WikiLeaks and classified information

In the aftermath of Wikileaks' release of some 90,000 classified documents pertaining to the war in Afghanistan (2004-2010) many have condemned the site for endangering our troops. Since its launch in 2007, WikiLeaks has been responsible for bringing us video of a helicopter attack on civilians and journalists, corporate documents relating to toxic dumping, and even a DOD intelligence report on WikiLeaks itself.

The notion that the site, which posts documents and information that is anonymously submitted, has been accused of endangering coalition troops in Aghanistan with this most recent release. I would ask those that are making this claim to explain how they believe the soldiers are being put at risk. Do they believe that an incident report from 2004 exposes any information that is still relevant to where the troops are today? Do they believe that there is strategic data in those reports that can be mined by Al Qaeda to target coalition forces? Or is it the even more ridiculous argument that the information in those reports is proof of civilian deaths at the hands of coalition forces and that somehow the publication will enrage the local population?

I deem the last argument to be the most ridiculous because if you had traveled through Afghanistan a month ago, long before these documents surfaced, the local people in the combat areas already knew of the civilian deaths accumulating under the occupation. These revelations are only revelations to the American people and are not new information to the Afghans. To believe that they are somehow ignorant to their neighbors deaths from coalition air strikes and firefights is so absurd that it borders on the delusional. The only people surprised by the information in the leaked documents are the American people and it's about time they knew the truth of the occupation of Afghanistan.

What we should take away from this document leak is that there are far too many items that are classified for no good reason. Hiding documents by classifying them as state secrets is a convenient means for the government to hide the truth from the voters, thus preventing them having the information necessary to be an informed citizenry. If the abuse of that authority were curtailed, then more weight might be given to documents deemed "classified," but so long as every slightly embarrassing document is deemed a state secret vital to national defense...well, we know what happens when you cry wolf.

Obama sneaks in and out of Afghanistan

This weekend President Barack Obama snuck out of Washington with a Blackberryless entourage of journalists and flew to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for a "surprise" visit. By calling it a "surprise" visit it almost seems as though that isn't the only kind of visit a President can make to Afghanistan or Iraq. When did President Bush ever announce ahead of time that he was heading to Iraq or Afghanistan? Will Obama ever have the luxury of declaring when and where he will visit? The fact that neither President has, in the 9 years of occupation, been able to announce a trip to that country is a black eye for the whole worthless mission of invading and occupying Afghanistan. If an American President is unable to safely visit either of our occupied countries without sneaking in and out, then clearly these endeavors have failed and we should acknowledge those failures and withdraw. Every day that American forces remain in Afghanistan and Iraq past January 20th 2009, is another day of failure that belongs to President Obama.

Opting Out

Now that Virginia's Senate has passed legislation preventing Washington from mandating the purchase of health insurance, I think it's time that states with legislatures against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan followed up with their own versions of these silly laws. Granted, it wouldn't accomplish much, just as Arizona and Virginia's laws will likely not matter when a final health insurance subsidy bill is finally passed by the filibuster-stuck Senate.

But what would a "left" version of this nonsense look like? It's hard to imagine because typically, the voices on the left are not as shrill, apocalyptic or stupid as the teabaggers and their ilk. I guess the first thing would be for state legislatures around the country to start passing laws prohibiting their residents federal income taxes to go towards either of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Instead of screaming about the tyrannical government that might make people purchase health insurance, "the folks" could be up in arms about this ongoing requirement to pay all that "war insurance" that doesn't ever seem to do as much good as a doctor's visit or some much needed surgery.

From there we might hope to see some states, feeling the crunch that such high rates of incarceration are putting on the budget, begin to decriminalize non-violent drug offenses so that they can focus on crimes that are hurting the community and save the billions that are going to processing, housing, and feeding people convicted of non-violent possession charges.

Finally, it's high time that these profit making mega churches started forking over some money. If they want to live a life of poverty and renounce material possessions fine. If they stick to wearing their scratchy habits and live simply off the donations from Sunday mass, fine, let them keep their tax free status. But if the preachers are wearing jewelery worth more than many members of their congregation make in a year, or drive around in fancy "pimped" out cars with spinning rims, or live in palatial mansions bought and paid for by the tithes that they force on their congregation, then these churches need to start paying taxes. And I mean a lot of taxes!

While I recognize that the likelihood of any of these things happening are about as likely as Obama suddenly becoming the radical progressive that FoxNews says he is, or that many of us wished he was, it would still be a great thing to see. The truth is that the Democrats seem to be either spineless, corrupt, or both (Bernie Sanders is an independent and does not fall under the afore mentioned categories). They are ineffective politicians who seem to keep waiting for some goodness to sink into their colleagues across the aisle and vote for what's right for the country, as opposed to what's right for Wall Street, the big corporations, and the richest 1%.

The ever brilliant Wally Shawn

Many of you will undoubtedly remember Wally from The Princess Bride. Here he is reading from his book of essays (titled "Essays"). I'll let his words do the talking, but suffice it to say, he has the kind of amazing insight that should be shared by our politicians today.

Obama's 30000 mistakes

Do not be alarmed. You have not accidentally stumbled across some ridiculous top 30000 list written by the great minds of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. I am not going to spew out 30000 ways that Barack Obama is trying to kill your grandma and rob your paycheck. I'll leave that kind of hackish nonsense to the triumvirate of stupidity that dominate FoxNews. Instead, this is one last plea for President Obama to save his administration and his legacy from making the biggest mistake of his first term: calling for the deployment of 30000 additional American soldiers to Afghanistan.

As Jonathan Schell details in his fantastic article in the November 30th issue of The Nation, there were plenty of things that Johnson and his team knew going into the Vietnam deployments that, had the people known, should have changed the course of history in that unfortunate fiasco. It is all too likely that Obama's team of advisors are seeing a similarly pessimistic outcome from this Afghan troop deployment but for some reason, believe that it is the only way to defend against the salacious accusations that he is "soft on terror."

Democrats need to dig deep, find their balls (or lady balls where appropriate) and present a real alternative to the hawkish war mongering that has dominated this country for far too long. The most courageous step President Obama could take today, contrary to what Glenn "the weeper" Beck says, would be to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan and urge our NATO allies to do the same.

By removing foreign soldiers from Afghanistan, President Obama would deal a momentous blow to Al Qaeda and other "terrorist" recruiting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The vast majority of our "enemies" in those countries are either nationalists who are opposed to foreign occupation, mercenaries attacking the NATO forces for pay, or a mix of the two. If we removed the foreign occupier for the region then both the motivation, and the money (read Aram Roston's piece in the same issue of The Nation) would dry up.

Certainly, if someone proposes a full withdrawal some ill informed but well meaning person might scream "but what of the women?" Or someone else who recognizes that little progress has been made but still sees some women attending school and being set free from the captivity of the home might say "we can't just abandon those women who we have told to go to school." Sadly, that is exactly what we must do. Not just for our sake, or the sake of our soldiers, but for those women as well. By propping up a corrupt regime that passes laws that legalize rape and legitimize the oppression of Afghan women we are hurting the women more than most Westerners realize. Malalai Joya, who has spoken out against the current puppet government does not see any benefit for women in NATO's continued presence. As she says "Democracy never comes by occupation. You cannot give it with cluster bombs."

The Nation: How the US is funding the Taliban

Please read this article if you know anyone that still thinks we should remain in Afghanistan.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston/single

It details the corruption that exists in the doling out of DoD contracts, as well as the irony that our presence is quite literally, supplying our "enemies".

And the winner is...the only guy running

(I started writing this 2 weeks ago and got side-tracked)

So depending on who's shoveling shit into your ear, today was either a great day for Afghan democracy, or just another example of business as usual in the weary war-torn country. Today's acceptance speech by President-until-NATO-kicks-him-out Hamid Karzai marks another sad page in Afghanistan's painful, bitter history. It shows the retreat of what could have been a meaningful foreign policy decision by the NATO powers vis-a-vis the endemic corruption that permeates the Afghan political community. Instead, we all get to sit back and watch as the status quo remains the same and the corrupt flunkies that caused the initial snafu are allowed to keep their jobs.

Remember that this all began with the elections in August in which there was so much wide-spread voter fraud that some of the ballots for Hamid Karzai were still in their original ballot booklets. And don't forget the imaginary polling places that never opened their doors to the voting public but still managed to rack up thousands upon thousands of votes for President Karzai.

Despite many people's claims that Karzai is a puppet of the West, it's even worse than that. If he were our puppet and he did what we told him, there would be some arguments to justify the complete perversion of our imposed democratic system over there in the interests of calm, stability, and development. But he isn't even our puppet. He's the puppet of the drug growing rapists who run Aghanistan today and that's one of the few things that could be even worse than if he were a Western puppet.

In the past year we have seen the Afghan parliament come up with laws that allow for husbands to withhold food from wives who withhold sex. We have seen President Karzai pardon a group of powerful elites who somehow managed to find themselves convicted of rape (something that is extremely difficult to convict someone of in Afghanistan). We have seen an escalation in NATO and civilian deaths and yet the British and the American leaders are still talking about "how many" more troops to deploy in the region as opposed to "why are we in the region?"

The best possible course of action for the Afghan people, and the NATO soldiers who are dying or being wounded trying to do what their leaders tell them is the right thing to do, is for NATO to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately. It does not appear that Karzai's government has any interest in curbing corruption or correcting the misogyny that exists in their laws and so it does not seem fitting for us to stay there. The presence of Western soldiers in Afghanistan creates a recruiting bonanza for terrorist groups and inevitably leads to more civilian casualties, which further undermines any stabilizing missions our soldiers are undertaking.

As the FoxNews Opiniontainment says over and over again, where's the Hope and Change you promised us Mr. President? Change course from the Bush/Cheney policies in Aghanistan and give the world hope in a new American foreign policy; one that isn't stained with blood.

Most Americans can't learn from past mistakes

A headline caught my eye this morning. It was from the Associated Free Press' reporting on a recent survey that found that "Most Americans see Afghan fight worth US bloodshed". This seemed a little surprising to me as you would think that since most Americans finally have the grey matter to realize that invading Iraq, killing more than a million Iraqis, spending trillions of dollars, and losing thousands of American and coalition lives was a mistake, they would also be able to see what a boondoggle the mission in Afghanistan is.

Upon further reading of the poll, it becomes more clear why the results are what they are. The question wasn't really "is the Afghan fight worth more US bloodshed" but was in fact asked how many "are willing to have American soldiers 'fight and possibly die' to eliminate the threat of terrorists operating from Afghanistan." To the passerby this might seem like the same thing, but I bet if the question were rephrased to something more likely, such as how many "are willing to have American soldiers 'fight and possibly die' to keep trying to eliminate the threat of terrorists operating from Afghanistan without any certainty of victory" we'd probably have some very different survey results.

Even as someone opposed to the Afghan mission long before it was such a cool thing to do, I might say sure, if you can promise me total victory in Afghanistan (flourishing democracy, no terrorism, no insurgency, no violence against women, no more poverty, 711s, Wa-was, and Tim Horton's on every street corner) then maybe it's worth some American lives. For all the above mentioned items I might even say it's worth 500,000 American and coalition lives. But that's not what's going to happen. Not even close.

Instead, we are going to see another 10-20,000 NATO soldiers killed over the next decade or so as President Obama foolishly takes ownership of one of W's hubris inspired military blunders and submits to the never ending requests for supplemental troops, equipment, and money that will be required to sustain (not win) the conflict in Afghanistan. Meanwhile the hawks back home will lament our deficits in explaining why we cannot have universal healthcare or decent educational funding and they'll continue to piss away our soldiers and our treasury.

We must end the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, no matter what a cunningly worded survey question shows because at the end of the day, there can be no victory for an occupying country except withdrawal. Vietnam is a great example of this problem. Granted, Ameircan soldiers could have stayed in Vietnam for another 20 years. They could have butchered another 3 million Southeast Asians, and lost another 60,000 American soldiers. They could have pissed away trillions more dollars in bombs and upkeep, and shot a few more protesters at college campuses, but in the end, it was by leaving Vietnam that allowed that country to develop itself into the capitalism loving, wheeling and dealing people that they were always meant to be.

Perhaps Afghanistan is different, and it will descend into chaos and bloodshed if NATO forces leave, but it is doing that anyway, so why should NATO, and specifically America, play any role in contributing to that downward spiral? It's time to bring the troops home...all of them.

Fuck you McChrystal!

Afghanistan: How many is enough?

The New York Times is reporting that Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has said "success in Afghanistan would probably require more troops and certainly much more time". I would like him to be honest with Congress, the administration and the public and say exactly how many more troops, and how much more time he thinks it will take for "success".

Frankly, I am of the belief that matter how many more sons and daughters America and NATO decide to sacrifice in Afghanistan, there can never be "success" as I would define it, and I doubt that most people would consider what Mike Mullen is calling "success", truly successful. This brings us to the issue of what is success in Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan? What does it look like? Does anyone really believe that if we send another 100,000 or another 500,000 or even another 1,000,000 NATO soldiers to Afghanistan that it will transform the country into a Western style democracy where the biggest problems are which intern the President may have "not had sexual relations with"?

And if we are to have any trust in these generals, admirals and other military commanders, then they should say exactly how many more troops they need and for how long. Instead, we see them making their requests in a political framework, asking for 10-20,000 troops at a time. This is dishonest and erodes the public trust as well as prolongs these conflicts. It seems astonishing to me that all these military officials, who probably served during the Viet Nam war would still be unable to grasp the concept that America is not good at occupying other countries.

From the day American troops entered Afghanistan and Iraq it seemed to me that we were just beginning a countdown (or a countup of bodies) until the troops would have to be pulled out and the world would agree that the missions were giant failures and gross expenditures of lives and treasure.

If anyone believes that another 30,000 or even 300,000 troops in Afghanistan will truly achieve "success" then have I got some real nice shorefront property to sell you on Baffin Island.

Close Guantanamo...Yesterday!

Now that the spineless democrats have joined with their colleagues across the aisle in opposing the immediate closure of Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay, it is time for us all to snap out of this political theatrical event and realize that we must close it, and we must close it now. I decided to do my best to sum up some of the arguments against closing Gitmo immediately, coupled with my counter-arguments.

1. They're terrorists!

* Unfortunately for the proponents of this argument, and more unfortunately for many of the captives themselves, they are not all terrorists. For those of you who, unforgivably don't follow the news, there was a messy period during and after the invasion of Afghanistan when the American military was offering cash money for Al Queda or Taliban members (just like Ed McMahon does for gold). Given the extreme poverty found across much of Afghanistan, the presence of corruption, and the disinterest the American military had for fact checking, dozens, if not hundreds of people were literally sold to the invading army and labeled as terrorists. While a good number of them have since been released (some after spending over 6 years in detention without any charges) some of the remaining 250 could well fall into this category. As recently as May 2008, a journalist was finally released after being held since December of 2001. That's right, it took 6 and a half years for the American military to realize that he was not a terrorist.

2. I don't want them in my state!

* Look, let's be reasonable. The men at Gitmo are people who had AK-47s in some patch of scrub land in Afghanistan. That's what got them classified as terrorists, or, "the worst of the worst." They are not super villains with laser beams that shoot from their eyes, or possess super human strength to bend the bars of a pitiful American prison. They are no more likely to escape from an American prison than was Timothy McVeigh or Ted Kaczynski (the unibomber for those of you living in the United States of Amnesia). This fabricated notion that by putting them in American prisons, they'll somehow manage to escape and immediately blow up your precious Wal-Mart is laughable at best, and sad at its worst.

3. Well, maybe they weren't terrorists then but they are now.

* This is by far the most offensive argument made to continue to hold people at camp X-ray. The argument is essentially that we, through our over-zealous policies, have created brand spankin' new terrorists by torturing them and solidifying their hatred of the West, and specifically America. This is where we get to set an example to the future administrations that this will not be tolerated. We have had to eat so many piles of steamy, smelly shit from the previous administrations actions and it is time to say ENOUGH. We cannot continue to cement the position that even though you are warned not to do something due to the possible ramifications, and you do it anyway, that we must then absolve you of the responsibility of ownership of that mess. I believe the old adage must apply to these situations, from the invasion of Iraq to the clustf@#k that has become the detainee situation, and that is "you break it? You buy it." Instead of continuing to hold these people who were not Al Queda or Taliban or any other "terrorist" group member until the day when they will certainly want to seek revenge, we should work with programs like those of the Saudis and try to rehabilitate these young men. If successful, they would become extremely powerful voices on America's behalf in the Islamic world.