Under normal circumstances, I would never consider posting a Beetle Bailey comic strip, but I was thunderstruck when I read one today with an honest political message. There is no military draft in the US, a common argument used by cretins who disdain conscientious objectors, but the fact is that there is really an economic draft happening here. And for Mort Walker to make that point is inspiring.
Richard Jehn / Fluxed Up World
Turning the Corner on Growth
By Richard Heinberg / March 24, 2010
Everyone agrees: our economy is sick. The inescapable symptoms include declines in consumer spending and consumer confidence, together with a contraction of international trade and available credit. Add a collapse in real estate values and carnage in the automotive and airline industries, and the picture looks grim indeed.
But why are both the U.S. economy and the larger global economy ailing? Among the mainstream media, world leaders, and America’s economists-in-chief (Treasury Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke), there is near-unanimity of opinion: these recent troubles are primarily due to a combination of bad real estate loans and poor regulation of financial derivatives.
This is the conventional diagnosis. If it is correct, then the treatment for our economic malady would logically include heavy doses of bailout money for beleaguered financial institutions, mortgage lenders, and car companies, better regulation of derivatives and futures markets, and stimulus programs to jumpstart consumer spending.
But what if this diagnosis is fundamentally flawed? The metaphor needs no belaboring; we all know that tragedy can result from a doctor’s misreading of symptoms, mistaking one disease for another.
A case can be made that dire events having to do with the real estate market, the derivatives markets, and the auto and airline industries are themselves mere symptoms of an even deeper, systemic dysfunction that spells the end of economic growth as we have known it.
For several years, a swelling subculture of commentators has been forecasting a financial crash, basing this prognosis on the assessment that global oil production was about to peak. The reasoning went like this: continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet. This is an axiomatic observation with which anyone familiar with the mathematics of compounded arithmetic growth must agree, even if they hedge their agreement with vague references to “substitutability” and “demographic transitions.”
This axiomatic limit to growth means that the rapid expansion in both population and per-capita consumption of resources that has occurred over the past century or two must cease at some particular time. But when is this likely to occur?
Energy is the ultimate enabler of growth (again, this is axiomatic: physics and biology both tell us that without energy nothing happens). Industrial expansion throughout the past two centuries has in every instance been based on increased energy consumption. More specifically, industrialism has been inextricably tied to the availability and consumption of cheap energy from coal and oil (and more recently, natural gas). However, fossil fuels are by their very nature depleting, non-renewable resources. Further, burning these fuels releases climate-changing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, setting up conditions for droughts, famines, and the drowning of coastal cities. None of these events is compatible with continued, easy economic growth.
Thus, either climate catastrophe or the eventual inability to continue increasing supplies of cheap fossil energy will likely lead to a cessation of economic growth, unless alternative energy sources and efficiency of energy use can be deployed rapidly and to a sufficient degree.
Of the three conventional fossil fuels, oil is arguably the most economically vital, since it supplies nearly all transport energy. Further, it is the fuel that is likely to encounter supply problems soonest because global petroleum discoveries have been declining for decades, and most oil producing countries are already seeing production declines.
During the period from 2005 to mid-2008, demand for oil was growing, especially in China (which went from being self-sufficient in oil in 1995 to being the world’s second-foremost importer after the U.S. by 2006). But the global supply of oil was essentially stagnant: from month to month, production figures for crude oil bounced around within a fairly narrow band between 72 and 75 million barrels per day. As prices rose, production figures barely budged in response. There was every indication that all oil producers were pumping flat-out: even the Saudis appeared to be rushing to capitalize on the price bonanza.
Today, oil prices are only half what they were in July 2008. Why has the economy not quickly recovered? Clearly, peak oil is not the only cause of the current economic crisis. Enormous bubbles in the real estate and finance sectors constituted accidents waiting to happen, and the implosion of those bubbles has created a serious credit crisis (as well as solvency and looming currency crises) that will take several years to resolve, even if energy supplies are not a problem.
But now the potential for renewed high oil prices acts as a ceiling for economic recovery. Whenever the economy does appear to show renewed signs of life (as has happened in May-July this year, with stock values rebounding and the general pace of economic contraction slowing somewhat), oil prices will take off again as oil speculators anticipate a recovery of demand. Indeed, oil prices rebounded from $30 in January to nearly $70 in early August, provoking widespread concern that high-energy prices could nip recovery in the bud.
The problem extends beyond oil and other fossil fuels, and even beyond climate change: the world’s fresh water resources are strained to the point that billions of people may soon find themselves with only precarious access to water for drinking and irrigation. Biodiversity is declining rapidly. We are losing 24 billion tons of topsoil each year to erosion. And many economically significant minerals—from antimony to zinc—are depleting quickly, requiring the mining of ever lower-grade ores in ever more remote locations. Thus the peak oil crisis is really just the leading edge of a broader Peak Everything dilemma.
In essence, humanity faces an entirely predictable peril: our population has been growing dramatically for the past 200 years (expanding from under one billion to nearly seven billion), while our per-capita consumption of resources has also grown. For a species, this is virtually the definition of biological success. And yet all of this has taken place in the context of a finite planet with fixed stores of non-renewable resources (fossil fuels and minerals), a limited ability to regenerate renewable resources (forests, fish, fresh water, and topsoil), and a limited ability to absorb industrial waste products, including carbon dioxide. If we step back and look at the industrial period from a broad historical perspective that is informed by an appreciation of ecological limits, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are today living at the end of a relatively brief pulse—a 200-year rapid expansionary phase enabled by a temporary energy subsidy (in the form of cheap fossil fuels) that will inevitably be followed by an even more rapid and dramatic contraction as those fuels deplete.
The winding down of this historic growth-contraction pulse doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the world, but it does mean the end of a certain kind of economy. One way or another, humanity must return to a more normal pattern of existence characterized by reliance on immediate solar income (via crops, wind, or the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity) rather than stored ancient sunlight.
This is not to say that the remainder of the 21st century must consist of a collapse of industrialism, a die-off of most of the human population, and a return by the survivors to a way of life identical to that of 16th century peasants or indigenous hunter-gatherers. It is possible instead to imagine various acceptable and even inviting ways in which humanity could adapt to ecological limits while further developing cultural richness, scientific understanding, and quality of life (more on this below).
But however it is negotiated, the transition will spell an end to economic growth in the conventional sense. And that transition appears to have begun.
If the physical scientists who warn about limits to growth are right, confronting the global economic meltdown implies far more than merely getting the banks and mortgage lenders back on their feet. Indeed, we face a fundamental change in our economy as significant as the advent of the industrial revolution. We are at a historic inflection point—the ending of decades of expansion and the beginning of an inevitable period of contraction that will continue until humanity is once again living within the limits of Earth’s regenerative systems.
A case can be made that after all this is done, the end result will be a more satisfying way of life for the vast majority of citizens—offering more of a sense of community, more intergenerational solidarity, more of a connection with the natural world, more satisfying work, and a healthier environment. Indeed, it is essential at a challenging time like this to emphasize solutions and benefits rather than dwelling only on the enormity of the crisis confronting us. But those in charge need to understand that looking on the bright side doesn’t mean promising what can’t be delivered—such as a return to the days of growth and thoughtless consumption.
We have entered a new economic era in which the former “rules” no longer apply. Low interest rates and government spending no longer translate to incentives for borrowing and job production. Cheap energy won’t appear just because there is demand for it. Substitutes for essential resources will in most cases not be found. Over all, the economy will continue to shrink in fits and starts until it can be maintained by the energy and material resources that Earth can supply on an ongoing basis.
Is it too late to begin a managed transition to a post-fossil fuel society? Perhaps. But we will not know unless we try. And if we are to make that effort, we must begin by acknowledging one simple, stark reality: growth as we have known it can no longer be our goal.
[This is an edited version of Richard's article Temporary Recession or the End of Growth?.]
Source / PostCarbon.org
Thanks to Deva Wood / Fluxed Up World
On the sixth anniversary after charges were brought in the Abu Ghraib scandal, it is appropriate to raise the issue of human rights abuses by Americans and the American government. We are a callous and arrogant nation, in denial about who we are and what we've done in our short history. Wake up and smell thecoffeeshit.
Richard Jehn / Fluxed Up World
• Each year, 30,000 people die in gun-related incidents.
• There were 14,180 murders last year.
• In the first ten months of 2009, 45 people were killed by police use of tasers, bringing the total for the decade to 389.
• Last year, 315 police officers in New York City were subject to internal supervision due to “unrestrained use of violence.”
• 7.3 million Americans were under the authority of the correctional system, more than in any other country.
• An estimated 60,000 prisoners were raped while in custody last year.
• 712 bodies were cremated at public expense in the city of Los Angeles last year, because the families were too poor to pay for a burial.
• There were 5,657 workplace deaths recorded in 2007, the last year for which a tally is available, a rate of 17 deaths per day (not a single employer was criminally charged for any of these deaths).
• Some 2,266 veterans died as a consequence of lack of health insurance in 2008, 14 times the military death toll in Afghanistan that year.
French Television Demonstrates Cheney Effect
By Juan Cole / March 18, 2010
AP reports on a French reality show where contestants proved willing to administer torture-level shocks to human beings, replicating the findings of the classic Milgram Study at Yale.
The show repeated the classic social psychology experiment of Stanley Milgram of Yale from the early 1960s, which has been successfully demonstrated numerous times around the world. Apparently about 70% of human beings have no independent conscience and will torture others if simply ordered to by a person in authority. The good news is that 30% will resist.
This finding helps explain the "Cheney Effect," whereby he illegally ordered torture but Americans are not eager to put him on trial for breaking the law. A super-majority is willing to go along with Abu Ghraib, and not blanch when the former vice president talks about being a "big supporter of waterboarding."
The only way you even got laws against torture is that they were self-interested-- forbidding one's own troops to torture is a way of trying to prevent their being tortured when captured by the enemy (and ensuring there is punishment, a la Nuremburg, for war crimes. Note that Stalin wanted just to summarily execute 50,000 - 100,000 German officers. Roosevelt demurred, jesting that surely 49,000 would be enough. In the end Henry Stimson's plan for war crimes trial was approved by Truman.
Nowadays, the Liz Cheneys and Bill Kristols prefer Stalin's methods of summary punishment, and are attacking the whole idea of defense attorneys for enemy combatants, as Matthew Yglesias notes. No doubt the attorneys would inconveniently object to the torture Cheney and Kristol want inflicted.
Anyway, most people don't get anti-torture laws. What is really hard to explain scientifically is how the US Republican Party got almost none of the ethical 30%. Shouldn't conscience be roughly equally distributed by party?
Update: Glenn Greenwald mischievously points out that Fox Cable News anchors expressed amazement at how horrible the French are because of this story, missing the irony that this news channel has been an unremitting cheerleader for torturing people!
Source / Informed Comment
Fluxed Up World
The New McCarthyism
By Joe Conason / March 11, 2010
The national madness known as "McCarthyism" began 60 years ago in Wheeling, W.V., when Joseph R. McCarthy held up a scrap of paper that supposedly listed the names of 57 State Department officials he said were actually Communists and traitors.
Eventually, America learned that the Wisconsin Republican's famous list was a fabrication, that he was a liar and a demagogue as well as an alcoholic — and that his authoritarian appeals to fear were worse than useless in defending our security. But by then, McCarthyism's self-serving and fundamentally unpatriotic promoters had inflicted grave damage on the body politic and international prestige of the United States.
Today, McCarthy's heirs are more slick and glib than he ever was, yet their fundamental methods are the same. When Elizabeth Cheney, William Kristol and their media friends slander Justice Department attorneys as the "al-Qaida 7" and malign the "Department of Jihad," they are engaging in the smear tactics that became synonymous with McCarthy.
What is different now is the cynical hypocrisy of the new McCarthyites, who know that the flimsy accusations they level against Democrats in the Obama administration could just as easily be turned on Republicans who served President Bush.
Cheney and Kristol have charged that certain lawyers in the Justice Department represented alleged terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp — and that by so doing, those attorneys rendered themselves unfit for government service. "Whose values do they share?" asks an ominous advertisement aired by their front group, known as Keep America Safe. They mean to insinuate that the values of those Justice Department attorneys, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are somehow closer to the jihadism of al-Qaida than to those shared by most Americans.
The values that most of us share include honesty and fairness — and this sleazy campaign violates both. If every lawyer who represents someone accused of terrorism is by definition a terrorist sympathizer, then our entire system of justice is in doubt, since it requires counsel for everyone accused of a crime. More specifically, if the lawyers who have counseled terror suspects are by definition untrustworthy, then the dark cloud of suspicion extends well beyond the current roster of the Justice Department — and into the heart of the Republican Party.
As Scott Horton points out in Harper's magazine, the McCarthyite list would have to include Michael Chertoff, who headed the Justice Department's criminal division before President Bush nominated him as secretary of the department of homeland security.
Among Chertoff's clients in private practice was a New Jersey doctor named Magdy el-Amir, identified as a conduit for money-laundering to al-Qaida and other jihadist outfits.
He became a Chertoff client when the state of New Jersey sued him to recoup illicit money from a health maintenance organization he controlled, which had sent more than $5 million by wire transfers to bank accounts "where the beneficial owner is unknown." In other words, a very dubious character who had been under surveillance by the FBI for years.
There was never any reason to believe that by representing Magdy el-Amir (who was recently arrested in a prescription drug racket), Chertoff somehow disqualified himself from government service. But similar phony questions could be raised about Michael Mukasey, the former Bush attorney general whose law firm provides pro bono representation to Guantanamo detainees. Or Rudolph Giuliani, the mayor of Sept. 11, whose firm has also represented detainees because, like all prisoners, they are entitled to counsel.
If this seems confusing, here's a simple principle to keep in mind: Representing someone in an American court does not mean agreeing with that person's actions or ideology. Here's another: Guilt by association is an unworthy tactic that ought to raise suspicions about those who use it rather than those against whom it is used.
The career of McCarthy and the specter of McCarthyism ended only when a handful of decent Republicans — notably including Prescott Bush, the grandfather of George W. Bush — joined in a Senate resolution of censure against him and his tactics. Perhaps we have witnessed such a moment of truth this week, when 19 prominent Republican attorneys, including Kenneth Starr and several former Bush Justice and Defense Department appointees, denounced the Keep America Safe smears as shameful, unjust and destructive.
Conservatives can effectively discredit this disgraceful campaign — and it is their responsibility to do so.
[Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer (www.observer.com). To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.]
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
Source / Creators
Fluxed Up World
The Rogue Nation
By Philip Giraldi / March 11, 2010
In spite of the fact that the United States faces no enemy anywhere in the world capable of opposing it on a battlefield, the Defense budget for 2011 will go up 7.1 percent from current levels. A lot of the new spending will be on drones, America’s latest contribution to western civilization, capable of surveilling large areas on the ground and delivering death from the skies. It is a peculiarly American vision of warfare, with a "pilot" sitting at a desk half a world away and pressing a button that can kill a target far below. Hygienic and mechanical, it is a bit like a video game with no messy cleanup afterwards. The recently released United States Quadrennial Defense Review reports how the Pentagon will be developing a new generation of super drones that can stay airborne for long periods of time and can strike anywhere in the world and at any time to kill America’s enemies. The super drones will include some that can fly at supersonic speeds and others that will be large enough to carry nuclear weapons. Some of the new drones will be designed for the navy, able to take off from aircraft carriers and project US power to even more distant hot spots. Drones are particularly esteemed by policymakers because as they are unmanned and can fly low to the ground they can violate someone’s airspace "accidentally" without necessarily resulting in a diplomatic incident.
Washington’s embrace of drones as the weapon of choice for international assassination is one major reason why the United States has become the evil empire. Drones are the extended fist of what used to be referred to as the Bush Doctrine. Under the Bush Doctrine Washington asserted that it had a right to use its military force preemptively against anyone in the world at any time if the White House were to determine that such action might be construed as defending the United States. Vice President Dick Cheney defined the policy in percentage terms, asserting that if there was a 1% chance that any development anywhere in the world could endanger Americans, the United States government was obligated to act. It should be noted that President Barack Obama has not repudiated either the Bush doctrine or the 1% solution of Dick Cheney and has actually gone so far as to assert that America is fighting Christianity-approved "just wars," a position disputed by Pope Benedict XVI among others. Far from eschewing war and killing, the number and intensity of drone attacks has increased under Obama, as has the number of civilian casualties, referred to by the splendid bloodless euphemism "collateral damage."
Drones are currently killing people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. It should be noted that the United States is not at war with any of those countries, which should mean in a sane world that the killing is illegal under both international law and the US Constitution. America’s Founding Fathers used constitutional restraints to make it difficult for Americans to go to war, requiring an act of war by Congress. Unfortunately it has not worked out that way. The US has been involved in almost constant warfare since the Second World War but the most recent actual declaration of war was on December 8, 1941. And then there are the special and clandestine operations that span the globe. Apart from Israel, no other country in the world has an openly declared policy of going around and killing people. One would think that the international community would consequently regard both Tel Aviv and Washington as pariahs, but fear of offending the world’s only super power and its principal client state has aborted most criticism. Most nations are resigned to letting assassination teams and hellfire armed drones operate as they please. If Iran were operating the drones and bumping off its enemies in places like Dubai you can be sure the reaction would be quite different.
And it doesn’t stop there. Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder has effectively blocked any inquiry into the use of torture by US government officials, mostly from the CIA. The Administration claims to have stopped the practice but has declared that no one will be punished for obeying orders to waterboard prisoners, an argument that was not acceptable at the Nuremberg trials in 1946 and should not be acceptable now. The United States is a signatory to the international agreement on torture and there are also both federal and state laws that prohibit either carrying out or enabling the practice, so the ruling by Holder is essentially a decision to ignore serious crimes that were committed against individuals who, in many cases, were both helpless and completely innocent. It also ignores the participation of Justice Department lawyers and CIA doctors in the process, involvement that most would consider both immoral and unethical. Worst of all, it lets off the hook the real war criminals, people like George Tenet and those in the White House who approved the practice. Tenet, one recalls, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a $4 million book deal. He still teaches at Georgetown University. Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who made the legal arguments for torture are now respectively a tenured professor at Berkeley and a federal appeals court justice. One assumes that the actual CIA torturers continue to be employed by the federal government or are enjoying a comfortable retirement. So much for accountability for war crimes under President Obama.
Finally there is assassination. On February 3rd Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair commented during a congressional briefing that the United States reserves the right to kill American citizens overseas who are actively "involved" with groups regarded as terrorist. Involvement is, of course, a very slippery expression providing maximum latitude for those seeking to make a case for summary execution. The death list involves a due process of sorts in that a government official makes the decision who shall be on it based on guidelines but it does not allow the accused to challenge or dispute evidence. It should also be noted that no one in Congress objected to the Blair statement and the media hardly reported the story, suggesting that tolerance of illegal and immoral activity now pervades the system. As former Reagan Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein has commented, the claimed authority to suspend one’s constitutional rights overseas can be extended to anyone in the United States by declaring one an enemy combatant under the terms of the Military Commissions Act. Jose Padilla was denied his constitutional rights to a fair trial even though he was an American citizen and was arrested in Chicago, not overseas. Can we anticipate extrajudicial killing of American citizens in America as part of the war on terror? Of course we can.
Three strikes and you’re out, Mr. Obama. Your government stands for preemptive killing and missile strikes on people living in countries with which America is not at war, lets torturers and torture enablers go free, and has asserted the right to assassinate its own citizens anywhere in the world based on secret evidence. Ronald Reagan once described his vision of America as a shining city on a hill. Over the past ten years the shining city has become the ultimate rogue nation, pumped up with power and hubris in spite of the clearly visible signs of decline and moving inexorably towards a catastrophic fall.
Source / Anti-War
Fluxed Up World
The banks that control the world’s supply of money are no better than counterfeiters – and their system of juggling debt has left the global economy teetering on the brink of ruin. Convicted fraudster Darius Guppy offers a provocative personal view.
Liz Cheney says terrorists have no rights. Also, you're a terrorist.
Flexible Afghanistan War Objectives: And the Agony Grinds On
By Ramzy Baroud / March 6, 2010
Washington and its willing mouthpieces in the media have for years been trying to sell us the preposterous war in Afghanistan. While they attempt to convince us that the war is predicated on a faultless military logic and moral wisdom, it remains in fact a tragic adventure with no decipherable objectives, and involving several countries, private contractors, and all sorts of firms seeking to make a quick buck.
The intellectual cowardice of some should not blind the majority to the fact that the war in Afghanistan is morally indefensible and militarily unwinnable.
The decision of the US to continue with its brutal military adventurism in Afghanistan can only be understood in terms of its limited and highly selfish political logic.
Let us start by ruling out some of the ridiculous assumptions that have permeated this war since it began in 2001. First, we were told that the war was aimed at eliminating al-Qaida. However, a retired CIA Station Chief who has served in the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff, has claimed that, “al-Qaida is finished in Afghanistan.” He further argued that, “the Obama administration, like its predecessor, claims we are fighting terrorism there. That is simply not true. It is a pure counterinsurgency issue.”
Indeed, even the most ardent war hawks are exerting little effort to delineate the link between Taliban and al-Qaida. If the link is infused, it is readily unleashed to demonstrate al-Qaida’s links to Pakistan’s tribal areas, thus urging ‘action’ in that part of the country, and not in Afghanistan.
Thanks to the random military ‘strategy’ of the US and its allies, al-Qaida has spread in all sorts of directions and branched off to many al-Qaida offshoots in various parts of the world. Without a centralized leadership in the military sense, al-Qaida inspired groups and individuals now are now working for localized sets of objectives and respond to different stimuli.
So if it’s not al-Qaida that is inspiring the awesome, although largely futile firepower and military surges in Afghanistan, then what is? This is where the idealists come in. They talk of nation-building, Western-style democracy, regional security and so on. Some of them genuinely mean what they say, and some don’t believe the present military surges and Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s rural area fight to the death will yield its intended results. Still, they contribute to the illusion that good intentions – starting with the initial hype about saving Afghani women, then ‘liberation’ from foreign terrorists, then democracy and nation-building, and so on – had anything to do with this bloody war. With their insistence on using such positive terminology, they continue to provide Washington’s political elites – and Kabul’s as well – with the benefit of the doubt that while we may disagree with their methods, we still trust their overall intentions.
It behooves those democracy-inspired, nation-building enthusiasts to remember that Washington has done much to stifle genuine democracy movements around the world since its occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. Palestine and Lebanon remain the most obvious examples. As for nation-building, compare the astronomical amounts invested in financing the destructive war in Afghanistan and to prop up the corrupt puppet regime in Kabul, to the miniscule sums devoted to enhancing the country’s stone-aged economic infrastructure. The US military budget for this year is set to exceed $693 billion, not counting the $42 billion set aside for Homeland Security. According to CostofWar.com, the financial cost of war in Afghanistan alone has exceeded the $256 billion; both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are approaching the $1 trillion threshold.
The war in Afghanistan cannot possibly be defended on any moral grounds. The official death count of Afghani civilians in 2009 is estimated at 2,412. The actual death toll is probably far, far higher, as polls do not account for the many more who perished in distant villages across the south and east, areas that are not accessible to outsiders. The death of these innocent people alone should silence the few who still speak of ethics and morality in relation to the disastrous war.
But not everyone is so overtly misguided in their assessment of the war. Some fully understand that the war in Afghanistan is a self-seeking, political and strategic venture. Still, they giddily welcome it, including one Con Coughlin whose recent article in The Telegraph was tellingly entitled, ‘India and Pakistan must bury the hatchet for the Taliban to be crushed.’
The India-Pakistan rapprochement is seen as beneficial only insofar as its potential to ‘crush’ someone else. And considering that that someone else is not a band of aimless terrorists, but a well-grounded, grass-roots, popular insurgency, the price of that “crushing” is likely to be tens of thousands of innocent people. Coughlin uses the same haughty and generalized language of “militant Islamist groups” to be crushed, failing to understand or appreciate the distinctiveness of each and every situation, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else. Instead, Coughlin nonchalantly expresses concern about the danger these militants pose to “the survival of the ruling classes” in Islamabad. What a compelling reason to get Richard Holbrooke, Washington’s special envoy to the region all fired up over the need to preserve the survival of the ruling classes, not just in Islamabad, but in Kabul and Delhi as well.
The war in Afghanistan has turned into find-an-objective-as-you-go military march to nowhere. It is proving futile and indefensible on every ground, be it political or military or moral. Moreover, as Haviland Smith concluded in his grim assessment, “it doesn’t really matter that we think of ourselves as benevolent liberators, it only matters that Afghans think of us as foreigners occupiers.” When will we all face up to this reality?
[Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.]
Source / Z-Net
Fluxed Up World
