring the line between articles and ads. I guess not.
Reporter Felix Gillette describes the sneaky marketing trend:
The year 2013 was shockingly damaging to relations between the U.S. and the countries of Latin America. Edward Snowden’s revelations showed that in the Western Hemisphere, Washington is trying to play only by the rules it itself has written.
Using such spying programs as Prism, Boundless Informant and others, U.S. intelligence was collecting strategically useful information throughout the South American continent and using it to ensure the effectiveness of its policy in the region…
