What in God's Green Goodness Are We Up To In Afghanistan?

Yeah, really!

It is kind of mind-boggling to realize there are 130,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. That's like a decent-sized American city.

Greenwald on those damn ingrates:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/05/31/afghanistan/index.html

Actually, the quote is "If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied."

http://counterpunch.org/mcgovern08082011.html

http://october2011.org/welcome

It's a big new expensive prison for Bagram, to hold prisoners sans habeas corpus rights:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/19/bagram/index.html

LBJ -- I mean BHO -- picked a good night to trot out the dazzling Al Green act.

American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report.

A decade into the war in Afghanistan, the report makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban. The ill will and mistrust run deep among civilians and militaries on both sides, raising questions about what future role the United States and its allies can expect to play in Afghanistan....

“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history)” (said the report) .... Official NATO pronouncements to the contrary “seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest,” said the report, and it played down the role of Taliban infiltrators in the killings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/world/asia/afghan-soldiers-step-up-killings-of-allied-forces.html

http://www1.rollingstone.com/extras/RS_REPORT.pdf

“Afghans protest when something is shocking and surprising,” said Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Security project, a nonprofit, bi-partisan public policy and research institute based in Washington, DC. “But this is something that they are used to and expect. They consider all civilian deaths criminal. This is just more of the same.”

It may seem counterintuitive that Afghans will take to the streets, kill or injure themselves and damage their own property, to protest an insult to their religion, but maintain relative calm when their loved ones are killed.

Last week’s protests against the Quran burnings were not unique; in 2005, a story in Newsweek magazine that US soldiers had flushed Qurans down the toilet set off a storm of anger that left 17 people dead.

When a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that Muslims found insulting, embassies in Kabul were stormed, thousands rioted and several people were killed.

There have never been similar outpourings of violence against the deaths of civilians. For those, sorrow far outpaces anger, as Afghans resign themselves to the horrors of war.

The issue of civilian casualties has long plagued U.S.-Afghan relations. Karzai has railed against night raids that violate homes and sometimes target innocent individuals, airstrikes that sometimes go astray and cause numerous deaths, and operations that do not take adequate precautions to protect the civilian population.

The United States, while often expressing regret at the loss of civilian lives, considers such collateral damage to be the price of war.

“Afghans are not making the moral distinction we are,” Foust said. “[These shootings are] not a game changer, it is just another aspect of the same game.”

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/12/just_another_civilian_massacre/singleton/

so, business as usual through 2024...?

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2012/0502/Obama-s-agreement-with-Karzai-in-Afghanistan-short-on-specifics-video

Yesterday was listening to a report on NPR about what the recent US-Afghan pact means to the future of the war there. After a bunch of scrupulous parroting of the official US goverment line, straight out of the briefing room, wherein the reporter blandly explained that the 25,000 troops who would be staying indefinitely would be responsible for training the afghani army, he THEN explained that the goal was to get all the afgahn troops "up to a first grade level and the officers up to a third grade level" because some of the current officers "even had trouble counting".

He backed it up with a story of US army soldiers drawing a big rectangle in the dirt, so an Afghan army commander could figure out if his unit had the correct number of men. The commander was instructed to have all his men stand in the rectangle and see if they all fit, or if there was any room left over.

At a stroke he destroyed all the carefully constructed propaganda he had just dutifully shoveled out to the listeners.

let's just outsource the Pentagon black budget to those guys.

what would be the propaganda purpose of that? it just makes the whole thing sound more like a fools' errand.

what are we outsourcing education to blackwater now too? wtf.

charming Af/Pak weekend developments while we were at the beach:

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/27/the_authoritarian_mind_2/singleton/

via Greenwald

"The U.S. military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations . . . .

"If the average age is 16, 'This means it is highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by U.S. forces,' Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, said Friday.

"'I've represented children as young as 11 or 12 who have been at Bagram,' said Tina M. Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_AFGHANISTAN_TEENS_DETAINED

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/24/world/asia/afghanistan-us-special-forces/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The Afghan government says a group of armed people who may be U.S. special forces is carrying out acts of torture and murder.
The U.S. military says it is investigating.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force must stop all special force operations out of Wardak province, where such horrors have been taking place, and all U.S. special forces must be gone from the province within two weeks, Afghanistan's National Security Council demanded.
At a meeting of the council, chaired by President Hamid Karzai, "it became clear that armed individuals named as U.S. special force stationed in Wardak province engage in harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people," Karzai's office said in a statement. It did not indicate who "named" the group a U.S. special force.

Nine people "disappeared in an operation by this suspicious force," the statement said. And in another incident, a student was taken from his home at night, and his "tortured body with throat cut was found two days later under a bridge," the statement said.

It added that the United States rejects any suggestion that its special forces carried out any such operation.

NYT subhead:

President Obama, frustrated in his dealings with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, is considering speeding up troop withdrawals and perhaps leaving none there after next year.

bleeve it when ya see it

coulda sworn the radio said out at the end of THIS year. Well, he's not a miracle worker.

"Got us out of Anghanistan" is how Obamadrones will sound even more like Nixonloons.

u don't give nixon credit for getting us out of vietnam?

fuck the Pentagon
fuck Afghanistan
fuck Obama
fuck America

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/asia/afghanistan-bombing-hospital-doctors-without-borders-kunduz.html

At least 19 people were killed when a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz was badly damaged early Saturday after being hit by what appears to have been an American airstrike, sparking international outrage.

The United States military, in a statement, confirmed an airstrike at 2:15 a.m., saying that it had been targeting individuals “who were threatening the force” and that “there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility....

President Ashraf Ghani’s office released a statement Saturday evening saying that Gen. John F. Campbell, commander of American forces in Afghanistan, had apologized for the strike. However, General Campbell said in a statement that he was “aware of an incident that occurred at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz” but stopped short of taking responsibility, saying that the airstrike “was conducted against insurgents who were directly firing upon U.S. service members advising and assisting Afghan Security Forces.”

He said the military would investigate the circumstances, echoing a statement by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter....

The hospital treated the wounded from all sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked Afghan security forces....

Doctors Without Borders, which released the casualty numbers, said 37 people were wounded, of whom 19 were hospital staff and 18 were patients or their caregivers, which means mostly family members. The organization described the facility as “very badly damaged.”

"In a statement, the aid group, which is also known by its French initials MSF, accused the American military of continuing the bombing for 30 minutes after receiving phone calls telling military contacts that the hospital was being bombed."

x0==

It's good they had the number.

been awhile since one Nobel Peace Prize laureate bombed another

Doctors w/o Borders
‏@MSF_USA
@NBCNews, @ajam also retract unfounded @AP claim that weapons were seen in #MSF #Kunduz hospital before bombing

http://nbcnews.to/1MaXOuy

so the military admits it was their decision to bomb the hospital

i'm sure they think that this admission will suffice

the idea that anyone in the US military might be held accountable in international court is unthinkable

our bombs are always sweet and freedom-loving

they mean well, at least

They have given so many different stories, I can't keep track of what they are claiming.

Is the "mistake" meant to be bombing a hospital at the request of the Afghans without the Americans on the ground and in the air paying enough attention to realise it was a hospital or are they claiming it was hit accidentally as part of an attempt to bomb something else?

i can't glean a rational cover story from the several put forth.

‏@ggreenwald 5 hours ago
It was an accident & they're investigating & will tell you what happened when they're ready. Be content. #Accident

@ggreenwald
Those who claim to know Kunduz hospital attack was an "accident" have to ignore all this

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/07/why-is-u-s-refusing-an-independent-investigation-if-its-so-clear-its-hospital-airstrike-was-an-accident/

The IHFFC is now awaiting the agreement of the United States and Afghanistan governments to proceed.

"We have received apologies and condolences, but this is not enough," said Dr. Joanne Liu, MSF International President. "We are still in the dark about why a well-known hospital full of patients and medical staff was repeatedly bombarded for more than an hour. We need to understand what happened and why."

MSF cannot rely only on the ongoing internal investigations by parties to the conflict and remains firm in its call for an independent and impartial investigation by the IHFFC.

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/kunduz-us-afghan-consent-needed-ihffc-investigation-commence

why a well-known hospital full of patients and medical staff was repeatedly bombarded for more than an hour.

because the army fucks up on the regular? mystery solved.

it hasn't been established that this wasn't an intentional targeting, and hence not a 'fuckup'

I can't really fathom what military goal the army would think they were accomplishing by blowing up a hospital. Is the implication supposed to be that the army just hates MSF and thus bombed them out of spite? I mean, I suppose that's possible and not entirely surprising but... well what do you do with that information even if it could be proved (which it won't be)

the Afghan army we are 'training' apparently feels that way about MSF, at least the leaders

Ah, yeah that makes sense

all these middle east adventures just turn me into an isolationist - we gain nothing by being involved, withdraw troops/funding and let them all kill each other if that's what they want imo

otm

I cut my education budget to the bone and all I got was this crappy stream of foreign interventions tshirt

I recall an Afghan army we trained in the 80s, spent hundreds of millions of dollars on them, wonder what ever happened to those nice chaps...

all these middle east adventures just turn me into an isolationist - we gain nothing by being involved, withdraw troops/funding and let them all kill each other if that's what they want imo

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, October 14, 2015 12:37 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

killing each other with guns we provided

this whole MSF thing makes me so bad, not least because of the empty rhetoric of "accepting responsibility" coming from the US military. what does that phrase mean, if the military isn't going to subject their actions to outside scrutiny and allow their officers to be subject to international law? the answer is, it means nothing. absolutely nothing. hillary clinton is "good" at this too; "i accept responsibility" intoned as though it makes everything better when it has absolutely no ramifications for her.

makes me so *MAD

yeah it's just an empty apology

i see that thing filter down (?) to my students, who will "accept responsibility" for something like plagiarizing an assignment, but get indignant if that actually means they fail the class.

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Frandomactsofreading.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F07%2Fim-sorry-mercer-mayer.jpg%253Fw%253D600&f=1

honestly in many contexts i just don't care to hear an apology at all. just know what you did, accept the consequences, and go away.

Sucks that the number one candidate for the left is a career arms dealer.

Just imagine what we would think if other countries were randomly blowing up hospitals and going "Oops." The tepid/de-sensitized response is chilling. At least the GOP goes overboard with the language, turning war boring is a dangerous thing.

other countries were randomly blowing up hospitals and going "Oops."

this is a p common thing where bombs are getting dropped tbh

the only way to stop a good guy w a gun is take the gun away

The Kunduz attack underscored an ugly reality: After nearly a decade and a half of war, more than 2,300 American lives lost, and an estimated 26,000 Afghan civilians killed, the nature of combat in Afghanistan is entering a new, potentially bloodier, phase. In August, the United Nations reported that civilian casualties in Afghanistan “are projected to equal or exceed the record high numbers documented last year.” While most civilian casualties in the first half of 2015 were attributed to “anti-government” forces, 27 deaths and 22 injuries were attributed to airstrikes “by international military forces,” a 23 percent increase over last year, most of them, unlike the air raid in Kunduz, carried out by drones.

Despite the rise in civilian casualties and the well-documented failure of drone strikes to achieve the military’s broader objectives, there is every indication that unmanned airstrikes will play an increasing role in U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan, as they have in war zones across the world. Less than two weeks after the U.N. issued its report, Foreign Policy revealed that JSOC has drastically reduced the number of night raids it conducts in Afghanistan, while dramatically increasing its reliance on airstrikes, and is currently “on pace to double the rate at which it kills ‘high-value individuals’ using kinetic strikes, compared to how many it was killing that way five years ago.”

https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/manhunting-in-the-hindu-kush/