Voices on Afghanistan Washington refuses to hear

Re-reported, compiled, edited by Carolyn Bennett

“If we do not take civilian components of the transition strategy as seriously as the military component, we will fail,” Kai Eide, the outgoing Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan said in his final report before Security Council in January. “For years, there has been a consensus ─ at least in rhetoric ─ that this conflict cannot ultimately be solved by military means,” he said, “but most of our focus has nevertheless been on the number and activity of military forces.”

Casualty reporting
February 28, 2010 (Accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com March 19, 2003 ─ [Since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 151] Wounded 31,693-100,000; U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000; Suicides 18 a day http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count figures: 95,557-104,255, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,380 U.S., 4,698 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,007 U.S., 1,667 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/
• Just Foreign Policy: [not current] 1,366,350 http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq


Voices, News from Afghanistan
Washington refuses to heed U.S. Middle East/Central/South Asia WAR

This past week from Kabul, London and elsewhere, UN officials pleaded for children in conflict and for an end to violent aggression. “I have always felt that the children in Afghanistan have probably suffered more than anywhere in the world,” said the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, in a February 24, 2010, press conference in Kabul. “I came here during the time of the Taliban in 1997 and actually met with ministers of the Taliban government. I have now come twice and have personally witnessed this continuous exposure to war and suffering. It is very important that we try to focus attention on children.”

Coomaraswamy said that in 2009 there were 615 educational-related incidents ─ double those of the previous year ─ and more than 100 health-related incidents.

Three hundred and forty-six (346) children died (as part of the conflict):131 died in aerial strikes, 22 from search-and-raid by Special Forces, 128 died at the hand of anti-Government elements (AGE) ─ assassinations, suicide bombings. Undetermined perpetrators caused other deaths.

The ideal situation, she said, is that “there should be no war” but “if there is going to be conflict, military activities should be judged by rules and procedures of international humanitarian law.”

In his February 22 opinion piece in the UK Telegraph, Kai Eide again urged diplomacy, respect for and cooperation with the Afghan people. “A political process must be shaped and led by Afghan authorities and cannot be imposed by international civilians or military with scant knowledge of this complex society. However, the international community must support – in financial and political terms – and facilitate where the Afghan authorities desire.…

“Loud and public invitations to the insurgency to join a reconciliation process will most likely be met with rejections. More cautious diplomatic initiatives may produce results. As in many other peace processes, confidence-building measures could be undertaken to test the prospects for a wider process. The delisting of individuals from the UN sanctions list could be one such measure. Five individuals have already been delisted as a result of a request by the Afghan Government in January. More should be considered. Another confidence-building measure should be the release of detainees from facilities such as the U.S. detention centre at Bagram.…

“We should not underestimate the number of those who fight for reasons of ideology, resentment and a sense of humiliation – in addition to criminal elements. Often, such motivation stems from a conviction that the government is corrupt and unable to provide law and order combined with a sense of foreign invasion – not only in military terms, but also in terms of disrespect for Afghanistan's culture, values and religion.…

“There is – particularly at this moment – an urgent need to inject more political oxygen in the non-military areas of our partnership.”

Washington refuses to listen and the bloodletting continues ─ February 28, 2010 ─ Eleven civilians died after a roadside bomb hit Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand. Though thousands of U.S., NATO and Afghan troops have been pursuing a major offensive against the Taliban in Helmand’s Marjah and Nad Ali areas since February 13 ─ the town of Marjah continues to see sporadic resistance. More than a dozen foreign soldiers and at least two of their Afghan counterparts died during Moshtarak. Dozens of Taliban fighters have also died although the authorities have yet to give precise figures. At least 15 civilians died in the offensive, 12 of them by a rocket fired by U.S. forces. The violence, military operations, reportedly will expand to the neighboring province of Kandahar. An estimated 121,000 mainly U.S. and NATO international troops are at war in Afghanistan.



Sources and notes
“UN Afghan chief stresses political strategy in final Security Council briefing,” January 6, 2010, http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/detail/88576.html
“SRSG for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy Press Conference,” February 24, 2010, http://unama.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1741&ctl=Details&mid=1882&ItemID=7881
“Afghanistan: UN official urges steps to prevent child deaths in conflict,” February 24, 2010, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33879&Cr=afghan&Cr1=
“Commentary: Kai Eide: ‘The largest military offensive since 2002 is now under way in the Helmand province in Afghanistan. At the same time, a consensus is emerging that the conflict in this country can ultimately not be solved by military means’ (Kai Eide,
Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Afghanistan” (Telegraph UK), February 22, 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7293889/Commentary-Kai-Eide.html
“Top UN envoy to Afghanistan calls for greater political effort to end conflict ─ ‘The involvement of neighboring countries, and especially Pakistan, will be critical,’ concluded Mr. Eide, who heads the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), ” February 23, 2010, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33872&Cr=Afghan&Cr1=
“Top UN envoy to Afghanistan deplores militant attacks in Kabul,” January 18, 2010, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33503&Cr=afghan&Cr1=
“UNAMA calls for safety first, as civilian casualties rise by 14 percent 2009, January 13, 2010, http://unama.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1783&ctl=Details&mid=1882&ItemID=7260
“Lethal Bombing in South Afghanistan,” February 28, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/2010228133831513930.html
“Operation Moshtarak (Dari and Arabic for Together or Joint)” is the name given by foreign forces to the latest killing spree in an area described as “the 'poppy-growing belt' of Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan.”

Entrenched MANFACTURED Iran, Giraldi’s Progressive Course

Edited excerpt for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett

“Why is Iran the target of so much rage,” former CIA officer Philip Giraldi asks, “even though [Iran] has not threatened the United States or any vital American interest?”

Israel and its friends’ influence over Congress and the media is surely a large part of the answer. How else can one explain the different treatment afforded Iran and North Korea given Pyongyang’s open development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles?

• Unlike North Korea, Iran continues to be a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its nuclear sites are inspected by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. • Iran is a developing country with a small economy and tiny defense budget and it has not invaded a neighbor since the eighteenth century.• Iran does not even have the resources to refine its own oil for home consumption and must import the gasoline it uses.

Wider consequences ─ If proposed Congressional sanctions are fully implemented Iran’s economy will grind to a halt but the damage does not stop there. Iran deals with many European and Asian companies in its energy industry, all of which would be sanctioned by the United States if they do not break off relations. They might not like that and might well take commensurate steps against the United States. Ultimately, the United States Navy might have to enforce the sanctions. What would happen when a Chinese or Russian ship is stopped on the high seas? Did the U.S. Congress really think about what it was doing and what the consequences of sanctions might be?

The irony is that the United States has an Iran problem largely manufactured in Washington and in Tel Aviv.  

• Tehran does not actually threaten the United States yet Washington has been supporting terrorists and separatists who have killed hundreds of people inside Iran. • Israel, which has its own secret nuclear arsenal, claims to be threatened if Iran develops even the ability to concentrate its uranium referred to as ‘mastering the enrichment cycle,’ a point of view that has also been adopted by Washington.  • The White House has made repeated threats that the military option for dealing with Tehran is ‘on the table’ while Israel has been even more explicit in its threats to attack.  • The U.S. mainstream media are united in their desire to come to grips with the Mullahs.

No wonder Iran feels threatened ─ because it is. To be sure, Iran is no role model for good governance but a desire to deal with the country fairly and realistically is not an endorsement of the regime in power. Iran is engaged diplomatically and through surrogates in the entire Persian Gulf region and central Asia, supporting its friends and seeking to undermine its enemies; but that does not make it different than any of its neighbors and the United States, all of which play the same game.

The bottom line is that the United States has been interfering in Iran since 1978 and even before if one goes back to the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadeq by the CIA in 1953. The interference has accomplished nothing and has only created a poisonous relationship that Barack Obama has done little to improve. Indeed, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s harsh rhetoric suggests that when it comes to Iran the Democrats are more hard line than was George W. Bush.

The drive to punish Iran supported in Congress and the media is perhaps no coincidence suggesting that those who want war are coordinating the effort. In an overwhelming voice vote at the end of January, the U.S. Senate joined the House of Representatives in passing a resolution demanding sanctions on Iran’s energy imports. A joint resolution being crafted could well give Obama the political cover he needs to advocate even more draconian measures against Iran and its rulers. From the Iranian viewpoint, it is pretty much a declaration of war.

Far better course of action ─ Imagine for a moment what might happen if Washington were to adopt a serious foreign policy based on the U.S. national interest.

That would mean strict non-interventionism in troubled regions like the Middle East where the United States has everything to lose and little to gain.

• It would be the real change promised by Obama if Washington were to admit that it is not threatened by Tehran and were to declare that it will not interfere in Iran’s politics.

• It could further announce that it no longer has a military option on the table, and that it will not permit Israeli overflight of Iraq to attack Iran.

• Iran’s leaders just might decide that they don’t really need their own ‘option on the table’ which has been the threat that they might seek to develop a nuclear weapon.

• An Iran that feels more secure might well be willing to take some risks itself to defuse tension with its neighbors and Washington. In 2003, Iran offered to negotiate all outstanding differences with the United States ─ an offer the Bush White House turned down.

The big question about Iran is not whether or not it has the knowledge and resources to build an atom bomb. It does or soon will. The real issue is whether the United States is actually threatened by that knowledge and what should be done in terms of positive policies to discourage an expanded nuclear program.  

The United States should first of all recognize that, as the world’s only superpower, it controls the playing field. It is up to Washington to take the first steps to defuse the crisis that is building by offering Tehran the security guarantees that might undercut the influence of those in its government who seek a nuclear weapon deterrent.

Punishing Iran is no solution. It will not work, closes the door to diplomacy, and will only make the worst case scenario that much more likely. Opening the door to a rapprochement by eliminating the threatening language coming out of Washington and creating incentives for cooperation is a far better course of action.

Sources and notes

“Some Straight Thinking About Iran” (Philip Giraldi), February 18, 2010, http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/02/17/some-straight-thinking-about-iran

Philip Giraldi is a former officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency who became famous for claiming in 2005 that the USA was preparing plans to attack Iran with nuclear weapons in response to a terrorist action against the United States, independently of whether or not Iran was involved in the action. He is presently a partner in an international security consultancy, Cannistraro Associates. Giraldi is a graduate of the University of Chicago and holds an MA & Ph.D. in European History from the University of London [Wikipedia].

“The U.S. and Iran: A Manufactured Crisis Part 1: The Facts of the Matter” (Jack A. Smith), September 28, 2009, http://activistnewsletter.blogspot.com/ 

“If push does come to shove with Iran it is important to remember how effortless it was to hoodwink the majority of American politicians and the masses of people into backing a completely unnecessary war against Iraq. As in the buildup to the unjust invasion of Iraq, today’s U.S. corporate mass media are playing a principal part to perfection: uncritically echoing government distortions about the danger of Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons. The Iran situation is different but similar in terms of mass public manipulation and the possibility of a future confrontation getting out of hand.”

Jack A. Smith is editor of the Activist Newsletter, a former editor of the Guardian (U.S.) radical newsweekly.

U.S. Footprints in Afghanistan ─ WAR

Re-reported, compiled, edited by Carolyn Bennett

Casualty sites reporting
February 23, 2010 casualty sites reporting (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com March 19, 2003 ─ [Since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 150] Wounded 31,669-100,000; U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000; Suicides 18 a day http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count figures: 95,412-104,103, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,378 U.S., 4,696 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,003 U.S., 1,659 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/
• Just Foreign Policy: [not current] 1,366,350 http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq

Bloodletting
News from U.S. Middle East/Central/South Asia WAR

February 23
AFGHANISTAN
Amid the NATO/Afghan military surge continuing today, at least eight people (among them one woman) died after a bomb exploded in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province. All of the dead as reported by local authorities were civilians. Thirteen people suffered wounds.

Al Jazeera reports in special programming a man (Hamidullah) claiming to be “a member of the Taliban fighting against ‘Operation Moshtarak’ says since [foreign forces] often kill civilians instead of Taliban fighters, the foreign troops’ offensive is not succeeding.” These civilian deaths have prompted “the Afghan people to support the Taliban more than before.” The man’s “statements come after Sunday’s NATO air strike on what was assumed to be a bus carrying Taliban fighters.” Thirty-three civilians died.

In an interview today with Pacifica’s Democracy Now, Phyllis Bennis said, contrary to prevailing propaganda, “The notion that it’s the Taliban’s fault because they are among civilians, well, the problem is the Taliban come from those communities; they are those civilians. Many of the Taliban fighters, in the words of many U.S. and strategy officials … who have faded away with this new offensive in Marjah, faded away because they live there. They’ve gone back to their families, back to their farms; and they will rise to fight again, presumably, if their interests are at stake, whether those interests are economic or they are issues of loyalty and connection to their communities.

“This is inevitable in this kind of a war, the escalation that we have seen during President Obama’s first year; and there is no question that this is President Obama’s war. He claimed it as his own, even during the campaign. The fact that we have now reached a thousand U.S. casualties, and we don’t know … significantly accurate totals of the vast number of Afghan civilians who have died in this war. We know that it has been escalating. By the time that President Obama’s most recent escalation is finished, which is supposed to be in the next several months, there will be over 100,000 U.S. and allied troops occupying Afghanistan. There are already more than 104,000 U.S. paid mercenaries in this war in Afghanistan…

“The exit strategy has to start by ending the killing. There has to be a unilateral ceasefire that can set the stage hopefully for a reciprocal ceasefire from all the various parties that are at war here.”

The ANSWER Coalition wrote this week as it plans its march on Washington, “The Pentagon has been bragging about new rules of engagement designed to ‘protect civilian lives,’ yet more than 50 Afghan civilians have died” at the hands of U.S./NATO forces during the past two weeks; and as long as Afghanistan is under occupation, the bloodshed will continue. The march is still on schedule for March 20. “People across the United States will converge on Washington, D.C. and joint demonstrations will be held in San Francisco and Los Angeles [all demanding] ‘No Colonial-type Wars and Occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti!’

“We will march together to say, ‘No War against Iran!’ We will demand money for jobs, free and universal health care, decent schools, and affordable housing.”

February 23
IRAN
Israel’s air force has unveiled a fleet of unmanned aircraft that it says are able to reach the Gulf, putting Iran within range.… Accusing Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, Israel has been putting pressure on UN Security Council [China, France, Russian Federation, United States, United Kingdom permanent] members to support U.S. moves for fresh sanctions against Tehran.

February 22
IRAQ
At least three people died Monday and four were wounded after a car bombing at an interior ministry detention centre. Among the dead were two police officers, a six-year-old boy and his father. The incident occurred near Ramadi, the capital of western Anbar province. The latest violence comes as campaigning approaches Iraq’s March 7 elections. The country is mired in conflict over a ban on scores of candidates. Since October, Ramadi has seen a rise in attacks including three bombings of the provincial governor’s offices.

February 22
PAKISTAN
At least six people died Monday in a car bomb attack on a security forces convoy in northwest Pakistan. A suspected suicide bomber crashed his vehicle into a convoy as it passed through a market in Mingora, the main town in North West Frontier Province’s Swat Valley. Since July 2007, more than 3,000 people have died in suicide attacks and other bombings across Pakistan.

February 20
PALESTINE
Israel’s separation wall has generated anger and protests all over the Palestinian territories. The Al-Nu'man village was cut off from Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank in 2003. Illegally constructed beyond the Green Line drawn after the 1949 Arab-Israeli war ─ the West Bank separation wall walls in Al-Nu'man on three sides. A permanent checkpoint today provides the only entrance to and from this village on the outskirts of Bethlehem. “The wall has effectively imprisoned its Palestinian residents.”


Sources
“Deadly bombings rock Afghan towns,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/20102237950809185.html
“NATO losing Afghan support” (Al Jazeera spoke to Hamidullah in an exclusive interview in Lashkar Gar, Helmand's capital city), http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/2010222131354638461.html
“Phyllis Bennis on Ending the US War in Afghanistan,” February 23, 2010 (Democracy Now interview with Amy Goodman, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/23/phyllis_bennis_on_ending_the_us
Phyllis Bennis’s latest book, with David Wildman, is Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer.
Another high-tech massacre, All out on March 20, http://answer.pephost.org/site/News2?abbr=ANS_&page=NewsArticle&id=9371&news_iv_ctrl=1621
“Israel’s drones could target Iran,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/2010221181347325634.html
“Suicide bomber targets Iraqi police,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/201022215942107239.html
“Suicide bomber targets Iraqi police,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/201022215942107239.html
“Barrier imprisons West Bank village” (Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh reports). http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/20102208759184330.html

NO MORE SAY DUTCH ─ Out of Afghanistan

The Netherlands leads countries to say enough is enough
Re-reported, edited excerpts for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett

Dutch troops’ participation in Afghanistan has today caused the Dutch government to collapse. A rift in political parties rose over extending Dutch troops in the U.S./NATO-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan resulting in Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende offering his government’s resignation to the constitutional head-of-state, Queen Beatrix.

The standoff began after the Labour Party leader, Deputy Prime Minister Wouter Bos, “drew a line in the sand” over extending the Dutch mission in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan.

The collapse of the coalition government in the Netherlands automatically means that Dutch forces will be withdrawn from the Afghan province of Uruzgan as of 1 August. The withdrawal of the 1,500 military personnel currently in the province will be completed by the end of December. The move is mandatory under a government decision taken in late 2007, in which the Netherlands signed up for another two-year stint in Uruzgan beginning on 1 August 2008. The Netherlands is the first country of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to withdraw its troops.

News of the government collapse came in the early hours of Saturday morning following 16 hours of crisis meetings and days of speculation that differences between coalition [political] parties had become too great to bridge. The Prime Minister’s representative, Henk Brons, has confirmed that Mr Balkenende has officially tendered the resignations of the 12 Labour (PvdA) ministers to Queen Beatrix. Though she is currently on holiday in Austria, Netherlands Queen Beatrix is expected to curtail her vacation in light of the governmental crisis.

Twenty-one Dutch military personnel have died since the latest Dutch mission in Afghanistan began in March 2006. Sixteen soldiers died in combat or by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Five others died in accidents. The only Dutch contribution to ISAF that is expected to remain consists of four F-16 fighter planes based at Kandahar Airfield and in Uruzgan some civilian personnel of the foreign affairs and development aid ministries.

Sources and notes
“Dutch government falls over Afghanistan mission,” http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/dutch-government-falls-over-afghanistan-mission
“Dutch Deputy PM Bos reacts to Dutch cabinet fall,” February 20, 1010, http://www.rnw.nl/english/video/dutch-deputy-pm-bos-reacts-dutch-cabinet-fall
“Dutch troops to leave Uruzgan after cabinet collapse,” http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/dutch-troops-leave-uruzgan-after-cabinet-collapse
The Dutch Labour Party (Dutch: Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), literally ‘Party of Labour’) is a social-democratic political party in the Netherlands [Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Labour_Party]

U.S. Footprints in Central/South Asia ─ WAR

Re-reported, compiled, by Carolyn Bennett
Casualty sites reporting
February 19, 2010 casualty sites reporting (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com March 19, 2003 ─ [Since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 148] Wounded 31,648-100,000; U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000; Suicides 18 a day http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count figures: 95,412-104,103, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,376 U.S., 4,694 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 998 U.S., 1,655 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/
• Just Foreign Policy: [not current] 1,366,350 http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq

Bloodletting
News from Middle East/Central/South Asia WAR

February 19
AFGHANISTAN
Six NATO soldiers have died on the sixth day of a military offensive to gain control of a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan. The deaths on Thursday bring the total to 12 one of whom is an Afghan soldier. These latest deaths come a day after a NATO air strike ‘mistakenly’ killed at least seven Afghan police officers and wounded two others in Imam Sahib District of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan.

February 19
PAKISTAN
The brother of a senior pro-Taliban commander died following a suspected U.S. missile strike in northwestern Pakistan. Mohammed Haqqani and a number of other associates of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of the so-called Haqqani network, were said to have died today in a compound in North Waziristan.

At least 29 people died and dozens were wounded in an explosion at a mosque in northwestern Pakistan. This attack on in the Khyber tribal region near the Afghan border came hours after the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, arrived for a meeting with Pakistan’s prime minister in the capital Islamabad.

February 19
IRAQ
─ The U.S. government has changed the name of the Iraq invasion/occupation from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” to “Operation New Dawn,” shamelessly taking the same name as used by U.S. forces in their November 2004 U.S. attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. That attack left hundreds of Iraqi civilians dead and thousands more displaced.

February 18
In the Iraqi city of Ramadi eleven people died on Thursday, among them four police officers and a young girl; the deaths followed a suicide bombing. Fifteen people suffered wounds.


Sources
“NATO troops killed in Afghan push,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201021925143887757.html
“U.S. drone kills Taliban supporters,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/2010219122853435538.html
“Blast as Holbrooke visits Pakistan,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/2010218232824418823.html
“U.S. Changes Name of Iraq War,” February 19, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/19/headlines
“Bomber hits checkpoint,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/201021810496996936.html

U.S. Footprints in Central/South Asia ─ WAR

Re-reported, compiled, by Carolyn Bennett
Casualty sites reporting

February 17, 2010 casualty sites reporting (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com March 19, 2003 ─ [Since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 148] Wounded 31,648-100,000; U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000; Suicides 18 a day http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count figures: 95,409-104,100, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties [not current] IRAQ: 4,375 U.S., 4,693 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 984 U.S., 1,624 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/
• Just Foreign Policy: [not current] 1,366,350 http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq

Bloodletting
News from Middle East/Central/South Asia WAR

February 17
AFGHANISTAN
Two errant U.S. missiles on Sunday struck a house on the outskirts of Marjah. Twelve people died. Half of them were children.

On Tuesday, an Afghan human rights group said they had counted 19 civilian deaths since the start of the latest U.S. killing spree. Four of the dead had been “caught in the crossfire” as they left their homes. The director of Afghanistan Rights Monitor told Al Jazeera “neighbors reported bodies left outside” waiting to be removed. Survivors on this slaughter said they were “scared if they go outside they too will be shot dead.”

At least 1,240 families are said to have fled the massive US/UK onslaught against the Taliban. Many people are seeking shelter with friends and relatives as no camps have been set up for the displaced.

February 11
Afghanistan
An estimated 185 people have died in avalanches that blocked a mountain pass north of the Afghan capital … More than 200 lorries [trucks], buses and cars were trapped inside the tunnel at 3,400 meters (11,154.85 feet) above sea level.

February 14
PAKISTAN
A deadly explosion has hit the Indian city of Pune leaving nine people dead and 57 wounded. The incident throws the India/Pakistan peace talks into jeopardy. Saturday’s bomb attack was India’s first big assault since the Mumbai attack that left 166 people dead.

February 14
IRAQ
Elections are due March 7 in Iraq. Leading up to that event, candidate expulsions and bomb attacks rooted in U.S. invasion 2003 have rocked Baghdad. Bans on candidates ─ a ban that blacklisted more than 500 Sunni and Shia candidates, severely affecting the Iraqiya list ─ have resulted in suspensions of election campaigns and bombings of political offices across Baghdad. A blast struck the political offices of Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni politician and co-founder of the barred Iraqiya list. Another bomb that wounded two guards was thrown into the garden of a building used by Sunni scholars including poll candidates in Mansour in west Baghdad. A third blast damaged the headquarters of the United Iraq list in east Baghdad. Another blast hit the headquarters of the Moderate Movement list in Karrada in east Baghdad wounding two people. A fifth bomb struck a building used by an election list led by Nehru Abdulkarim al-Keznazani and wounded another person. The election turmoil in Iraq seems to find roots in the ban on candidates accused of ties with the outlawed Baath party of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president whom the U.S.-led invasion and administration ousted and executed.

Sources
“Afghan civilians killed in fighting, February 17, 2010
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201021614344722197.html
“Afghan avalanches death toll soars,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201021083946138428.html
“Blast clouds ‘India-Pakistan talks,’”
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201021474951328248.html
“Iraq coalition halts poll campaign,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/201021463242489398.html

Resisting ‘war time’ ─ Poets and their Poetry

Respectfully excerpted no copyright claimed for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett

GOOD CLEAN FUN

Diane di Prima

It’s terrorism, isn’t it, when you’re afraid to answer the door
for lack of a Green Card

afraid to look for work, walk into the hospital when your child is sick,

and what else than terrorism could you call
those smallpox blankets we gave the Indians

the trail of tears, the raids on Ghost Dancing tribes

It’s terrorism when you’re forbidden to speak your language

paddled for it, made to run a hundred laps in the snow

in your thin and holey sneakers. What do you call it

when you’re locked in your high school classroom,
armed policemen manning the halls?
Isn’t it terrorism to force a young woman

to talk to her parents about her clandestine love

the child she will or will not carry?
Is it terrorism to shoot striking onion workers (1934),
pick off AIM members one by one?

What happened to the Hampton family in Chicago [in] bed;

would you call that terrorism? Or the MOVE kids in Philadelphia

bombed in their home. Or all the stories we don’t know

buried in throats stuffed w/socks, or pierced w/bullets.

Would you call it terrorism, what happened at Wounded Knee

or the Drug Wars picking off the youth of our cities
twenty years ago now; you know the names.

What was COINTELPRO if not terrorism?

What new initials are they calling it today?

Is Leonard Peltier a victim of terrorism? Is Mumia Abu-Jamal?

Is it terrorism if you are terrified of the INS, the IRS, the landlord,

your boss, the man who might do your job for less?

if you're scared of your health insurance no health insurance

scared of your street, your hallway, scared every month

you might not get to the 1st and the next measly check?

Is it terrorism to take food from hungry school-kids?

To threaten teenagers who still have hope enough

have joy enough to bring babies into this mess?

How has terrorism touched you, shaped your life?

Are you afraid to go out, to walk in your city,
your suburb, your countryside?

To read, to speak your own language, wear your tribe’s clothes?

Afraid of the thin-shelled birds w/twisted necks

poisoned by nitrates, by selenium?

Afraid that the dawn will be silent, the forests grey?

Is it terrorism to fill the Dnieper w/radiation?

or heat the ionosphere w/magnetism ‘to see what will happen’?

A wonderful weapon, they say, it will perturb

the weather pattern, disrupt communications

Who are the terrorists in the lumber wars?

(the water wars are coming)

And we haven’t even talked about AIDS and cancer.

Is the assault on native intelligence and good will

that we call the evening news

anything other than an act of terror?

What was the Gulf War but terrorism

wearing the death mask of order? and one big car bomb it was

the guys who drove it dying now one by one

Is acid rain a form of terrorism? (Think for yourself.)

Is GATT or NAFTA anything but a pact among brigands
and their back-up men?

How long before they fight over the spoils?

Who’ll do their fighting for them?

Is Alan Greenspan perhaps the biggest known & named

of our terrorist leaders, here,
nurtured here, trained here

the dark design of whose hearts makes

Hutu and Tutsi

Croat and Muslim and Serb

mere diversionary tactics before the onslaught

Diane di Prima (b. Brooklyn, New York, 1934)
Diane di Prima in 2009 was Poet Laureate of San Francisco and in 2006 received the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement and community service. She is the author of 43 books of poetry and prose, including Pieces of a Song (City Lights, 1990). Her work has been translated into at least twenty languages. She has received grants for her poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1993, she received an Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry from the National Poetry Association. In May/June 1994 she was Master Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. In 1999, she received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from St. Lawrence University. In Spring, 2000, she was Master Poet-in-Residence at Columbia College, Chicago. Her autobiographical memoir Recollections of My Life as a Woman was published by Viking in April 2001. In her Manhattan years, she was an important writer of the Beat movement and co-founded the New York Poets Theatre; founded the Poets Press that published the work of many new writers of the period. She co-edited the literary newsletter The Floating Bear (1961-1969). Diane Di Prima has lived in northern California for the past thirty-four years. Biography of Diane Di Prima, http://dianediprima.com/bio.html

American Wars

Ursula K. Le Guin

Like the topaz in the toad's head

the comfort in the terrible histories

was up front, easy to find:

Once upon a time in a kingdom far away.

Even to the dreadful now of news we listened comforted

by far timezones, languages we didn't speak,

the wide, forgetful oceans.

Today, no comfort but the jewel courage.

The war is ours, now, here, it is our republic

facing its own betraying terror.

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (b. Berkeley, California, 1929 -)
Ursula K. Le Guin has published twenty-one novels, eleven volumes of short stories, three collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards. Three of Le Guin's books have been finalists for the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Among many honors her writing has received a National Book Award, five Hugo Awards, five Nebula Awards, SFWA’s [Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s] Grand Master, the Kafka Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Howard Vursell Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the L.A. Times Robert Kirsch Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. Her latest publications include Incredible Good Fortune: New Poems (Shambhala 2006); the Annals of the Western Shore: Gifts, (Harcourt 2004, paperback edition 2006); Voices (Harcourt, September 2006), and Powers, (Harcourt, September 2007); Lavinia (Harcourt, April 2008). Though now retired, she has taught writing workshops from as far distanced places as Vermont-USA and Australia. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Ursula K. Le Guin: Biographical Sketch, http://www.ursulakleguin.com/BiographicalSketch.html; http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Biography-70Word.html

Umoja: Each One of Us Counts

Rita Dove

Do those who failed still miss the wind,

that sweet breath from the sky?

Do they still covet rock and moss

or the swift, hard blink of the lizard's eye?

We walk on water, we are written on air.

Let us honor the lost, the snatched, the relinquished,

those vanquished by glory, muted by shame.

Stand up in the silence they've left and listen:

those absent ones, unknown and unnamed --

Remember! their whispers fill the arena.

Rita Dove (b. Ohio, 1952- )
Rita Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. From 1993 to 1995, she was Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress. From 2004 to 2006, she was Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Her writing and collections include The Yellow House on the Corner (1980), Museum (1983), Thomas and Beulah (1986), Grace Notes (1989), Selected Poems (1993), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American Smooth (2004), a book of short stories, Fifth Sunday (1985), the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992), essays under the title The Poet’s World (1995), and the play The Darker Face of the Earth, which had its world premiere in 1996 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and was subsequently produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Royal National Theatre in London, and other theatres. Seven for Luck, a song cycle for soprano and orchestra with music by John Williams, was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1998. Her latest poetry collection, Sonata Mulattica, was published by W.W. Norton & Company in the spring of 2009. Rita Dove was a 1970 Presidential Scholar and received her B.A. from Miami University (Ohio), an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, and held a Fulbright scholarship at the Universität Tübingen in Germany.  Rita Dove, a Brief Biography , http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/

BULLETIN

Diane di Prima

It is happening even as you read this page.
By the time you finish reading this it will be over.

She will have left the hotel and disappeared.
He will have eaten the pills.
That one will slip and crack her skull on the floor.
That one will go out in a driveby shooting.

halfway around the world the bombs are dropping

As you read these words it is already too late.
200,000 children will have starved.
One of them held the Jewel in his brain,
another could cure plagues with her breath.

As you read this line one thousand have died of AIDS.

They die alone hidden in furnished rooms.
They die on the ground all over Africa.

halfway around the world the bombs are falling

Do not think to correct this by refusing to read.

It happens as you put down the paper, head for the door.

The ozone reaches the point of no-return

the butterflies bellyflop, the last firefly, etc.

Do not think to correct this by reading.

The bombs burst the small skull of an Arab infant
the silky black hair is stuck to your hands with brains. W/bits of blood.
There is less shrieking than you would expect a soft silence.
The silence of the poor, those who could not afford to leave.
Drop flowers on them from your mind, why don't you?
"I guess we'll have to stay and take our chances."

They die so silently even as we speak

Black eyes of children seek eyes of the dying mother

bricks fall dirt spurts like fountains in the streets.

In the time you fill a cup they die of thirst.

In the time it takes to turn off the radio.

Not past, not future

The huts are blazing now.
South of Market a woman ODs with an elegant sigh.
No more no less than is needed.

halfway around the world the bombs are dropping

Source
All poetry at Poets against War, http://www.poetsagainstwar.com/chapbook.asp#Le%20Guin