Helen Thomas | The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is making a big mistake in escalating U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan where he already has acknowledged he doesn’t believe victory is possible.
We should ask: What are we doing there seven years after the 9/11 attacks by the al-Qaida network? Historically, the country has lacked a strong central government and has been governed by locally strong tribal leaders and warlords.
Al-Qaida was able to take advantage of this loose structure and turn Afghanistan into the plotting ground for the terrorists who struck the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York.
But what are our goals there in 2009?
While the U.S. is supposed to wind down its presence in Iraq in 19 months (rather than the 16 months promised by Obama on the campaign trail), the president has ordered a military buildup in Afghanistan to more than 50,000 troops, both from the U.S. and other NATO members.
He would leave 50,000 Americans in Iraq to cope with the resistance there. Such was the folly of President George W. Bush, who invaded Iraq after his hawkish neoconservative advisers told him we would triumph in a few weeks.
To this day none of Bush’s reasons for attacking Iraq have held up to examination. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no Iraqi ties to al-Qaida and no threat to the United States.
There have been no apologies from Bush or his cohorts.
When Obama visited Afghanistan last summer as a presidential candidate, he joined several other senators in a get-tough statement that said: “We need a great sense of urgency because the threat from the Taliban and al-Qaida is growing and we must act. We need determination because it will take time to prevail. But with the right strategy and the resources to back it up, we will get the job done.”
What exactly is the job that he says needs to get done? What is the U.S. exit strategy? Does anyone in power remember the lessons we were supposed to have learned from Vietnam?
Afghanistan is known as the “graveyard of empires” because of the repeated failure of invaders over the centuries to achieve their goals in that rugged country.
U.S. prowling around in Afghanistan hasn’t aroused anti-war protests as did the March 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. I am puzzled about this. It seems to me we are leaping out of the frying pan into the fire!
American public aversion to our military adventures in Afghanistan has been fueled by our shock at the toll that U.S. planes and aerial drones have inflicted on Afghan civilians.
There have been indications that Obama may start diplomatic overtures to the Taliban at a time when the human and financial costs of the two wars are wearing down the U.S. as it struggles with an economic depression that has no end in sight.
According to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, the president is evaluating the situation in Afghanistan.
Obama would do well to study the trajectory that took us into the Vietnam War and the terrible price we paid there. We lost the war and fled by helicopters from Saigon.
Both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon thought that they could win in Vietnam, but they were brought down as much by the American people — who rebelled against the war — as they were by the North Vietnamese.
Obama could go deeper in history and check out President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s career for a lesson on how to end a war.
When running for the White House in 1952, when the American public was growing frustrated about the long U.S. involvement in the Korean War, Eisenhower told voters: “I shall go to Korea.”
And he did. The Korean War ended in a standoff in 1953 — much to the relief of the American people.
Despite some ensuing skirmishes in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, a truce has endured ever since.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama indicated that he was willing to speak to all parties in the military or diplomatic disputes we were involved in. He was criticized for his plan for outreach to the militants in Afghanistan.
But there is no alternative.
Sooner or later American presidents should learn that people will always fight for their country against a foreign invader. And peace should be the only goal.
But however anyone wants to characterize or label the Israel lobby, no one can dispute that it is tenacious. Freeman’s assessment that were he to take up the intelligence position he would remain “under constant attack” is most likely accurate. His choice to remain in private life is understandable. If anything constructive is to come out of this episode — and I think it can — it is that the workings of the Israel lobby are now more transparent than ever.
Feelings of happiness and sadness, I still don’t have them. As far as I am concerned, nothing matters 
Sri Lankan newspaper editor held without charge
March 13, 2009By Nanda Wickramesinghe |WSWS, 13 March 2009
The detention of N. Vithyatharan, the editor of the Tamil daily Sudar Oli, is another example of the police-state methods being used by the Sri Lankan government to silence any media criticism, in particular of its criminal war against the country’s Tamil minority.
Vithyatharan was seized by police at a family funeral in the Colombo suburb of Mount Lavinia on February 26. Police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekera initially refused to acknowledge any police involvement, saying that the editor had been abducted by an unidentified group in a white van.
The official denial was particularly ominous as hundreds of people have been abducted or murdered over the past three years by death squads sanctioned by the security forces. The white van is their well-known trademark.
In a matter of hours, however, police changed their tune, admitting that Vithyatharan had been arrested by the Colombo Crimes Division and was being held at its headquarters. A Defence Ministry spokesman Lakshman Hulugalle told the media that the editor was detained in connection with a February 20 air attack on Colombo by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) with two light planes.
Vithyatharan is still being held without charge under the draconian provisions of the government’s emergency powers.
James Ross, legal and policy director at the US-based Human Rights Watch, commented earlier this month: “Once again the government has arrested a Tamil journalist on allegations that border on the absurd. And if the accounts of a beating are accurate, it shows the open contempt the government has for Sri Lanka’s independent media.”
The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse has become increasingly sensitive to criticism as news of the army’s killing of Tamil civilians in fighting in the North has been covered in the international media, provoking protests in a number of countries.
Well before the LTTE’s air attack, the Colombo Criminal Division (CCD) had already grilled Vithyatharan on February 13 over two articles published in the Sudar Oli. The day before Vithyatharan’s arrest, officers from the state intelligence unit searched the Sudar Oli office at Grandpass and asked for the names and contact numbers of all the newspaper’s journalists. The newspaper’s managing director, E. Saravanapavan, refused to provide any details.
Saravanapavan, who is also Vithyatharan’s brother-in-law, told the WSWS what happened on the day of the arrest. “The abductors might have calculated that there would be only a handful of people at the funeral parlour by mid-morning. But quite a considerable number had arrived by 9.45 a.m. when the abductors crashed in. They had to face more people than they expected.
“When the three policemen in uniform started to drag Vithyatharan out through the gate of the parlour, relatives hung onto him and tried to pull him back into the building. Our people almost managed to free him after a tug-of-war. When this happened, three toughs in civvies jumped out of the vehicle in which the police arrived and came running into the parlour. They began hitting us, causing injury to a number of our relatives. Then they forcibly dragged Vithyatharan away.
“Our people raised an outcry. We noted that the number plate of the white van was HX 0640. A few of us then got into a vehicle and started to follow the van. But we could not catch up with the abductors. Finding that our complaints to the police stations in the area were of no avail, I took steps to immediately inform the international news media and diplomatic missions as well as the police headquarters and also a number of ministers,” Saravanapavan said.
As this was taking place, government spokesman L. Y. Abeywardene made a call to the media rights group, Reporters without Borders, at 11.45 a.m., saying that Vithyatharan was being held by police and was being interrogated, but his relatives would be able to visit him.
Saravanapavan explained: “After Vithyatharan was taken away, he was blindfolded and beaten severely on the feet and head, so badly that the CCD had to take him to a hospital to get his head x-rayed. His wife and children who saw him after they were notified by the police have been very disturbed by his condition.”
If the government had not been forced to acknowledge Vithyatharan’s arrest, it is quite possible that he could have been killed. As in hundreds of other cases, his murder would have been blamed on “unknown abductors” and after a perfunctory police investigation the case would have been closed. What stands out about Vithyatharan’s abduction was its brazen character. It took place in broad daylight in front of scores of people and involved uniformed police officers.
Sudar Oli and its sister paper in the northern town of Jaffna, Uthayan, have been targetted before. Their offices have been attacked several times and six of their employees have been killed. Following Vithyatharan’s arrest, senior staff have received threatening phone calls, telling them to leave the country or face the same fate.
The arrest of Vithyatharan followed the murder of Sunday Leader editor, Lasantha Wickrematunga, on January 8. Wickrematunga, who had been increasingly critical of the Rajapakse government, was shot in his car by unknown gunmen as he was travelling to work in Colombo. Two days earlier, armed thugs burst into the premises of the Sirasa TV station, smashing equipment and attacking staff. Police have made no arrests in either case.
According to the Sri Lankan media organisation Free Media Movement, 12 journalists have been killed in Sri Lanka since August 2005 and 27 are in detention.
Well-known journalist J.S. Tissainayagam has been detained for more than a year along with two colleagues, Vettivel Jasikaran and Vadivel Valamathy. The charges brought against Tissainayagam, some five months after he was detained, are blatantly political. He is accused of inciting communal disharmony in articles written in 2006 and 2007, as well as writing and raising money for the North Eastern Monthly magazine. The three each face up to 20 years’ jail if found guilty.
For all its boasting about the army’s victories over the LTTE, Rajapakse is confronting a deepening economic crisis and the prospect of widespread social unrest over mounting unemployment and deteriorating living standards. The government’s repression of the media is a sharp warning of the measures that are being prepared more broadly against working people.
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Tags: journalists in detension, killing of Tamil civilians, N. Vithyatharan, Sri Lankan government, war against Tamils
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