America’s wars: the logic of escalation

Paul Rogers, 22nd September 2011

The United States’s political-military strategy for drawdown in Afghanistan is in trouble, even as Washington is tempted by increased high-tech military engagement in other theaters of war.

The killing of Afghanistan’s former president Burhanuddin Rabbani in a suicide bomb-attack at his home in Kabul on 20 September 2011 removes  a senior player who for decades was at the centre of the country’s political scene. A major incident in itself, which led the current Afghan president Hamid Karzai to return home from New York to attend the funeral, Rabbani’s death follows the concerted assault on key targets in central Kabul on 13-14 September that lasted twenty hours.

The exact responsibility for Rabbani’s death is still  to be established. But this and similar operations  – such as attacks on Kabul hotels, and on the offices  of the British Council in the city on 19 August – reflect the ability of the Taliban to hone tactics in recent months in response to the “surge” in United States troops into Afghanistan.

Every casualty: the human face of war

OpenDemocracy

The idea of recording, identifying and acknowledging each individual victim of armed conflict – and holding to account those responsible – extends the principles underlying the laws of war.

From the Soviet Union to Libya, the story of a single American submarine – the USS Florida – throws light on the transition to the post-cold-war world. The Florida was an Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine launched in 1981, at the start of the most dangerous period of that conflict, and commissioned two years later. It was then one of the most powerful warships ever built.

Whose war are we fighting on our soil?

We need to identify our enemy. America is not our enemy; it may not be our friend either. American policies are guided by national interest and we should not expect a country to have policies otherwise. Our enemy is the people who would have us believe that Islam provides only for a monolithic society in which different cultures or sub-cultures cannot co-exist; rather they have to be merged with the “Islamic” culture.

By Hussain H Zaidi

WHILE terrorists are on the rampage, society is in disarray and the economy is in a shambles, there is a split in public opinion on whose war we are fighting.

Is the fight against terror being waged in the country’s mountains and plains, in the streets and markets, in mosques and on campuses, essentially America’s war and Islamabad is being used merely as a pawn on the chessboard of Washington’s counter terrorism strategy? Or is it our own war, which we have to wage and win with or without the US involvement.

A section of intelligentsia as well as politicians argues that the war against terror is essentially America’s war — a reaction to the 9/11 attacks — and the hell that let loose on the people of Pakistan is the result of the country’s role of a frontline ally of the US in the campaign against extremism.

Henry Kissinger’s 1974 Plan for Food Control Genocide

By AHSAN NAWAB

// On Dec. 10, 1974, the U.S. National Security Council under Henry Kissinger completed a classified 200-page study, “National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” The study falsely claimed that population growth in the so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) was a grave threat to U.S. national security. Adopted as official policy in November 1975 by President Gerald Ford, NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in those countries through birth control, and also, implicitly, war and famine. Brent Scowcroft, who had by then replaced Kissinger as national security adviser (the same post Scowcroft was to hold in the Bush administration), was put in charge of implementing the plan. CIA Director George Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture.

Will Pakistan Army Wake Up Now ? Aey Mard e Mujahid jaag Zara

Would it be too rude to say that Pakistan Army had it coming? No, I mean, literally. As reported in the media, there were intelligence reports that the attack on GHQ was imminent and had been well planned.

Two facts stand out about the armed terrorists who attacked.

a. They knew they will not be able to come out alive from the heavily guarded military headquarters. These were highly trained and motivated terrorists who wanted to make a big impact by attacking the nerve centre of Pakistan Army.

b. The terrorist must have known that the attack was going to have more of a symbolic value than anything else. In fact this is akin to attack on Pentagon and World Trade Centre. In an irony some may say that GHQ can be seen as representing both the corporate and military interests in Pakistan.

This was an audacious attack, whose consequences and implications had been undoubtedly, thought through. However, most probably, where terrorists failed is that they may have hoped to prolong their action and inflict more damage and destruction then actually occurred.

But post GHQ attack, the most obvious and loudly ringing question is following: Will the Army wake up now to the fact that there are no more ‘good militants’ and ‘bad militants’ ?

This is not a Tehrik e Taliban but a Tehrik e Kharijaan ? These guys are ‘Zalimuun’ and ‘Mujrimuun’, and they must be treated as murderers and criminals.

Is the Army now going to draw a Line and say ‘No More’? Does Army now realise and understand that complete defeat and dismantling of TTP or TKP ( Tehrik e Kharijaan), is in its own best interest ?

EU reluctant to commit troops to Afghanistan without clear shift in strategy

Geraint Rees Published in Open democracy 29 – 09 – 2009

European Union defence ministers have expressed reluctance to committing more troops to Afghanistan except as part of a limited plan training the Afghan military and police.

The statements were made as EU defence ministers met yesterday in Göteborg, Sweden, for informal discussions on theEU’s security and defence policy. Several ministers were reluctant to send front line troops, instead wishing to focus resources and efforts on training Afghan security forces. ‘We have a lot, about 2,000 men in Afghanistan. I think it’s far more important in the long run that we have more Afghan military, and Afghan police,’ Dutch defence minister Eimert Van Middelkopp told reporters.

The ToD Verdict: The statements come in anticipation of a possible call by the US for the EU to commit more front line troops to support the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan. The US is considering a request by General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, for up to 30,000 extra troops, without which the eight-year mission “will likely result in failure“. In a leaked report to the Pentagon, General McChrystal expressed doubts that any purely military solution to the Afghan war would succeed and called for a complete overhaul of tactics that would focus on safeguarding the Afghan population. Extra troops would be needed to secure civilians in population centres in an effort to loosen the grip of the growing Taliban-led insurgency, but the exposure of troops under such a strategy would almost inevitably result in higher casualties.

How Top Generals May Trap Obama in a Losing War By Tom Engelhardt

Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley “Stan” McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose “classified, pre-decisional” and devastating report — almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster — was conveniently, not to say suspiciously,leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama; Admiral Michael “Mike” Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been increasingly vocal about a “deteriorating” war and the need for more American boots on the ground; and the president himself, who blitzed every TV show in sight last Sunday and Monday for his health reform program, but spent significant time expressing doubts about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. (“I’m not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan… or sending a message that America is here for the duration.”)

A Letter to President Obama:Work with Western Muslims to Promote Stability and Peace in the Muslim World

Dear President Obama,

This is an extraordinary time in history. You have been elected as the president of the most influential nation in the world.

This is also a formative period in history, and political decisions will influence humanity’s direction for generations to come. Humanity faces enormous challenges and hopes for great possibilities. The world finds itself in a reflective and transformative mood, and it hopes for a visionary leader who can set milestones towards a better world.

How Can We Stop the Epidemic of Killing Women and Children By Returning Soldiers

Apr 6, 2009

No society that sends its men abroad for war can expect them to come home and be at peace, as returning Iraqi vets are proving in alarming numbers.

 

Wake up, America. The boys are coming home, and they’re not the boys who went away.

On New Year’s Day, the New York Times welcomed the advent of 2009 by reporting that, since returning from Iraq, nine members of the Fort Carson, Colorado, Fourth Brigade Combat team had been charged with homicide. Five of the murders they were responsible for took place in 2008 when, in addition, “charges of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault” at the base rose sharply. Some of the murder victims were chosen at random; four were fellow soldiers — all men. Three were wives or girlfriends.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Men sent to Iraq or Afghanistan for two, three, or four tours of duty return to wives who find them “changed” and children they barely know.