Tag: Afghanistan

Osama is dead!

Witnessing various reactions on the radio and internet today over the U.S. finally finding and killing Osama bin Laden — though when and how the U.S. knew where he was, not to mention what justification they had to go into Pakistan to get him, are well on their way to becoming the “stuff of legend” (surprizing, I know) — I can’t help but feel concerned over what comes next. Frankly, exactly how his death equals “justice” is beyond me, and is beside my point.

So instead of assigning any relevance towards an event I, not only couldn’t possibly know at this point, but probably will not understand when its implications inevitably come to fruition, I’ll simply urge everyone to read Chris Hedges Speaks on Osama bin Laden’s Death for some much needed context. In part;

So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. And we had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion. [But] [w]e responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond. They wanted us to speak the language of violence. […] These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of occupation — the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed. […] The tragedy of the Middle East is one where we proved incapable of communicating in any other language than the brute and brutal force of empire…

I think Mr. Herbivore said it quite succinctly on Twitter today, “SO glad that the US and NATO forces have no reason to be killing people in Afghanistan anymore. What a relief that’s over!”

The Iraq War Logs

Yesterday I posted an entry citing a talk Chris Hedges recently gave concerning his new book, The Death of the Liberal Class. In said talk he mentioned a few bits of interest that have relevance to what I’m writing about today, illusion and war. Speaking of illusion and war, on Friday WikiLeaks “leaked” the largest classified military leak “that has ever been released into the historic record”, some 391,832 documents, otherwise known as “The Iraq War Logs”.

Putting aside the predictable reactions and infantile tactics we’re now witnessing from, both, the Obama Administration, and their lackey’s, the mainstream media, nothing I’ve read or watched since Friday is, at least in part, as powerful as what Josh Steiber wrote in an open letter to members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, An Open Letter on the Needed Response to the Upcoming Wikileaks Report;

I write on behalf of those around the world who are ashamed to have to listen to the President, along with military and political officials, express their great angst over leaks while seeming to ignore the realities of what those leaks reveal about the very nature of these wars. When you fail to take account for what has been done in our names, funded by our taxes, and fought by those who believe that the U.S. should represent something noble, we will search for and tell the truth; if you are ashamed by citizens practicing the accountability that our country was designed to demand, then that says more about you than about us…

I’m urging people who are not so willing to drink the Kool-Aid to check out a the aforementioned letter by Josh Stieber, a couple video’s, featuring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (explaining the logs and defending the logs), and lastly Friday’s Democracy Now! appearance by America’s “most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971”.

Please do yourself a few bits of important reading and watching today…

The Same Standard?

What’s with people? You’d think with the debacle of the “War On Terror,” and Iraq specifically, American “Conservative’s” would scrutinize what they have to say a little harder before talking their shit, eh? I know, how dare I.

So it’s been 10 days since WikiLeaks released 76,000 classified Afghan war documents — and yet some 15,000 additional documents have been deliberately withheld, for the very reason they’re being accused of disregarding already, that being security — that describes the war as something other than what the Imperial Propagandist’s wish us to believe. For the record, I think it’s reprehensible! For attempting to hold Barack Obama to his “promise” of transparency? Where does WikiLeaks and its founder and “editor-in-chief,” Julian Assange, get off? Don’t they know the American Government is not responsible to anyone? Least of all its citizens? I mean, fuck, right?

But what’s done is done. And we now have what has been described as a “game changer” by some, but the American Government itself, up ’til last week at least, has labelled it as “nothing new?” Yet their attacks on WikiLeaks and Assange, have increased? All led by the irresponsible Right-Wing Douche-bag’s who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, on the best of days? Am I missing something? I can’t believe I’m typing this, what happened to the American Government? It wasn’t that long ago where they, while under the rule of George W. Bush, chose a stance and, rather arrogantly, stuck with it all the way into the ground!

I’ve said this before, here goes one more time, is this what hope brought us?

Continue reading The Same Standard?

Absolutely Sickening!

There is very little, of value anyway, I could add to most of today’s Democracy Now’s broadcast [1] [2], so I’ll simply cite a bunch of words Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger for Salon.com, spoke in said episode;

“My concern with the discussions that have been triggered, though, is that there seems to be the suggestion, in many circles […] that this is some sort of extreme event, or this is some sort of aberration, and that’s the reason why we’re all talking about it and are horrified about it. In fact, it’s anything but rare. The only thing that’s rare about this is that we happen to know about it and are seeing it take place on video. This is something that takes place on a virtually daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where we invade and bomb and occupy. And the reason why there are hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq and thousands of dead in Afghanistan is because this is what happens constantly when we are engaged in warfare in those countries. […] This is what war is. This is what the United States does in these countries. And that, I think, is the crucial point to note, along with the fact that the military fought tooth and nail to prevent this video from surfacing, precisely because they knew that it would shed light on what their actual behavior is during war, and instead of the propaganda to which we’re typically subjected…”

The reality of war and what is asked of those who carry it out, by a certain breed of psychopath, is absolutely sickening!