#239 Hey Justice Scalia, "Ba Fungule"--Are You Talkin' To ME? About Gun Laws?

Three things about this picture of  6-yr-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, resident of Aurora, Colorado:

1) She's missing a front tooth (I sympathize);

2) She loves ice cream;

3) She's dead;

4) She was killed by Justice Antonin Scalia.

Now, three questions directed to this so-called A.Scalia, by all accounts with a full set of teeth and breathing in and out. 

1) You are quite fond of the 2nd Amendment, as are we all, because it was after all a pretty good law for its time, and you like the "for-its-time" thing don't you, being what they call a Constitutional "originalist" or something. True?

2) Qualifying as an audible life-form, you were appointed to the SCOTUS Corporation, owned by Ronald Reagan at the time, based on your fondness also for the Tridentine Latin Mass (sponsored by a famous chewing-gum company) and GUNS. Right?

3) As one of the known mobsters on the Court, you are sympathetic to the proliferous gun-lobbies and to organized crime, who reject any kind of Federal regulation of guns and ammunition of any kind. Including assault rifles. Yes?

4) Your ties to the Mafia are not only indicated by #3, but also by your last name, your religion--clandestine rites in a dead language--and the Soprano-perfect sign you are wont to use when annoyed by reporters asking about these biased decisions:

This photo captures the secret gesture midway between first cupping your hand under the chin and full-out FLICK of hand and fingers, does it not? The visual mummery represents the underlying code in Italian "Ba(va) Fungule(fan culo)"--meaning literally in English "Go find an ass (your own, to fuck, implied). Abstracted meaning, of course:  "Fuck you." And Mr. Scalia, you would be up on your Latin/Italian roots, based on your old-timey Roman church experience, would you not? ***   

 5) You are responsible for the murder of this young lady, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who while doubtless finishing her dental-friendly ice cream and waiting for The Dark Knight Rises to appear on the screen of  her local Cinema ... he did. Movie cancelled for Veronica. New front tooth mooted.

This innocent was slaughtered by an angry white man in a black suit carrying an AK-47 assault rifle--a Weapon of War. Unless this was a SOLDIER run amuck, suffering from PTSD, i. e. Particularly Terrible Something or other, thinking in a crazed state he was firing at terrorists in Saskatchewan--you might be off the hook. Right? But no ... he WAS a civilian! Because of your gaseous gun decisions, and in particular your fatal deconstuction of the 2nd Amendment, the shooter possessed a weapon of war, "legally." You put it in his hands. The AK-47 was the ONLY way that the shall-be-nameless boy could have killed and wounded the incredible amount of people he did. Is this not all true Justice Scalia?

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***Look for my Mafia connections soon in Mosteller Musings.
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#238 The Two Or Three Faces of Mitt, Or "Lies My Father Told Me" ...

... about TELLING THE TRUTH,.

How's this for a headline:

Honesty All But Destroys Governor Romney's Presidential Campaign  Presumptive nominee's admission of being WRONG costs him GOP major support. Primary battle now shifts in favor of ...

Richard Nixon ... Gotcha. Now you must adMIIT to being totally and completely fooled by my fake/true/fake headline, Or not. But boy-golly it's a tangled web, as Somebody once said, or said was said. The WRONGITY for Romney pere, as it turns out, was about the VIETNAM WAR--he discovered he was against it, In 1965. A Republican fercryinoutloud.. What. A. Guy. Cost him the Presidency in 1968 and his (incumbent) Michigan Governorship later that year, if he'd been running for it. .

Headlines like the one above reflected the Gov's changed attitude about THE war of our time as early as mid-year 1965, when  by now the former auto executive and Michigan CEO appeared already to be the man to run against LBJ in '68. But he had zero foreign policy experience. He decided, alone among presidential hopefuls, to take a look, 'Nam-wise. Result? "I was FOR, but NOT ANYMORE or some such dramatic stuff. Before TET, Cronkite. An epiphany.

He saw the shambles--the literally and etymologically abattoir of bloody failure of US intervention--and declared the so-called "progress" bullshit. Or something like that in Mormonese When he got face-to-face with the Generals directly in charge of the Vietnamese killing fields ... he knew. Their so-ridiculous-sounding-now protestations of "light at the end of the tunnel"--standard issue phraseology memorized from the Officer's Code, or something, as it is today--cut no shit with the Michigan/Mormon Elder. And he said as much, on record, in late-'67:

When I came back from Vietnam, I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get. I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop Communist aggression in SE Asia. [No kidding; this is how a lot of grownups really talked back then]

Ah, soooo ... the Brainwashing. Sinatra's Manchurian Candidate was still fresh in every brainwashed American mind, as it should have been. But Frank got George W. (hmmn) in big trouble when all of this soundbite baggage concatenated up into the newslines of 1968. And the Primaries.

The Chicken-Hawks of the GOP got fugacious ("fug-" to fly; flee; ult. fr. Latin fugere "fuck you"). Yes, they abandoned him in flocks, and prez hopes fluttered away for one of the first unlikely doves, lo unto Zolub, of the anti-Vietnam-war cause.

Naive; i.e. HONEST ... George W. (hmmn) Romney was NOT a dumb guy. He SAVED American Motors Corp,(irony alert) a struggling Detroit auto company on the verge of bankruptcy after buying out the venerable Nash and Hudson brands. He innovated. My first legal motorcaraage, in fact, was via our family's  AMC/Hudson Rambler "Cross Country" model which was CEO Romney's precursor to the modern mini-SUV! No kidding. Great car. It came with--guess what-- a built-in dog-carrier rack on the rear top of the little wagon,

No, not a dumb guy--later, Mitt's father had done a good enough job as Gov of a difficult state to be elected for three 2-year terms. Guess whose  first legal ballot was for George  to serve the second of those terms? Here's the headline:

Noted Future Blogperson Casts His Vote for Romney in 1964 Gubernatorial Election Gov Wins by Single Vote

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#234 Blog Hard or Die II--Back from the Fifth Dimension

"The more things change,, the more they stay the same."--translated from the old French adage leading off my #232 on "collateral damage"--i.e. slaughter of the innocents-- from the skies. When will we learn? When will we stop?  Scroll down to my last post of 2010 and you see there's hardly a gap. The "meme chose" of civilian casualties in the Middle-East murder zones goes on ,,, and on. Did I hear in a daze someone say something about ... ten more years?

I promised a return at summer solstice. Well, the sun "stood still" this last Wednesday ... and POOF the Daily Mosteller (perforce with Weekly added) is back, along with its evil culture-grubbing twin, Mosteller Musings. Only a year late--a year pretty much wasted on health issues that I'm still getting over ... and as a result: medical-bill-issues that I may NEVER get over (see "headline"  #2 below).

Would that the big lacuna in my bloggery were a kind of  Rip Van Winkle experience for me ... and life on this planet as we know it.. After a couple of years of  peaceful sleep, hey, we wake up--or "plunked" back to reality with Froggy the Gremlin's magic twanger if you will--to a world  where the current-event headlines we read are less like the gruesome realities of my re-inaugural DMW #232 ... and more like the following:

US Involvement in Middle-Eastern Wars Over Troops and treasure home after 5000 deaths and thousands more injured and maimed for life ... trillions of dollars wasted ... leaving behind insurgent and civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands ... OR

Health Care Reform Affirmed  Full coverage now for 30 million uninsured ,,, children with pre-existing conditions, college-age young people, the elderly, and all other Americans now covered only at the whim of  their employers ...OR

Economy Back On Track Under President's Jobs Bill millions of workers building,/repairing roads and bridges and schools (oh my) ...  workers getting fair minimum wage ,,, women's paychecks equal to men's for equal work  ... police, firefighters, teachers back on the job with federal subsidies ... unemployment down ... OR

Civil Liberties Assured Congress and the Courts end discrimination against all ethnic groups, esp "illegals" ,,,  other marginalized citizens including gays and WOMEN, esp the latter's reproductive rights ... OR

Social Justice For All "Safety-net" intact for the unemployed, elderly, poor, infirm, disabled ... Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security secure and strengthened ... OR

US  Congress Non-Partisan Accord Law-making bodies across the country ... federal and state legislatures ... passing non-partisan laws in cooperation with their Chief Executive ... White House, Capital Hill, Supreme Court put aside party politics and agree to  legislation promoting General Welfare of country as mandated by Constitution  .. OR.

Obama Overwhelming Choice for Re-Election A polling majority of Americans cite the President's  outstanding record (see "Long List ... with Citations" here)  ... taking into account the fact that he inherited a nation laid waste by over a decade of Republican malfeasance at home and abroad  ... electorate prefers current occupant of WH to what some refer to as an "empty vessel" and a "gaseous state" ... OR

Republicans Revealed: Sane, Smart, Caring Human Beings  ... BUT

Nooooo: None of  the Above ... quite. Lots to talk about, In fact, it's almost like I never left. If anything, 2012 seems eerily deja vu 2008, when this blog was launched, and when you interpret the underlying issues in the quasi-fake headlines above. Anyway, POOF the DMW magically returns to do its take on current affairs with an edge, a twist, a smile--like the one on the face of the deceptively benign "Silver Age" middle-incarnation of Mr Myxyzptlk pictured above. No cigar yet. He's back in 4D space-time here, but sitting in mid-air, defying natural laws as usual and ready to confound, confuse, confront, with his other-dimensional skills.

So too, this blog (whatever that means)--one among many in the vast punditsphere of  amateur internet journalism. Humbling, but expect no deference here. I'll attack anything that moves ... the wrong way, that is, as I see it..  But always I hope putting on a measure of Hamlet's "antic disposition." Playing the Trickster--irony, paradox, satire, ridicule, and so on ... good fun.  After all, you're invited to sit down, as the masthead motto says, to a mess/meal of memes AND mummery.. It's a daily served up weekly. Makes perfect sense in the fifth dimension. (Full disclosure: at this stage of life, I couldn't possibly keep it up every day, anyhow, Oops.)
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#232 "La Plus Ca Change ... [UPDATE 6/13]

...
 la plus c'est la fucking meme chose."   Some headlines--

Afghanistan: NATO Airstrikes Killed 18 Civilians [half of them children--denied at first for "lack of evidence" but see the next one] (AP 5/27)

Afghanistan War: NATO Apologizes For Civilian Deaths In Airstrike [US Maj General John Allen meets with families and promises cash money] (6/8

Abu Yahia al-Libi Top Al Qaeda Strategist [and undetermined others] Killed In Pakistan Drone Strike (6/5)

U.S. Drone Policy: Standing Near Terrorists Makes You A Terrorist (5/29)  


Yea and verily. It's good that America is still doing the Lord's work as best we can, (and as Yahweh bespoke directly unto Dubya) to wipe out as many of these little brown heathens before the Pashtunese killing fields are are in danger of being closed for good, and we have to look elsewhere ... Iran maybe?  Good prospect.

For. lo. the Deity shall be behind us, aided by our courageous  Chaplain-Corps-crusaders (almost 100% Judeo-Christian, amen), who can use the literal and fundamental Word of God to justify the killing--surely their favorite verse would be Jeremiah's ever-timely, cheer-leading, "Cursed be he who neglects the Lord's work; cursed be he who holds back his sword from blood" (Jer. 48:10). Happily, the Chaplains are able to chose from any number of other fine kill-the-infidel references in the Good Book. Beats the Koran all to Hell.

And back to the newsphoto--just look at how those devilish Talibs cum Qaeda disguise themselves..They look like little children, I know, but that can be soooo deceiving, considering the average height of these non-flesh-color people (to use the traditional Crayola distinction) that we kill around the world are well below the average height of the brave American soldier or airman (the latter too far away to distinguish clearly anyway). And they've all got those baby-faces. Remember the commie Vietnamese with their little-boy looks. And from the air ...? Well you just gotta shoot your rockets and "light 'em up." (more)
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#230 The Bush/Obama War Exposed Again

Okay, back to Obama's War and the current counterpoint to Vietnam's My Lai Massacre, last entry. I posted the above atrocity back in April (DM #219-220), and I'll repeat it here, again courtesy of WikiLeaks, which gave it the headline "Collateral Murder." Scroll down to read, view, hear the whole abhorrent story of wanton civilian killage, including terminal child abuse by 30 mm aerial cannon fire.

Light 'em all up. Come on fire ... Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.

BECAUSE ... Wikileaks is in the news again TODAY, big time, as they have pulled a back-to-the-future "Pentagon Papers"-style coup of massive proportions, exposing over a period of a half-dozen years the blood-drenched futility of our doomed AfPak Adventure. The so-called "Afghan War Diary" is a compilation of 90,000 U.S. military records that "give a blow by blow account of unreported civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures"--what the British press has already characterized as "a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan." (See full AP story here.)

The earlier Wiki-"leak" above had its Keystone-Cop-esque consequences of its own--a la Vietnam Whistleblower Dr. Daniel "Pentagon Papers" Ellsberg forty years ago--early on as the alleged Leaker, one Army Spec. Bradley Manning, 22, was chased down and arrested in early June, and now faces 52 years in a military prison.

Meanwhile, the FOUNDER of WikiLeaks, an Australian bloke exotically named Julian Assange, has faced a virtual fatwa put on him by the Pentagon, ever since the "Collateral Murder" video surfaced. He's in virtual hiding. After Bradley's arrest, Ellsberg, himself a Vietnam Marine veteran who saw the light, recommended in an interview he'd best stay that way (here).

(Should it be at all surprising that events will continue to prove the incontrovertible parallels of the Middle East Wars with Vietnam?--as those in the know have known to be there all along.)

NOW, after Mr. Assange somehow got hold of an unbelievable 90,000 Pentagon documents and released them on WikiLeaks today, he'd best head for the wastes of the Outback. And find a Hussein Hole somewhere. For their content is altogether rather bad P.R. for the U.S. of A. Among other disclosures:

The leaked records include detailed descriptions of raids carried out by a secretive U.S. special operations unit called Task Force 373 against what the U.S. officials considered high-value insurgents and terrorist targets. Some of these raids resulted in unintentional killings of AFGHAN CIVILIANS, according to the documents. (AP)

For example: the AP cites one operation in June 2007 which "resulted in a death tally [!] that the U.S. military document said include SIX enemy fighters and SEVEN noncombatants--ALL CHILDREN." Shirts and skins ... the innocents win.

And the White House response to all this? The usual. It condemned the document disclosure, saying it "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk."

Good. The more the better in the righteous cause of getting us the hell out of there.
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#229 Good Libertarianism: On War

This is My Lai, but I make no apologies for throwing it up again as a reminder of the reality of interventionist foreign wars. We just never learn. If there's any doubt that America has gone "back to the future" and is now fully become the militaristic nation it was in the 60's and early 70's, it's should be dispelled by this recent headline and lead:

CASEY: U.S. COULD BE AT WAR ANOTHER DECADE--
General George Casey. the chief of Staff of the Army, said today the United States could face another "decade or so" of persistent conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. (CBS News 7-8-10 here)

A "decade or SO"!!!!!--welcome to the first half of the American 21st Century. To tangentialize a moment: this guy, George W. (!) Casey Jr., is 61 years old. He's a true "Junior" in that his father was also an army man, a First Cavalry Division commander shot down and killed in Vietnam in 1970. Son George Jr. was born in Korea, where his father was stationed during that ill-advised conflict, only one among ALL OF THEM since WWII, which is to this very day (check the news last month) an uneasy standoff, sixty years on, never having been won or lost. (This is in spite of the old joke that the M*A*S*H TV series lasted longer than the war it depicted. It really, and sadly, didn't) But the General is to the manner born, and his "siege mentality" would seem to be inbred. Isn't it nice to foresee one's security in the latter years of one's career, even unto retirement or death--no matter the tribute paid in thousands and thousands of human lives. In a former age Casey might have been called a warlord, if not surely a mercenary.

Listen, our bloated military-industrial complex, which Gen/Prez Eisenhower warned us about HALF a century ago, drains HALF the national treasury every year, and grabs HALF your annual Federal income taxes paid. Somebody's got to pay General Casey's salary. He mongers the war that he's getting paid to fight. A perpetual motion machine, if ever there was. But nothing new. And haven't they done a god job of it?! Afghanistan is now America's LONGEST WAR, finally surpassing Vietnam, its fraternal twin.

Yes, 50% of your annual tax bill goes to the misnamed "Defense" Department. Why aren't the self-proclaimed Taxed-Enough-Already/Tea Baggers on top of this? They should be all over it like white on angry old white men. Never comes up. Why?--because, also self-proclaimed, they are 80% Republicans, and that's just contrary to the party line. Convoluted irony of ironies: just last week, unlucky, incongruously-African-American RNC Chair, Michael Steele, got in trouble again for being a sleeper-cell Democrat, even though he was directly attacking the President! "It's Obama's War ... let's get the hell out"--or some such. This seriously brassed-off the foreign-interventionists of both parties, including even the anti-war faction of the Democrats, who would rather continue to blame the whole megilla on the two Bushes. They're right, but so too, at the same time, is Michael Steele.

It proves something else about the Tea Baggers. They are far from being classical Libertarians, at least in terms of what has always been a most important foundational pillar of the Party:

3.1 NATIONAL DEFENSE
We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to DEFEND the United States against aggression. The United States should both AVOID ENTANGLING ALLIANCES and abandon its attempts to act as POLICEMAN FOR THE WORLD. We oppose any form of compulsory national service.

That comes right out of the Libertarian Party 2010 Platform (here), but is also right out of the Vietnam War and the American misadventures that followed, and are still going on. DEFENSIVE WARS ONLY, if you please. The platform righteously purloins the very terms another George W. used long ago--foreshadowing Ike many years later--"Beware foreign entanglements" of the military sort, said the Father of Our Country in his Farewell Address, and we wouldn't have to fight wars of any kind. We just never learn. (more)
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#221 Mark Morford Un-Foodied but Tasty

Since I picked on him peckishly a couple of weeks ago over at Mosteller Musings, let me give this SFGate guy a soupcon of time on this more topical/polemical wing of the family bloggerage. Though wildly off-menu in his food-nannyism about the "toxic zoo" at left (MM #48-50), Mark Morford doth rant often and well about other issues of more consequence, and closer to my heart ... in the non-cardio sense.

An opportunity for him to do so was afforded last week by the explosive reaction to that same anti-KFC-Double-Down article I attacked. The respondents to Morford's original column were overwhelmingly in support, of course, except for a "few oxygen-deprived souls" who only weakly (out of fan-loyalty, I must suppose) suggested to him that the Colonel's sandwich just wasn't all that bad, and that there were "far worse things out there" to get his animus animated about. No, no, says he to those few: you've missed the more important,"larger picture" (told you so). And here he admits to his true target(s) all along:

... all the pollution, animal abuse, INDUSTRIAL FARMING, chemicals, synthetic, antibiotics, hormones and just plain insidiousness of a company [losing syntax in mid-rant] concocting something this greasy and disgusting in the modern age. (full article here)

But while he's at it, okay, Why not admit rhetorically that there are indeed "those things that are worse for you than KFC's fistful of karmic hate"--and get some of them off his chest? So the remainder of "37 Things Worse Than a KFC Meatwich" does just that.

But first, a moment with Industrial Farming. If, Mr. Morford, saving the lives of millions of CALORIE-deprived souls around the world is of any consequence, then scientific agri-business must continue going about its business for years and years to come. Cute little organic "victory" gardens in everybody's utopian backyard--which even so canny a food-pundit as Michael Pollan seems to get misty-eyed about--just ain't gonna feed the SIX BILLION people, and counting, on Planet Earth. Thanks to "industrialization," the developed countries, including mainly us, have indeed been able SHARE our surplus groceries with the rest of the world. Moreover, our friendly neighborhood supermarket offers the most inflation-resistant, bargain-priced product you can buy in these hard economic times, or any other time for that matter. So very, very fortunately--think about it--it's THE product we can't live without.

However, here is a buffet of Morford's top seven, a tasty mix the sublime and the ridiculous, which I've seasoned with a sampling (in quotes) of his pungent prose:

1. Tea Parties. A recent rally featuring Sarah "Queen of Duh" Palin reminded him of the Lollipop Guild serenading Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz"-- "that bizarre acid-trip of a scene ... the moment just before a very stoned Dorothy skips away to hook up with her crazy gay pals and traipse through a giant Pink Floyd album, the moment when those three adult dwarves stumble out of the Munchkinland horde wearing little kid outfits, and sing their little surly song, replete with surly, out-of-sync leg spasms." Nicely done.

2. Floating garbage. Referring to that recently reported and news-piced "giant, rancid, thousand -mile swath of plastic collected over a period of years in a huge swirling vortex and choking off sea-life as far as the eye can weep." No bun needed.

3. Military spending. No argument from me, of course, about that vomit-inducing 53% of our annual tax bill. "We have the largest, most bloated war machine in the world. We SELL more guns, tanks, jets, and warheads to more dictators, regimes, and drug cartels than anyone on the planet. Are your local schools crumbling? Public hospitals failing? Entire state dumber than Glenn Beck's fact-checker? Blame the military ..."

4. Miley Cyrus. The ridiculous.

5. The Catholic Church. Worthy of quoting his full, sardonic treatment: "Sure, sure, the Double Down will enrage your colon, toxify your blood, disfigure your heart, greasify your skin, shrivel your genitalia, and dumb you down to the level of slug shoelace. But that's nothing compared to 2,000 years of abuse, lies, oppression, lack of sunshine and dead leathery skin that accompanies handing over your soul to the sinister clan of old men who run the Vatican. As for the Pope, well, it would appear the "holiest" man in the Christian empire cares more about PR than child rape. You know, just like Jesus wanted." More from me about all of that in a later post.

6. "Jersey Shore." For him it's the TV version of the Double Down, I guess. Why has Morford risked his gastro-intestinal health by watching even a moment of it?--one might ask. I suppose it's meant to be , like Miley Cyrus, another example of America's Double-Down-and-out sense of TASTE.

7. Republicanism. No argument here either. For me, the once proud party of Lincoln has become a weird religious cult of cold-eyed shamans leading a bunch of wild-eyed Kool-Aiders. For Mark Morford, the party "has devolved into a shrill, shrieking puddle of Glenn Beck's crocodile tears, Rush Limbaugh racists and surly white men who hate the fact that you might [in future?] have decent access to health care, can marry someone you love, and don't hate [as the Republicans do at present?] everything and everyone not inbred near a Texas football stadium." (The guy's rhetorical outrage doth betimes befuddle the plot of his sentences.)

8-37. Here he fudges. Morford put out a call on his FaceBook fan-page for suggestions to finish out his 37 "non-food items deemed far worse for you than a KFC Double Down." Check 'em out. They too range from the important to the inane--from Ann Coulter to a dioxin enema, from the Bible to unprotected bestiality (?!). Fun readage.

Okay, Mark Morford, time's up. I guess I'm a fan, too, because ... De gustibus non est disputandum. And you can Double-Down on that.
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#220 IrAfPak--"Death to America"

Ah, Kandahar ... land of the pomegranate and the palm- and/or ballistic-grenade (see DM #154-156 for a fulsome rhapsode on that strange fruit's metaphorical and combatical implications) ... you EXPLODE upon the headlines once again--this time in the CIVILIAN MURDER department, apropos of last several posts. We just can't get enough of "takin' pot-shots at the Gooks."

Here's Monday's AP/HuffPost lead:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan--Afghans burned tires and chanted "Death to America" after U.S. TROOPS FIRED ON A CIVILIAN BUS near Kandahar, killing four people and wounding more than a dozen. Afghanistan's president [Hamid Karzai] accused NATO of violating its commitment to safeguard civilian lives. (full report here)

Ah, Kandahar ... of once-lovely place and vowelicious name, you threaten us with irony-overdose. Yes, you are the land of luscious pomegranate and lush-full opium-poppy, but also the fertile spawning-ground of the Taliban, and its major stronghold. You are also the birthplace of "democratically elected" Hamid Karzai, a former/major Talib himself, and will be once again, easily, if things don't go his way. For the execrable Mr. Karzai, as for all his Sunni-Pashtun brothers, Taliban or not, it's simply a matter of power-politics. Party affiliation, no more no less.

Hence the intractable, ultimately irresolvable problem--and why we must get the hell out--put in simple terms and Haiku-form for ease of memorization :

WE KILL CIVILIANS EVERY DAY,
AND SO DO THEY,
BUT THAT'S OKAY.

... because they're "one of us." The Americans, on the other hand, are the murderous foreigners, no matter the "collateral" justification. It was the non-overcome-able problem in Vietnam, and so it is in Pashtunwaliland. The awful fact is that NO AMOUNT of internecine slaughter-of-the-innocents by the Taliban will ever counter-balance the HATRED these people have for us infidel invaders--hatred, in microcosm, that can translate to a father (a Karzai-gov't employee who got off scot-free) stomping his daughter to death for fraternizing with a British soldier (DM #127 and ad nauseum).

All the innocent bloodshed is reflexively blamed on "America." Listen to this Afghani implicitly absolving the militants of any responsibility:

"The Americans are CONSTANTLY KILLING OUR CIVILIANS and the government is not demanding an explanation," protester Mohammed Razaq said. "We demand justice from the Karzai government and the punishment of those soldiers responsible."

Or this one:

"These FOREIGNERS have their enemies [someone/somehow or other], but killing Afghans is not the answer," said Abdul Hadi ... "Better yet, I would like to see them LEAVE Afghanistan," he added.

So might it just be possible that the following contains a grain of truth?--

The attack ... DEALT A FRESH BLOW to U.S. and NATO efforts TO WIN POPULAR SUPPORT [???!!!] for a coming offensive to drive the insurgents from the biggest city in the south. (AP 4-12-10)

The City of Pomegranates, Kandahar the Beautiful.
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#219 Another "Fatal Vision" UPDATE--Video

Well, Karzai is still threatening to turn the color of his coat, and now yesterday exploding in the media is more damning evidence of "collateral murder"--WikiLeaks' headline--in our occupied territories. I'll admit to sensationalizing a bit when I anchored a post last week with a classic photo of the My Lai Massacre, but, really, so little has changed. And this video just come to light from 2007 Iraq proves it.

Reuters had been trying to get the scoop on on why two of their Iraqi journalists (arrows) among a totally non-combatant group of men were inexplicably killed in an attack by an American gunship. And, wow, did they finally get a scoop. It's fuzzy here, but quite clear in the full video, photographed and narrated by the killers themselves--"Light 'em all up. Come on, fire"--that we still can't resist "taking potshots at the Gooks" four decades after Vietnam. "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards," says one hero after the fact.

(See three versions of the WikiLeaks video/audio here, along with commentaries.)

All these guys in the picture are strafed and eventually killed. A wounded Saeed Chmagh tries to crawl away to safety but is sky-stalked and re-strafed. That's gut-wrenching enough, but here's the heart-breaker: an "innocent" van pulls up ... adult jumps out ... looks up at gunship ... proceeds anyway to rescue one of the wounded ... both strafed and killed ... gunner asks permission to open fire on van ... permission granted ... van strafed.

Moments after the attack was over, ground troops report to the gunship that there are TWO CHILDREN in the bullet-riddled van, now lying severely wounded by the helicopter's 30 mm cannon fire. Still on video and audio, one of the crewmen responsible for just killing their father responds:

Well, it's their fault bringing their kids to a battle.

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#218 IrAfPak: Obamas Fatal Vision IV--the Kids Again

But first, an I-told-you-so, news-flash update: "Afghan President Hamid Karzai Threatens To Switch Sides"--scream the headlines today. If his political situation doesn't improve, he and his minions may do what comes naturally, and turn their coats. Nothing new. Scroll down and take another look (#216) at those stolid guerrillas of a hundred years ago, turning on their British allies.

Karzai was once a staunch Talib, after all. And like them, a hard core Sunni-Muslim-Sharia-Pashtunwali-Tribal Pashtun. The Taliban may be a little stricter in their practice of of Sharia Law--cutting off heads instead of hands, and blowing up Buddhas--but they throw no fewer stones at an adulterous woman to get the deadly job done. They represent NOT some invading army--as I'm sure vast numbers of naive Americans believe--but an indigenous political movement borne out of reaction to foreign encroachment, and dedicated, in their militant-insurgent incarnation, to driving the Big-Boy Imperialists out. That's us, no matter how much we try to propagandize otherwise. We kill kids just like the Taliban do.

But let it be said, as ad nauseum I have: the adults aren't worth it in the first place. Not nice people. (I won't repeat it again, but for a refresher-in-microcosm revisit the father-murders-daughter story, DM #176) Our Vietnamese allies had at least entered the nineteenth-century in terms of cultural progress and (almost) social justice. These folk are no more than benighted barbarians emergent from some worm-hole-in-time connected to the fourteenth. Like the rest of the Middle East. Setting aside 9-11, if they weren't connected tangentially to the Great Oil Debacle that IS the Middle East, we would look at the AfPak-Pashtun people, if at all, with little more than scorn or pity.

However, the sins of the fathers must not be visited upon the children. Keep in mind a statistic that I will repeat: WE KILL TWICE AS MANY CIVILIANS as the "enemy" does. Their devious suiciders just can't top infantry operations and air strikes (incl. robo-planes) for killing innocent people. The child pictured above was caught in the latter. There is simply NO WAY to avoid it if the Bush/Cheney approach is followed by President Obama, and it seems to be. A military "solution" will NEVER "gain the loyalty of the people," much less "bring the insurgents to the negotiating table" (last post). How breathtakingly absurd is that direct quote?

If innocent "collaterals" are not killed or wounded willy-nilly from the sky, they're simply gunned-down deliberately. In a New York Times article ignored by other mainstream media, Obama's "man-on-the-ground" General Stanley McChrystal admits as much:

We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.

Great P.R. The article as redacted by HuffPost (here) continues:

According to the military's own figures, American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but as McChrystal noted, NONE OF THE VICTIMS PROVED TO BE A DANGER TO THE THE TROOPS. [Called in Vietnam: "taking potshots at the Gooks"]

Despite new rules put in place by McChrystal, aimed at REDUCING [not eliminating] THE KILLING OF INNOCENTS, such shootings have not dropped off. Although fewer than deaths from air-strikes or Special Forces operations, their continuance ... "has led to GROWING RESENTMENT among Afghans fearful of Western troops and angry at what they see as the impunity with which the troops operate--a friction that has TURNED VILLAGES FIRMLY AGAINST THE OCCUPATION."

So ... "Who ya gonna call?" The Taliban, of course. They're "one of us," after all, might reason the Afghan villager who has just lost a little daughter in an air-strike, or heard of Mohammed Yonus, a local teacher whose chest was ripped open by shots fired from a passing military convoy as his two sons sat in the bullet-riddled car (NYT). And the Taliban's WAR CRIMES, he might further think to himself, are no worse than the Americans'.
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#217 IrAfPak: Obama's Fatal Vision III--Troops and People

I know ... this is My Lai. But the parallels between Vietnam and IrAfPak get stronger every day, and that's no easy thing, considering that they were well-nigh INDISPUTABLE from the beginning! It's baffling, frankly, why Obama has stepped full-booted into this quagmire, and taken now a majority of Congress and the American people (by a slim margin lately) mucking along behind him. After all, Wasn't he a scholar/teacher (who should know better) before he became a politician?--oops ... I just answered my own question. Besides, I forgot that every U.S. President since WWII but Jimmy Carter has gotten foreign blood on their hands. It gets in their blood somehow, and they've killed foreigners so well, and in so many lovely countries.

This is why it's axiomatic, I guess, that "The United States of America does not quit, once it starts on something [like its very favorite] ... We will prevail." Or so saith President Johnson--oops again ... Obama--to his contract-killers at Bagram. More to arrive soon. And BE killed ... it's only fair. From the same AP report (here) cited in last post:

In total, 57 U.S. troops were killed here during the first two months of 2010, compared with 28 in January and February of last year, an increase of more than 100 percent, according to Pentagon figures ... at least 20 American service members have been killed so far in March, an average of about 0.8 per day [eight-tenths of a human-being on the general's clipboard--love it], compared to 13, or 0.4 per day a year ago [not counting the winged and wounded, maimed, and mangled, due to the spike in roadside sniper-attacks and IEDs].

That's the good news; here's the bad:

U.S. officials have warned that casualties are likely to RISE EVEN FURTHER as the Pentagon completes its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and sets its sights on the Taliban's [read: those "other" Pashtuns] home base of Kandahar province, where a major operation is expected [or maybe not?] in the coming months.

"WE MUST STEEL OURSELVES, no matter how successful we are on any given day, FOR HARDER DAYS YET TO COME" [who is this retro-jingoist?] Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing last month.

The rhetoric is bone-chillingly THE SAME that we heard forty-odd years ago about Vietnam. Listen to this language:

... the Taliban [Viet-Cong] continue to plant bombs [we do it by air] at night and intimidate the locals, and the hardest part of the operation is yet to come: building an effective local government that can WIN OVER THE LOYALTY [insert "hearts and minds" here, in the Viet-speak of LBJ/McNamara] OF THE PEOPLE.

But there's "light at the end of the tunnel"--

The goal of both operations is to put enough PRESSURE on the Taliban [who live and die for it] to FORCE THEM TO THE NEGOTIATING TABLE [how about in Paris?] to work out a POLITICAL SETTLEMENT to end the war ... "Until they [the opposition, but Afghans just the same] transition to that mode, then we will have fighters ready to take shots at us and plant IEDs (improvised explosive devices), said Lt. Col. Calvert Worth Jr., commanding officer of the 1st battalion, 6th Marines Regiment in central Marjah.

Translation: they're winning. As insurgents always will. Point is ... no matter the outcome, EVERY DAY IS A DEFEAT in an unjust war. Eight-tenths of an American soldier per day are eight too many tenths. And might even prove fatal. Meanwhile, innocent civilians are dying by the whole numbers. (more)
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#216 IrAfPak: Obama's Fatal Vision II--Troops and Tribes

But "The United States of America does not quit, once it starts on something ... " said the President. Neither do these redoubtable fellows pictured at right, Pashtuns ready to turnabout and give a good sniping to their British ALLIES (against the Russians once again) ... ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. (See DM #197--love this painting. They are as staunch and immovable as the ancient boulder next to them.) The watchwords have forever been "keep the foreign bastards the hell outta here" (in Pashto), no matter who, and with whomever business is being done at the time. So it goes, still, in this Graveyard of Empires.

And yet we stay. For the "Afghan" people? No such thing, not even geographically. The Pashtuns themselves spill over into the implacable borderlands of AfPak and beyond. Occupying other areas are such ethnic groups as the Uzbeks and Tajiks (and more) with their own sub-multiplicity of tribes, and centuries-old tribal laws and traditions. The Pashtuns have simply outnumbered them historically within the artificial, surveyor-tape boundaries of what we now call Afghanistan. What has kept peace amongst them is their bedrock hatred of outsiders--unless trader-types just passing through on the ancient Silk/Opium Road. Nevertheless, the President would have his troops believe that

If this REGION slides backwards ... if the Taliban retakes this COUNTRY , the al-Qaida can operate with impunity; then more American lives will be at stake; the AFGHAN PEOPLE will lose their opportunity for PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY; and the world will be significantly less secure. As long as I'm your commander in chief, I'm not going to let that happen. (AP story again)

After several moments of stunned silence, the assembled troops burst into a mixture of jeers, razzberries, and hearty guffaws, while some were seen putting sidearms to their heads and clicking away furiously. Or running for the exits. It's April 1 ... but don't I wish.

As reported, the other pressing reason for Obama's visit was to drag President Karzai to the woodshed and give him a few retributive licks for the CORRUPTION and FRAUD (like in elections) blighting his puppet government. In the true tradition of Vietnam. Well, "Prosperity is just fine with us, Mista Obama, but progress?" To dysquote the string-puller. The woodshed dialogue might have continued thus:

Listen, when you leave, and if we're still standing, fuhgeddabout this democracy shit [a Pashto word] you've imposed on us. We'll always be governed by our ancient, pre-Islamic "Pashtunwali," the tribal code-of-life, now merged with Sharia law and adopted by even the non-Pashtuns under our control. What's a little fraud, to preserve these sacred principles? Besides, they're your rules, not ours. One more thing: stay away from our women, or we'll kill them.

And so for all this, the war escalates and the death-toll rises. "The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010, compared to same period last year," according to Pentagon figures, and we can expect a further increases in the dead and wounded--a very high rate for the latter because of IED's and the SNIPING that the Pashtuns, no matter whose side they're on at the time, have had so many years to perfect--a natural result 30,000 more troops yet to come. (AP story here)

So it follows--guess what--that the militants, to make a point, might just want to kill and maim as many more of the new guys as they can! No kidding, this is how one Pentagon spokesman tries euphemistically to describe the coming mayhem: "a reaction by an enemy to a new force presence." The soon-to-be-dead Americans have a space already assigned on his clipboard. (more)
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#215 IrAfPak: Obama's Fatal Vision

"The United States of America does not quit, once it starts on something. We will prevail ..." said their Commander-in-Chief to 2500 troops at Bagram Air Field north of Kabul, during a "surprise" visit this week. His words must also have come as a surprise to any students of History in Obama's audience.

"But what about Vietnam, Mr. President?" one might have shouted. No, these were loyal troops, "fighting for our freedoms," as their mothers would have insisted halfway around the world. The President and former scholar/teacher (no less) might have have responded, at apparently an advanced stage of his denialism: "There's a huge difference ... and I'll think of it in a minute--but, soldier, you're comparing the two?! Look here, we sent more 50,000 of you people to their deaths in Southeast Asia; we haven't hit 1000 here in Afghanistan, and not quite 5000 for the whole Middle East megilla. Apples and oranges. Long way to go yet, men."

"I'm a woman, Sir. But let me follow up with: What then, or whom, are we fighting for?" This is how Obama put it, un-asked, to the troops (not a made-up quote):

Your services are absolutely necessary, absolutely essential to America's safety and security ... Those folks back home are relying on you. We can't forget why we're here ... We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al-Qaida and its extremist allies. (AP story here)

Some in the audience might well have been frozen in "The Two-thousand Yard Stare" (Tom Lea's WWII painting used once before in DM #185 "The Middle-East Quagmire"), if it weren't for the generic hoopla erupting after the President's gung-ho pep-talk.

No one to point out for the Head Honcho that these "extremist allies" are Afghans too--Talibans only militarily (in the mujaheddin tradition) with their own cadre of foreigners helping out minimally (al-Quida) to kick out those other foreigners--but otherwise they are non-Arab Pashtuns ethnically, Sunni Muslims religiously, and (like us, ironically) Indo-Europeans linguistically, just as is current President Hamid Karzai and his government. They were all true-blue Talibans only a few years ago. When we were Talibans too! Everybody is fighting everybody else, including themselves. These subtleties may have been lost on Obama's audience. Best to stick with "Kill al-Qaida!" (more)
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#214 Victory Choo-Choo III--"Foreign" KIds

And that includes our own.

But first, kudos to President Obama for signing yet another installment of the Nuclear Arms treaty with the Russkies--it's been twenty years--which reduces by 50% the 95% of all nuclear weaponry on earth "controlled" by us and them. Let's see ... that adds up to only 100% M.A.D. left to go. Not to mention the other 5% (un)controlled by mutually-assured, destructive madmen.

However, let's by all means keep up those symbolic gestures toward global peace, wheel-spinning though they are in real terms. Hey, our children won't be vaporized in a future nuclear war after all; they'll just keep dying in the good-old-fashioned, untidy way. More on that in a minute.

But talk about symbolic value! The US/Russia accord, signed after a year or so of intense negotiation (we're told) lends further credence, however belated, to Obama as Doer. Say what you might, and I have, Could our "new" President ever be accused, even by the wildest-eyed wing-nut, of NOT workin' his ass off at the job?! Consider this: two "master strokes" of the pen, involving THE two major areas of concern for any President--domestic policy with Health Care, and foreign relations with the Nuke Treaty. And it was all done with rather a flourish, both signings coming within days of each other.

The President IS on on roll, no doubt about it. Polls are up already this week. Can all this can be of much-needed help for foreign kids here at home, and those abroad?

YES for Immigration Reform. There were rallies all over the state of North Carolina last week (in conjunction with a general "march" on D.C.) protesting the need for more humane laws for "illegals"--especially in alleviating the plight of their children, who had absolutely no choice in ending up here, and their access to main-stream health care, educational opportunities, and gainful employment. Being an undocumented alien himself--well, Obama has certainly been singed by the flames of bigotry and xenophobia in that regard--he and the Congress should now be able to get something done.

Especially poignant at the Raleigh rally were testimonies from two young men of Hispanic heritage (yes, this is really what it's all about) just ready to graduate at the top of their high-school class. Outlook for college: bleak or non-existent. Our otherwise outstanding Community College system, for example, recently restored their right to matriculate (a long story, fraught with the usual prejudices), but these guys will still have to pay out-of-state tuition (that was the "compromise") at about three times the rate of in-state, even though they've been here virtually all their lives. Not fair. And they were well-spoken (perfect English naturally), intelligent young men whom I couldn't help compare with some of the inarticulate free-riders on NC State's and Duke U's basketball teams, interviewed at about the same time on the same local channel. "March" madness all around.

NO for IrAfPak. Because Obama's on the wrong side here, simply. Bite my tongue, but this fatal flaw will end up making him an LBJ--grudgingly remembered for his history-making domestic programs (Civil Rights, Medicare, etc.), but cursed forever for his foreign policy disasters. Lest we forget, President Johnson was responsible for the death, disfigurement, and dislocation of millions of people. Including innocent children, of course. Sound familiar? Look at it this way: for last-President Bush, Iraq is already on record as HIS Vietnam. No win. A bloody fraud of a war, and still going on. Moreover, to understate, he had less than zero domestic accomplishments to counterbalance it. Thanks to his inept and self-serving helmsman-ship we're still "underwater" in more ways than one. Obama will fix that I think, the way things are going, but When will he come to realize that the whole Middle East theater is now his very own Vietnam? And, so far, he's Bush.

It's so very, very lucky that Obama got some sort of health-care reform passed. And I'm sure there will be more social-justice measures on the books before too long. But JUST A WEEK AGO he was in real danger of becoming another G.W. Bush--rightfully ranked as the worst President ever-- failing not only on the foreign, but on the domestic front as well. Now if Obama would only stop killing kids overseas.
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#210 That Other Health-Care Vote--IrAfPak

And speaking of St. Dennis of Cleveland, here's the Mother Teresa of anti-war protesters, Cindy Sheehan, in her most iconic photo-shoot at an earlier demonsration. It could just as well have been taken yesterday, the Seventh Anniversary of the War In Iraq, where she got martyred in just the same way. Yes, St. Cindy (hyperbole, but NO sarcasm intended) and eight of her acolytes were arrested for "crossing" something or other (read: cops) as they were donating their flag-draped coffin-replicas outside the White House fence as usual once again. Not-arrested were THOUSANDS of others--GLAD TO REPORT-- similarly protesting the needless loss of American lives in the Middle East. (AP here)

All this--while at the Capitol a few blocks away Tea-Baggers and other toxic Dregs and Lees of Society were protesting a bill that would help stop the needless loss of American lives under our current health-care system. (HP here). Priorities, ah priorities.

Now on yet another anniversary of the unjustified and wasteful war in Iraq, the protesters can add Afghanistan Redux, whatever the cause of its earlier beginnings. Soon, our ground troops will follow the robot bombs dropping on Pakistan, and already contingency plans have been laid for intervention in Iran, Yemen, and Syria. Not to mention an old favorite, North Korea. "TOMORROW'S WARS ... that could tie up American troops for decades," said one meshugga Pentagon official with undisguised self-satisfaction (see THAT whole megilla in DM #179-180).

I've blogged and flogged, but America IS war-crazy, and I'm just not sure how we're going to get out of it. Well, "war-crazy" at the top, anyway. Neurobiological Science has discovered that, since WWII, American Presidents--whether Republican or Democrat--have undergone some sort of malign mutation that makes them want to kill foreigners. Hasn't fully affected the commoners yet--they're always in the majority against--but most of Congress seems always genetically inclined. With its permission, implicitly or otherwise, our Commanders in Chief over the last three decades have INVADED and/or BOMBED:

--Grenada
--Haiti
--Panama
--IRAQ
--Somalia
--Serbia
--Bosnia
--AFGHANISTAN
--IRAQ
--AFGHANISTAN
--Pakistan

So it's lucky we've got our own CRAZY PEOPLE out there to be on the side of REASON. Borderline lunatics like Ralph Nader and Cindy Sheehan (who lost a son killing foreigners) can be counted on--yesterday, in fact--to take up the cause. Nader maintained that Obama has essentially followed the policies of the Bush administration: "He's kept Guantanamo open ... continued to use indefinite detention," and so on. But I much prefer St. Cindy's less cerebral, more in-your-face, 60's style of protest. As she was being cuffed and led away, she gestured toward the White House and shouted:

Arrest THAT war criminal!

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#209 Vox Populi--Rep. Dennis Kucinich?

Love this little guy, with the giant babelicious wife. St. Dennis of Cleveland was martyred again last week in the House of Representatives, just like his avatar, St. Denis (> Dionysius, right) of Paris, some 1750 years ago by Druid priests for preaching the gospel to the Gauls. Kucinich was beheaded too, by a negative overkill-vote of 365 to 65. For what? For simply preaching the gospel of turning the other cheek, a bedrock Xianism that the pagans in the Lower House just didn't want to listen to, vis a' vis Afghanistan.

Of course, what kind of "cheek" is in question. You guessed it. The other, other one. Let's turn around and get our ASS the hell out of Afghanistan, before we get 'em both shot off. The Congressman's defeated Resolution would have mandated the withdrawal of all troops within 30 days of passage. The consensus press is arbitrarily labeling it out-of-hand a "symbolic resolution" (e.g. WashPost here), and as usual for Kucinich's quixotic efforts he gets a big round of ha-ha from most everybody. But NOT from Reps. Ron Paul and Patrick Kennedy who voted in favor--nor from the "silent majority" that I'll speak for in a minute.

Mid-Note: Paul and Kennedy?! Talk about strange bedfellows. Well, they're both talkin' true Libertarianianism--not the greedy, solipsistic Ayn-Randianism of the Tea Baggers--rather that all-the-way-round-the-circle meeting point of right and left political wings ... at least when it comes to WAR. Defensive ones only, etc., etc. We've blogged and blogged enough about that. Worth watching the Kennedy rant (here). Apoplectic. But he's right on target in condemning the mainstream media for saturating their time with gossip about Rep. Eric Massa's "groping" escapades rather than paying attention to the ongoing bloodshed in the Middle East--as occasioned by the Kucinich Resolution.

Anyway, it's about that totally futile sacrifice of a thousand American lives so far, and the unconscionable martyrdom of untold thousands of civilian "collaterals" (another horrendous case headlined last week)--that the Voice of the People can still be heard. And the "Kucinich Sixty-Five" speaks for them, granted only symbolically, perhaps. But according to the polls, over 50% of Americans STILL oppose the 100.000-troop "surge" that President Obama is STILL proceeding with, and will no doubt continue to get funding for. Of course I wish there were a higher number of us in the majority opposed to IrAfPak altogether--but what's with the lopsided majority in the House of Representatives opposed to the Voice of the People?!--as can be seen in the "symbolic" beheading of Kucinich et al. and their good intentions. In this case, and in their continued funding of a wasteful war, the members of the House are just not "representative" at all.

A final note. The "little big man" from Ohio is also eligible for sainthood by dint of his opposition to the health-care reform bill in Congress. What? Yes, I want it to pass, despite it's flaws. Obama needs it; and by association the country needs it if we're EVER going get ANYWHERE toward real Reform of our blighted system. Non-passage, I fear, will delay our joining the rest of the civilized world for years to come. However, Kucinich hasn't cast his vote yet (the Prez is lobbying fiercely), but if it's a "Nay" we'll know his martyrdom is based on principle. Inevitably, this country's health-care will be a public, tax-payer-driven, single-payer program modeled on Medicare. You heard it here. Problem is ... St. Dennis wants it NOW. Let the beheading begin.
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#197 Obama's GPA Slipping into AfPak Hell II

Nothing has changed in the Graveyard Of Empires since Alexander. Though other nations have been fighting over Afghanistan throughout its interesting but bloody history, they never win. The tribes endure ... especially the Pashtuns, forever the largest and most historically hegemonic, who, as Talibans, were once our secret allies against the Russians (see "Charlie Wilson's War" posts DM #24-25, 28). Here we see them, more than a century ago, about to ambush their very own British allies against the Russian imperialist threat of their day! Double-cross and turn-about are always fair play, whether the ancient Zoroastrian kingdom of "Pastunistan" is allied with Mohamet, Genghis Khan, Queen Victoria, Charlie Wilson, or Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban. The tribes endure.

Because they simply never give up. And won't, as long as the USA is seen as an aggressor/occupier of their homeland. Let them have their beloved Taliban. They get what they deserve--and, after all, once-upon-a-time we were crazy about them! Recruits come easy, and there are enough hiding places in the endless mountains and desert wastes of Afghanistan to harbor the combined forces of the NLF and Viet-Cong. Sorry, nightmare flashback. Now, Gen. Stanley McChrystal--our Gen. Wm. Westmoreland of the moment--would have us believe differently about all this. In an interview with Diane Sawyer, she reminds him that he had said on earlier occasions that "we needed a quantum shift [sic], something dramatic to shift the momentum." Then: "Have you done it," she asks, "have you turned the tide?" Here's his dramatically "shifty" reply:

I believe we are doing that right now. I believe we have changed the way we operate in Afghanistan. Changed some of our structures. We're on the way to convincing the Afghan people that we're here to protect them."

Interesting, because more than one CIA operative in the field says we're virtually "clueless" about how the Afghan people feel about anything. But more of that in a minute. McChrystal is mouthing the same old bullshit that we heard from the U.S. Military for years upon years during Vietnam. "Light at the end of the tunnel" and all that. Can't we learn from history and not repeat it? asketh the tired but true bromide. One of the most disappointing, nay shocking, aspects of the President's Dec. 1 speech justifying his fatal "surge" was Obama the scholar/teacher disavowing any valid connection between Vietnam and AfPak (DM #175). When even a second-rate mind should easily grasp it.

In so many words, a late-December-2009 report by the Deputy Chief Of Military Intelligence in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, contradicts Obama and McChrystal at every "turn of the tide." Pretty much under the radar of mainstream news, his un-classified (which maybe they'd like to re-think) "State of the Insurgency" concludes most ominously that

The Afghan insurgency could SUSTAIN ITSELF INDEFINITELY. The Taliban retains its original partnerships to sustain support through its legitimacy and military capacity ... and the Taliban is expanding, contesting and controlling additional areas of influence ... The original stability is rapidly decreasing and getting worse.

Maj. Gen. Flynn further points out that "kinetic" events (love the euphemism for murder and mayhem) have increased by 300% since 2007, and another 60% since 2008, with greater frequency of attacks and in more varied areas. The Taliban, in other words, is more organized than ever. Robert Grenier, former CIA chief in Islamabad, says that this state of affairs will always obtain, because "A conventional military force, whatever its strategic intent, is going to look like to the local people a colonizing, occupying army, and is not going to succeed in Afghanistan." (See video of Sawyer, McChrystal, Flynn, Grenier here)

The full intelligence report, picked up and excerpted by the Jan. 5 London Times online (here), blames the problem in large measure on so little "intelligence" in the way our spies have been doing their business in the AfPak regions. Flynn quotes one of his operatives confessing to being "clueless" about the country he's spying on: "We're no more than fingernail deep in our understanding of the environment." Most tellingly, Flynn writes that we've "fallen into the trap" of waging an "anti-insurgency campaign" aimed at capturing or killing mid-to-high-level militants, while remaining oblivious to the people it was supposed to be helping.

Tell you what: How about we just leave the party early? These people aren't worth knowing.
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#196 Obama's GPA Slipping into AfPak Hell

Sure enough, the Associated Press reported yesterday that the President will request $33 billion on top of the already bloated $708 billion "Defense" Department budget for this year. To be wasted on the wasteland at right. After all, he's got to pay for the American troops to be wasted there as well. When will we put it plainly to the mothers of the sons and daughters who will go there to die, that they are throwing away their lives on a lost cause and a lost people? For, as I've said ad nauseum, the un-winnable "hearts and minds" populating these infernal wastes are as irredeemably bleak as the landscape.

Moreover, the Insurgents/Militants/OppositionForces--call them what you will-- amongst those benighted people can hold out forever in that blighted land. And here's the irony: Obama's own men in the field know that ... and have spoken thus. But more of that later.

First, let's follow the money. What's maddening is that the Commander and Chief's cavalry is already out of the barn. After three months of scholarly deliberation, he nonetheless made the retro Bush/Cheney decision to "surge"--how I do hate that lame euphemism--for the fatal second and thus irretrievable time. Congress paid for the first one last March without much of a kerfuffle, because it seemed to go along reasonably with Obama's campaign-promised intentions to clean up the former administration's mess and "re-deploy" from Iraq to Afghanistan--thus to re-focus on rooting out the 9/11 culprits, which, he said, should have been our sole purpose in being over there all along. But as of his November decision, AfPak is now an all-out WAR. Against any and all comers.

At a price tag of $33 billion. Not to mention the tally of thousands upon thousands of human lives. But the money drain is "costing" human lives here at home too. We're not over the Great Recession yet. Folks without jobs or health care will be walking the streets for the foreseeable future. And here we are peremptorily dumping into the AfPak money-pit what can only be a down-payment of billions on the eventual trillions that will be budgeted the next few years--and then only that much only if Obama's plans succeed! Much, much more if they don't.

Here are some dry but dire economic details. Excessive "defense" spending obviously drains the economy in general at a time when we can least afford it. But it's particularly hard on the JOB MARKET--that segment of the Economy that will take the longest to recover. This is just sheer anguish, moment-to-moment panic and despair, on the part of a good 20% of our fellow Americans right now. (Personal example: my ex-girlfriend is now over a year out of work; thus out of unemployment compensation; thus out of the means to afford COBRA ... or any health care at all.) And prodigal defense spending only exacerbates the problem, according to standard economic models developed by CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research) just after Obama announced the second AfPak escalation:

In these models, any government measure that interferes with market outcomes almost by definition reduces efficiency, leading to less economic growth fewer jobs.... For example, defense spending means that the government is pulling away resources from the uses determined by the market and instead using them to buy weapons and supplies and to pay for soldiers and other military personnel. In standard economic models, defense spending is a direct drain on the economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth, and costing jobs. (CEPR 11/10/09 here)

In fact, the job losses from our Middle-East misadventurism are projected to run into the millions, over and above the millions already out of work. This will assuredly happen unless Obama, who Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already said is on his own when it's time to defend the increased funding, or Congress itself does the right thing and Constitutionally puts an end to it. Fat chance. (more)
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#185 The Middle-East Quagmire--a "Told-You-So" Quote w/o Comment

Headline, McClatchy Newspapers, 12/17/09:

Eikenberry Assures Afghans U.S. Will Stay Beyond 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan--U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry Thursday further signaled that a strong AMERICAN MILITARY PRESENCE WILL REMAIN in Afghanistan LONG AFTER July 2011, when President Obama plans to end his troop surge.

To the Afghan government: "Act with urgency." To the Afghan people: "We will not abandon you."

"After eight years of assistance to Afghanistan, many Americans and many members of Congress are impatient to see results," he said, while assuring that "OUR MILITARY COMMITMENT WILL NOT END OR DECLINE EVEN AS OUR COMBAT FORCES WITHDRAW"

Eikenberry suggested that the JULY 2011 DATE for beginning a U.S. troop drawdown is FLEXIBLE.

"THIS IS NOT A DEADLINE, despite what some people in the United States and Afghanistan have said," Eikenberry said. He added that American WITHDRAWAL in 18 months is "ENTIRELY BASED ON THE CONDITIONS THAT EXIST AT THAT TIME."

I'll let the forlorn soldier in Tom Lea's famed WWII painting, "The Two-Thousand Yard Stare," provide the commentary today.
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#184 "Whither ... the Testicular Fortitude ... ?"

To semi-quote my question from last post. Well, just today, some small amount of ball-age was discovered in the U.S. House of Representatives in the person of--defying human anatomy--Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker. She represents one bicameral half of the Legislative branch of our tripartite Government under the Constitution-- as if you needed to be re-schooled after all the preceding bloggery--that is authorized as a Separate Power to hold the President in "check and balance." In this case, TO PUT A STOP to a BAD WAR.

As reported by McClatchy (on-line):

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that it's up to President Barack Obama to persuade reluctant Democrats to FUND his Afghanistan troop build-up--his most important foreign policy initiative--because she has no plans to do so herself.

Put in overly-popular parlance ... that's balls. Though not mentioned in the the article, the elevated testosterone level is fully justified by that good ol' Constitutional clause proclaiming Congress's power "To raise and support armies ... [by] appropriation of money ... [etc.]" Stop the funding; stop the war; or, short of that, at least force a penniless White house and Pentagon to adopt different strategies to resolve this exercise in futility, and to get us the hell out. Which is what everybody wants. There are other ways to "win" a war than throwing troops at it. A Bush/Obama "surge" is another step deeper into the quagmire. It's heartening that a Pew poll reports that 51% of the American people are against escalation--to call it by its right name--even after the President's speech last week.

But it'll never happen. First of all, the troops are already on the way, despite the official Jan. 1 start-up date for the increase. In our military-saturated state of North Carolina, the government installations are emptying and deploying--Camp Lejeune disgorged a bunch of Marines last Friday, to a typically-hyped send-off.

Moreover, and crucially, Congress will NEVER stop the funding. It never has in recent history, and never will. Not as long as an Imperial Presidency is in power, and unchecked. Ms. Pelosi's intentions are good, but a funding bill for Obama's first escalation in March--the only one we can possibly forgive him for--passed EASILY through the House. This one maybe not so easily, but it will pass. Ironically, the opposition party, the Republicans, will make it a shoo-in.

Wouldn't it be nice if some wild-eyed, anti-war Representative--I'll nominate brave little Dennis Kucinich--wended himself over to the Supreme Court building and handed the Justices a brief. In it he would ask them simply to declare the undeclared war in Afghanistan unconstitutional ... and save us all a lot of trouble.

But, as the old proverbial exclamation goes, "Balls!" said the Queen, "If I had 'em, I'd be King."
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