reboot the republic

From LewRockwell.com

“Democracy” is a central part of the mantra by which the modern political establishment continues to exercise the same monopoly on the use of violence that was enjoyed by earlier monarchs and warlords. The rationale for the political domination of the more numerous by the few has morphed from “divine right of kings” to “democracy,” each serving, during its time, to convince people of the propriety of their subservience to power. There have been many definitions of “democracy” – none more to the point than those offered by the likes of H.L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce. My own definition is that “democracy is the illusion that my wife and I, combined, have twice the political influence of David Rockefeller.”

This concept has been used to camouflage the violation of the values and principles upon which democratic societies are allegedly based: the protection of life, liberty, and property; respect for human rights; and the belief that the state should represent and be controlled by the general population rather than by privileged elites. From at least the time of Woodrow Wilson’s warmongering to “make the world safe for democracy,” to current efforts to “make the world safe for democracy,” most Americans have accepted this state of perpetual war as one whose totality of costs could be measured solely in dollars and the lives of American soldiers. It was not until 9/11 that American civil society was on the receiving end of what Lord Byron called “the feast of vultures, and the waste of life”; an experience that most thought was supposed to be confined to other people in other lands.

As growing numbers of thoughtful Americans begin to question the war system – and the thinking that makes it possible – it is timely to consider how the imposition of “democracy” through “shock-and-awe” bombing raids, the massive destruction of homes, and the slaughter of members of the electorate is having on its “let’s pretend” beneficiaries. Whatever one’s opinions about the virtues of democratic systems, or of the self-contradictory efforts to prescribe them through warfare and conquest, reason demands that careful attention be paid to the views of those being made subject thereto. To this end, a “Statement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban): Regarding the Runoff Elections” in that country has been obtained and made public by the NEFA Foundation. The statement was issued on October 25, 2009, and its translation is reproduced here in its entirety.

“For the past eight years, the sole invaders of the world have embarked on an ambitious road aimed at slapping an illegitimate rule on the Afghan people and mobilizing views of the public of the world in their own favor. They are trying to trouble the water and then fish in it. Time and again, they resort to staging parodies under the name of Loya Jirga and elections in order to distract the attention of the people from their unlawful invasion and confound the mind of the public. But still, these wicked maneuverings have not availed them [of the] capability to achieve their evil goals, nor they have been able to divert the attention of the people from their invasion. Contrarily, their conspiracies and collusion have been exposed and lost their credibility in the sight of the masses.”

“Some time ago, the invaders conducted presidential and provincial council elections concurrently in order to legitimize their handpicked regime. But the elections revealed flagrant fraud in addition to bring to [the] open the fact that the invaders’ conspiracies have lost their flagrance. The invaders realized that our people not only boycott the elections and avoided going to the polling stations but also took part shoulder to shoulder with Mujahideen to neutralize the fraudulent plots of the enemy. It was because of their efforts, that the enemy achieved nothing from staging the elections drama.”

“At…[the international] level, every one knows the elections were no more than an eyewash. The elections substantiated the well-known quotes of our leader who had said one year ago that the real decision was taken in Washington. It is never taken on the basis of the votes of the Afghans. The enemy is trying to prolong the drama which is now…in full swing. Therefore, they have decided to conduct the election once again and keep the attention of our countrymen and the public of the world diverted in order to hide their defeat…[on] the…[battle] field.”

“The Afghans know why the elections are being held and what for? And what will be its certain outcome. The Afghans also know that the format of the current elections will not be different from the past elections. Furthermore, the Afghan nation has been witnessing the shameful posturing and political collusions. The clandestine motives behind the announcement for the runoff could be understood from the suffocated voice and the pale countenance of the besieged miserable president! The people witnessed…how powerless and incapable was the Independent Commission of Elections and how far the ICE is under the influence of the Complaint Commission whose majority members are foreign nationals. Even the Independent Election Commission is not authorized to make any announcement or issue any statement without prior permission of the Complaint Commission. The people also know that the election drama, which is now being played with a new episode as a soap opera, in fact, panders to the invaders’ ambitions and goals. What could be expected of this election for the benefit of the country and our miserable people?”

“The public of the world like the Afghans have reached the conclusion that the miserable people of Afghanistan are hostage in the hands of the global terrorists under the leadership of America whereas the Kabul surrogate Administration is entangled in the claws of the invaders. Through coercion and manipulation, they want to impose on the Afghans a regime, which is only palatable to the invaders. But our brave nation will never stoop to this.”

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan deems it necessary to announce the following points to the pious people and the believing Mujahideen regarding the second round of the devious conspiracy of the invaders.”

“1. The Islamic Emirate announces to all countrymen to avoid participating in the deceitful and foreign-made electoral process. On the command of your belief and the Afghan conscience, you should completely boycott the elections on the basis of the rule of Sharia.”

“2. All Mujahideen should make efforts to foil this wicked process; should carry out operations against their centers; prevent people from participating in the elections and block all roads and paths for all public and government vehicles one day before the day of the polling and inform people about this. Similarly, with the help of religious scholars, clerics and elders, educate people about the clandestine motives behind the elections. Create awareness among people regarding the conspiracies of the enemy.”

“3. The Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have worked out programs to foil and prevent this process. They closely monitor all workers, officials and voters including other related programs hammered out in this regard. Every one is responsible for the harm he sustains as a result of his participation in the elections. The Mujahideen have repeatedly warned the people and announced their program of action.”

“4. All Mujahideen and their local chief are instructed to execute their plans against the enemy. They should put to use new experiences and the action program now at the disposal of the provincial leaders. This is in addition to the previous tactics, which were utilized in the past. Similarly, they should foil the last conspiracy of the enemies of the country and Islam.”

“5. We know the enemy is not able to make the elections successful. So they will try to make exaggerations about this empty and failed process of the elections by using the mass media through coercion and bribes. They will falsely show that the election was successful. Therefore, we call on all impartial and independent media outlets to abide by the timeless rule of journalism and do not tarnish your reputation by partial reporting but rather fulfill the rightful mission in the best way it can be done.”

From The FFF

Jane Mayer, author of the great book  The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, was interviewed yesterday on NPR on the CIA’s drone attacks in Pakistan. She discussed the morality and legality of those attacks as well as their adverse consequences.

Last summer CIA Director Leon Pinetta announced cancellation of an assassination program that the CIA was going to implement.

Yet, how are these drone attacks in Pakistan any different from an assassination? Suppose, for example, a CIA assassin sneaks into Pakistan, spots a suspected terrorist sunbathing on the top of a house, and blows up the home, killing the suspect and everyone in his family.

That’s the type of assassination that Pinetta presumably put a stop to.

Assume, however, that a CIA official in Northern Virginia uses his computer to direct a drone over the house, spots the suspected terrorist, and drops a bomb on the house, killing the suspect and everyone else in the house.

Apparently, that’s considered okay.

What’s the difference?

The CIA justifies these attacks on the old Bush rationale that terrorism is an act of war, not a criminal offense, and that the war on terrorism is a real war, just like World War II or Vietnam.

Yet, that’s just plain false, which is repeatedly confirmed by criminal prosecutions for the federal crime of terrorism that are regularly carried out in federal district court. Examples include the federal prosecutions of Jose Padilla, Zacharias Moussaoui, and Ali al-Marri. Would federal judges be presiding over such trials if terrorism wasn’t a federal criminal offense as defined by the U.S. Code? Of course not. They would have been dismissing the criminal indictments at the inception of the proceedings.

Thus, the notion that terrorism is an act of war is bogus, as is the notion that a “war on terrorism” is a real war.

Let’s not forget also that there is no constitutionally required congressional declaration of war against Pakistan and, yet, amazingly and virtually without objection, the U.S. government is now killing people in that country with impunity.

Even worse, the drone attacks are killing family members, friends, and relatives of the suspects who are targeted for death. As New York Times columnist David Rohde, who was held captive in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Taliban has been pointing out in a series on articles about his captivity, the drone attacks are producing enormously high levels of anger and rage against the United States.

Another justification for the drone attacks in Pakistan is that that country is serving as a sanctuary for insurgents in Afghanistan, who are opposing the 8-year occupation of that country by the U.S. government (which invaded without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war).

U.S. officials says they have to continue occupying Afghanistan for the next several years, maybe decades, in order to prevent the Taliban from regaining power. The notion is that the Taliban would provide a sanctuary for al-Qaeda.

But that’s a ludicrous rationale because it’s obvious that the occupation and, now, the expansion of killing into Pakistan are producing the very thing that the U.S. government fears most — terrorists.

Moreover, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, terrorists don’t need a Taliban sanctuary in Afghanistan to plan attacks against the United States. All they need is a hotel room or a house somewhere. So, the principal rationale for continuing to occupy Afghanistan is ridiculous, especially given that the occupation is churning out new terrorists at an ever-increasing rate.

Thus, why wouldn’t the U.S. be better off simply exiting Afghanistan and bringing the troops home? After all, they’ve had a free hand to kill terrorists to their heart’s content for more than 8 years, and the situation is worse than ever. If they exited the country and came home, at least they would no longer be serving as a permanent terrorist-producing machine.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is preparing to once again raise the debt ceiling, which will permit the U.S. government to stack more debt onto the existing mountain of U.S. debt. Coincidentally, the New York Times business section carried an article yesterday showing the enormous damage that ever-increasing debt owed by the Japanese government is doing to Japan. Wouldn’t the same principles apply here?

Too bad President Obama is failing so dismally with his much-vaunted campaign promise of change. A good place to have begun would have been to bring the troops home from both Afghanistan and Iraq. Not only would that have made America safer but also more economically secure.

By Glenn Greenwald

The debate over Afghanistan — or, more accurately, the multi-pronged effort to pressure Obama into escalating — is looking increasingly familiar, i.e., like the “debate” over Iraq.  The New York Times is publishing articles filled with quotes from anonymous war advocates.  Permanent war-justifier Michael O’Hanlon is regularly featured in “news accounts” as he all but blames Obama for increasing combat deaths due to his failure to escalate the moment the military demanded it.  The New Republic is churning out pro-war screeds.  Every option is on the proverbial table except one:  not fighting the war.  And there’s a widening gap between (a) public opinion (which sees Afghanistan as “turning into another Vietnam” and which opposes more troops, with 49% favoring a full or partial withdrawal) and (b) the virtual unanimity of establishment punditry which, as always, is cheerleading for the war.  The only difference is that, with a Democratic President, there seems to be more Democratic and progressive support for this war (though there was, of course, plenty of that for Iraq, too).

The primary rationale for remaining — and escalating — in Afghanistan is the same all-purpose justification offered for virtually everything the U.S. has done since 2001:   Terrorism.  Apparently, the way to solve the Terrorist threat is by sending 60,000 more American troops into a Muslim country and committing to at least five more years of war there.  That, so the pro-escalation reasoning goes, will make us safer.

In 2004, Donald Rumsfeld directed the Defense Science Board Task Force to review the impact which the administration’s policies — specifically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — were having on Terrorism and Islamic radicalism.   They issued a report in September, 2004 (.pdf) and it vigorously condemned the Bush/Cheney approach as entirely counter-productive, i.e., as worsening the Terrorist threat those policies purportedly sought to reduce.  It’s well worth reviewing their analysis, as it has as much resonance now as it did then (h/t sysprog).

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From Juan Cole

Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the US, other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.

But on this occasion, I thought I’d take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but for which the evidence is shaky.

Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US

Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the US or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of “no first strike.” This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.

Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.

Reality: Iran’s military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.

Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to “wipe it off the map.”

Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of ‘no first strike’ to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.

Belief: But didn’t President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to ‘wipe Israel off the map?’

Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that “this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.

Belief: But aren’t Iranians Holocaust deniers?

Actuality: Some are, some aren’t. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called “the crime of Nazism.” Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.

Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.

Actuality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to US signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the UK intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.

Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.

Actuality: Iran announced Monday a week ago to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had begun work on a second, civilian nuclear enrichment facility near Qom. There are no nuclear materials at the site and it has not gone hot, so technically Iran is not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, though it did break its word to the IAEA that it would immediately inform the UN of any work on a new facility. Iran has pledged to allow the site to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, and if it honors the pledge, as it largely has at the Natanz plant, then Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons at the site, since that would be detected by the inspectors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz precisely because it is being inspected. Yet American hawks have repeatedly demanded a strike on Natanz.

Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June’s presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.

Actuality: Iran’s reform movement is dead set against increased sanctions on Iran, which likely would not affect the regime, and would harm ordinary Iranians.

Belief: Isn’t the Iranian regime irrational and crazed, so that a doctrine of mutally assured destruction just would not work with them?

Actuality: Iranian politicians are rational actors. If they were madmen, why haven’t they invaded any of their neighbors? Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded both Iran and Kuwait. Israel invaded its neighbors more than once. In contrast, Iran has not started any wars. Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. The US elite was once unalterably opposed to China having nuclear science because they believed the Chinese are intrinsically irrational. This kind of talk is a form of racism.

Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.

Actuality: The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA’s discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can’t attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC.

From The Guardian UK

The UN’s chief weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today he had seen “no credible evidence” that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, rejecting British intelligence allegations that a weapons programme has been going on for at least four years.

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From The Examiner

In 300 words or less…

Contrary to popular opinion, willful ignorance, or intentional misrepresentation, libertarians do not believe in isolationism.

Libertarians believe in nonintervention.

The difference is simple, but important.

Map of U.S. military bases around the world as of 2007, including those in the former Republic of Texas (Image by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr)

Isolationism is the cartoon ostrich sticking its head in the sandbox and refusing to see reality.

Noninterventionism is seeing reality very clearly and choosing to stay the hell out of it whenever it doesn’t involve defending America from foreign attack.

As a nation, the supreme law of America is the Constitution. That document created a federal government and gave it certain enumerated powers, one being to “provide for the common Defence.”

Not warmongering, not empire building, not land grabbing, not preemptive attack, not policing the world, not picking sides in other country’s brawls, but defense.

The familiar quote by Thomas Jefferson, “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none,” neatly sums up libertarian foreign policy.

As an individual, you may do whatever you like as long as you don’t coerce, intimidate or defraud others in the doing of it.

Want to help free the Uighurs from China? Go do it. Want to aid the starving people of Africa? Have at it. Want to fund Hezbollah while your brother sends money to Israel? That’s your and his business.

You can advocate your cause, help develop organizations and associations, go tote a gun on a battlefield or conduct fundraising events or consciousness raising experiences about your cause. It’s your choice. But no one, neither individually nor collectively, has a right to force that choice on others.

If a collective entity called government doesn’t exist for the sole purpose of guaranteeing every individual’s rights, it shouldn’t exist at all. Mucking around in the doings of other countries isn’t foreign policy; it’s just arrogant muscle flexing.

That’s the libertarian take on foreign policy.

From The American Conservative

With the 30th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan approaching, the question retains its fascination: Why did the Russians do it? The misguided Afghan War sounded the death knell of the Soviet empire. How could they have been so stupid? With the United States several years into its own Afghan War, the question possesses more than academic interest. However wrapped in irony and paradox, history is offering us instruction that we ignore at our peril.

When it came to divining the motive behind that Soviet invasion, Richard Pipes, the Harvard historian and Russian expert, expressed considerable certainty. As he told the New York Times in early 1980, the incursion into Afghanistan showed that the Soviets were on the march. “Russians do not seize territories that have no strategic importance,” Pipes announced.

Afghanistan has no natural resources of importance, and the risk of antagonizing the West is very high for a bit of mountainous territory with a primitive economy, with a population that has never been subdued by any colonial power.

To run all these risks for the sake of occupying this territory makes little sense—unless you have some ultimate, higher strategic objectives.

Pipes and others believed the ultimate Soviet objective was to seize control of Persian Gulf oil, something they insisted the United States prevent. President Jimmy Carter heeded that demand. In what became enshrined as the Carter Doctrine, he declared that attempts “by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf” would constitute “an assault on the vital interests of the United States,” to be “repelled by any means necessary.” Everyone understood “outside force” to be a thinly veiled reference to the Soviet Union.

Yet in reality, the Kremlin had no intention of using Afghanistan as a jumping-off point for a grand offensive across Iran and Iraq to the oil El Dorado of Saudi Arabia. Nor did the Soviet legions possess the capability of doing so. Pipes got it wrong. According to their own lights, the Soviets had entered Afghanistan for defensive purposes—to prevent this remote outpost of communism from slipping out of the Soviet orbit.

Allow the Afghans to go their own way, and other Soviet satellites might follow—or so the Kremlin feared. To preserve their empire, therefore, Soviet leaders embarked upon what became a costly, open-ended war, oblivious to the fact that the real threats to their empire were internal: the Soviet economy had stagnated, and the Soviet system was fast losing its legitimacy. The Kremlin’s stubborn insistence on keeping a grip on Afghanistan served only to hasten the empire’s demise—a process helped along when the U.S. and its allies famously funneled arms and money to Afghan “freedom fighters” resisting Soviet occupation.

Meanwhile, the force that actually threatened the Persian Gulf appeared not outside but inside: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. During the 1980s, Washington had forged a marriage of convenience with Saddam, supporting his war of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, President George H.W. Bush called the marriage off and thereafter denied its existence. The Carter Doctrine underwent a subtle transformation: preventing outsiders from dominating the Gulf no longer sufficed; defending the Gulf now required that the United States establish itself in a position of unquestioned primacy. The Gulf War began the effort, still ongoing, to incorporate the Persian Gulf more directly into the American empire.

That effort offended the sensibilities of some Muslims and provoked considerable resistance. American officials spent the next decade fixating on Saddam, said to be the source of all the woes afflicting that part of the world. In the meantime, a more genuinely dangerous adversary was gravitating to Afghanistan, of all places. By the 1990s, Afghan freedom fighters that Washington had enthusiastically supported in the 1980s were providing sanctuary to violent Islamists who wanted to wage jihad against the United States, primarily in retribution for sins committed under the aegis of the Carter Doctrine. Only with the events of 9/11 did Americans awaken—albeit only briefly—to the fact that efforts to turn Afghanistan into a Soviet Vietnam had produced poison fruit. When the Soviets announced their withdrawal from Afghanistan back in 1989, the CIA station chief in Pakistan sent Washington a two-word cable: “We won.” By September 2001, events were calling that verdict into question.

So at the behest of President George W. Bush, the Carter Doctrine once again underwent a subtle transformation. No longer did the waters of the Persian Gulf define its scope. U.S. ambitions after 9/11 widened to encompass the Greater Middle East, a newly invented geographic expression that included the very place the Soviet empire had run aground. As the wheel of history turned, Afghanistan once again found itself positioned to determine the fate of empires.

As if responding to some cosmic imperative, the best minds in Washington proceeded to devise policies incorporating all the worst features of the Soviet policies that had hurtled the Soviet Union toward self-destruction. The Bush administration committed U.S. troops to what quickly became a costly, open-ended war, beginning in Afghanistan, then shifting to Iraq, then reverting in the Obama era back to Afghanistan. Like the Politburo of olden days, our political elites remain oblivious to the possibility that the real threats to the American empire might be internal: an economy in shambles and basic institutions wallowing in dysfunction. The conviction that “victory” in Afghanistan will make things right grips Washington with the same intensity that once gripped Moscow—and with as little justification.

Spooked by a nonexistent Soviet threat to Persian Gulf oil back in 1980, the United States committed itself to a course that in the years since has metastasized into a gargantuan enterprise that vaguely aims at remaking the entire Greater Middle East. In a supreme irony, that effort has now landed us exactly back where the Soviets, in a supreme act of folly, started the ball rolling. History has looped back upon itself. It’s déjà vu all over again, with American soldiers now playing the roles once assigned to Russian soldiers.

Writing 30 years ago, Professor Pipes got many things wrong, but he got Afghanistan right. It is still a place with “no natural resources of importance.” Opium apart, Afghanistan produces little that we need or want. It remains a “mountainous territory with a primitive economy, with a population that has never been subdued by any colonial power.” As Pipes correctly observed, to occupy such a forbidding country “makes little sense—unless you have some ultimate, higher strategic objectives.”

Soviet objectives—centered on the conviction that salvaging their empire required them to subdue the Afghans—proved self-defeating. American objectives—centered on a kinder, gentler version of the same idea—have not yet produced markedly different results.

To persist in Afghanistan will more likely compound the miscalculation that lies at the heart of our foreign policy: the conviction that the United States has no alternative but to use any means necessary to ensure its ostensibly vital interests throughout the Greater Middle East.

The debate that we need is not about Afghanistan as such but about the original sin that eventually mired us there: the misinterpretation of Soviet behavior back in 1979 that has disfigured U.S. policy ever since. If you want a strategy worthy of the name, start by repealing the Carter Doctrine.

From The Future of Freedom Foundation

It’s interesting to see conservatives calling for the U.S. Attorney General to ignore evidence that people have knowingly violated federal criminal laws against torture. Aren’t conservatives usually the law-and-order crowd in this country?

The argument that conservatives are making for ignoring violations of federal criminal law seems to be that because the suspected criminals presumably had good intentions — e.g., protecting Americans from terrorism — federal prosecutors should refrain from prosecuting them for violating the law.

Yet, the simple fact remains — the law is the law. If the federal criminal statutes against torture provided that good intentions were a defense to criminal prosecution, that would be one thing. But they don’t. Therefore, the Attorney General’s duty is clear: Investigate and prosecute.

Otherwise, if the law isn’t going to be enforced, then what’s the point of having the law? As a facade? Moreover, if government officials are free to violate criminal laws whenever they have good intentions, then how is that any different from how government officials operate in such countries as Burma?

What about the claim that the suspected criminals saved American lives with the information they allegedly acquired through their violation of the torture statutes?

Again, the law does not provide that that’s a defense to prosecution. Instead, that’s a matter to be considered in mitigation of punishment.

For example, at sentencing the convicted torturer can argue to the judge that he broke the law because he felt that by doing so, he could save lives of Americans. He could show that his actions actually did save lives. The judge could then take such factors into consideration when imposing punishment.

But what the prosecutor cannot rightfully do is simply ignore violations of federal criminal law when faced with clear evidence that people have violated it, even if they claim to be well-motivated when they committed the violations.

Interestingly, the conservative law-and-order crowd, as well as the Attorney General himself and his team of federal prosecutors, seem to have a good understanding of these principles when it comes to violations of other federal criminal statutes, such as drug laws.

Suppose the DEA arrests a person here in Virginia in possession of marijuana. The person states, “I have cancer and this marijuana is alleviating the effects of my chemotherapy treatment.”

What will be the response of federal prosecutors? Will they ignore the drug laws based on the good motives of the drug-law violator? Of course not. They will say: “The law is the law and you have violated it. Explain your motives to the judge before he sentences you.”

Or suppose someone is caught selling a load of cocaine to an undercover DEA agent. The person says, “I need the money to pay for my mother’s heart operation. If she doesn’t have the operation, she’ll die.”

Will the feds let him off the hook with respect to prosecution? Of course not. Since the drug law does not provide that his good intentions constitute a defense to prosecution, they will prosecute him for violating the drug laws. They will tell him that he’s free to mention his motive at sentencing.

The same holds true for those who have violated laws against torture. With respect to prosecution, it makes no difference that the defendants allegedly were well-motivated or that their actions allegedly produced beneficial results. If they have violated the law, they need to be prosecuted for it. To permit them to escape prosecution makes a mockery of the law. They can tell their story to the judge at sentencing.

From RawStory.com

Last spring, the news media trumpeted Vice President Dick Cheney’s challenge to release the CIA’s torture memos.

It was a move Cheney supported because, he said, the documents would vindicate his claims that the Bush administration’s torture program operated within the law, and provided indispensable information in protecting the US from further terrorist attacks.

Since Monday, when the CIA released a significant part of those documents — a 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on torture practices — there has been hardly a mention in the mainstream press about the fact that the report largely contradicted what the former vice president has been saying in public.

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Found at RawStory.com

In an interview last month with blogger Brad Friedman, whistleblower Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell when a caller asked a question about 9/11.

The former FBI translator carefully [1] replied, “I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban – those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.”

Australian blogger Luke Ryland has now [2] filled in more details of the Central Asian operations to which Edmonds was referring, quoting Edmonds as saying on other occasions that al Qaeda and the Taliban were used by the US as proxies in “a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex.”

Turkey acted as the primary intermediary in this operation, with assistance from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The intention was, on one hand, to avoid creating a direct confrontation with China and Russia and, on the other, to prevent popular resistance to US influence by appealing to Central Asian aspirations for an Islamic and Turkic resurgence.

Ryland also points out that Uighurs from the western Chinese province of Xinjiang were receiving training from al Qaeda in Afghanistan before 2001, with the expectation that they might serve as guerrilla forces in the event of US conflict with China. Edmonds has recently stated that “our fingerprint is all over” recent Uighur unrest within China.

There are certain factors, touched on lightly by Ryland in this article, which provide further support for Edmonds’ shocking allegations. One is what is sometimes known as the “Bernard Lewis Project,” an effort first [3] espoused thirty years ago by Middle East scholar and Neocon guru Bernard Lewis to pursue “the fragmentation and balkanization of Iran along regional, ethnic and linguistic lines.”

Although this plan involves several different ethnic groups within Iran, including Arabs, Kurds, and Baluchis, its most ambitious component involves the use of pan-Turkic (or pan-Turanian) nationalism to shift power in the Middle East away from both Iran and the Arab states and towards Turkey, a US ally which is linguistically and ethnically close to the oil-rich states of Central Asia. Pan-Turanism often has fascist affinities, which makes its encouragement particularly problematic.

Another anomaly of US policy in the region has to do with its support for terrorist groups, many of them engaged in the heroin trade, that are also strongly suspected of having ties to al Qaeda. This was the case in the 1990’s with groups in Chechnya, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and there is some evidence that it continued to be the case in Central Asia even after 9/11.

For example, a [4] profile of the Kosovo Liberation Army at HistoryCommons.org includes numerous mainstream citations from 1998-99 indicating that the KLA, working together with the Albanian Mafia, had taken control of Balkan heroin trafficking routes and was funneling the profits into its political activities. The United States continued supporting the KLA during this period and even removed it from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, despite statements from US officials that it was a terrorist group with strong evidence of links to al Qaeda.

The extent to which al Qaeda may itself have played a role in the Afghan heroin trade is a matter of [5] dispute, but there is no question that al Qaeda provided training and financial support to some of the same terrorist groups that were being supported by the US — a situation in sharp contrast with the usual assumption that the United States and al Qaeda were deadly enemies even prior to 9/11.

Edmonds’ latest remarks appear intended to draw fresh attention to these anomalies, as well as the role played by Enron and other Western oil companies and weapons suppliers in Central Asia in the 1990s.

This article was modified from an original version to provide additional background.

URLs in this post:

[1] replied: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7332
[2] filled in: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/31/760117/-Bombshell:-Bin-Laden-worked-for-US-till-9-11
[3] espoused: http://www.rozanehmagazine.com/NoveDec05/AZPartVI.html
[4] profile: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=kosovo_liberation_army
[5] dispute: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1590827.stm