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The Air War In Afghanistan Expands On Both Sides – Moon of Alabama

Posted by M. C. on January 28, 2020

The graveyard of empires.

The longer we are there the better they get.

From cell phones and VCRs to effective anti-aircraft technology.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

Moon of Alabama

The Air War In Afghanistan Expands On Both Sides

Under the Trump administration U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan have sharply increased. But it now seems that the Taliban have acquired some means to counter them.

Last year the U.S. dropped a record number of bombs on Afghanistan leading to ever increasing casualties among civilians:

According to the Combined Forces Air Component Commander (CFACC) 2013-2019 Airpower Statistics released in late January, 7,423 missions flown in Afghanistan in 2019 resulted in weapons being released. There were more weapon releases in most months of the year than in any corresponding months since records were first released in 2009, with September recording the most for the year at 948.The previous annual record was 7,362 set in 2018, and the last two years together have seen more weapon releases over Afghanistan than the combined number for 2012 through to 2017.

Twenty bombing strikes per day is a quite astonishing number. Many civilians get killed in this U.S. bombing campaign. The U.S. often seems not to know who it is hitting. This report from last week is typical:

A drone attack carried out by U.S. forces earlier this month in western Afghanistan that apparently targeted a splinter Taliban group also killed at least 10 civilians, including three women and three children, an Afghan rights official and a council member said Wednesday.
…
There was no immediate comment from the Afghan military or the U.S. forces. But Wakil Ahmad Karokhi, a provincial council member in Herat, said the Jan. 8 strike also killed the commander of a Taliban splinter group, known as Mullah Nangyalia, along with 15 other militants.
…
The commanders funeral the following day was held in the Herat provincial capital’s Guzargah neighborhood, and was attended by dozens of militants.Karokhi criticized the strike as “huge mistake” saying the commander had been a useful buffer against the Taliban in Shindand district, taking up arms with his fighters against the insurgents “when no one else would do it” and leaving the area’s civilians in peace.

The U.S. military and its allies and Afghan proxies are not the only ones fighting. The Taliban can hit back at helicopters and planes and, judging from the number of recent air incidents, they now have found effective means to do so. Two days ago they destroyed another helicopter:

Drexluddin Spiveyzai @RisboLensky – 9:44 UTC · Jan 25, 2020Helicopter hit by missile in Kajaki area of #Helmand 4 soldiers wounded via @TOLOnews #Afghanistan

Its #Moldova flag. Helicopter got hit pretty bad. True miracle there are no deaths

#Taliban took responsibility for shooting down of military helicopter in #Helmand #Afghanistan

This is the 4th helicopter that went down in January

Video from Kajaki

Four helicopter losses in one month is quite significant.

Earlier today there were reports that a civilian Afghan airliner had come down. Those turned out to be false. But a plane had indeed crashed in Ghazni province south of Kabul. It was a military one:

Harry Boone @towersight – 12:37 UTC · Jan 27, 2020Wreck of plane crashed today in Afghanistan looks like to be a USAF Bombardier Global 6000 / E-11A “BACN” (Battlefield Airborne Communications Node)

Four U.S. E-11As are assigned to the 430th Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron and operate usually from Kandahar AB.

There are video of the burning and burned out plane.


biggerAfghan sources say the Taliban claimed that they shot down the plane. Others deny that. What is sure though is that the plane crashed into Taliban held territory. At least two persons on board were killed.


biggerThe “BACN” flying radio relay stations have been in Afghanistan for a while. A military report from March 2017 said:

Called “as essential to mission success as bullets,” the E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node flew its 10,000th sortie Feb. 24, 2017 at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, since arriving in Afghanistan eight years ago.The 430th Expeditionary Electronic Squadron operating out of Kandahar is the only unit in the U.S. Air Force that operates the E-11A with the BACN payload. It was created to fulfill what is called a joint urgent operational need, when it was identified that the terrain of Afghanistan posed serious communication challenges.

E-11A
biggerThere appear to exist only four of these planes which are heavily modified Bombardier Global 6000 ultra long-range business jets. They are only used in Afghanistan.

The loss is significant. The ground troops depend on radio communication when they direct bombers to their targets. Without the flying relay stations they have no chance to do so in Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain.

It is not known what new means the Taliban have to take down planes and helicopters. In 2018 a few Stinger anti-air missiles were found during a raid on some Taliban. But those seem to have been old and were probably no longer functioning. Helicopters can be brought down with machine guns or even with anti-tank missiles (RPGs).

But the E-11A usually fly at a significant altitude and the crashed plane was not near an airport. The usual man-portable air-defense missiles (MANPAD) like the U.S. made Stinger reach a maximum altitude of only some 3.500 meters.

That opens the possibility that the Taliban have acquired new supplies of larger missiles. One wonders where those would come from.

On January 5 Hizbullah leader Hassan Nazrallah announced how the ‘resistance axis’ would respond to the U.S. murder of the Iranian General Soleimani and the Iraqi PMU leader Al-Muhandis.

The response to the blood of Soleimani and Al-Muhandis must be expulsion of all U.S. forces from the region.

Using effective means to take down even high flying U.S. planes would be one possible way to achieve that aim.

But Iran is not the only possible source of such missiles. China and Russia also produce effective anti-air missiles and the military in Pakistan and in Tajikistan have bought those in significant numbers. All these countries usually hold back from providing anti-air missiles to militants as they could also endanger their own (civil) airplanes.

But the loss of five aircraft in one month in Afghanistan might well mean that this has changed.

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His son died fighting the Taliban. The Afghanistan Papers confirmed what he already knew.

Posted by M. C. on December 17, 2019

For them, big questions remain, like: Why were a group of Navy SEALs flying in a decades-old helicopter over a valley known to be an enemy stronghold just months after the same unit killed bin Laden? Why did officials seemingly change their story about the existence of a black box in the helicopter? Why was Michael cremated without his family’s permission? And why were they told his body was badly burned when an autopsy photo showed otherwise?

It was these sentiments that have fueled some of Charles Strange’s theories about Extortion 17, which doesn’t appear to be mentioned in the Afghanistan Papers, though the documents are partially redacted. He and some of the other relatives of those killed in the crash have suggested they believe Afghan security forces tipped off Taliban fighters that Navy SEALs were flying overhead.

Don’t confuse the dead soldier’s poor family, and the public, with the facts.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/charles-strange-michael-afghanistan-papers-philadelphia-native-20191214.html

by Anna Orso

It would not be accurate to say that Charles Strange felt a surge of anger when he read evidence this week in the Washington Post that U.S. military leaders misled the public about the war in Afghanistan.

No, for the Montgomery County father, the anger’s always there, like a tiny earthquake rumbling below the surface. The intensity changes daily, but it never really goes away.

Related stories

It’s been more than eight years since his son, Navy Petty Officer First Class Michael J. Strange, was killed alongside 29 other U.S. soldiers and eight Afghan security forces on America’s deadliest day of the war in Afghanistan. The crew, which included the 25-year-old Michael, were killed when Taliban fighters shot down their helicopter, Extortion 17, while they were carrying out a mission in a valley southwest of Kabul on Aug. 6, 2011.

Michael was a cryptologist and part of the elite Navy SEAL Team 6, the unit responsible for killing Osama bin Laden. At his core, though, he was a Wissinoming native, a graduate of North Catholic High School, and a “Philly boy” through-and-through.

This week, Charles Strange and his wife, Mary Ann, Michael’s stepmother, sat in their home in Hatboro, parsing through the Washington Post’s reporting on the Afghanistan Papers, which said what the Strange family has long thought: Military leadership can’t always be trusted.

“This is what you get when your son dies: a pin and a flag,” he said, his Gold Star pinned to his chest. “And lied to.”…

Plenty of veterans of the 18-year conflict, along with their families, have been reluctant to publicly criticize the ongoing war effort for fear of coming across as unpatriotic. The Stranges, on the contrary, have immense pride in their country. They’re dedicated to supporting men and women who serve, and established a foundation in Michael’s name to support other Gold Star families.

They instead see the war in Afghanistan and the circumstances surrounding Michael’s death as a failure in leadership.

So this week, they read and reread the Post’s reporting in the same house where they have collected thousands of pages of partially redacted documents that are supposed to tell the story of how Michael was killed. The documents aren’t sufficient, the Stranges say.

For them, big questions remain, like: Why were a group of Navy SEALs flying in a decades-old helicopter over a valley known to be an enemy stronghold just months after the same unit killed bin Laden? Why did officials seemingly change their story about the existence of a black box in the helicopter? Why was Michael cremated without his family’s permission? And why were they told his body was badly burned when an autopsy photo showed otherwise?…

It was these sentiments that have fueled some of Charles Strange’s theories about Extortion 17, which doesn’t appear to be mentioned in the Afghanistan Papers, though the documents are partially redacted. He and some of the other relatives of those killed in the crash have suggested they believe Afghan security forces tipped off Taliban fighters that Navy SEALs were flying overhead….

Other portions of the Post’s reporting were familiar to Charles Strange, specifically revelations that nation-building efforts in Afghanistan were unsuccessful on a variety of fronts. U.S. officials told SIGAR, for example, that while its dreams of developing a strong economy and reliable security forces were failing, Afghanistan became the world’s largest source of opium.

Michael had mentioned this, too, saying he’d seen poppies growing on plots the size of football fields.

More from that Post story was eerily familiar, so Charles Strange looked for support this week, sharing the link in a group text he’s in. It’s for a club no one wants to be a member of.

“I’ve known this a long time,” replied another Gold Star father. “This is a difficult pill to swallow.”

Be seeing you

 

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US Says They ‘Had To’ Bomb Afghanistan Hospital to Get Taliban – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on December 16, 2019

https://news.antiwar.com/2019/12/15/us-says-they-had-to-bomb-afghanistan-hospital-to-get-taliban/

Jason Ditz

Pentagon officials are trying to spin the aftermath of Wednesday’s Bagram attack, in which US airstrikes did major damage to an under renovation hospital near the air base. They are now saying they had no choice but to bomb the hospital to get the Taliban.

The attack saw the Taliban use a suicide car bomb to force their way onto the site, and they dug in defensively for a 10 hour battle. Airstrikes were clearly the most convenient way for the US to kill those Taliban, but given the damage inflicted, it may not have been the most ideal for the construction project.

That’s why the Pentagon is now so eager to blame the Taliban for what happened, which is a go-to reaction, but very much beside the point. The Afghanistan Papers reports about failures in US reconstruction in Afghanistan, after all, wasn’t just lacking a scapegoat. The inability to construct sites without getting the unbearable urge to airstrike them is part and parcel to why nothing ever gets built in US-occupied Afghanistan.

Moreover, the problems don’t stop at the destruction of the site. The Pentagon emphasized how valuable to hospital would’ve eventually been to locals, but it was built right on the outskirts of a US military base, which probably wasn’t the most convenient for the locals, and also made the site a particular target for the Taliban to occupy, and one for US forces to airstrike.

The first US response was to further delay the peace process by pausing the Doha talks to protest the attack, and the second response is to blame the Taliban for the damage done. Neither of these is a solution to a problem, and rather reflect why the Afghan War has gone on so long with no progress.

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“There exists a government within a government within the United States” -Osama bin Laden | Zero Hedge | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on November 20, 2019

Said a different way, the USA invaded and occupies a nation on the other side of the planet that fucking borders Iran and China, then complains about Persian and Chinese aggressive behavior in the Persian Gulf and South China Sea.  

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-11-18/there-exists-government-within-government-within-united-states

by hedgeless_horseman

“I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself… That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks. … The American system is totally in control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States.” 

-Osama bin Laden statement, published by BBC

 

In essence, this article is about a map, a video, a timeline, and a chart.  Please, take a few minutes to carefully examine each.

The Map

I have asked dozens, if not hundreds, of Americans to please tell me why, exactly, America is at war with Afghanistan, the longest war in American history.  Some say, “Because they attacked us.”  Most have no answer, whatsoever, but instead ask me, “Why?”   I respond by asking them what large oil-producing nation borders Afghanistan in the west.  Some guess, “Iraq.”  Nobody knows.  I then ask what large oil-consuming nation borders Afghanistan on the East.  Nobody knows.  I tell them the answers are Iran (Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s arch enemy) and China.

0 miles: Distance from Afghanistan to Iran

0 miles: Distance from Afghanistan to China

7,477 miles: Distance from Afghanistan to Washington, D.C.

Said a different way, the USA invaded and occupies a nation on the other side of the planet that fucking borders Iran and China, then complains about Persian and Chinese aggressive behavior in the Persian Gulf and South China Sea.

lol

 

The Video

It is highly unlikely that you have seen the interviews in this 4 minute and 13 second video, a compilation of FDNY firefighters talking about the explosions inside the WTC on 9-11-2001.  Watch it now, before it is memory holed by The Ministry of Truth.

 

The Timeline

  • 1979-1989 Operation Cyclone – CIA program to arm and finance Afghani insurgents, including those organized by Saudi Arabian, Osama bin Laden
  • 9-10-2001 US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, declares $2.3 trillion in missing Pentagon receipts
  • 9-11-2001 Thousands of Americans killed when three World Trade Center towers are destroyed and two unidentifiable flying objects crash into the Pentagon and the ground in Pennsylvania
  • 10-7-2001 US goes to war against the general concept of “terror” and attacks the nation of Afghanistan, because they decline to extradite former Operation Cyclone ally and Saudi Arabian citizen, Osama bin Laden, without some evidence of his involvement in 9-11-2001 attacks, which US refuses to provide
  • 10-26-2001 USA Patriot Act signed into law
  • 11-21-2001 Five Dancing Israelis arrested by NYPD on 9-11-2001  are quietly released by FBI to return to Israel
  • 9-2-2004 US Presidential election with essentially zero discussion or debate about the War in Afghanistan
  • 9-4-2008 US Presidential election with essentially zero discussion or debate about the War in Afghanistan
  • 5-2-2011 Osama bin Laden reportedly shot in face in Pakistan and his body immediately buried at sea
  • 9-6-2012 US Presidential election with essentially zero discussion or debate about the War in Afghanistan
  • 9-8-2016 US Presidential election with essentially zero discussion or debate about the War in Afghanistan
  • 9-3-2020 US Presidential election with essentially zero discussion or debate about the War in Afghanistan

 

The Chart

President Donald J. Trump has expressed his desire to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R45122.pdf

Watch what they do, not what they say.

On September 7, 2019, President Trump revealed in a series of tweets that he had invited “major Taliban leaders” and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to meet with him separately at Camp David on the following day. He wrote that, because a Taliban attack killed several people, including a U.S. soldier, in Kabul on September 5, he had “immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations.”

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R45122.pdf

U.S. air operations have escalated considerably under the Trump Administration, as measured by the number of munitions released (see Figure 2). These operations have contributed to a sharp rise in civilian casualties; the U.N. reported that the third quarter of 2019 saw the highest quarterly civilian casualty toll since tracking began in 2009, with over 4,300 civilians killed or injured from July 1 to September 30.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R45122.pdf

Oceania is at war with Central Asia.

Oceania has always been at war with Central Asia.

Oceania will always be at war with Central Asia.

 

11-17-2019

US Army’s new card decks feature Russian, Chinese & Iranian weapons ‘to learn more about adversaries’

https://www.rt.com/usa/473664-us-army-playing-cards/

 

Peace, liberty, love, and truth,

h_h

 

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The Trump Effect on Foreign Policy – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on October 17, 2019

Just in the 2016 election, Graham referred to Trump as a “jackass”. Now, he has realized that to remain relevant within the Party, he must adapt. This is true for many others as well, including Chuck Grassley and Donald Rumsfeld, neither of which one could hardly characterize as populists.

Graham – Selling out his mother (warparty neoconservatives) to remain in power.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/10/atilla-mert-sulker/the-trump-effect-on-foreign-policy/

By

Since the conception of his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump had received backlash from a number of different political factions. Among these, were the “Never Trump Republicans”. This included the likes of multiple Bush administration officials, including Paul Wolfowitz and Hank Paulson, the latter voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Often many pundits declare that the GOP has become the party of Trump. This statement bears a lot of truth, given that most of the hardliner Never Trumpers have become irrelevant. Among these are major figures in neoconservative circles, including Bill Kristol, and John Kasich. Watching as their hardliner friends started to fade away, many Republicans who would certainly not be characterized as populists by any stretch, had to adapt to the Trump phenomenon. For if they had dissented along with their friends, they too would be pushed to the periphery.

Trump’s conducting of foreign policy well underscores this phenomenon of “necessary adaptation”, for the sake of remaining relevant. Many formerly aggressive Republicans had to adapt to Trump’s volatile “peace through strength” approach regarding diplomacy in say, North Korea. Among one of these Republicans, is Lindsey Graham…

Graham was recently on Fox News, discussing the firing of John Bolton, and potential replacements. Graham started off saying, “The one thing you got to learn about President Trump, that I’ve come to learn, is that he’s unconventional in a conventional way”. This clearly alludes to Graham’s “adaptation” to Trump’s conducting of policy. Graham even went as far to say that “It’s okay, I think, to talk with the Taliban… if there’s a reason to believe they’re going to accept peace and change their behavior”. Such a statement would be seen as a sin in neoconservative circles, for it violates the Bush doctrine- “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists”.

What was even more peculiar for Graham, was to openly tell President Trump “I told the President, you’re right to want to reduce our commitment. You’re right to want to lower our cost”. Graham even went as far as to critique foreign interventionism, proclaiming “18 years later, what have we found? Al Qaeda’s still there. ISIS is there… We can’t do in Afghanistan what we did in Iraq… I’d like to end the war. And the only way you ever end a war is to get the two sides talking”. For a split second, Graham’s sentiment was reminiscent of Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

This phenomenon has big implications for Trump’s guiding of the GOP. Just in the 2016 election, Graham referred to Trump as a “jackass”. Now, he has realized that to remain relevant within the Party, he must adapt. This is true for many others as well, including Chuck Grassley and Donald Rumsfeld, neither of which one could hardly characterize as populists.

Trump’s “taking over” of the GOP has made its way into foreign policy. It has radically changed the direction of the Republican Party in ways one could have never conceived. Trump has embodied a volatile, “pufferfish” approach in foreign policy, one that could potentially swing the wrong way and lead to great cataclysm. So far however, it has had some implications of restraint, and has forced the neocon establishment to make changes in their conduct.

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Lindsey Graham Proves Ayatollah Right - America Is ...

 

 

 

 

 

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The Real Reason the US is Staying in Afghanistan – The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on September 21, 2019

The Taliban are not militant jihadists. Their only concern is their
ancient homelands. The only antagonism the Taliban have for Americans is
the fact that the U.S. military has occupied their country to various
degrees over the last 17 year as USAID and other international
organizations attempted to impose western cultural values that conflict
with their Saudi-indoctrinated fundamentalist form of Islam.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-real-reason-the-us-is-staying-in-afghanistan/

By

Ronald Enzweiler

As someone who lived and worked at the field level in Afghanistan for six years (2008-14) implementing projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development, I am bemused by the fact that the mainstream media (who should have known better or worse yet, actually did) misled the public into believing that it was — or ever will be — possible for the U.S. to reach a meaningful peace accord with the Taliban for amicably ending the Afghan war. Moreover, anyone who thinks a piece of paper a purported Taliban leadership council accepts and signs at a given point in time has any lasting value is woefully naïve and ignorant of who the Taliban are and what governs their belief system and way of life. Spoiler alert: It’s not a diplomatic legal document.

For starters, probably 70% or more of the ethnic Pashtuns who have inhabited the Afghanistan and Pakistan border region (this border is a figment of 19th century British imperialism) for centuries and have adopted over the last 35 years a variation of the Saudi Arabia-spread fundamentalist form of Islam (taught at the Saudi-funded religious schools they attended in Pakistan) as their way of life are illiterate — beyond being able to read Koran verses in Arabic. Moreover, the Taliban have no written theological doctrine or scholarship. These facts should be a clue that written documents are unimportant in their lives. The society that calls itself the Taliban (Arabic for “the students”) live a mostly subsistent life without access to electricity, media, mass communications, or material goods. Most have never travel outside their homelands. They are extremely hostile to outsiders and adhere to a strict Medieval moral code (Pashtunwali) and their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law (Shari’a).

The Taliban are not militant jihadists. Their only concern is their ancient homelands. The only antagonism the Taliban have for Americans is the fact that the U.S. military has occupied their country to various degrees over the last 17 year as USAID and other international organizations attempted to impose western cultural values that conflict with their Saudi-indoctrinated fundamentalist form of Islam. (Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban as Afghanistan’s official government before 9/11.) Moreover, Taliban leaders have been wary since the U.S. troop surge in 2009 that the U.S. intended to maintain permanent bases in their country. This is why the Taliban and other Afghan nationalists intensified their fight to expel latest round of foreign invaders in a civil war to oust the U.S.-backed government. (Media pundits who lament that civil war and chaos will break out if the U.S. troops withdraw have somehow missed the last 40 years of Afghan history.)

It’s always been an inaccurate pejorative for the U.S. government and media to refer to the Taliban as “terrorists.” Consider this scenario: A foreign power invades and occupies your country; it installs and pays the costs (over $5 billion in FY 2020) for keeping a friendly pro-western government in power; the Afghan officials who profit from these payments (corruption is a way of life in Afghanistan as the SIGAR has repeatedly documented) are willing to let the foreign power retain permanent military bases in your country (which are needed to keep them in power). As an Afghan nationalist, you don’t want your way of life changed at gunpoint and don’t want a foreign power to use bases in your country to project power in the region and possibly attack the neighboring (predominately Muslim) countries. Given this situation, you join a home-grown insurgency that opposes the foreign troops staying and having your traditional way of life coercively changed.

However, because you fight against the neocolonial foreign power that has taken de facto control of your country for its self-interests, you are deemed a “terrorist.” Yes, the Taliban and other anti-government elements in Afghanistan have killed over 2,400 U.S. soldiers over the 17-year, $2-trilllion-dollar war and occupation of their country. But this happened only because more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers at one point (140,000 including other NATO countries) and squadrons of F-16s were sent to their country to kill them — while subjecting the Afghan civilian population to the hardships, collateral damage, and casualties inherent in warfare.

The question our elected officials need to be asked: Why are U.S. soldiers still in Afghanistan and being killed fighting local insurgents engaged in a civil war who are not a threat to America 17 years after the al-Qaeda jihadists responsible for the 9/11 attacks were vanquished?…

The real reason for the pushback by the Washington national security establishment against getting all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan is the guiding maxim of our post-World War II “War State” (the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned about) that has grown into a $1-trillion/year enterprise with a worldwide empire of over 800 foreign military installations: never give up a military base in a strategic location. The U.S. military eventually will be pushed out of Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan (it’s also a civilian airport near a large restive city in Taliban territory). But Bagram Airfield (a prior Soviet base north of Kabul) is a military-only installation in an easily defended remote area. Bagram is the missing piece in our War State’s chessboard of worldwide bases. Retaining it will enable our military to “project power” throughout Central Asia. It’s a steal at $30 to $40 billion/year (assuming troops levels and graft payments are drawn down at some point) for our overfunded War State. Representative Max Thornberry, then chairman and now ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, visited Bagram in October 2018. He publicly acknowledged afterwards that the U.S. seeks “a sustainable presence” in Afghanistan. (The U.S. military’s new high-tech F-35 fighters — a $1.5 trillion program — are manufactured at a Lockheed plant near Rep. Thornberry’s district in north Texas.)

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russia wants war

 

 

 

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The Media’s Betrayal of American Soldiers – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on September 11, 2019

Behind their self-conscious, over-adulation of military members lay a unspeakable dirty secret: these people are pawns of the military-industrial-complex, for whom the troops are naught but pawns in their partisan political games. When mixed with widespread public apathy regarding foreign affairs, the result is an utter abandonment of the soldiers that all purport to love.

https://original.antiwar.com/danny_sjursen/2019/09/10/the-medias-betrayal-of-american-soldiers/

by

Bipartisan critique of Trump’s plan to roll out an Afghan peace plan during the 9/11 anniversary from Camp David misses the point: negotiation was the only hope to avoid more needless American deaths.

It is a rare thing, indeed, when both establishment and media “liberals” and “conservatives” agree on anything. Nevertheless, lightning has proverbially struck this week as both sides attack President Trump with equal vehemence. Thus, here we are, and here I am – in the disturbing position of defending Trump’s (until Sunday) peace policy for Afghanistan. Nonetheless, though I don’t particularly like the way this position befits me, I’ll take it as a sign that I just might be on to something when the clowns at Fox News and MSNBC, alike, vociferously disagree with my position on an American forever war.

Few in the political or press mainstream ever much liked Trump’s regularly touted plans to extract U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Even “liberal” Rachel Maddow – who once wrote a book critical of US military interventions – turned on a dime and became a born-again cheerleader for continuing the war. After all, in tribal America, if Trump proposes it, the reflexive “left” assumes it must be wrong, anathema even. That’s come to be expected.

Only this time, even his own party has attacked the president after he let it slip that he’d planned a secret peace conference with the Taliban at Camp David and might even have announced a deal to gradually end the US role in the war during the anniversary week of the 9/11 attacks. Gasp! How dare he? End a failing war, save the lives of perhaps hundreds or thousands of US troops, and do so near the 9/11 anniversary? This amounts to heresy in imperial Washington D.C. But it shouldn’t be unexpected: Trump’s own policy advisers have opposed any meaningful steps to end the Afghan War from the get go.

Ever since he took office, Trump’s anti-interventionist “instincts” – though publicly popular – have been stifled by his advisers in what his base calls the “deep state,” and I prefer to simply label the national security warfare state. Whether it was, first, the ostensible, media-canonized “adults in the room” – really a troika of generals with tired, discredited ideas – or, recently, the neoconservative retreads, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, nearly every Trump national security adviser has worked tirelessly to keep America at war…everywhere.

Lost in all the bipartisan hysteria regarding the 9/11 anniversary and Camp David location choice, is one salient, if uncomfortable, truth: the only way these sorts of wars end, historically, is through negotiations with implacable enemies and nefarious actors. That’s real life, and ending stalemated wars is no time for dreamy delusions. Besides, what better option exists than peace talks and a phased US withdrawal? With the Taliban contesting more of the country than ever before, the Kabul regime broke and corrupt, and a record opium crop fueling Taliban finances, the war’s reached – for years now – a tenuous stasis between quagmire and stalemate…

What’s so bad about having Taliban representatives at Camp David? The PLO’s avowed “terrorist,” leader, Yasser Arafat has been there. What’s more, presidents and their representatives have negotiated with adversaries responsible for far more American deaths than the Taliban: Eisenhower with the North Koreans and Chinese; Nixon with the North Vietnamese and Vietcong; Reagan with the leader of the Soviet “evil empire.” In fact, I’d argue that diplomacy is actually more presidential than waging endless, reflexive warfare…

Nevertheless, the pundits at the helm of corporate media programs, and party-line Democrats and Republicans, only pretend to care about the lives and well-being of America’s servicemen and women. Behind their self-conscious, over-adulation of military members lay a unspeakable dirty secret: these people are pawns of the military-industrial-complex, for whom the troops are naught but pawns in their partisan political games. When mixed with widespread public apathy regarding foreign affairs, the result is an utter abandonment of the soldiers that all purport to love. Which is exactly what the mainstream media’s (even Republican!) vacuous critique of Trump’s planned but canceled 9/11 week peace announcement is: a betrayal of the troops and a death sentence for who knows how many more American soldiers.

Now, let me be clear: as New Yorker from a blue collar Staten Island neighborhood chock full of cops and firemen, I don’t take the 9/11 attacks lightly. In fact, I took the whole tragedy personally and long seethed with anger against bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the likely complicit Saudi kingdom, for that matter. September 11, 2001 left two of my FDNY uncles forever emotionally scarred, took the life of a dear family friend, sent my father fleeing for his life from an office across the street from the Twin Towers, and renamed countless streets in my borough to honor dead firemen.

That said, call me provocative or unpatriotic, but I thought that Trump’s original reported plan to announce a peace deal with the Taliban – and impending end to the US war in Afghanistan – to be quite fitting. Consider it a sad, yet appropriate, final bookend to the still prevalent and absurd notion that America’s longest war still carries any connection to 9/11. The ill-advised, unwinnable, foolish attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan and ongoing stalemate combating Taliban farm boys, has long since lost any 9/11-based justification. To pretend otherwise is an exercise in self-delusion…

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Trump's Air Strikes against Syria. The More They Explain ...

 

 

 

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Taliban Peace Talks Must Not Ignore CIA-Funded Militias

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2019

Another CIA success story.

There are so many they are embarrassed to tell US about them.

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/21/taliban-peace-talks-afghanistan-militias/

After 18 years of war, and months of direct talks, the United States appears to be on the brink of reaching an unprecedented peace agreement with the Taliban that would bring about U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A draft agreement was reached in March, and negotiators in Qatar have reportedly been ironing out the details ahead of a September 1 deadline — including exactly when U.S. troops will withdraw and when a permanent ceasefire between the parties will take effect. The U.S. is reportedly also seeking assurances from the Taliban that it won’t harbor foreign terror groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda and will engage in dialogue with the Afghan government after the U.S. military leaves.

It’s the closest the U.S. has come to a diplomatic breakthrough with the Taliban, and foreign policy scholars are cautiously optimistic that it could facilitate a U.S. exit. But a new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute argues that the agreement won’t lead to real peace unless it addresses the elephant in the room: the fate of regional Afghan militias paid and directed by the CIA.

“Militias that operate outside the control of the central state and the chain of command of its armed forces will undermine the process of state formation and the prospects for a sustainable peace,” the report reads.

It is unclear to what extent the fate of the militias has been discussed at all by the U.S. or Taliban negotiators. In July, Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief U.S. negotiator, mentioned the fate of militias while listing topics that needed to be encompassed by a general agreement. But the authors of the report note that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, once director of the CIA, has not.

If the issue goes unaddressed, the report argues, it could lead to the breakdown of a ceasefire or agreement, which would in turn jeopardize Afghanistan’s future. “If violence continues at some level after the agreement is signed,” the report says, “militias will be in much demand in the political market place.”

The use of CIA-backed militias goes back to 2001, when, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the CIA rapidly organized Afghan militias under its payroll to overthrow the Taliban. This allowed the CIA to send Al Qaeda’s fighters fleeing the country with a minimal U.S. footprint.

Initially, these local militias were viewed as a temporary solution, but they eventually became a permanent fixture of secret CIA operations in the country — sometimes acting without the knowledge of U.S. diplomats and Afghan military leaders.

Not much is publicly known about specific groups the CIA directs, the best known of which is the Khost Protection Force. The force has no basis in the Afghan Constitution or law and operates out of the CIA’s Camp Chapman in the province of Khost.

In 2010, journalist Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA’s “army” consisted of about 3,000 Afghan fighters, but since then the number has likely ballooned. According to the New York Times, as of December, the Khost Force alone may number as many as 10,000. (The U.S. currently has approximately 14,000 troops in the country.)

President Donald Trump has further expanded the CIA’s paramilitary role in Afghanistan, using local militias in hunt-and-kill operations…

According to the report, the size and power of the CIA’s forces could pose a problem for the Afghan government after the peace talks. For the militias, integration into the regular armed forces could mean a significant pay cut and a loss of the privileged status that has allowed them to operate largely without transparency or legal accountability. “If cut loose by the CIA,” the report notes, “they may be reborn as private armies or ‘security guards’ in the service of powerful individuals, or operate autonomously to prey on civilians and commercial sources.”

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GUYANA: CIA meddling, race riots and a phantom death squad ...

 

 

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When, If Ever, Can We Lay This Burden Down? – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on August 20, 2019

Iran presents no clear or present danger to U.S. vital interests, but the Saudis and Israelis see Iran as a mortal enemy, and want the U.S. military rid them of the menace.

In how many of these are U.S. vital interests imperiled? And in how many are we facing potential wars on behalf of other nations, while they hold our coat and egg us on?

https://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2019/08/19/when-if-ever-can-we-lay-this-burden-down/

by

Friday, President Donald Trump met in New Jersey with his national security advisers and envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who is negotiating with the Taliban to bring about peace, and a U.S. withdrawal from America’s longest war.

U.S. troops have been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, in a war that has cost 2,400 American lives.

Following the meeting, Trump tweeted, “Many on the opposite sides of this 19 year war, and us, are looking to make a deal – if possible!”

Some, however, want no deal; they are fighting for absolute power.

Saturday, a wedding in Kabul with a thousand guests was hit by a suicide bomber who, igniting his vest, massacred 63 people and wounded 200 in one of the greatest atrocities of the war. ISIS claimed responsibility.

Monday, 10 bombs exploded in restaurants and public squares in the eastern city of Jalalabad, wounding 66.

Trump is pressing Khalilzad to negotiate drawdowns of U.S. troop levels from the present 14,000, and to bring about a near-term end to U.S. involvement in a war that began after we overthrew the old Taliban regime for giving sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.

Is it too soon to ask: What have we gained from our longest war? Was all the blood and treasure invested worth it? And what does the future hold?

If the Taliban could not be defeated by an Afghan army, built up by the U.S. for a decade and backed by 100,000 U.S. troops in 2010-2011, then are the Taliban likely to give up the struggle when the U.S. is drawing down the last 14,000 troops and heading home?

The Taliban control more of the country than they have at any time since being overthrown in 2001. And time now seems to be on their side.

Why have they persevered, and prevailed in parts of the country?

Motivated by a fanatic faith, tribalism and nationalism, they have shown a willingness to die for a cause that seems more compelling to them than what the U.S.-backed Afghan government has on offer…

And Afghanistan is but one of the clashes and conflicts in which America is engaged.

Severe U.S. sanctions on Venezuela have failed to bring down the Nicholas Maduro regime in Caracas but have contributed to the immiseration of that people, 10% of whom have left the country. Trump now says he is considering a quarantine or blockade to force Maduro out.

Eight years after we helped to overthrow Col. Moammar Gadhafi, Libya is still mired in civil war, with its capital, Tripoli, under siege.

Yemen, among the world’s humanitarian disasters, has seen the UAE break with its Saudi interventionist allies, and secessionists split off southern Yemen from the Houthi-dominated north. Yet, still, Congress has been unable to force the Trump administration to end all support of the Saudi war.

Two thousand U.S. troops remain in Syria. The northern unit is deployed between our Syrian Kurd allies and the Turkish army. In the south, they are positioned to prevent Iran and Iranian-backed militias from creating a secure land bridge from Tehran to Baghdad to Damascus to Beirut.

In our confrontation with Iran, we have few allies…

Iran presents no clear or present danger to U.S. vital interests, but the Saudis and Israelis see Iran as a mortal enemy, and want the U.S. military rid them of the menace…

Around the world, America is involved in quarrels, clashes and confrontations with almost too many nations to count.

In how many of these are U.S. vital interests imperiled? And in how many are we facing potential wars on behalf of other nations, while they hold our coat and egg us on?

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steel helmet

How did I get here?

 

 

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The U.S. Government Doesn’t Care About Afghan Women

Posted by M. C. on August 15, 2019

Make no mistake: The well-being of Afghan women hardly motivated the architects of the American invasion and occupation. Need proof? Here’s an ever-so-brief history lesson. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979-89), the CIA not-so-secretly backed some of the worst Islamist theocrat “freedom fighters” against the Soviet-backed secular communist government then in power.

You gotta break a few eggs to build an empire.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-u-s-government-doesnt-care-about-afghan-women/

Maj. Danny Sjursen
The U.S. Government Doesn’t Care About Afghan Women
Afghan women stand outside the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2006, awaiting an appearance by then-U.S. President George W. Bush. (Eric Draper / White House)

In once, and to some extent still, relatively cosmopolitan Baghdad, Iraq, I once saw three young female college students from Mustansiriyah University walking home from class. They couldn’t have been more differently clothed. One wore a full burqa that exposed only her eyes; another a hijab, a more modest head scarf without a facial veil, and a pair of jeans; the third sported a pink miniskirt and a revealing tank top with her long hair fully exposed. Still, they chatted like old friends.

By early 2007, this range of women’s clothing was already highly rare in all but the safest Baghdad neighborhoods, yet it did still happen. I remember woefully realizing that I, a 23-year-old American lieutenant, had been treated to a rare glimpse of Saddam’s largely secular (if brutal) regime that had preceded the U.S. military’s ill-fated invasion. Before Uncle Sam fractured Iraq and empowered Islamist zealots, I was often told by locals that men and women could go on dates and drink alcohol publicly in cafes along the Tigris River. But those days were gone.

Four years later, and even further east in the proverbial Greater Mideast, while patrolling rural Kandahar, Afghanistan—birthplace of the Taliban movement—I hardly even saw a solitary grown woman. There, in the backwater of a country full of backwaters, adult women were rarely seen outdoors and never without a male family member as an escort.

It was all rather archaic and made Baghdad seem as liberal as Boston. I remember one young girl with shocking blue eyes, maybe twelve, playing close to my patrol base in the nearby village of Pashmul. Watching her skip a strange, improvised jump rope gave me rare moments of innocent joy in an altogether dangerous place I shouldn’t have been in in the first place.

Then one day, she disappeared, this (to me) nameless, joyful girl, never to be seen again. Eventually I asked a village elder, who probably played both sides—Taliban and America—against the other, what had happened to the blue-eyed Afghan girl. His answer was simple: puberty. She had had her first period, was immediately deemed a “woman,” and cloistered away behind the mud walls of her family home until her father decided to marry her off—likely to a much, much older man. Such was life in rural southern Afghanistan. It seemed most of the ethnic Pashtun villagers wanted it that way.

I think about that striking young girl occasionally as I repeatedly argue for the full and rapid withdrawal of the U.S. military from Afghanistan—which is, after all, the gold standard of hopeless wars. As I’ve predicted, it seems likely the Taliban will either conquer much of the country outright in the near future or at least maintain de facto control of Afghanistan’s Pashtun-dominated south and east indefinitely. That means Afghan women in those regions, and potentially many others, will suffer.

Yet, here’s the nasty truth: When I (and some 100,000 other U.S. troops) occupied much of Afghanistan, rural women still suffered. We could scarcely alter the longstanding cultural traditions of these regions. If, at the height of Obama’s Afghan surge, the status of most (largely pastoral) women didn’t change, what hope do the remaining 14,500 or so American soldiers still there have to protect these women? And after 18 years of stalemate, if—as now seems obvious—the U.S. can’t meaningfully win this war, what point is there in pining over the fate of human rights in this landlocked Central Asian time warp?

Sure, it’s disturbing, but it’s also a solid fact of life. What’s more, militarist, interventionist mainstream foreign policy wonks’ sudden feigned concern for the fate of Afghan women is cynical bunk meant only to prolong America’s longest ever war. It was never about women’s rights or humanitarianism in general. The U.S. military and CIA invaded Afghanistan out of vengeance for the 9/11 attacks, out of a degree of uncertainty about what else to do. Someone had to pay, someone had to be bombed, and bin Laden was, well, in Afghanistan.

Treating the terror attacks as an act of war rather than an international crime was then the original sin of these forever wars. The rapid decision to shift strategy in Afghanistan from limited counter-terror operations to nation-building, counterinsurgency and prolonged military occupation ought to be considered the second sin…

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U.N.: Despite law, Afghan women still suffer abuse

 

 

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