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

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/

It wouldn't surprise me if some US military commander had it in for MSF, even if it doesn't go all the way to the top. Who knows why -- they're a lefty organization, maybe they reported abuses or were going to, maybe they were seen as "interfering" or "providing comfort to the enemy" etc.

they treat the enemy (on all sides)

American special operations analysts were gathering intelligence on an Afghan hospital days before it was destroyed by a U.S. military attack because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity, The Associated Press has learned.

No evidence has surfaced publicly suggesting a Pakistani died in the attack, and Doctors without Borders, the international organization that ran the hospital, says none of its staff was Pakistani.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5e20fcd92aee49e699149aef93595e49/apnewsbreak-us-spec-ops-knew-afghan-site-was-hospital#

None of the damage appears due to guided bombs (which even in the smallest operational sizes would leave craters and blow out walls), but it is consistent with a SOCOM AC-130 orbiting overhead, peppering the building with 105 mm rounds (ea. w/ ~5 lb HE).

Depending on the fabric dyes used, the 9 ft Red Cross flag affixed to the the roof may not have been visible in the passive IR typically used for nighttime targeting (there's a few reports on problems with this). The aircrew may not have known it was a hospital, so responsibility would fall to the ground personnel familiar with the area and calling in the strike.

‏@ggreenwald 3h3 hours ago
Kunduz: US military refused independent investigation, "investigates" itself, finds it was just a mistake, leaks it

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

MSF reacts: "more questions than answers"

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/msf-initial-reaction-us-military-investigation-kunduz-attack

haha wait what how did we fuck Afghanistan in the 80s, by not fighting WWIII w/the USSR after they invaded?

We trained the motherfuckin' mujahadeen and fought a proxy war against the Soviets, Shakey, you ignorant person. Might wanna read Charlie Wilson's War (skip the crap Mike Nichols movie).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/17/yemen.islam

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/10/ghost_wars_how_reagan_armed_the

I've come to think the significance of the US in Afghanistan in the 80s has become greatly exaggerated. Bin Laden and his little Abraham Lincoln brigade-like band of foreign fighters didn't make much of a difference in the Afghan war against the Russians. The US did not create the taliban.

yep

I mean, otm

I'd figure miscalculating the US backing of the Shah was a bigger foreign policy blunder in the long run than any misadventures in proxy war in Afghanistan. Fall of the Shah in some ways was the first domino that perhaps led to the USSR taking the step to invade Afghanistan and then later the Iraq/Iran war.

Recent documents showed that Carter basically gave the go ahead to depose the Shah so it's not like the US even stood much in the way of the revolution.