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But the units have also operated unconstrained by battlefield rules designed to protect civilians, conducting night raids, torture and killings with near impunity, in a covert campaign that some Afghan and American officials say is undermining the wider American effort to strengthen Afghan institutions.
A deeper understanding of ISIS and Syria:
By David William Pear
If you want to know the untold history of the U.S.A., then a good place to start is with the history of US imperialism in Asia from the mid-19th century until today. Not only will that reveal the history of the criminality of US foreign policy, but it will also reveal the true nature of U.S. capitalism, imperialism, fascism and U.S. wars of aggression: past, present and future.
For centuries the U.S. has preached that it believes in democracy, freedom and self-determination, but its actions towards other countries speak louder than words. Internationally the U.S. is a predator and a bully. It subjugates small countries, corrupts them by backing right-wing dictators, and enables death squads to commit mass murder of all suspected dissidents. During the First Cold War leftists, anti-colonialists, nationalists and intellectuals were called “communists” and imprisoned, tortured and executed. Now they are called “terrorists”.
The foreign policy interests of the U.S. are to promote the neocolonial interests of U.S. corporations, and to project the financial and military power of the U.S. internationally. If the U.S. cannot bully a head of state into collaborating then it backs a military coup d’etat, stirs up internal violence with divide and conquer strategies, and covertly uses mercenaries to start civil wars. If all else fails it will find a pretext or a false flag to invade and overthrow an unfriendly government.
Because of past disasters in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq the U.S. is hesitant to commit large numbers of U.S. boots on the ground. Instead it prefers the safety of “boots in the sky” with its domination of air power to bomb helpless countries into submission. If it cannot get a country to submit then it destroys it mercilessly as an example of the price that other countries will pay if they do not go along to get along with the U.S.A. The U.S. never gives up on its quest for control of worldwide capitalism. Any doubters of U.S. persistence need only to look to North Korea, Cuba and Iran.
U.S. foreign policy is the domain of the elites. The public busies itself with domestic issues, just trying to make a living and raise a family. Sometimes the elites of foreign policy let their masks slip to reveal their true nature. When Zbigniew Brzezinski said in 2009 that “today it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people” he was not just intellectualizing, as if teaching a Harvard course on political science. Brzezinski was admitting to his personal responsibility for policies that have killed millions of people.
[Photo: Brzezinski with First Lady Rosalynn Carter and President Jimmy Carter.
(Image by CSIS: Center for Strategic & International Studies) Permission Details DMCA]
It was Brzezinski that advised President Jimmy Carter to destabilize Afghanistan in the 1980’s. At the time Afghanistan’s communist government was modernizing the country, developing its economy, educating its people, and improving the standard of living for millions of Afghans. It was also advancing the rights and opportunities for women, which the U.S. is constantly touting as one of its cherished human rights concerns. It was Brzezinski’s destabilization project that set women’s rights back hundreds of years in Afghanistan. When human rights get in the way of U.S. foreign policy objectives, then human rights lose.
In 1979 Brzezinski advised Carter to secretly authorize the CIA to give financial and military aid to further inflame Islamic fanatic mujahideen that were violently opposed to modernization. When the Soviet Union intervened militarily in support of the threatened Afghan government it was not an invasion. It was the legal response of Russia to a neighboring country that was asking for military aid against foreign backed insurgents. Today we see a similar Russian military assistance program in Syria for similar reasons against very similar villains.
Carter feigned indignation and outrage towards Russia and he put the freeze back into the Cold War. He decried the “invasion as a deliberate effort by a powerful atheistic government to subjugate an independent Islamic people”, and Carter claimed it was a Russian plot to control Afghanistan’s oil. Carter declared a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow-hosted Olympics to punish Russia, and by doing so he dashed the dreams of U.S. athletes that had been training for 4 years in preparation for the Olympic Games. A good time was had by all in Moscow without the U.S. participation. U.S. athletes were sacrificed as pawns in Brzezinski’s game of the Grand Chessboard. It is a blood soaked chessboard where the masters see flesh and blood people as objects to be toyed with.
What Brzezinski and Carter did was to set a trap that the Soviets fell into when they sent their military into Afghanistan. The trap had been laid before the Russian “invasion”, and not afterwards as Brzezinski would brag years later in a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur:
“Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”
Carter and Brzezinski were overjoyed that the U.S. would then have the sweet revenge of giving Russia a bloody Vietnam experience. Carter and Brzezinski gave Afghanistan a Vietnam experience too, in which millions of people were destroyed.
Once events in Afghanistan were set into motion, then Carter and Brzezinski added gasoline to the inflamed Islamic fanatics with billions of dollars in U.S. military support funneled through Pakistan. Thousands of mercenaries from Arab countries poured into Afghanistan to join the fight and get paid too. They were called “Afghan-Arabs”. The Brzezinski-Carter scheme would be continued under President Reagan and led to the destruction of Afghanistan, the re-subjugation of Afghan women, and millions of Afghan civilian victims of war. Afghanistan never recovered but from its ashes rose up the Taliban and al Qaeda. The mysteries surrounding the attacks on the U.S. of September 11th 2001 are unresolved. Regardless of whodunit the attacks of 9/11 would be used as justification by President W. Bush to launch another invasion of Afghanistan.
Brzezinski’s egotism to show how smart he thought he was is the smoking gun of George Orwell’s famous quote:
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
For decades the U.S. pretended that the false narrative of a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was reality. The U.S. glorified the mujahideen as freedom fighters, when actually they were Islamic fanatics and mercenary proxies used by the U.S. and its coconspirators. The U.S. and the Saudis funded a heavily armed brand of Islamic terrorism that the U.S. though that it could control, ignore or kill off once it was no longer needed.
Surprise, surprise. Now we find out Omar Mateen’s father was an FBI informant at the time of his ISIS-inspired massacre. What’s more the father sends money to Turkey and Afghanistan for unspecified reasons.
According to a motion filed by Salman’s lawyers, the defense team learned about Seddique Mateen’s work for the FBI on Saturday, in an email from prosecutor Sara Sweeney. She said the elder Mateen had been an FBI source “at various points” between January 2005 and June 2016. Seddique Mateen was on the prosecutors’ witness list, but they rested their case last week without calling him to testify.
Sweeney also disclosed that FBI agents investigating the shooting found receipts for money transfers to Turkey and Afghanistan between March 16, 2016, and June 5, 2016. On June 10, Omar Mateen searched for cheap tickets to Istanbul.
And I’m going to keep pasting this link to the NY Times…
by David Swanson
The new movie, War Machine, on Netflix starring Brad Pitt begins as a hilarious and satisfying mockery of General Stanley McChrystal, circa 2009, as well as of militarism in general. Hilarious because of the deadpan sincere idiocy. Satisfying at least to those of us who have been screaming “What are you idiots doing?” for the past fifteen-and-a-half years.
Should we be glad that a Hollywood movie can still be made mocking the murderous malevolence of true believers in militarism, or should we be disturbed that theaters won’t show such movies and they have to end up on Netflix? Should we be glad that a war satire set in Afghanistan didn’t have to wait decades for a different war, in the manner of Mash, or should we be disturbed that most viewers will not know a current war is being mocked because they either believe the war on Afghanistan has ended or they simply can’t keep up with the proliferation of wars?
Regardless, I recommend making sure every movie-lover, Brad Pitt fan, young person, and old person watch this movie. Watch a sincere true-believing military commander and his sycophants consciously choose to win an unwinnable war, proposing straight-faced to work on protecting people while not killing them — or killing them less, or something.
The basic truth that people don’t want armed foreigners in their towns and would rather not be bombed is presented here in straightforward dialogue as well as comedic exchange. And Brad Pitt’s character, based on Stanley McChrystal, and on Michael Hastings’ account of McChrystal, is depicted as having turned himself into a human hammer, unable to see any problem as anything other than a nail — his ambition to “win” a war driving his blindness to the absolute unwinnability of foreign occupations or “counter-insurgency” or “counter-terrorism,” also known as terrorism.
The whole thing stops being funny three-quarters of the way into the movie, when the protests of troops that they cannot distinguish civilians from enemies becomes an actual demonstration of that inability. When we get to watch the General in charge articulate all of his usual platitudes and nonsensical pep-rally lies (even if lies to himself, still lies) to a man whose child has just been murdered by U.S. troops, the laughter is gone.
Even when we see a village leader ask the General to “please leave now,” there’s little satisfaction in this plea of the Afghan people for the past decade and a half finally making it into U.S. ears, because we know that the U.S. military will not ever listen.
We also know that this movie constitutes the extent of the punishment that the real Stanley McChrystal will ever receive for his crimes. There will be no trial, no legal judgment.
Speculation as to the cause of death of Michael Hastings continues, but speculation as to whether the individuals crashing the U.S. war machine into Afghanistan year after year have committed murder in a futile and criminal attempt to advance their personal interests should end. There is no doubt that they have done and are doing just that on a massive scale. They are, as this movie points out, and as no U.S. newspaper or television station dares to state, endangering the United States under the banner of slogans claiming they are defending and protecting it.
It’s like The Fucking Twilight Zone…
The New York Times tells us that the Saudi Arabian government funds the Taliban, whom the US has supposedly been at war with for 15 years!!!
Saudi Arabia is critical because of its unique position in the Afghan conflict: It is on both sides.
We are beyond satire, beyond parody. It’s matter of fact, routine now, insanity on the pages of the news as if it’s normal.
How can anyone tolerate a government in bed with those who fund its official enemies, whom the military is actively fighting against?
Anyone?
Is this thing on?
