Putting the blame where it belongs

In line with my post yesterday in which I placed the blame squarely where it belongs (and unlike Digby, I do not put the blame at the feet of Republicans  – as misguided and hateful and uncaring as some of them may be). 

No matter what you may hear about the attacks in Afghanistan, the attacks were not done by Taliban “infiltrators.” 

From UNDispatch:

This Attack is Different

Una Moore

Kabul, Afghanistan – Foreigners have been killed in Afghanistan before, and today’s attack was not the first fatal attack on UN staff.  But it was different than previous fatal attacks. Very different. The killers were ordinary residents of a city deemed peaceful enough to be one of the first places transferred to the control of Afghan security forces. The men who broke into the UN compound, set fires and killed eight people weren’t Taliban, or henchmen of a brutal warlord, or members of a criminal gang. They weren’t even armed when the protests began –they took weapons from the UN guards who were their first victims.

Foreigners committed to assisting in the rebuilding of Afghanistan have long accepted the possibility that they might die at the hands of warring parties, but this degree of violence from ordinary citizens is not something most of us factored into our decision to work here.

Tonight, the governor of Balkh province (of which Mazar-i-Sharif is the capital) is telling the international media that the men who sacked the UN compound were Taliban infiltrators. That’s rubbish. Local clerics drove around the city with megaphones yesterday, calling residents to protest the actions of a small group of attention-seeking, bigoted Americans. Then, during today’s protest, someone announced that not just one, but hundreds of Korans had been burned in America. A throng of enraged men rushed the gates of the UN compound, determined to draw blood.  Had the attackers been gunmen, they would likely have been killed before they could breach the compound.

I was sharing a meal with aid worker friends when I heard the news. Phones began buzzing. Security officers were demanding that my friends return to their compounds immediately. Cars had already been sent to retrieve them. Lockdown was in effect.

This is not the beginning of the end for the international community in Afghanistan. This is the end. Terry Jones and others will continue to pull anti-Islam stunts and opportunistic extremists here will use those actions to incite attacks against foreigners. Unless we, the internationals, want our guards to fire on unarmed protesters from now on, the day has come for us to leave Afghanistan.

The time has comme to get out. Now.

Time to learn Mandarin

A few months back I wrote a post titled This is why aren’t leaving. 

From the NYT article linked in my post:

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.

“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.

And then there’s this:

China to Tighten Limits on Rare Earth Exports (NYT)

China’s commerce ministry announced on Tuesday in Beijing a steep reduction in export quotas for rare earth metals in the first months of next year, a move that threatens to cause further difficulties for manufacturers already struggling with short supplies and soaring prices.

The reduction in quotas for the early months of 2011 — a 35 percent drop in tonnage from the first half of this year — is the latest in a series of measures by Beijing that has gradually curtailed much of the world’s supply of rare earths.

China mines more than 95 percent of the global supply of the metals, which are essential for smartphones, electric cars, many computer components and a range of military hardware. In addition, the country mines 99 percent of the least common rare earths, the so-called heavy rare earths that are used in trace amounts but are crucial to many clean energy applications and electronics.

I think I need to learn Chinese. Seriously.

Why we’re not leaving

L.A. Times

Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with regional leaders Saturday to sign an agreement for a massive energy project that could eventually net his country billions of dollars in revenue: a 1,000-mile natural gas pipeline whose proposed route cuts through the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.

As if to highlight the complications facing the project, at least 26 people were killed in attacks Friday and Saturday, including a Taliban commander and several people believed to be with a private security firm, Afghan and NATO officials said.

The United States strongly supports the proposed pipeline because it could draw Central Asia’s significant energy resources to Pakistan and India and bypass Iran, Washington’s top adversary in the region.

[ . . . ]

But the proposed $7.6-billion TAPI Gas Pipeline project and any revenue it may generate may be years away. The planned route passes from Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic, through violent territory still unsettled by insurgencies, including the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, and the Pakistani city of Quetta, which is considered the home of the Taliban leadership.

Where to start?

The words are in my head, but they don’t seem to want to come out my fingertips to the keyboard. I carry on conversations with nobody during my hour-long commute to and from work each day. I think, I need to write about that, and then I get home and peruse the blogs instead, or read Becoming Vegetarian, or play with the dogs.

There’s a big part of me that’s mighty discouraged and yet I take solace that there are people like Glenn Greenwald and his readers. I take solace in the fact that I have friends who are as horrified and disgusted as I am. 

I’ve taken to listening to “progressive” talk radio again just to see if there is some sort of awareness out there of the cliff that we are heading for and I hear rumblings. But for the most part it’s just a rehash of how awful the Republicans are,  Sarah Palin!!, Glenn Beck!!  and very little examining of themselves or their supposed leaders. Yeah, Republicans suck. Got it. Now, what are you going to do about it? Dave Marsh, whose show airs on Sundays, and listened to by me for the first time last Sunday, gets it. It isn’t about what THEY are doing, its about what WE are doing.

It’s funny, in a sad sort of way. There are some who were virulently opposed to Hillary Clinton who are now upset that Obama is not the liberal avenging angel they thought he’d be, but nearly to a man (and nearly all the show hosts are men – way to go progressive radio) they just can’t seem to admit their mistake. A couple of them step off the reservation every once in a while, and I even once heard Cenk Uygur admit that, knowing what he knows now, he would have voted for Hillary. Why? Because, he realizes, she wouldn’t have let the Republicans roll her. Nuh-duh dude.

Some of them are actually catching on that things are progressing exactly as Obama has intended. Perhaps the Alan Simpson episode has finally made it plain.  

Shirley Sherrod was fired when a snippet of a speech she gave on class warfare was taken out of context by a right wing rat-fucker. Alan Simpson, on the other hand, full bore antagonist of the every American worker and every Social Security recipient, and not taken out of context,  remains, with the full support of Barack Obama, as the co-chair of Obama’s Deficit Catfood Commission which is working in secret (so much for transparency) and has Social Security in its sights. Social Security, which has not added One Thin Dime to the deficit.

 There’s a class war alright. It’s just not the one the the Tea Partiers think is happening. (There isn’t enough time this morning for me to comment on the goings on on the other side,  but don’t worry, I’ll get there too).

In other news . . .

Tonight President Obama is going to give his version of “Mission Accomplished” speech. Oh yay. What was the mission again? Joe Biden was in Iraq for the “turnover” ceremony.  Maliki claims Iraq is now capable of handling all threats on their own. Except when they can’t I suppose.

“Iraq today is sovereign and independent,” Mr Maliki told Iraqis in a televised address.

“Our security forces will take the lead in ensuring security and safeguarding the country and removing all threats that the country has to weather, internally or externally.”

[...]

Around 50,000 US troops will remain in Iraq and will focus on supporting Iraqi forces. They will not participate in combat missions without a request from the Iraqi authorities, or if they are acting in self-defence.

The new Iraqi air force is still in its infancy, our correspondent adds.

Air cover for Iraqi ground operations is provided almost exclusively by US planes and helicopters, he says.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan …

Afghanistan bomb attacks kill twenty-one US soldiers in 48 hours

Deaths have risen consistently each year since 2001. Afghan police and civilians have suffered far higher casualties.

The coalition blames the rise in troop deaths partly on the influx of reinforcements, which is allowing commanders to target previously untouched insurgent safe havens where rebels are mounting stiff resistance.

Gen David Petraeus, senior US and Nato commander in the country, warned last week fighting would “get harder before it gets easier”.

 Sigh.

I’m off to work. Catch you all later.

Ain’t it the truth!

Cultural change at the barrel of a gun?

Peter Daou’s heart is in the right place when he tweets:

Negative reaction from (male) liberal peers when I suggest oppression, rape & slaughter of women/girls might justify military intervention

And:

Keep getting asked if we should also consider intervention to save raped and ravaged women/girls in Congo and elsewhere. Answer: of course.

I understand where Daou is coming from. He is arguably the the most committed male champion of women’s rights I’ve seen in my lifetime. Unfortunately, military intervention solely on the behalf of women is just not what happens. Ever.

I’m torn over the current Time cover. On the one hand, I know that this issue must be made real to the rest of the world and images like this one assist in that goal. On the other hand, the use of the image to imply that ending our military operations in Afganistan will lead to more Aisha’s is beyond the pale. We must stay in Afghanistan, we are told, or terrible things will happen to women!

When I look at the cover, I see what has been done so many times: women being used as pawns, as currency, as bargaining chips. Their bodies are being used to manipulate our emotions and to fan the flames of war.

But there is an elision here between these women’s oppression and what the U.S. military presence can and should do about it, which in turn simplifies the complexities of the debate and turns it into, “Well, do you want to help Aisha or not?”

How is this any better than using the fear of another 9/11 (or worse!) to both dampen dissent on one side and to gain public support for the case for invading Iraq on the other? This woman’s image is being used as cover for our continued military presence in Afghanistan, pure and simple.

Abuse of women, physical and psychological is a global fact. I don’t write this saying I have a solution since atrocities against Afghani women are deplorable and it has yet to be seen if we can support the women of Afghanistan the way we would want to or would be the most effective. But I do take issue with the consistent practice in Western media to use women’s bodies to prove a point, because it creates a fantasy about what our motives are, obscuring the politics that are at play.

We must stay to protect the women, we are told. Really? Our military is already there and their presence did nothing to save Aisha.

The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband’s house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn’t run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha’s brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose.

This didn’t happen 10 years ago, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It happened last year.

Short of giving every woman and girl a military escort, and one that be with her 24/7, how do we protect all the Afghani from the culture they swim in? The culture that sees women as not human, as property, as deserving of having their ears and noses slashed off for disobeying their husband? Does anyone see this culture changing at the barrel of a gun, or the bomb from a drone?

A gun is useful to stop a thief or murderer. I’ve never seen a bullet cause a genuine change of heart. Would that they could. I’d take up arms to make it happen.

I don’t have an answer. Just saying my piece.

Just lovely

Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. has poured more than $100 million into upgrading the Kajaki hydropower plant, the biggest source of electricity in south Afghanistan. And it plans on spending much more, in an effort to woo local sympathies away from the Taliban insurgency.

Yet, one of the biggest beneficiaries of this American-taxpayer-financed project are the Taliban themselves.

Since U.S.-funded repairs of a turbine at the Kajaki plant doubled its capacity in October, nearly half of the total electrical output has flowed to districts in Helmand province where the Taliban administer the grid, Afghan officials say. In those districts, residents pay their monthly electricity bills directly to the insurgents, who use the proceeds to fund their war with American and British troops.

It gets worse.

The Taliban’s continuing stranglehold over wide swathes of Helmand means that the provincial government here must seek an informal accommodation with the insurgents on sharing Kajaki’s juice. A large part of this insurgent electricity network is used for irrigation, Helmand officials say, boosting the area’s main crop—opium poppies.

Wow. Providing material support to the insurgency and the illegal drug trade in one fell swoop. Perfect. Just perfect.

Coming to their senses? I doubt it.

Far be it from me to defend Michael Steele or Barack Obama’s pathetic asses. Live by the sword, die by the sword and all that.

By now most everyone has heard about the big-ass can of worms that Micheal Steele opened the other day when he spoke the truth. Not that everything he said was true. But most of it was. You know it, and so do I. Let’s get the stupid part out of the way.

Rather than playing the standard version of Tribalism™ which would have consisted of throwing spit balls at the Democrats and tell them how they’re Doing! It! Wrong! when it comes to Afghanistan, Steele went for the Hail Mary shot and, in a statement that would make 1984‘s Ministry of Truth look like pikers, placed the entire Afghanistan fiasco at Barack Obama’s feet. 

“Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.”

Michael Steele attempted to rewrite history and thought he could get away with it.  Certainly we’ve see very little fact-checking and ever so much stenography by the media over the past decades, so who can blame Steele for thinking that no one would call him on this? And of course, the impotent Democrats would take umbrage. Eh, par for the course. But poor Michael Steele, his own party wants to can him.

So, we’ve got The Stupid out of the way. Now for The Truth of his statement.

“Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed.”

I hope Mr. Steele will forgive me if I don’t get all excited about his sudden epiphany.  I take that back.  I don’t give a flying you-know-what if he forgives me or not. 

Never one to ignore an opportunity to have an intelligent discussion on our war policy be as tribalist as the Republicans, the DNC issued a statement that, as Glenn Greenwald put it, continued the Cycle of Stupidity. Sounding just like Republicans, the DNC issue a statement that sounds just like the same sort of crap the Republicans threw at anyone who dared to question Bush’s wars. Using every trope in the book, be it walking away from the fight (shades of Viet Nam), 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! (see Family Guy), or inferring that opposition to never-ending war doesn’t Support The Troops (yeah, because wanting them continually in harm’s way, rather than safe at home is so repellent), the DNC doubles down.

And they wonder why their donors are slipping away.

Yeah, I know. Michael Steele is an ass. He says stupid partisan shit. News at eleven. And Steele, gave more ammo to those in his party that would like to see him gone.

And lost in all of this faux outrage is the truth of Michael Steele’s statement and the question he (for partisan gain) and millions before him (for solid reasons) are asking: Why are we still there?

Fareed Zakaria is asking too.

“If Al Qaeda is down to 100 men there at the most,” Zakaria asked, “why are we fighting a major war?”

Zakaria noted that the war is costing the U.S. a fortune in both blood and treasure. “Last month alone there were more than 100 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan.,” the CNN host said. “That’s more than one allied death for each living Al Qaeda member in the country in just one month.

“The latest estimates are that the war in Afghanistan will cost more than $100 billion in 2010 alone. That’s a billion dollars for every member of Al Qaeda thought to be living in Afghanistan in one year.”

Maybe, just maybe we might be able to have this conversation? Can we finally talk about how endless war is sucking us dry? That pouring billions, no trillions, of dollars into this rat hole is killing us as a democracy?

To sum up, the President can do all of the following, in most cases without meaningful appeal or a trial: execute Americans, imprison people indefinitely, spy on anyone he wants, forbid people from flying, torture people, kidnap people, forbid people from associating with whoever they want, and deny them the right to speak freely anywhere except in small cordoned off zones.

This is America?

This is what the American dream has come to?

Your founders warned you about this.  Warned you that standing armies and unrestrained banks would cost you your freedom.

And the sad thing is that most Americans are ok with it.

Are Americans who don’t believe that everyone is endowed with inalienable rights still Americans worth the name?

Can we finally talk intelligently about this, without the rhetoric? Oh, who am I kidding? Of course not. The American people might come out on top, and the PTB will never let that happen.

Take it away Major General Smedley Butler.

Full text here.

What kind of expense report do they file for this?

Well, this makes sense. Not.

Private security contractors protecting the convoys that supply U.S. military bases in Afghanistan are paying millions of dollars a week in “passage bribes” to the Taliban and other insurgent groups to travel along Afghan roads, a congressional investigation released Monday has found.

The payments, which are reimbursed by the U.S. government, help fund the very enemy the U.S. is attempting to defeat and renew questions about the U.S. dependence on private contractors, who outnumber American troops in Afghanistan, 130,000 to 93,000.

Banging head against desk.

The report alleges that neither the contactors nor the military know specifically how the trucks arrive safely at bases when many of the country’s roads are regular targets of Taliban attacks.

The report quoted e-mails, PowerPoint presentations and meeting notes of HNT officials alerting local military commanders to the problem but the report found the military did little in response.

“The Department of Defense has been largely blind to potential strategic consequences of its supply chain contingency contracting. U.S. military logisticians have little visibility into what happens to their trucks on the road and virtually no understanding of how security is actually provided,” the report found.

Unbelieveable.

This is why we aren’t leaving

Here’s why we aren’t leaving Afghanistan.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

There isn’t any way in hell we’re gonna walk away from that and let the Afghans decide their own future.

American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.

So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.

Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.

See? Not leaving. The excuse will be we must stay to help Afghanistan build this new industry. So while millions and millions of Americans continue to languish, we will continue to pour our blood and treasure into Afghanistan. The money quote:

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region.