by Chris Hedges, TruthDig.com, Oct 5, 2009
War memorials and museums are temples to the god of war. The hushed voices, the well-tended grass, the flapping of the flags allow us to ignore how and why our young died. They hide the futility and waste of war. They sanitize the savage instruments of death that turn young soldiers and Marines into killers, and small villages in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq into hellish bonfires. There are no images in these memorials of men or women with their guts hanging out of their bellies, screaming pathetically for their mothers. We do not see mangled corpses being shoved in body bags. There are no sights of children burned beyond recognition or moaning in horrible pain. There are no blind and deformed wrecks of human beings limping through life. War, by the time it is collectively remembered, is glorified and heavily censored.
NY Times Whines That ‘Rethink Afghanistan’ Film is Not “Balanced”
by Jeremy Scahill, RebelReports, Oct 6, 2009
Perhaps more than any other major corporate news outlet, The New York Times played a central role in promoting the Bush administration’s fraudulent case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The “reporting” of Judith Miller and Michael Gordon basically served as a front-page fiction laundering factory for Dick Cheney’s fantasy of a “mushroom cloud” threat from Saddam Hussein looming on the immediate horizon, topped off with a celebratory slice of yellowcake. More recently, the paper’s propagandists, William Broad and David Sanger, have aimed their sights on reporting dubious claims about Iran’s nuclear program.
Readers of the Times, therefore, should take with a huge grain of weaponized salt the paper’s “review” of Robert Greenwald’s new documentary, Rethink Afghanistan. With no sense of the painful irony of writing such jibberish in the Times, reviewer Andy Webster declares that the film could “use balance, something in short supply here:”
At an almost breathless pace that leaves little room for reflection, Mr. Greenwald presents a flurry of sights, voices and figures, many of them compelling but all reflecting his point of view. A historical summary is fleeting. What appears, again and again, are terrifying images of children: dead, hideously maimed or, in one instance, almost put up for sale by a frantic civilian in a refugee camp. Military engagements, it seems, are messy and claim innocent lives.
If it takes Greenwald’s “point of view” to see the human costs of the U.S. war in Afghanistan in the form of deformed, maimed and dead civilians, then his film should be required viewing for anyone purporting to support the war.
In the wake of terrible news out of Afghanistan, there is renewed debate at the Pentagon and White House over the future of the war.
![[As the US led war in Afghanistan begins its ninth year this week, activists brought a strong message to the White House that war, torture and drone bombing are outrageous, unacceptable and must end immediately. Sixty-one people were arrested during the protest. (Image source: Flckr by mike.benedetti)]](https://i0.wp.com/www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/white_house_protest.jpg "white_house_protest.jpg")
As the US led war in Afghanistan begins its ninth year this week, activists brought a strong message to the White House that war, torture and drone bombing are outrageous, unacceptable and must end immediately. Sixty-one people were arrested during the protest. (Image source: Flckr by mike.benedetti)In the first five days of the month, there have been more deaths of U.S. service members than in all of October in 2008. And the calls for an end to the war were increasingly loud outside the White House Monday afternoon.In a defiant display with hopes of influencing the president’s plan on Afghanistan, hundreds of people marched from McPherson square chanting and holding signs. Some chained themselves to the White House fence, demanding we leave Afghanistan now and wondering aloud, where’s the “change” they were promised.
By Dennis Loo, Consortiumnews.com, Oct 6, 2009
Editor’s Note: At the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, more and more Americans are questioning why the United States is still fighting this war – and asking whether there is any end in sight for this bloody occupation.
In this guest essay, sociology professor Dennis Loo expresses the view of this emerging majority, in favor of ending the war:
Eight years ago, on Oct. 7, 2001, the U.S. launched a war upon Afghanistan.
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What have eight years of war and occupation accomplished?
Government corruption is so rife and pervasive that even the U.S. State Department has condemned it. The recent elections are still being contested because of massive fraud. War and drug lords are part of the government.
Jon Boone in Kabul and Ed Pilkington in New York
The Guardian/UK, Oct 4, 2009
Peter Galbraith accused his former chief at the UN, Kai Eide, of deliberately playing down the level of cheating in the election. Photograph: Toby Talbot/Associated Press
A former senior United Nations diplomat in Kabul has made a scathing attack on the UN’s handling of Afghanistan‘s disputed elections, claiming that almost one in three of the votes cast for president Hamid Karzai were fraudulent.
Peter Galbraith, the former deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, singled out his former chief, Kai Eide, for criticism, saying he had deliberately played down the level of cheating in an election where, in one region, “10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast”.
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Peace and Justice Post 
Dan Simpson: Sack the general; stop the war
October 7, 2009The United States is currently faced with the astonishing spectacle of a uniformed military officer, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, lobbying publicly for the option he favors on an issue that is in front of President Barack Obama to decide.
The civilian president is still commander-in-chief of America’s armed forces, a point that Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, stressed correctly in his various flag-draped presentations. The United States isn’t Guinea.
Anyone who has ever watched the U.S. military in action on Capitol Hill, acting in coordination with the various lobbyists who represent defense contractors and others who profit from U.S. military enterprises, knows the degree to which the Pentagon is proficient at getting its way inside both the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government.
But the whole thing is usually carried out more in line with what the military call “the chain of command.” Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, expressed a preference for that approach with reference to Gen. McChrystal’s current undertaking on a television talk show last weekend.
Lest Gen. McChrystal’s direct “general to the people” blitzkrieg be thought unique, it is important to recall the Bush administration’s sometimes extravagant use of Gen. David H. Petraeus to try to bulk up the American public’s support for its war in Iraq.
Gen. Petraeus was painted as the genius of the troop “surge,” which theoretically saved America from defeat at a low point in that unfortunate conflict, which, also unfortunately, still hasn’t ended, in spite of the efforts of Gen. Petraeus, holdover Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and others. In case anyone hasn’t noticed (there is less reporting coming now from Iraq than from Afghanistan), the Iraq war continues and there are broad hints that U.S. forces may not be able to withdraw from there as fast as Americans had hoped. This debacle will soon have lasted seven years.
There are historical precedents for U.S. generals trying to use public pressure to maneuver presidents into particular positions on issues of interest to the military. A famous one was Gen. George B. McClellan’s face-off with Abraham Lincoln over the conduct of the Civil War, which went so far that the general finally ran for president against Mr. Lincoln in 1864 and lost.
A second famous one was in 1951 when Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur pushed Harry Truman to let him attack China during the Korean War. Although Mr. Truman eventually fired him, the general did manage to engage U.S. forces in conflict with the Chinese, with basically disastrous results.
What is going on with Gen. McChrystal and Mr. Obama is that a few months after having been given command of U.S. forces in Afghanistan by Mr. Obama, Gen. McChrystal has looked at the situation and now wants 40,000 more U.S. troops. He already is authorized 68,000, so the 40,000 would constitute about a 60 percent increase. That may well be Gen. McChrystal’s honest assessment of how many troops it would take for the United States to “win” in Afghanistan — if anyone could figure out what “winning” means in that tormented country.
It is important to bear in mind that the textbook military analysis of how many troops it would take to nail down a country the size and population of Afghanistan is 480,000. The United States finally had more than 543,000 in Vietnam and didn’t win.
What is actually going on, whether Gen. McChrystal intends it to be the case or not, is that he is saying to Mr. Obama loudly and publicly, “Give me more troops. If you don’t, I’ll lose and it will be your fault.”
It also is important to look at the political situation in the United States, as well the political and military situation in Afghanistan.
First, Afghanistan. The U.S. casualty rate there is going steadily upward. That partly reflects the fact that we have more troops there, and in more difficult combat situations. It also is becoming increasingly clear that for the Afghans, the enemy is becoming less and less al-Qaida, or the Taliban and al-Qaida, and more and more the Americans. This is perfectly normal for Afghans. They don’t like foreigners in their country, especially foreigners seeking to play a dominant role. Ask Alexander the Great, the British and the Russians. And Americans do normally try to run the show, particularly as we increase our investment in a country.
We didn’t like the way they did their elections in August. We didn’t like the result, although it is unclear who would have been more to our taste than President Hamid Karzai. We don’t like how they earn their money, mostly from illegal drugs. We would like them to do the fighting, but since that fighting would involve Afghans fighting Afghans for the most part, they are not very keen on that. On Friday we had an Afghan police officer shooting and killing two American soldiers on patrol and then escaping.
At home, after eight years, Americans are weary of the Afghan war, as well as the Iraq war. The public wonders why we continue to spend our money — upwards of a trillion dollars now — on these wars while our own economy lags, with only one job available for every six persons looking for one.
It is time to wrap up the Afghanistan war. It might be a good idea to remove Gen. McChrystal from the picture, taking him up on the part of his analysis that says, give me more troops or take me out of the game.
We don’t have to rule Afghanistan to be safe at home. If we did, we would also have to rule Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09280/1003447-374.stm#ixzz0TErK8XNW
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Tags:Afghanistan, Afghanistan war, casualties, Dan Simpson, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, lobbyists, more troops, President Barack Obama, war
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