That “Freedom” the US/NATO Brings Afghanistan

Tales in a Kabul Restaurant

by KATHY KELLY

Drone Murder as Pilots Understand It

[Would these pilots say the same things if their unmanned planes were circling over the United States itself?]

Drone Pilots Expose Politicians’ Lies

By David Swanson

Our elected and unelected officials tell us that drone strikes target top level enemies of the United States who are imminent threats to us, and that killing innocent people is avoided altogether or minimized.

Congressional hearings, with a couple of excellent exceptions, question outside academics about the legality of this purported strategy. The Obama administration declines to send any witnesses.

But drone pilots have begun talking to the media. And they describe policies that bear a lot closer resemblance to reporting from the areas where the missiles strike. These pilots should be brought before Congress.

Here is a stunning new interview with one of them:

“So the pilot is not only flying the airplane, he or she is using all those sensors to watch a potential target, circling over it for hours or days at a time. What can you really see?

“Okay, so in a village in, say, country X, where the houses are built together, there are adults who live in this house, and these children belong to those adults because we see them out in the fields together or we see them eating dinner. So you can start figuring out who is associated with who. Who is a stranger, who is it that’s visiting this house? There’s a dog and it barks at strangers, so if we needed to go in and free a hostage or conduct a raid, you’d want to tell the land forces there’s a dog there and either it’s an attack dog or it alerts the village that somebody’s coming.

“You must develop an emotional tie with the people on the ground that makes it hard if there is going to be a strike or a raid, people are going to be killed.

“I would couch it not in terms of an emotional connection, but a ” seriousness. I have watched this individual, and regardless of how many children he has, no matter how close his wife is, no matter what they do, that individual fired at Americans or coalition forces, or planted an IED — did something that met the rules of engagement and the laws of armed conflict, and I am tasked to strike that individual. The seriousness of it is that I am going to do this and it will affect his family. But that individual is the one that brought it on himself. He became a combatant the minute he took up arms.”

This pilot, in fact this director of the Air Force Remotely Piloted Aircraft Capabilities Division, has not said that a high level operation leader of terrorists who is imminently threatening the United States is targeted. He has said that some ordinary guy who has chosen to violently resist the hostile foreign occupation of his country by shooting at the occupiers is targeted.

He has also not said anything to satisfy those who support the notion of just wars but want them conducted in compliance with the Geneva Conventions and other such legally binding limitations. This director of a U.S. drone kill program openly says that our public employees target a family for death if needed in order to blow up a foreign soldier from thousands of miles away. Every effort is made to avoid killing innocent family members, he says in the interview, but if it can’t be avoided, well, the target “brought it on himself.”

Here another pilot describes specific such incidents. Here the New York Times reports on the resulting PTSD suffered by drone pilots.

War is murder, and this type of war ought to look to most people like the murder that it is. But even if you accept war, this is not how ANYBODY claims it is to be legally done. This is beyond what Congressional witnesses or even Congress members would say is acceptable or legal. Yet this pilot blurts it out to the media with apparently no concern that his life will be inconvenienced by further questioning.

Enough is enough is enough. End this madness now [petition to ban armed drones].

http://davidswanson.org

David Swanson is the author of “When the World Outlawed War,” “War Is A Lie” and “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.” He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org

Abby Martin: Iraq’s View

CAVEAT:

The speaker is a raving anarcho-libertarian ideologue.

I’m posting this video for his succinct presentation on Iraq, and NOT to endorse his essentially knee-jerk simplistic anti-state rhetoric.  I did consider deleting it, but I’d rather provide a counterargument.  The libertarians spin every issue to be one problem, one solution: the state is evil and must go.  Such a blinkered view of the world is shown to be ridiculous upon scrutiny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iquN_rqw9uI&feature=youtu.be

“Kill Anything That Moves”

We fight fascism here, and this is the front line.

“Citing a recent Gallop poll, journalist Robert Sheer reports that “a majority of Americans ages 18-29 believe sending U.S. troops to Vietnam was not a mistake… the young now approve of an irrational war in which 3.4 million Indochinese and 58,000 Americans died…” Holding steady across the age divide, “70% of those 50 or older… with contemporary knowledge…” retain their beliefs in the war’s essential wrongness. “

The real Vietnam war: Kill Anything That Moves, a new history by Nick Turse is reviewed over at Counterpunch. Using a large cache of firsthand accounts by US soldiers on the ground there, this is the wake up call generation dumbass needs to read.

That said, Michael Uhl’s review of the book is far from flattering, with a sense of the one-upsmanship and infighting of the left.  Uhl, a veteran of the war criticizes the young Turse for his limited knowledge and knee jerk myopia.  More from Vietnam era veterans found at In the Mind Field.

It’s often a thankless job fighting the neo-nazism of the current empire. These aren’t the articles, posts, videos, books and films that draw the big crowds. A video called “Beer Boobs” would probably reach millions virally on Youtube, but the descent of the nation into barbarism, mass murder and totalitarianism fails to attract much notice. They say you get the government you deserve. What does that say about the US public?

“…an old lifer Sergeant Major spoke, pointed to us and very specifically stated, ‘These whining, complaining Vietnam veterans will die off. I want to assure you, we have written the history of the Vietnam war your grandchildren will read.’”

If you want to hear what a real hero sounds like, listen to helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson’s account of how he stopped the My Lai massacre by turning his helicpter’s guns on the infantrymen massacring women and children.

Parry vs. Hanks, re: Afghanistan

Robert Parry takes on Charlie Wilson’s War, and the Hollywood fictional foreign policy that nearly always kowtows to official spin. As always, I have a healthy skepticism of Parry’s own take, but he seems to have come back to hard factual reality lately. Good.

“Yet, as deputy assistant secretary to the Air Force, J. Michael Kelly, put it, “the most critical special operations mission we have … is to persuade the American people that the communists are out to get us.“”

The film made it seem like Wilson was instrumental in getting this Mujahadeen resistance started, when in reality he didn’t even get involved until 1985, six years after radical Islamic terrorists were sponsored under Carter/Brzezinski to destabilize pro-Soviet Afghanistan.

…Hiding the unspeakable realities of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan was almost as high a priority as concealing the U.S.-backed slaughter in Central America. Reagan’s pet “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan as in Nicaragua were tainted by the drug trade as well as by well-documented cases of torture, rape and murder.

…The problem, as Avrakotos explained, was that the Afghan mujahedeen [Reagan's "freedom fighters"] routinely tortured and then murdered any Soviet soldier who fell into their hands, except for a few who were kept around for anal rape.

…Despite this knowledge about the true nature of the Afghan “freedom fighters,” the Reagan administration — and the “Charlie Wilson’s War” moviemakers — concealed from the American people the inhuman brutality of the jihadists who were receiving billions of dollars in U.S. and Saudi largesse.

Continue

Parry concludes with one hell of a detailed history of the conclusion of the Afghan/Soviet War.  He destroys the myth of “abandonment” used by DC to keep garrisons in nation after nation.  The Taliban was a creation of the Pakistani ISI.  The Pakistani ISI was a creation of the CIA, and this massive money spigot.

FURTHER

Coincidentally, today Globalresearch has an in-depth analysis of women’s rights used as an occupation pretext and the real history of fomenting Jijad and actually financing extremist textbooks through USAID to teach children Islamic fundamentalism.

Women of Afghanistn – BEFORE 30 YEARS OF USG ‘HELP’

Afghan Women Today – Under Sharia Law

Thanks Charlie Wilson!

From Afghanistan to Syria: Women’s Rights, War Propaganda and the CIA

“The [Madrassa school textbook] primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books…

The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books “are fully in compliance with US law and policy.

…The [USAID] agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.”

 

’”These gentlemen (the Taliban) are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” -Senile Ghoul R. Reagan

 

Crimes Against Humanity in Iraq

The Guardian today posted an investigation and a documentary film on the architects of the “Salvador Option” and the death squads of Iraq. Col. James Steele and Gen. David Petraus, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Chency, the names are expected but for Steele. The documentary highlights Steele’s atrocities from Vietnam through Central America on his way to Baghdad.

From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington’s man behind brutal police squads

Numerous witnesses are on the record. I have one complaint, however, and that is a bogus civilian casualty count mentioned near the beginning of the film. A total of 130,000 Iraqis is stated as some kind of fact with no discussion or examination. This is likely the US military’s own body count; ironically from an invading force that bragged “we don’t do body counts” (Gen. Tommy Franks).

 

Iraq War Casualties

Lancet survey
601,027 violent deaths out of 654,965 excess deaths

Opinion Research Business survey
1,033,000 deaths as a result of the conflict
 

Savage Sunday

Savage Sunday

By Rev. Dan Vojir

The savagery of today’s religions is brought out in a horrible video of events this last month (What Religion Has Contributed To The World This Month). It is not for the feint of heart. Nor is it for those who wish to keep faith in humanity. Those of us who do, need to remind ourselves that there are other people in the world less virulently “religious”, hence kinder and more compassionate and ultimately … more human.

This video elicits a simple reaction: gather these people up and build a wall around them, isolate them so that they cannot co-habitate with humanity, for humanity does not deserve them and they do not deserve humanity. They will beat, enslave, murder and discriminate – all “in the name of God.”

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the video is the hypocrisy of zealots: from violence in an Amish community to teens telling reporters that they “love” homosexuals but don’t want them attending a prom,

The producers of the YouTube videos series, ConversationwithA, may have a problem in obtaining widespread viewership since it promotes atheism, but it can constructively be viewed as one absolutist view pointing out the hypocrisies of absolutist views. This position, however, is not without its merits: today’s America is so dumbed-down that only shocking, black-and-white imagery can be effective. Nuance and metaphor are only for those whose I.Q. are above that of a dead flashlight battery.*

Savage Sunday Points

It may not seem ironic, the video airing on a Sunday: for what day of the week would better suit it than one in which America is steeped in religion. It is a savage counterpoint to the (sometimes) clandestine savagery of religion, the underbelly of piety of which few dare speak in highly religious countries like America.

Here are some of the news items featured:

• Pat Robertson says having a picture of Buddha in your house is idolatry and tells the owner to set it on fire because it may be demonic.
• Leader of an Amish Community is accused of violent acts and sexual abuse against members who don’t agreed with him.
• Passersby in London are accosted by a Muslim sect for “looking gay” and not adhering to Sharia law.
• A fatwa is issued against Kashmir’s all-girl rock band.
• Indonesian Muslims discourage people from celebrating Valentines Day.
• Saudi Arabian cleric issues edict that all baby girls should be forced to wear burkas
• Noted Saudi preacher who raped and tortured his five-year-old to death is given shockingly light sentence.
• Mother who thought 2-year old daughter was possessed by an evil spirit throws away body in trash.
• Thousands of children accused of witchcraft in Democratic Republic of the Congo are being violently abused by their own parents in response to the teaching of their pastors who tell them that the children are possessed and the cause of their poverty.
• Headline: House Bill 2647 Could Prevent Aizona Atheist From Graduating High School.
• A “kiss-in” outside Moscow’s parliament became violent when the protesters were attacked by people who disagreed with (gay or straight) public displays of affection.

 

Love On Sunday

Another shocking aspect of the video is its demonstration of a total lack of love for humanity: from brutal clerics to doggedly fundamentalist teenagers, the lack of love for neighbors (and even kin) is appallingly evident, no matter the cries of “we don’t really hate anyone.” Negativity is rampant, steeped in righteousness and paranoia. And while one could argue that the religious attitudes are “fringe” and relatively small, that negativity has an far-reaching impact on the psyches of whole countries: even in church-going America, the love on Sundays has turned into a diatribe of hatred and despair, a polemic against almost any form of “Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself.”

We are seeing the dark side of religiosity on a day when we are supposed to be aware of our humanity.

*After all, it is a country in which half voted for George Bush – twice.

Rev. Dan Vojir is has been writing/blogging on religion and politics for the better part of ten years. A former radio talk show host (Strictly Books €” Talk America Radio Network) and book publisher, Dan has connected with some of the most interesting people of our time: Steve Allen, William F. Buckley, Alan Ginsburg, Armisted Maupin, Anne Rice, Grace Slick, Bishop John Shelby Spong, Patricia Nell Warren, and Betty White.

He is also an ordained minister in the ULC and has studied extensively on the subject of the Bible and homosexuality. Additional articles can be read on his blog, The Devil and Dan Vojir.

Future goals and activities: a new ministry focusing on reaching personal spiritual levels without the outside influence of proselytism or evangelism called The Church of the Inner Preacher. This ministry will be included in a new website The Devil and Dan Vojir.

Vojir’s main goal: to root out hypocrisy in religion and politics. “If only one person is saved from being killed or bashed by inane bigotry, then I’ll have accomplished what I was put on earth to do: To Live and Help Live.”

http://sacredcowsmakethebesthamburgers.blogspot.com
 

The Story of Gonzalo Guerrero

This is great.

 

Official Murder Policies of Obama Administration

// //

Justice Department Leaks Memo “Legalizing” Murdering Americans

By David Swanson

Global Research, February 05, 2013

War is a Crime

Here is the memo.  With a few tweaks and a more creative title — like “Murder With Your Hands Clean” — this memo could sell a lot of copies.

And why not?  Either there’s a whistleblower in the Department of So-Called Justice about to be charged with espionage, and NBC is about to face the same persecution as WikiLeaks, or this is one of those “good” leaks that the White House wanted made public in an underhanded manner — perhaps as an imagined boost to morality-challenged CIA director nominee John Brennan who faces his Senate Rejection Hearing on Thursday.

The memo, which is thought to be a summary of a longer one, says the United States can murder a U.S. citizen abroad (abroad but somehow “outside the area of active hostilities” even though killing him or her seems rather active and hostile) if three conditions are met:

“1. an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States;”

The memo goes on to base its claims on the supposed powers of the President, not of some random official.  Who is such an official?  Who decides whether he or she is informed?  What if two of them disagree?  What if he or she disagrees with the President? or the Congress? or the Supreme Court? or the U.S. public? or the United Nations? or the International Criminal Court? What then?  One solution is to redefine the terms so that everyone has to agree.   “Imminent” is defined in this memo to mean nothing at all.  “The United States” clearly means anywhere U.S. troops may be.

“2. capture is infeasible, and the United States continues to monitor whether capture becomes feasible;”

And if a high-level official claims it’s infeasible, who can challenge that?

“3. the operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles.”

When a U.S. drone strike killed Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, no one had shown either of them to meet the above qualifications.

When a U.S. drone strike targeted and killed 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, no one had shown him to meet the above qualifications; I don’t think anyone has made such a claim to this day.  And what about his cousin who died for the crime of being with him at the wrong time?

The sociopaths who wrote this memo have “legalized” the drone-killing of Americans with the exception of all the Americans known thus far to have been murdered by our government with the use of drones.

 David Swanson’s books include “War Is A Lie.” He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook. 

 

NRCAT: Fact Not Fiction (Torture)

 

The Fact Not Fiction Campaign challenges the depravity of Zero Dark Thirty on moral grounds.  Created by the National Religious Campaign Against Torure.

 

Untold History: Ep. 7 – Vietnam

Untold History of the United States

Oliver Stone, Obama, and the War in Vietnam

by MICHAEL D. YATES

Oliver Stone’s Showtime series, Untold History of the United States, is the most radical mainstream television I have ever watched. Eye-opening scenes, shocking speech by our presidents, splendid narration by Stone, all make for a compelling series. A 700-page book by Stone and historian Peter Kuznick accompanies the eight-part program; it provides greater detail and covers more ground than the Showtime installments, allowing viewers to gain an even better understanding of our “untold history.”

Full Episode (may be deleted at any time)

Episode 7, which is mainly about the War in Vietnam (or the Second Indochina War as it is also called), riveted me to the screen. Stone atones for whatever guilt he has felt about being a soldier in Vietnam by laying out the horrors of the war, the sheer murderous violence of it, in vivid detail. I came of political age in those years, and I got angry all over again watching the bombs and defoliants falling, the victims screaming, and the politicians and generals lying. It will be a joyous day when that master liar and war criminal Henry Kissinger dies and joins his cohorts in mass slaughter, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. His name should become a synonym for murderer.

The carnage brought to Southeast Asia by the United States is mind-boggling, as Stone and Kuznick document:

• nearly four million Vietnamese killed.
• more bombs dropped on Vietnam than by all sides in all previous wars throughout history, and three times more dropped than by all sides in the Second World War.
• 19,000,000 gallons of herbicide poisoned the land.
• 9,000 of 15,000 hamlets destroyed in the South of Vietnam.
• In the North, all six industrial cities devastated; 28 of 30 provincial towns and 96 of 116 district towns leveled by bombing.
• The United States threatened to use nuclear weapons thirteen times. Nixon chided Kissinger for being too squeamish about this. Nixon said he, himself, just didn’t give a damn.
• After the war, unexploded bombs and mines permeated the landscape and took an additional 42,000 lives. Millions of acres of land have still not been cleared of live ordnance.
• Agent Orange and other defoliants have caused severe health problems for millions of Vietnamese.
• Nearly all of Vietnam’s triple canopy forests were destroyed.
• 3,000,000 tons of ordnance struck 100,000 sites during the “secret” war in Cambodia, causing widespread social dislocation, destruction of crops, and starvation. The U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia was directly responsible for the rise of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot and the genocide that took place afterward (The United States actually sided with Pol Pot when Vietnamese troops finally ended his reign of terror). Stone and Kuznick quote a Khmer Rouge officer:

Every time after there had been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched … The ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on cooperating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children off to go with them … Sometimes the bombs fell and hit little children, and their fathers would be all for the Khmer Rouge.

• 2,756,941 tons of ordnance dropped in Laos on 113,716 sites. Much of the Laotian landscape was blown to bits.

At a news conference in 1977, in response to a reporter’s question asking if the United States had a moral obligation to help rebuild Vietnam, President Jimmy Carter infamously replied:

The destruction was mutual. We went to Vietnam without any desire to capture territory or impose American will on other people. I don’t feel that we ought to apologize or castigate ourselves or to assume the status of culpability.

Mutual? Carter’s statement reflects both the arrogance of power and a vulgar sense of imperial righteousness. There were 58,000 U.S. soldiers killed during the war, and 300,000-plus wounded, and plenty of mental and physical illness, suicides, broken families, and other kinds of distress. Stone nicely captures all of this with a statement made to a journalist by a mother whose son was at My Lai, “I gave them a good boy, and they sent me back a murderer.” But whatever happened here, it pales in comparison to what took place there. There was no mutuality whatsoever, and it is obscene to say there was. What the United States did in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos ranks with the worst atrocities of the twentieth century. If the peoples of Southeast Asia had done to us what we did to them, and the same share of our population was killed as in Vietnam, the Vietnam Memorial wall would have about 20,000,000 names on it.

Our political rulers have continued ever since 1975, when the North Vietnamese Army and the National Liberation Front militarily liberated their country, to not just erase the horrors of Vietnam from public memory but to paint the war as what President Reagan called “a noble cause.” Since he took office, President Obama, an admirer of Reagan, has gone further than any president to do this, attempting to perpetrate another U.S. atrocity, albeit in another form than war, by proclaiming the “Vietnam War Commemoration.” The 2008 National Defense Authorization Act empowered the Secretary of Defense to organize events to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the War in Vietnam. A thirteen-year commemoration is envisioned, from Memorial Day 2012 until November 11, 2025.

In his Proclamation urging us all to participate in what amounts to an orgy of self-congratulations and forgetfulness, President Obama said:

As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn reverence upon the valor of a generation that served with honor. We pay tribute to the more than 3 million servicemen and women who left their families to serve bravely, a world away from everything they knew and everyone they loved. From Ia Drang to Khe Sanh, from Hue to Saigon and countless villages in between, they pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans. Through more than a decade of combat, over air, land, and sea, these proud Americans upheld the highest traditions of our Armed Forces.

This made me want to cry. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese suspected of being insurgents or sympathizers assassinated in the CIA’s Phoenix Program; the forcible removal of more than five million villagers from their homes into “Strategic Hamlets”; political prisoners jailed and tortured in “tiger cages”; the intentional bombing of North Vietnamese dikes and hospitals; the murder of some 500 women, babies, children, and old people (many were first raped and later butchered) by GIs at My Lai. What kind of valorous efforts were these? What kind of grand ideals did these embody?

The Secretary of Defense is to organize all of the Commemoration’s programs to satisfy these objectives:

1. To thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War, including personnel who were held as prisoners of war (POW), or listed as missing in action (MIA), for their service and sacrifice on behalf of the United States and to thank and honor the families of these veterans.
2. To highlight the service of the Armed Forces during the Vietnam War and the contributions of Federal agencies and governmental and non-governmental organizations that served with, or in support of, the Armed Forces.
3. To pay tribute to the contributions made on the home front by the people of the United States during the Vietnam War.
4. To highlight the advances in technology, science, and medicine related to military research conducted during the Vietnam War.
5. To recognize the contributions and sacrifices made by the allies of the United States during the Vietnam War.

These are all awful, but the fourth one would make the Nazis proud.

The current chairman of the Commemoration is former Nebraska Senator and Vietnam veteran Chuck Hagel. He is also under consideration to become the next Secretary of Defense. If he does, he’ll become the chief organizer of everything connected with it. Some progressives claim that Hagel will be a rare voice of reason and decency at the top of the U.S. killing machine. But how reasonable and decent can a man be who would agree to chair this trunkful of lies?

I hope that radicals will do what they can to counter this celebration of atrocities. Monthly Review magazine, with which I am affiliated, will be running a series of essays from our archives, as well as newly written contributions, on the war. The first of these was published in November, 2012, a wonderful review of Oliver Stone’s film, Platoon, by former Marine Leo Cawley, who was poisoned by Agent Orange and died too young from its effects. It’s a good antidote to the most recent attempt to rewrite the history of the war in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam War should never be forgotten. It was a stain on our country and on humanity itself. To glorify it is an ignominious crime. We should instead honor the Vietnamese people, who fought more valiantly and suffered more for their liberation from foreign rule than we ever did for our own.

MICHAEL D. YATES is Associate Editor of Monthly review magazine.He is the author of Cheap Motels and Hot Plates: an Economist’s Travelogue and Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy. He is the editor of Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back. Yates can be reached at mikedjyates @ msn . com

See also:

Other posts tagged “Oliver Stone”

The History of America’s Death Squads

Today’s history lesson.

What I’ve Learned About US Foreign Policy(Film Website)

Professor Michel Chossudovsky has a new article entitled, Death Squads in Iraq and Syria. The Historical Roots of US-NATO’s Covert War on Syria.  Some of these previous “death squads” can be seen in the above documentary.  This is essential modern history that every American should already know like the back of his/her hand, and yet is nowhere to be found in US high school history classes.  …And that, my friends, is exactly what’s wrong with America.