May 9, 2009

1.  “The Big “Con:” Taliban About to Defeat Pakistan, Take Control of Nukes, and It’s Another 9/11

Perpetual 9/11

We’re experiencing an example of the enduring power 9/11 as a justification for just about anything. Military adventures that kill foreigners have the potential to create what Chalmers Johnson so eloquently described as “blowback” in his trilogy on the perils of aggressive foreign policy. We’re expected to believe that our violent actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan, including robot killer aircraft, will somehow produce a different result this time. We will be “safer.”

…

We aren’t supposed to question the motives of government officials. What they state publicly simply must be the real policy. When the public policy turns out to be a disaster we are told the intentions were good just that the policymakers were incompetent. For example, we were told that the goal in Iraq was a stable democracy. We were told this didn’t happen because the US architects were incompetent. They were arrogant and ignored more informed military advisers like Gen. Shinseki. One only need watch the documentary No End in Sight to realize that incompetence isn’t a plausible explanation for the conduct of Bush administration officials in relation to the occupation policies. In fact, they were consistent as they acted in bad faith to justify the invasion as well. Some suggest that failing to support such policies is an insult to the soldiers risking their lives. This is simply more deception. The policymakers are betraying the soldiers even worse than the public by having them risk their lives for ulterior purposes.”

http://www.911blogger.com/node/20046

2.  Burma after the cyclone – the benefits of the US NOT intervening militarily:

“Since then the regime has become even more responsive (though not, of course, more democratic). Twice as many aid workers are now active in the delta as before Cyclone Nargis. A former Oxfam adviser on Burma opines: “The overall response of the government has been remarkable. They are ‘getting it’ more and more each day that they are involved in the recovery process.” Frank Smithuis of Doctors Without Borders told the New York Times: “You can work here very well, and to say that you can’t is a lie.” Indeed, “the military at times has actually been quite helpful to us.”

Of course, no one sugarcoats the regime’s human-rights record. But the relationship between the domestic military junta and outside humanitarian agencies has been transformed. Which would not have happened had the West attempted coercion. Forcible intervention would certainly have destroyed the prospect for cooperation over the long-term and likely spread conflict across Burma, even to areas not directly affected by Cyclone Nargis. And having broken what was left of Burma, the West—meaning America—would have been left attempting to reconstruct another impoverished, strife-torn land.

Military intervention has become the panacea for hawks and doves alike. Thus the groundswell of support for coercion in Burma a year ago. But caution proved to be the better part of valor: intervention would have created far more problems than it would have solved. Humanitarian intervention remains a foreign-policy oxymoron.“

http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=21442

3.  “U.S. Foreign Policy Caused the Taliban Problem

U.S. officials are now concerned not only with a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan but also a Taliban takeover in Pakistan. These problems, however, were caused by the U.S. Empire itself.

While most Americans now view President Bush’s Iraq War as a “bad war,” the common perception is that Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan was a “good war” (despite the fact that he went to war without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war). The notion is that the U.S. government was justified in invading Afghanistan and ousting the Taliban regime from power because the Taliban and al-Qaeda conspired to commit the 9/11 attacks.

There’s just one big problem with that belief: it’s unfounded.

The reason that Bush ousted the Taliban from office was that the Taliban regime refused to comply with his unconditional demand to deliver Osama bin Laden to U.S. officials after the 9/11 attacks.

The Taliban responded to Bush’s demand by asking him to furnish evidence of bin Laden’s complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Upon receipt of such evidence, they offered to turn him over to an independent tribunal instead of the United States.

Bush never explained why the Taliban’s conditions were unreasonable.
…
Once the Taliban regime refused to comply with Bush’s unconditional order to turn over bin Laden, the U.S. Empire did what it had done and tried to do in so many other countries — Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, Indonesia, Iraq, and others — bring about regime change by ousting a recalcitrant regime that refused to comply with the unconditional orders of the U.S. Empire — a regime that the U.S. Empire itself had helped to create — and replacing it with a submissive pro-empire regime. In the process, the empire succeeded in embroiling the United State into one more foreign conflict, one that has now spread to nuclear-armed Pakistan.

It’s just another “success story” in the life of the U.S. Empire and its interventionist foreign policy.”

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0905c.asp

4.  “ Tom Ricks to Antiwar.com: Get Off of My Cloud!

Anointed Washington Surge scribe Thomas Ricks takes Antiwar.com to task for writing “about an area about which they know absolutely freaking nothing,” referring to my current piece on Gian Gentile: Exposing Counterfeit COIN. To his mind and of the COIN clique he runs with online, writing about the war should be left to practitioners and military theorists, and of course, Washington Post special war correspondents and senior fellows at the Center for a New American Security.

Certainly not any operation calling itself “Antiwar.” (Note to Ricks: Try to take more than two minutes to check out the site, then you’d find out how we feel about “predatory strikes” and “protecting the population.”)

Like many Washington types who ride a singular moment — say a war, a Surge, the rising stars of generals named Petraeus and Odierno –to such breathless heights of Washington success and sycophancy, there is a tendency towards peevishness when any of it is questioned. It’s territorial, and I can understand that. Thus Ricks reacts by reminding us of his bonefides in Iraq, and is so quick to defend the Washington think tank where he now hangs his hat. Don’t worry, we’ll get off of your cloud.“

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/05/08/tom-ricks-to-antiwarcom-get-off-of-my-cloud/