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
• Iraq Body Count figures
97,361 – 106,245
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,417 U.S., 4,735 Coalition
AFGHANISTAN: 1,241 U.S., 2,019 Coalition
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
