Here we are again: the SHOW of “shock” feigned anguish, public weeping, wringing hands

U.S.
Dropping cluster bombs

“If you’re not outraged, you are not paying attention.”

By Carolyn Bennett

A

mericans (we) will not face the fact and the implications of the fact that the problem is not in the stars or with the gods, but with us. We are the problem. 

Whether it is the environment or violence or inhumanity of man to man, the problem is us. No question about it. We seem unable or, more likely, unwilling to progress beyond this point. And a people or any of the many peoples of the world who fasten themselves in fear and paranoia, blind themselves with consumption, and who will not rise to the challenge of our inherent failings will forever be doomed to repeat and repeat and repeat the horrors that beset the world. No, let me restate that: the horrors we unleash on the world.

Let’s take a look for a moment at us.

"War on Terror"

Mr. Obama, the current U.S. head of state, is the personification of a “good” actor, a camouflage, a fake, a fooler, a flimflammer; whether “promising” or “mourning,” he performs the part like no other. And you believe him because mass media makes you believe, as it plays and replays the scene of a weeping president; like towers falling over and over until your brain is washed of the common sense that tells you something is amiss.

Together they can perform as many “mourning” moments as they like. Lower as many flags in feigned grieving as they like. But it is these same “grievers,” these mourning cabals who send young men and women to make war, to instigate conflict, to fall in a foreign land, to return home broken inside and out.

Torture

The same “mourners” send “immigrants” to fight their wars and when they return imprison them without due process, torture the without recourse in human rights convention, and or “render” them to countries for the sole purpose of having them undergo further cruel and inhuman treatment.

U.S. deploys
Fails to sign
UN Treaty

War, massacre, mayhem

It is these same mourners who kill women and children and who, as suits their fancy, label young men “terrorists.” It is these same mourners who send remote bombs and who attack with chemical weapons leaving landmines and bomblets to massacre hundreds of thousands immediately and well into the future. These same mourners destroy lives and livelihoods and upset geographic regions, multi-sectarian relations, international and domestic relations among people who have and would, if left alone, resolve their own conflicts and live in peace with one another.

Corrupt politics and bribe-taking pandering terrorists-making hypocritical politicians, these are the performing “mourners.” Torture, assassination and brute force at home and abroad are their examples, their legacy to world and nation. Violence is the true face of these “mourners.”

Pakistanis protest
U.S. assassination drone strikes

Violence

  

These are heads of U.S. governments up and down the spectrum (local to national) whose “law enforcement,” whose immigration and homeland security and “safe communities” agents make sport tasering unarmed people, shooting pointblank,  shoving instruments up the rectums of victims in their custody; doing this routinely, with impunity, never having to face prosecution or adjudication. This is “our” face domestically, transported by U.S. agents (soldiers, officials, personnel, proxies) anywhere in the world. We are the world, the world is us; and what we do is who we are.

Face of “mourners”: here and there, failure to care

The faces and facts of those who today perform a “mourning” of the deaths of schoolchildren are also heartlessly, carelessly without caring.  These “mourners” play to and promote ignorance. In fact, their destruction of quality education ensures ignorance.

Homeless USA

Fakers and foolers: For the masses of people in the United States, there are no schools encouraging independent thought and love of learning. Schools instill profit-making models, makers of consumers, and mindless consuming, furthering a violent character in consumption. A culture that creates holidays for gouging and gorging; a culture that creates disasters for making fake “community,” convenient “humanitarians,” manipulative mass-media-made “heroes”: “Look how they helped one another, even the black, brown, yellow and white people … ‘hero’ Johnny pulls little Sally from the sink hole.”

Education, medical and health resources, shelter ─

Why do the sick of all kinds suffer needlessly?

Why does homelessness persist in a “prosperous” nation? Is this not violence against one’s own people?

(Why are the U.S. citizens demanding regime change in other nations not demanding it in the United States?

Disestablishing education

Why not sweep out the entire sitting government, executive and legislative?)

Why not? Because this nation is a nation of people who have learned not to care as a matter of character; because we are a nation of people who have created and maintained structures, institutions and systems that operate in the interests of profit for a few and that tease suckers into wanting the same ─ like playing lotteries that help no one and deliberately work against the needs and interests of human beings, against societies all over the world.

Here and there: Killing

In the void of care, of caring; in the absence of character that regards, respects, is concerned one for the other grows paranoia, fear and uncertainty, untreated sickness, suspicion and division. Community declines (no fake mourning or heroes can contain), descending to annihilation.

Lie on its face: the Show

You can continue to believe the false “mourners,” the assassins, the CNN-ized portrayal of reality. 

However, to really shake up things, we have to look critically at what these “mourners” do, what they have done, what they will continue to do as long as you (as we), the masses, majorities of people, let them get away with moments of weeping while chronically engaging in manipulation and murder.

U.S. war in Afghanistan
Civilian Dead

Violence has been the first instrument of an entrenched character, of a cabal, of the corrupt, corrupting and corrupted. Anyone conscious of or engaged in contemporary world and domestic affairs expects violence to rise from among the masses ─ whether university teachers in tenured posts, board members of top companies or organizations, whether laborers in garbage collection or students in America’s classrooms ─ when what they are fed continuously is violence. This status quo in violence will continue until we the masses say no more.

Shock? Mourning? I don’t think so. It is all performance: for some, self-delusional; for others, deliberate flimflamming made for television. For all, it is pageantry, the SHOW: Gere sings “Chicago.” 

Here we are again, a fleeting moment of feigned (for some possibly real)  anguish. Then back to character as usual ─ until next time.

I am saddened but not shocked. I am definitely outraged, angry with us.

Peg: Sources and notes

HEADLINES yesterday and yesterday

Today's news

CIA: European court rules [U.S.] CIA tortured, sodomized German man.

SYRIA: West sanctions causing Syrians to suffer: Syrian Foreign Minister says.

SYRIA: Blacklisting terrorists in Syria pretext for U.S. intervention says Opposition

PAKISTAN: Thousands of Pakistanis have been killed in bombings and other militant attacks since 2001, when Pakistan joined an alliance with the United States in the so-called ‘war on terror.’  Today a rocket attack on an airport killed four people in NW Pakistan.

AFGHANISTAN: U.S. soldier dies in volatile southern Afghanistan

UNITED STATES: Alabama Gunman killed after shooting three people

A gunman opened fire at a hospital in the U.S. state of Alabama, injuring a police officer and two other people. The police then shot and killed the gunman.

UNITED STATES: Suicide [in U.S. Army] numbers likely to top 2011, Army says

UNITED STATES: Poll: 32 percent of Americans find medical care too expensive

Yesterday’s news December 14, 2012

UNITED STATES

20 children, 6 adults killed by gunman at U.S. school

Newtown, Connecticut, northern Fairfield County about 45 miles southwest of Hartford, 80 miles northeast of the New York City.

CBS News reported 27 people died: 20 Sandy Hook Elementary School students, 6 adult victims; shooter suicide. One person injured in the Friday incident. Media outlets reported the school’s principal and psychologist among the dead.

Headlines from Press TV print news online, http://www.presstv.ir/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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War, occupation at what cost

What return?

Compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett

“World military expenditure is estimated to have been $1,630 billion in 2010,” says a report by the Stockholm International Peace Institute. In real terms, this is “an increase of 1.3 percent” and the “increase in 2010 is almost entirely down to the United States, which accounted for $19.6 billion of the $20.6 billion real-terms increase.

“Excluding the USA, the total in the ‘rest of the world’ barely changed in 2010, increasing by a statistically insignificant 0.1 per cent.…

“The rate of increase in U.S. military spending slowed in 2010, to 2.8 percent in real terms, compared to an annual average increase of 7.4 percent between 2001 and 2009 [but] the United States continues to be exceptional in terms of its military spending.

“As well as being overwhelmingly the largest spender in absolute terms, with 43 percent of the global total — six times its nearest rival China — the U.S. has led the way in the global increase since 2001, with an 81 percent rise in real terms compared to 32.5 percent in the ‘rest of the world’.

“Moreover, the share of U.S. GDP devoted to the military — the ‘military burden’ — has increased sharply, from 3.1 per cent in 2001 to an estimated 4.8 percent in 2010, while in the majority of others worldwide the military burden has fallen or remained steady.

“Of those countries for which SIPRI has reliable data, the USA is likely to have had the highest military burden outside the Middle East in 2010, based on IMF projections for GDP.

“Even in the face of efforts to bring down the soaring U.S. budget deficit, military spending continues to receive privileged treatment.

“President Obama’s FY2012 budget announced a 5-year freeze on non-security-related discretionary expenditure, but military spending along with other security spending such as intelligence and Homeland Security is exempt.

“Such cuts as may occur are likely to be due to the end of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and the gradual drawdown from Afghanistan, rather than to cuts in the ‘base’ defense budget. Taken together, these figures suggest that the USA continues to prioritize maintaining its overwhelming military power as the basis of its security and status.…”

At what cost, what return?

U.S.-led

WAR DEAD

Casualty sites reporting April 12, 2011

(accurate totals unknown)

Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20,

2009: 219] Information out of date

•

Wounded 33,003-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides estimated: 18 a day

Latest update on this site: April 11, 2011

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

•

Iraq Body Count

The worldwide update on civilians killed in the Iraq war and occupation

Documented civilian deaths from violence

100,383 – 109,666

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

•

ICasualties figures:

AFGHANISTAN: 1,532 U.S.; 2,403 Coalition

IRAQ: 4,447 U.S.; 4,765 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/

AFGHANISTAN

“Afghanistan is struggling to recover from more than a quarter century of conflict.” Violence still rages in parts of the country. The Taliban continue fighting to oust tens of thousands of foreign troops and Afghanistan’s Western-backed government. The country is one of the most heavily mined in the world and home to a booming narcotics trade.

“The UN and ICRC have recorded that 730,000 people have been internally displaced in Afghanistan due to conflict since 2006, an average of 400 a day. At the end of January 2011, 309,000 people remained internally displaced due to armed conflict, human rights abuses and other generalized violence. This figure was higher than at any time since 2005.

“While armed opposition groups have been responsible for the majority of killings, most of the documented mass displacements have occurred as a result of offensives by international forces. Efforts by the International Security Assistance Force in 2010 to limit the impact of fighting on the civilian population have failed to reduce the rate of internal displacement.

“The basic needs of recently displaced people across most regions of the country are often unmet, increasing the risk of disease and death. Internally displaced people (IDPs) have also been vulnerable to food insecurity, while insecurity and the absence of basic services in places of displacement have forced many IDPs into protracted secondary displacement in urban areas.

“The Afghan government is generally unable or unwilling to assist IDPs. Hundreds of thousands of IDPs have been assisted by international agencies, but assistance outside camps has been short-term and restricted by problems of funding and access.”

“Friendly Fire” in Helmand

Two U.S. soldiers died from a suspected U.S. drone strike. The incident is under investigation and if confirmed, “It would be a rare example of a ‘friendly fire’ killing of U.S. forces by the pilotless aircraft.”

A military official told Reuters, anonymously, that the “initial information” indicated the dead had been killed “during a Hellfire missile strike in southern Afghanistan.” The soldiers had been conducting operations in Helmand province. More than 1,500 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan since the war began nearly a decade ago. Violence here reached its highest level since the start of this U.S. war.

PAKISTAN

Eight people died and several suffered injuries in the northwestern town of Dir when a suicide bomb exploded at a bus stand. A car dealer who had helped in a security operation against Taliban a few days earlier was the apparent target.

The beheaded body of a pro-government tribal leader kidnapped some three weeks ago was found in the tribal region of South Waziristan on the Afghan border. Hundreds of tribesmen have died in the past years as a result of having been “‘U.S. spies’ or having “worked for the Pakistani government.”

Forty-one people died and scores suffered wounds when suicide bombs exploded last Sunday at a Sufi shrine in eastern Pakistan. Police said the attackers struck during an annual ceremony for the Sufi saint for whom the shrine is dedicated and approximately 65 people were wounded in the attack.

Many analysts say more than “religious hatred” is motivating the attacks; that “militant groups hope by inflaming sectarian tensions they can further destabilize Pakistan and weaken the government’s tenuous grip on the country.”

A bomb blast last October at a Sufi shrine in another eastern city, Pak Pattan, killed six people. One in July killed 42 people in Pakistan’s most important Sufi shrine, in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province.

IRAQ

Ashraf camp

In conflicting reports, an estimated ten Iranian exiles died and five members of the Iraqi forces suffered wounds at Camp Ashraf in Iraq on Friday when “security forces clashed with residents of the Iranian dissident camp north of Baghdad overnight.” Residents of the camp had reportedly “pelted security forces with rocks.” A medical source reported to the press “10 bodies of Iranians and 40 people wounded in the hospital, most of them killed or wounded by bullets.”

The dispute was apparently over land rights and ownership. Government forces reportedly “tried to reclaim land from camp residents and return it to farmers who owned it.” People in the camp resisted. Camp residents reported “31 deaths and 300 people injured in a ‘criminal attack.’

Defense Ministry representative Mohammed al-Askari said the disparity in the death tolls prompted the government to open an investigation ‘to look into the real details of the operation, to know how many people exactly were killed, the reasons for the deaths and the date of the deaths.’ He said, “the government had evidence that some residents had wanted to leave Ashraf but were prevented from doing so by camp leaders, and that some of the alleged victims were shot ‘in a professional way, in the head, chest and heart.’”

“The United States blamed the bloodshed on the government.”

April 11 Fallujah

A series of roadside and car bombs killed several people trying to carry on their daily lives in Iraq. Six people died Monday and dozens suffered wounds when bombs exploded near a crowded market in Fallujah. Ten other people died in the Diyala province when roadside bombs exploded. Three people died in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, following the explosion of another roadside bomb.

Though violence has reportedly fallen sharply in Iraq in recent years, the country is subjected daily to bombings and other attacks.

Indelible eight years

In the 8th year from the dramatic removal of the statue of Iraq’s president, an aide to the anti-American cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, “told tens of thousands of followers (on Saturday), ‘We say to the Black House we are all time bombs and the detonators are at the hands of Moqtada al-Sadr. American troops must definitely leave our lands.’”

The warning came after the visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense pressed the Iraqi government to decide if they wanted U.S. troops to remain in Iraq and help fight an insurgency.

In their day of remembrance, many Iraqis waved their country’s black, white and red flag. Some “carried signs reading ‘Occupiers Out’, ‘No to America.’” Others burned flags of the United States, Israel and Britain. Others draped white funeral shrouds over their shoulders signifying their willingness to die for their beliefs.

The crowd cheered Sadr’s representative Salah al-Ubaidi when he warned on Saturday that “an extension of the U.S. ‘occupation’ would have two consequences: the escalation of military resistance and withdrawal of the order freezing the Mehdi Army; and the escalation of peaceful and public resistance through sit-ins and protests.”

Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia fought U.S. troops during the height of Iraq’s sectarian bloodshed in 2006-07. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sent government troops to crush the militia in 2008. Tens of thousands of Iraqis died. Sadr disavowed violence against fellow Iraqis and ordered his militia to become a humanitarian group.

Under a security agreement signed by the United States and Iraq, the remaining 47,000 (est.) U.S. forces are to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

LIBYA

More than 460,000 people have fled the violence in Libya and entered neighboring countries, primarily Tunisia and Egypt.

According to an aid official’s reports, “Sick people trapped in the western Libyan city of Misrata are dying because of shortages of vital medicines.” A coordinator for shipments of food and medicine told reporters that many were in need “especially of medicine for chronic diseases like cancer and hepatitis.”

Libya’s Oil via Qatar

The United States Department of State is reportedly supporting “the marketing of Libyan crude oil by Qatar on behalf of rebels fighting against President Muammar Qaddafi.” The U.S. statement followed Qatar’s report that it had marketed 1 million barrels of crude oil on behalf of Libya’s rebels.

YEMEN

More than 100 people have died in Yemen since February. Last week conflict escalated between government and anti-government demonstrators. Twelve Islamist militants and four soldiers died in clashes on Monday in the southern province of Abyan.

On Tuesday, President Ali Abdullah Saleh chaired a meeting of coalition allies that blamed the opposition for protests and civil disobedience in cities throughout the country. However, according to Reuters, “Even before the protests inspired by the toppling of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents, Saleh was struggling to quell a separatist rebellion in the south and a Shiite Muslim insurgency in the north.”

For many years, Saudi Arabia and Western countries had backed Saleh as their man to fight al Qaeda militants but “countries of the region became convinced that Saleh is an obstacle to stability in a country that overlooks a shipping lane where over 3 million barrels of oil pass daily.”

Sources and notes

Background paper on SIPRI military expenditure, data, 2011“World military spending reached $1.6 trillion in 2010, biggest increase in South America, fall in Europe, according to new SIPRI data,”  STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL PEACE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (SIPRI), Press background material, April 11, 2011, http://www.sipri.org/media/pressreleases/translations11/milexbackground.pdf

“Afghanistan: Need to minimize new displacement and increase protection for recently displaced in remote areas,” April 11, 2011 (Source: Content partner // International Displacement Monitoring Centre), http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/afghanistan-need-to-minimise-new-displacement-and-increase-protection-for-recently-displaced-in-remote-areas/

“Two U.S. troops die in suspected Afghan drone strike,” April 11, 2011, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/two-us-troops-die-in-suspected-afghan-drone-strike/

“FACTBOX-Security developments in Pakistan, April 4, 2011, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/factbox-security-developments-in-pakistan-april-4/

“Suicide blasts at Sufi shrine in Pakistan kill 41,” April 3, 2011, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/suicide-blasts-at-sufi-shrine-in-pakistan-kill-41/

“At least 10 Iranian exiles killed in clashes in Iraq” (Muhanad Mohammed), April 8, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/08/us-iraq-iran-ashraf-idUSTRE7375CM20110408

“Iraqi govt says it will probe Iranian camp deaths” (Reuters), April 12, 2011, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/iraqi-govt-says-it-will-probe-iranian-camp-deaths/

“Nineteen killed, dozens wounded in Iraq bombings,” April 11, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/11/us-iraq-violence-idUSTRE73A5TS20110411

“Iraqi cleric warns of violence if U.S. troops don’t go,” April 9, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/09/us-iraq-protests-idUSTRE73816Z20110409

Source: member // Jaya Vadlamudi, Senior Communications Officer, International Medical Corps, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/international-medical-corps-sending-critical-supplies-into-misrata-nalut-in-western-libya-delivering-emergency-health-care-and-supplies-in-eastern-libya/

“Patients in Libyan city dying without drugs – rebel,” April 12, 2011, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/interview-patients-in-libyan-city-dying-without-drugs-rebel/

“U.S. says supports Qatar marketing Libyan oil,” April 12, 2011, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/us-says-supports-qatar-marketing-libyan-oil/

“Yemen opposition seeks details on Gulf plan,” April 12, 2011, http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/yemen-opposition-seeks-details-on-gulf-plan/

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/yemen-icrc-calls-for-respect-for-human-life-and-dignity/

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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Crimes of empire inseparable, endlessly cyclical

War, occupation, exploitation, poverty, injustice, climate change, conflict, poverty … To speak ─ as the U.S. does ─ of mere “democracy” amidst these crimes against nature is worst than ridiculous. It affronts, offends, insults, demeans all that lives or exists in any form.
Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

AFPAK, INDIA, IRAQ

U.S. Pakistan

“The U.S. currently spends at least $12 billion each month prosecuting the war in Afghanistan and the broader ‘war on terror.’ Congressional Research Service estimates that the U.S. spends $1 million per soldier per year in the AfPak theatre. …

“Imagine how Pakistanis would respond,” Mark LeVine writes in an opinion piece, “if, instead of competing with the Taliban or al-Qaeda via drones, missiles and IEDs, the U.S. were clearly at the forefront of a massive relief and rebuilding effort.

“Imagine if U.S. and other coalition officials, relief specialists and personnel worked with grassroots organizations… and began the process of building bonds of trust and solidarity with the very groups who are currently so suspicious of American intentions and goals.…

“How would [poor Pakistanis] respond if, instead of handing over ‘crops, fertilizers, and seed’ (in the UN secretary-general’s words) to the country’s corrupt landed elite, the U.S. led the drive to work with grassroots forces to break the cycle of dependency and corruption by empowering small farmers to take control of the country’s agricultural system?

“Such a strategy has a chance of working where the current one of bombs and aid to the government has met with failure.”

U.S. Afghanistan

Four U.S. soldiers died in three separate incidents Sunday in Afghanistan. The second-in-command of security for the inter-provincial Kandahar-Uruzgan highway also died early Sunday, Agence France Presse is reporting.

Afghanistan is preparing for what occupied Iraq tried and failed to accomplish (and which is impossible to properly) accomplish in the midst of war, occupation and unending conflict with thousands of foreigners (combatants or not officially ncombatants) on their soil: Parliamentary elections.

In a war-torn, conflict ridden country of fellow citizens and foreigners, it is hard to tell who is who and which side is killing which side.

Foreign forces “apologized” last week for firing a missile and 30-millimeter rounds from helicopters that killed and wounded Afghan National Police. Three Afghan police died Friday in a NATO airstrike in north Afghanistan [EPA]. Nine Afghan police died in two separate incidents in the north and south of Afghanistan. “Bodies of six police officers were found in their station house in Greskh district of southern Helmand province on Saturday.”

A botched NATO airstrike in July “killed six Afghan soldiers in Ghazni province in the east.”

Thirty-eight members of the international coalition, including 24 Americans, have died so far this month. The United Nations is reporting that Afghan civilian dead (est. 1,271) and wounded (1,997) soared to 31 percent in the first six months of 2010.

Hundreds of Afghan villagers some chanting anti-American slogans such as ‘down with Obama’ and ‘down with foreign forces’ closed the highway connecting Jalalabad to Pakistan on Wednesday. The villagers blocking a highway in eastern Afghanistan were protesting a night raid by NATO and Afghan soldiers that left two people dead.

Jalalabad lies on the route from Kābul, the Afghan capital, via the Khyber Pass to Peshāwar, Pakistan, and handles much of Afghanistan’s trade with Pakistan and India.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) disputed the villagers’ labeling of the dead. Afghans have staged a number of similar protests in recent months all related to the killing (or disputed killings) of civilians.

U.S. India

The Union Carbide chemical disaster perpetrated on the people of Bhopal, India, represents the world’s worst and most unjustly adjudicated disaster in history. However, reports last week said U.S. officials are attempting to silence “the uproar over ‘alleged malfeasance’ on the Bhopal issue.”

India’s media have released leaked emails suggesting that senior U.S. officials told India to end its ‘noise’ about the chemical disaster, in order to secure loans from the World Bank. U.S. deputy national security adviser Mike Froman writes in an email released on Wednesday, “‘I trust you are monitoring it carefully ... I think we want to avoid developments which put a chilling effect on our investment relationship.’”

U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit India in November and is “hoping to sign a series of investment agreements, particularly in the nuclear sector.”

Many Indians feel U.S. companies (Union Carbide then Dow Chemical) have not faced justice for the 1984 chemical disaster [AFP]. The U.S. has refused to extradite Warren Anderson, the former Union Carbide CEO who has been blamed for the disaster.

In December 1984, general references report, “Bhopal was the site of the worst industrial accident in history. An estimated 45 tons of the dangerous gas methyl isocyanate escaped from an insecticide plant owned by the Indian subsidiary of the U.S. firm Union Carbide Corporation.

“The gas drifted over the densely populated neighborhoods around the plant, killing thousands of people immediately and creating a panic as tens of thousands of others attempted to flee the city.

“The final death toll was estimated to be between 15,000 and 20,000, and some half million survivors suffered respiratory problems, eye irritation or blindness, and other maladies resulting from exposure to the toxic gas. Soil and water contamination in the area has been blamed for chronic health problems of the area’s inhabitants. Investigations later established that substandard operating and safety procedures at the understaffed plant had led to the catastrophe.”

U.S. Iraq

Sixty people died and an estimated 125 suffered wounds Tuesday when a bomb hit an army recruitment center in central Baghdad. The location of the massacre was the historical site of Iraq’s defense ministry, a building that had been turned into an army recruitment center and military base after the United States invaded the country in 2003. Iraq is still without a coalition government and the incident last week demonstrates the rising violence in that U.S.-occupied country. Violence hit a two-year high in July. This latest incident has been recorded as “the deadliest attack in Iraq this year.”

Unraveling war lies spinning “success”
Edited excerpt from Professor Hannah Gurman’s article “The Iraq withdrawal: An Orwellian success”

…In recent weeks, we have reached another historic juncture. The Iraq war, or at least the American military’s role in it, is drawing to a symbolic close. To mark this moment, the U.S. Ministry of Information has put its spin machine in high gear. …

The official version championed in its earlier moments by President Bush, Gen. Petraeus and the congressional hawks, and now trumpeted almost as loudly by the White House and U.S. State Department is this: Violence is down. Iraqis are finally … taking responsibility for their own security. The March elections were a great step forward. Iraq, we can safely say, is on the path to a brighter future. This story marks the last chapter in the surge narrative that took root in 2006, a narrative in which Petraeus is credited with turning the war around.

Proponents of this story know better than to declare victory, a word that has largely fallen out of the official lexicon. But the word ‘success,’ which has taken its place, is everywhere; and while it doesn’t quite afford that nationalist sense of superiority to which Americans have long been accustomed, success does provide a certain contentment and satisfaction over a job well done. It allows for that perennial optimism that never quite goes out of fashion in the American way of war.…

As the deadline for troop withdrawal has neared, Ambassador Christopher Hill has become a more visible prop in the administration’s official spin machine, deflecting any arrows aimed at the armor that is the official success narrative.

However, the success story is a bit harder to feed to the Iraqis who actually experience the realities on the ground in Iraq, and who, unlike Hill, will continue to face these realities on a daily basis.

No matter how much the U.S government erases the past or predicts the future of Iraq, ordinary Iraqis will continue to face the messy and complicated realities of the present. I dare [U.S. President] Obama and everyone else in the spin machine to go to Iraq and look a child in the eyes ─ A child who, seven years after the U.S. invasion, still lacks adequate housing, drinking water, sanitation, electricity and education. Then tell that child that the war in Iraq was a success.

“The Iraq withdrawal: An Orwellian success ─ The symbolic end of America’s involvement in the war has arrived, but the propaganda rages on” (Hannah Gurman, posted at Salon dot com), August 15, 2010, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/08/15/iraq_withdrawal_success. Also at CounterSpin (8/20/10-8/26/10): “Hannah Gurman on Iraq, Norman Solomon on Petraeus and Afghanistan,” http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4138

Hannah Gurman is an Assistant Professor at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Her dissertation “The dissent papers: the voice of diplomats in the cold war and beyond,” received Columbia University’s Bancroft Prize. She has published articles and reviews about U.S. foreign policy in numerous venues including Salon, Small Wars Journal, and Foreign Policy in Focus as well as The Journal of Contemporary History and Diplomatic History.

How many (est.) in two-theater

U.S.-led

WAR DEAD?

Casualty sites reporting

August 22, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 187]

Wounded 31,907-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides [estimated] 18 a day

Latest update on this site August 16

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count figures

97,361 – 106,245

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,417 U.S., 4,735 Coalition

AFGHANISTAN: 1,241 U.S., 2,019 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Sources and notes
“The real war on ‘terror’ must begin” (Mark LeVine, OPINION), August 18, 2010,http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/08/201081612554999771.html
Mark LeVine an author and a professor of Middle East history at the University of California, Irvine.
“Four U.S. soldiers killed in day of Afghan violence” (AFP), August 23, 2010, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100822/twl-afghanistan-unrest-575b600.html
“Policemen targeted in Afghanistan,” August 21, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/08/2010821142838886939.html
Jalalabad lies on the route from Kābul, the Afghan capital (110 mi [177 km] north-northwest), via the Khyber Pass to Peshāwar, Pakistan, and handles much of Afghanistan’s trade with Pakistan and India. The town stands at an important strategic position, commanding the entrances to the Laghmān and Konar (Kunar) valleys. It is a military center, with an airfield.
Jalālābād (formerly Jalālkot) is the capital of Nangarhār velāyat (province) in eastern Afghanistan on the Kābul River [Britannica notes]
“Afghan villagers protest night raid,” August 18, 2010,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/08/2010818102118648839.html
Bhopal is situated in an agricultural area in the fertile plain of the Malwa Plateau. The region was formerly a part of the Bhopal princely state, which was founded in 1723 by Dost Mohammad Khan, an Afghan adventurer, and was the second largest Muslim principality of the British Empire [Britannica notes].
“Al-Qaeda ‘claims’ Baghdad attack,” August 20, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/08/20108204250505178.html
“Scores die in Baghdad bombings,” August 18, 2010,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/08/20108183304894446.html