Chomsky on the Wall St. protesters, Bin Laden, & Israel

In this interview with Russia Today (RT) television Noam Chomsky discusses three main topics:

1. The current protests occurring in New York across from Wall Street and spreading throughout the world
2. The legal framework and international norms associated with kidnapping, torture, and murder
3. The current international versus American-Israeli perspective on the emergence of a Palestinian state.

For the most part I think what Chomsky has to say is true.

Criticisms leveled by Chomsky regarding economic matters and the control of the legislative process by corporations has been shown by this recent depression to have been wholly correct. America's political system is so badly broken that not even the greedy politicians can claim that the system works for anyone other than Goldman Sachs.

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What I found disappointing about this interview is Chomsky's rather weak argument that America is a lawless country because it assassinated Osama Bin Laden, invaded the sovereign nation of Pakistan, then dumped Bin Laden's body at sea. Unlike a great number of person on the left, Chomsky has never claimed that there were grand conspiracies at work during the 9-11 attack. What he does do is make the rather odd legalistic argument that everyone under American jurisprudence is entitled to the claim of being "innocence" until found guilty. That statement is true, but misleading. Bin Laden was never after 9-11 a conventional criminal. Rather, Bin Laden was the leader of an international organization whose purpose was to engage in terrorism that indiscriminately killed as many people as possible to draw America into a wider conflict in the Middle East. Bin Laden freely admitted and repeatedly boasted of his multiple attacks on American assets abroad and on 9-11. If we are talking about US law, under public law 107-40, the US Congress authorized the president of the United States “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Equally, under international law the UN charter provides nation states the right to use lethal force in individual and collective self-defense.

Second, Chomsky makes the error of claiming that the assassination has inflamed Pakistan's civilian population and enraged the quasi-military rulers of the state, thus exacerbating US-Muslim tensions and further destabilizing the Middle East. What Pakistan or its illiterate masses thinks about American killing of Taliban or Al Qaeda leaders on their territory is irrelevant. Pakistan exists because the United States for decades has been propping up this little Islamic wasteland run by kleptocrats and military dunces. The country is a failed state that exists as the central exporter of international terrorism across the world. What has become completely evident after the assassination is that individuals within Pakistan and its government have been hiding and protecting Bin Laden for years. Given the overall lawlessness and criminal actions of the Pakistani state, there is little reason anyone should consider anything that this country wants as legitimate.

Chomsky further states that Obama has become even more reckless than Bush in using drone attacks on targets. The problem with this statement is that is exactly what Obama didn't do when he sent military personnel to kill Bin Laden. Today Bin Laden's family members that were hiding with him in Pakistan are alive and not dead.  Something that Bin Laden's victims cannot claim.

I for one am in complete agreement with UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, who said

“The death of Osama bin Laden … is a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism…Personally, I am very much relieved by the news that justice has been done.”

For all his faults, President Obama did the right thing and all civilized people should applaud his actions, instead of trying to score cheap rhetorical points in defending the indefensible.

Americans Negotiating with Taliban Impostor!

Over and over, the impression given by our marginally elected politicians is that they and their well educated bureaucracy, if given enough time and effort are capable of implementing effective leadership and results across the globe.  The Afghan war is a typical example, in which we the citizens of the West have been promised that the country would be modernized and made safe from the Taliban.

Despite nearly a decade there, neither NATO nor America seems capable of winning a war against a fifth rate nation.  Why is that?  The reason might have something to do with the type of people who we have running the show over there.  Consider this and file it under "My God, they can't be this Fucking Stupid!"

According to international newspapers, both NATO and America have been negotiating with an impostor who claimed to be a high ranking Taliban commander.

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who traveled from in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge.

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.

The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old American-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in American aid.

That's right.  The US government, including  Gen. David Petreaus the US Senior military commander in the region, was commenting on the progress they were having in negotiating with... a fucking impostor!  The impostor who for months was taking their money and pretending to be interested in halting the Talban's offensives in Afghanistan against NATO troops.  According to others:

The man may have been a Taliban agent. “The Taliban are cleverer than the Americans and our own intelligence service,” said a senior Afghan official who is familiar with the case. “They are playing games.”

Brilliant!  At this point any statements made by anyone in any Western government can be considered useless.  We are fighting semi-literate tribesmen, who have no formal military training, no firm logistical support lines, no long term financing for their guerrilla campaigns, and no discernible resources; other than that provided by the duplicitous and corrupt Pakistani.  Yet we are being told that the war will last for another five years!  Send Biden, Obama, and every member of congress and their adult relatives to do a tour of duty in Afghanistan and this war will end tomorrow.

Open Advice to President Obama

Dear Barack,

I know you don't care what I think, with all those high-paid clowns dispensing all that brilliant strategy to you on how to piss-off those loser hippies who funded, supported, and fought for you across America in 2008, but here it is.

You're a bit like Bubba, in that despite all those flowery speeches about hope or being from a place called hope (who can get it straight anymore) you've given over the past few years, we really don't know what you believe.  I mean, the nihilists and brain-dead masses think you're a Marxist Fascist with ties to Kenyan revolutionaries.  I don't know what that means either, other than interpreting it as an odd way to just call you a nigger.  I've never really thought you were the second coming of FDR, but you were a better option than the Queen corporatist Madam Clinton.  People liked what you had to say and what you represented, but back then it mostly was about voting against eight hard and dismal years under the Bush junta.  However, you waffled and instead of steamrolling what remained of the right wing yahoo's and pushing through a progressive and liberal agenda, you coddled and capitulated to their bizarre demands.  Let's recap:

• Did exactly what Bush said he would do in ending the Iraq war; that being leaving 50K troops to babysit the Shia thugocracy in Baghdad.
• Escalated the Afghan war, which everyone has already admitted is lost.
• Caved into special interests in the health care bill, by eliminating the public option and preventing the  importation of drugs from Canada.
• Created a health care bill that would force individuals to purchase lame health care coverage and subsidise the crooked insurance companies.
• Pushed through a special debt committee, filled with right-wing ideologues and hacks demanding that Social Security be privatized under the guise of bi-partisanship.
• Bailed out your friends and big-donor buddies in the banks, but left the rest of the nation submerged with debt and ever-expanding (and now illegal) foreclosures
• Failed to prosecute any of the major players in the Bush junta for war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of the Constitution, and numerous illegal acts and unethical behavior
• Advanced the post-911 security-surveillance state to new levels
• Advanced the military-industrial complex in the face of mounting debts and limited resources
• Let Israel make a complete mockery of you, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and your entire administration relating to the Palestinian issue
• Allowed the minority blue dog Democrats to dictate the terms of major legislation, so they could retain their congressional seats (which as every poll indicates, they won't)
• Put in charge Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior, effectively creating what others have referred to as Bush's 3rd term with respect to governmental regulation and resource management of public assets
• Colluded with BP to lie to the public on the scope and severity of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

People who voted for you, in the deluded belief that government could mend it ways, are looking at a moribund economy, a Democratic Party that is incapable of defending themselves against corrupt Republican and Tea Party slander, and a crypto-fascist uprising funded by the same assholes whose jobs and balance sheets you saved from complete Armageddon.  A lot of people said early on that you were playing three-dimensional chess and were way smarter than the rest of the dolts on the Hill.  It's pretty clear that not only don't you have game, but you're really not as bright as those Harvard and Columbia degrees might imply.

So Barack, if you want to do something meaningful, do yourself a favor and grow a couple, because this nonsense you've been pedalling for the past 21-months is getting tired and no one is going to vote for you if you keep selling the same recycled shit that Bush left behind on the White House's going-out of business sale in November 2008.

Fuck-you very much.

The Lifer.

Afghan Civilian Killings Amongst the Worst Yet

The NY Times has another article on the morass that has unfolded in Afghanistan, involving "a drug-addled Army unit"  that killed Afghan civilians for sport and posed "for pictures with victims and [took] body parts as trophies."

The article outlines the various prosecutions that have arisen from combat related conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.

Some cases gained a measure of notoriety, including a rape and multiple killing in Iraq in 2006 that resulted in lengthy sentences for several soldiers. The Marine Corps, too, has dealt with high-profile cases, like the killing by Marines in 2005 of 24 Iraqis in Haditha — though prosecution efforts in that case largely collapsed.

But a case being heard before a military court at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Seattle could surpass all that have come before in the two wars.

The case has received little coverage in the broader American press.  Human rights organizations and legal authorities publicly recognize that bringing forward successful prosecution of criminal acts committed by soldiers in conflict zones is difficult due to the often spartan evidence and limited cooperation from civilian populations.

“The large majority of civilian harm in both Iraq and Afghanistan takes place during legitimate military operations,” said Sarah Holewinksi, executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. “But because of very poor record keeping on the part of all the warring parties, we really don’t know who has been harmed, how many have been harmed and how they have been harmed.”

In this particular case though, video and photographic evidence created by the perpetrators and their own statements to military investigators strongly support the prosecution's claims. If convicted, it is certain that none of these men will ever see freedom again.

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Previous blog entries that I've made on this subject are here, here, and here.

Natural Born Killers, Afghan War Vets

Newspapers across the globe are starting to elaborate on the outrageous criminal actions of the newest batch of natural born killers that the US military has produced.  Gruesome details of drug induced homicide, random killings, and the dismembering of Afghan civilians are coming to light.

The Boston Globe has a short summary in its editorial commentary:

SIX YEARS after the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, the Army has another heinous atrocity on its hands in Afghanistan. It has charged five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division with killing three innocent Afghan civilians earlier this year. Moreover, the Army has to answer for the fact that a member of the soldiers’ platoon contacted his father in the United States about his concerns after the first killing and the father did all he could to alert the Army to what had happened — to no avail. The Army must proceed with court hearings, but it should also investigate why the father’s initial warning did not set off an inquiry that could have kept the second and third killings from occurring.

I have already discussed this matter in two previous blog entries (here and here), in which I made comparisons to similar conduct by the Americans in Iraq and Vietnam, as well as previous atrocities committed by the Soviets during their occupation of Afghanistan.

The NY Times has an excerpt of a conversation, from a military interview of one of the main defendant's in the case, Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock:

“[Sgt. Calvin Gibbs] kind of placed me and Winfield off over here so we had a clean line of sight for this guy and, you know, he pulled out one of his grenades, an American grenade, popped it, throws the grenade, and tells me and Winfield: ‘All right, wax this guy. Kill this guy, kill this guy,’ ” Specialist Morlock said in the video.

Referring to the Afghan, the investigator asked: “Did you see him present any weapons? Was he aggressive toward you at all?”

Specialist Morlock replied: “No, not at all. Nothing. He wasn’t a threat.”

It's pretty obvious why only a few outlets within America have sought to present this story until this point.  The recklessness and complete lack of ethics in which these soldiers have acted is not an aberration; rather, it is a symptom of the rot and moral degeneracy that the Af-Pak/Iraq wars have instilled in America's newest recruits to active combat.  Does anyone actually believe that this whole war is somehow ever going to end well for either the people in Afghanistan or America?  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, said today that "America was never going to leave Afghanistan."  If that is true, the intentional and unintentional murder of Afghan civilians by US troops will never end either.

Penalizing Competence in the US Military

Tom Ricks has posted a couple of articles on Lt. Col Michael Mori.  According to Mori, the Pentagon was unhappy with his defense of an Australian enemy combatant at Guantanamo in 2003 and thus delayed his promotion for three years.

During the trial period, Mori said that the tribunal system was fundamentally flawed and that the government did not want to give his client a fair trial.  Marine Corps Times quotes Mori as stating to an interviewer, “I think his case has become political and … the first military commissions can’t be acquittals. They couldn’t afford that.” 

Today, he is now suing the Navy for what he claims is capricious treatment toward him for zealously executing his duty.

A followup commentary by a former JAG in Ricks' blog underlies the absolute nonsense that the military is the best setting for evaluating the criminality of foreign combatants.

I don't know anything about Mori's case, but I do know that if you want a long and successful career as an Army lawyer, you'd better remember "you are an Army officer first, and a defense counsel second." In other words, don't rock the boat. In fact, I would never advise a JAG to accept a defense counsel post if they hoped for a long career. Too much institutional bias against the necessary work that they are forced to do on behalf of their accused.

War Crime Allegations Threaten to Harm America's Image

Der Spiegel International has a good description and analysis of the Afghan war crimes incident, that I wrote about yesterday, in which American soldiers have been charged with murdering civilians and extracting trophy body parts during active duty.

The article outlines what is at stake:

It involves more than a court imposing a just penalty for brutal murders, and more than compliance with the military code of honor and the Geneva Conventions. At stake is the reputation of a country that, after eight years under the administration of former President George W. Bush, had set out to liberate itself from charges of moral failure. Indeed, the Seattle case raises the question of whether the United States has really turned its back on the days when it gambled away its reputation with images of naked Iraqis forced to form human pyramids in Abu Ghraib prison.

It discusses how this situation will make mockery of the entire narrative under the Obama administration that there has been a clean break from the sordid eight years under George W. Bush.

They allegedly fired at their victims with gusto, collecting trophies that included finger and toe bones, and even a tooth. The charges outline senseless, horrific acts reminiscent of a former America, an America of waterboarding, torture scandals and Guantanamo Bay. They also raise the question of what exactly has changed since the election campaign in which then-candidate Barack Obama promised so much, including a more responsible approach to warfare and the closing of the military prison in Cuba, an important symbol of America's moral failings under former President George W. Bush.

The article also reviews the fact that Soviet forces in their earlier conflict with the Afghan population, also engaged in horrendous criminality:

Feeling helpless in their inability to counter the resistance of the Afghans, Moscow's troops turned to drugs and alcohol. Having lost their inhibitions, they committed atrocities they would never forget. In September 1982, a group of Russian soldiers burned 105 villagers alive in an irrigation canal south of Kabul. Women were thrown naked from helicopters. In a particularly horrific incident, soldiers doused a boy in kerosene and set him on fire in front of his parents

US Troops Harvesting Afghan Body Parts for Souvenirs

According to international newspapers US Army soldiers have been charged in the premeditated murder of Afghan civilians, the beating of one or more fellow soldiers, wrongfully taking and/or possessing photographs of dead bodies, and "keeping trophy body parts from Afghan corpses, including a skull and fingers!"

The soldiers, all from the same company in the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, are charged with a total of 76 crimes.

McClatchy Press elaborates on what they describe as "one of the most serious war crimes cases to emerge from the nine-year war in Afghanistan."

The accused soldiers are with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Wash., Some 3,700 soldiers in the brigade were deployed throughout southern Afghanistan, involved both in combat and in wide-ranging efforts to open schools, train Afghan forces, improve agriculture and take other measures to win the support of civilians.

Vietnam Redux?

This behaviour was also found in the Vietnam war.  The Toledo Blade, in 2003, ran a comprehensive series of reports about Tiger Force, a task force of the United States Army, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade (Separate), 101st Airborne Division.  Investigations conducted by journalist Michael Sallah into the actions of this group during 1967, resulted in the disclosure that members of the task force had engaged in "the routine practice of intentionally killing unarmed Vietnamese villagers including men, women, children, and elderly people" and collecting body parts, which they used in necklaces and personal talismans.  The Blade journalists won the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting.

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Is this what happens when soldiers know that torture and the liquidation of whole swaths of brown skinned people is acceptable?  Where is the outrage from the American population?  Where are the so-called moral leaders of America in proclaiming that this type of activity is not acceptable anywhere, anytime, period? From the very beginnings of the Afghan-Iraqi conflicts, more than just bad-apples have been observed.  Constant, predictable, and enduring levels of violence perpetrated by US forces on foreign populations has occurred: CIA contractors murdering detainees; torture at Guantanamo and black sites across the planet; the shocking and disturbing events at Abu Ghraib; the rape and murder of Iraqi women and children by US troops; helicopter gunships and automated drones liquidating unarmed civilians at weddings and villages in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

What type of victory can be salvaged in this moral wasteland?

Unfunded Liabilities: A Cost Profile of the Iraq War

Joseph E. Stiglitz (Columbia University) and Linda J. Bilmes (Harvard University) wrote in 2008, "The Three Trillion Dollar War."  It was an attempt to examine and describe the full costs of the Iraq war to the general public and contextualize the implications of the American public's decision to allow the Bush junta unfettered war making authority.  Although the original figures were met with usual hostility from cultural managers and propagandists on the right,  additional studies completed by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, concluded that the war would cost American taxpayers at least $3.5 trillion or between $1.4 and $2.2 trillion respectively.

Today they update the assumptions and cost profile of the cost of the Iraq war in a Washington Post opinion piece labelled, "The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond." They briefly expand on four areas that have developed over the past two years: Afghanistan, the Oil market, the Federal debt, and the financial crisis. I've highlighted the most illuminating sections of the article below.

Afghanistan

The Iraq invasion diverted our attention from the Afghan war, now entering its 10th year... It is hard to believe that we would be embroiled in a bloody conflict in Afghanistan today if we had devoted the resources there that we instead deployed in Iraq. A troop surge in 2003 -- before the warlords and the Taliban reestablished control -- would have been much more effective than a surge in 2010.

Oil

We now believe that a more realistic (if still conservative) estimate of the war's impact on prices works out to at least $10 per barrel. That would add at least $250 billion in direct costs to our original assessment of the war's price tag. But the cost of this increase doesn't stop there: Higher oil prices had a devastating effect on the economy.

Federal Debt

There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn't include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.

Financial Crisis

Saying what might have been is always difficult, especially with something as complex as the global financial crisis, which had many contributing factors. Perhaps the crisis would have happened in any case. But almost surely, with more spending at home, and without the need for such low interest rates and such soft regulation to keep the economy going in its absence, the bubble would have been smaller, and the consequences of its breaking therefore less severe. To put it more bluntly: The war contributed indirectly to disastrous monetary policy and regulations.

"A Seamless Transition" on the Afghanistan War

Ralph Nader gives an antiwar speech in front of the White House on December 12 2009. In it he succinctly summarizes a number of the inconsistencies and obvious logical fallacies made by president Obama in pursuit of his current Afghan policy.

I would add, it is getting a bit tiresome to hear propagandists, including Mr. Obama in his West Point speech, lecturing us about the necessity of having to contain illiterate Afghan tribesmen, who live in mud huts and reside in a country that has been undergoing civil war for thirty years and which has no air force, navy, or army, because they somehow pose an existential threat to Western civilization. The Taliban are outnumbered 10:1 by NATO troops and Al Qaida abandoned Afghanistan in 2001 for Pakistan, which is the central nexus of Islamist and Jihadi activity. If America was serious about eradicating Islamist terrorism it would have attacked Pakistan and overthrown the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia.

A trillion dollars is spent every year by the American government, more than all other nations combined, to sustain their Imperial ambitions across the planet. Nearly 60% of discretionary spending in the US goes to the Pentagon, intelligence gathering, nuclear weapons development, the Veterans Administration, and other military operations. America has spent more time and money than it did in either Vietnam or the Second World War to date and is still unable to defeat fifth-rate insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chris Hedges, former war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner for journalism, says the obvious:

The deviousness and stupidity of generals, the absurdity of most war plans and the pathological addiction to violence—which is the only language most who command our armed forces are able to understand—make the American military the gravest threat to [America's] anemic democracy, especially as we head toward economic collapse.

How's that Surge Working Bub?

In 2007, George W Bush authorized the the deployment of more than 20,000 soldiers into Iraq, five additional brigades, and sent the majority of them into Baghdad. It was called "the surge" and was meant, at least as far as the public was concerned, to provide the time and conditions conducive to reconciliation among political and ethnic factions. Considerable discussion was made by American politicians during the 2008 Presidential election about the merits of the surge strategy and the failing Iraq War. President Obama, who as a candidate vigorously opposed the surge, now takes a less explicitly oppositional stance to it as he continues with his predecessor's failed polices of throwing good money after bad decisions. As an example, according to the New York Times,

A series of car bombs on Tuesday ripped through Baghdad in Iraq's deadliest attack in six weeks, a brutal reminder of the threat still posed by an insurgency that has killed thousands since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Health Ministry officials said 77 people died, but police sources put the figure higher at 112.

The attacks came hours before the government announced March 7 as the date for the parliamentary election, ending weeks of political bickering that had delayed the vote from mid-January and could have complicated U.S. military withdrawal plans.

While the American public gleefully supports their Nobel Peace Prize winning Commander-in-Chief in his own attempt to execute a "Dubya-esque Surge" in Afghanistan (with an additional 30,000 troops), the Iraqi situation continues to be problematic, with persistent bombings, mass causalities, and a non-functioning federal state that is incapable of independently creating the conditions necessary for American soldiers to leave at any substantial level.