Where Will They Get the Troops?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:58 GMT

Preparing undeployables for the Afghan front
by Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare

As the Obama administration debates whether to send tens of thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, an already overstretched military is increasingly struggling to meet its deployment numbers. Surprisingly, one place it seems to be targeting is military personnel who go absent without leave (AWOL) and then are caught or turn themselves in.

Hidden behind the gates of military bases across the U.S., troops facing AWOL and desertion charges regularly find themselves in the hands of a military that metes out informal, open-ended punishments by forcing them to wait months – sometimes more than a year – to face military justice. In the meantime, some of these soldiers are offered a free pass out of this legal limbo as long as they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq – even if they have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In August 2008 at TomDispatch.com, we reported on the deplorable conditions at the 82nd Replacement Barracks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. There, more than 50 members of Echo Platoon of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 82nd Replacement Detachment were being held while awaiting AWOL and desertion charges. Investigations launched since then – in part in response to our article – have revealed that the plight of members of Echo Platoon is not an isolated one. It is, in fact, disturbingly commonplace on other bases throughout the United States. And it is from these “holdover units,” filled with disgruntled soldiers who have gone AWOL, many of whom are struggling with PTSD from previous deployments in war zones, that the military is hoping to help meet its manpower needs for Afghanistan.

Nightmare in Echo Platoon

On Aug. 16, determined to put an end to unbearable mental and psychological pain, Pvt. Timothy Rich, while on 24-hour suicide watch, attempted to jump to his death from the roof of Echo Platoon’s barracks (where he had been held since being arrested for going AWOL). Prior to his suicide attempt, Rich had been offered amnesty by the military in exchange for agreeing to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq.

He had already been through a hellish year awaiting a discharge and treatment for mental health problems. “I want to leave here very bad,” he explained. “For four months they have been telling me that I’ll get out next week. I didn’t see an end to it, so I figured I’d try and end it myself.”

He fell three stories, bouncing off a tree, before hitting the ground and cracking his spine. The military gave him a back brace, psychotropic drugs, and put him on a renewed, 24-hour suicide watch.

While he has recently been discharged from the military, Rich was not atypical of the soldiers of Echo Platoon, some forced to wait a year or more in legal limbo – in dilapidated buildings under the authority of abusive commanders – for legal proceedings to begin, and many struggling with mental illness or PTSD from previous deployments. As Spc. Dustin Stevens told us last August: “[It's] horrible here. We are treated like animals. Some of us are going crazy, some are sick. There are people here who should be in mental hospitals. And the way I see it, I did nothing wrong.”

Shortly after our story was published, Stevens told us that at least half a dozen soldiers in the platoon, including him, were suddenly given trial dates. Although he was likely to be found guilty and face punishment, Stevens claimed to be “relieved” to have an end in sight. Soon after, according to Echo Platoon informants, their barracks were condemned as a result of a military investigation of the site and, on Oct. 19, the platoon itself was disbanded.

Recently, due possibly to the attention his story drew to the mistreatment and indefinite detention soldiers were facing in Echo Platoon, Stevens was informed by the military he would be “chaptered out” – in other words, given an administrative discharge from the Army – and will not be forced to serve formal prison time.

James Branum, Stevens’ civilian lawyer, as well as the legal adviser to the G.I. Rights Hotline of Oklahoma and co-chair of the Military Law Task Force (MLTF), summed developments up this way: “After repeated complaints and congressional inquiry, Echo Platoon was shut down. The whole place was shut down. Everyone was scattered to other units. If your old unit still exists, they are sending you to your old unit. We know that at least one of the NCOs [non-commissioned officers] in charge of Echo Platoon was fired. I think this is a positive thing.”

Echoes of Echo

The troubling state of affairs in Echo Platoon may only have been the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Army holdover units. Evidence suggests that soldiers being held on other bases in the United States for AWOL and desertion face similar apathy or intentional neglect – and that they, too, are often left with the choice between living in legal limbo or agreeing to be sent to a war zone.

Scott Wildman, a former Army specialist, went AWOL in 2007 when he was unable to receive adequate help for severe PTSD sustained after a 15-month deployment to Iraq. In February 2009, he finally turned himself in at Fort Lewis in Washington state, only to find himself lost in a labyrinthine bureaucracy. For the first four months, he was not allowed to leave a confined area and was forbidden even to walk around by himself.

Here’s how he describes his experience: “I was flipping out. My wife had left me while I was over there. I hadn’t seen my kids in a couple years. I came home and tried to get help. At Fort Lewis, they do not care about you. I had been diagnosed by civilian and military doctors with severe depression, PTSD, and severe anxiety. When you are at the unit, they make fun of you. They crack PTSD jokes. They all have it too, but they’re too cool.”

During the eight months he has been held at Fort Lewis, Wildman claims he has suffered verbal abuse and substandard mental healthcare. “The command treated me like dirt. My commander ignored me for the first couple months until my roommate jumped me. They’ll make sure you’re in the room and call you a ‘bunch of PTSD pussies.’”

Four weeks ago, Wildman was informed that he would be court-martialed, but he was not given a trial date. Feeling he had no other choice, he went AWOL again and remains so today. “I’d been going to see some military counselors, but we weren’t making progress on the real problem…. They give us classes on calm and peacefulness, but they are right near the shooting ranges. There’s gunfire and explosions all around, people being screamed at all the time because it’s infantry. It’s not a good place for someone with [mental health] issues.”

At one point, despite a confidentiality protocol that should have prevented it, Wildman’s commanders went through his medical evaluations and found out that he had been involved in the accidental killing of two little girls in Iraq. They proceeded to needle him by threatening to write him up for war crimes.

Explaining why he once again went AWOL, Wildman says, “I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I had to remove myself from that situation.”

“Examples of how the military is treating soldiers, like the case of Wildman, are common,” comments Kathleen Gilberd, co-chair of the MLTF. She also points out that the Army, stretched thin by years of multiple deployments to two war zones, has taken to downplaying potentially severe medical conditions to keep soldiers eligible for service overseas. It is commonplace, she reports, for formerly AWOL soldiers to be “bribed” with offers of having all charges, or potential charges, dropped, as long as they accept deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.

“A lot of folks who are under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed are being deployed second and third times,” she adds. “Barrier mechanisms that should prevent this from happening are being routinely ignored. … If someone is on psychotropic medication or is diagnosed with a fresh psychiatric condition, there should be a 90-day observation period and delay, under DOD [Department of Defense] policy.”

Remarkably, that sometimes-ignored 90-day hold period for military personnel on psychotropic medications does not always apply to soldiers who are diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI) of a sort commonly caused by roadside bombs. According to an Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center analysis, reported in theDenver Post in August 2008, more than “43,000 service members – two-thirds of them in the Army or Army Reserve – were classified as nondeployable for medical reasons three months before they deployed” to Iraq. The process, if anything, only seems to be accelerating when it comes to Afghanistan.

Deploying the Undeployables

Not all soldiers go AWOL in order to save their minds and bodies. Some are trying to save their families. One soldier held in Bravo Platoon, a holdover unit of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs (who did not want his name made public) disclosed that, having returned from service in Iraq, he was told he would soon be redeployed there. Because his mother was ill, he refused and was threatened with a court martial.

“When I turned myself in, I submitted a binder with letters from my mom’s doctors and state officials that made clear that I needed to be home to take care of my mother. At that time, they had me on restriction and lockdown 24/7 to keep me from leaving again. Later they punished me. I was assigned extra duty and received a rank reduction from E3 to a private. I was treated like crap.”

He and the other soldiers in his holdover platoon were subjected to verbal abuse and made to do menial jobs. He claimed that he was threatened daily with being sent to the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the military’s maximum security correctional facility – and then was urged to agree to go back to Iraq instead. It made no difference that he had “no-go” orders from doctors at Fort Carson exempting him from overseas deployment.

His commander promised him a clean slate if he would redeploy to Iraq, insisting that the only alternative was a court-martial. Despite a regimen of humiliation, he stood his ground and was finally discharged for family hardship in September 2008. There were at least 11 other soldiers then in Bravo Platoon. Like their counterparts in Echo, most were told that their records would be wiped clean once they agreed to redeploy. The alternative was a non-judicial punishment, followed by a court-martial some months down the line.

As he tells it, Sgt. Heath Carter, originally based at Fort Polk, La., found himself torn between pressing family needs and an indifferent military command. On returning from the invasion of Iraq, he discovered his daughter living in what he believed to be an unsafe environment. Heath and his new wife started consulting attorneys in order to secure custody of the child. Precisely during this time, the military began changing Carter’s duty station. He was moved from Fort Polk to Fort Huachuca, Ariz., then on to Fort Stewart, Ga., reducing his chances of gaining custody.

Convinced that this was a crucial matter for his daughter, he requested compassionate reassignment to Fort Leavenworth, Mo., about two hours away from her. His appeals to the military command, to his chaplain, even to his congressman failed. In May 2007, having run out of options, he went AWOL from Fort Stewart, heading home to fight for custody, which he won.

This Jan. 25, however, he was arrested at his home by military police, who flew him back to Fort Stewart, where he has been awaiting charges for the past eight months. Being a sergeant, he is in a regular unit, not a holdover one. Initially, his commander assured him he would be sent home within a month and a half. Several months later, the same commander decided to court-martial him.

Carter feels frustrated. “If they had done that in the beginning, I would have been home by now. It’s taken this long for them to decide. Now I have to wait for the court-martial. If we had known it would take this long, my family could have moved down here. Every time I ask when I’ll have a trial, they say it’s only going to be another two weeks. I get the feeling they’re lying. They’ve messed with my pay. They’re trying to push me to do something wrong.”

His ordeal has forced Carter to reflect on America’s wars. Once, he admits, he was proud of his mission in Iraq. Now, he sees things differently. “I don’t think there is any reason for us to be there except for oil.”

His wife, who witnessed her husband’s callous treatment, says, “He’s been there [Iraq], done that, and seen horrible, terrible things, so of course he doesn’t want to go back.”

While the Obama administration decides how many thousands of troops to send to Afghanistan, service men and women are already facing repeated deployments, oftentimes while having already been diagnosed with medical conditions that should render them unfit for deployment.

Nothing has changed for these beleaguered troops, except the venue of their maltreatment and the desperation with which the military is now struggling to make the necessary deployment numbers as it continues to fight two endless wars.

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009) and

The Pentagon's Dirty Bombers

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:57 GMT

The Nuclear Regulator Commission is considering an application by the US Army for a permit to have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training Area, a vast stretch of flat land in what’s called the “saddle” between the sacred mountains of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island, and at the Schofield Barracks on the island of Oahu. In fact, what the Army is asking for is a permit to leave in place the DU left over from years of test firing of M101 mortar “spotting rounds,” that each contained close to half a pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army, which originally denied that any DU weapons had been used at either location, now says that as many as 2000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might have been fired at Pohakuloa alone.

But that’s only a small part of the story.

The Army is actually seeking a master permit from the NRC to cover all the sites where it has fired DU weapons, including penetrator shells that, unlike the M101, are designed to hit targets and burn on impact, turning the DU in the warhead into a fine dust of uranium oxide. Hearings on this proposal were held in Hawaii on Aug. 26 and 27.

Depleted uranium M101 “spotter round” for Davy Crockett Mortar

Uranium particles, whether pure uranium or in an oxidized form, are alpha emitters, and can be highly carcinogenic and mutagenic if ingested or inhaled, since they can lodge in one part of the body—the kidney or lung or gonad, for example—and then irradiate surrounding cells with large, destructive alpha particles (actually helium atoms), until some gene is compromised and a cell become malignant.

Among the sites identified by the NRC as being contaminated with DU are:

Ft. Hood, TX
Ft. Benning, GA
Ft. Campbell, KY
Ft. Knox, KY
Ft. Lewis, WA
Ft. Riley, KS
Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD
Ft. Dix, NJ
Makua Military Reservation, HI

Other locations identified as having DU weapons contamination are:

China Lake Air Warfare Center, CA
Eglin AFB, Florida,
Nellis AFB, NV
Davis-Monthan AFB
Kirtland AFB, NM
White Sands Missile Range, NM
Ethan Allen Firing Range, VT
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

An application for a 99-year permit to test DU weapons at the NM Inst. Of Mining and Technology claimed that that site’s test area was “so contaminated with DU…as to preclude any other use”!

DU weapons have also been used by the Navy at Vieques Island off Puerto Rico (the Navy claimed it was a “mistake.”

The Pentagon continues a long history of claiming that DU–which is the uranium that is left after the fissionable isotope U-235 is removed to make nuclear fuel and bombs–is not dangerous, although this official stance is belied by the warnings it has given to its troops (though not to civilians in battle zones), to stay well clear of tanks and other equipment destroyed by US tanks, which used DU weapons as the ordnance of choice in both the Gulf War and the current Iraq War. During both wars, DU ammunition was used by Army and Marine tanks, by the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the A-10 ground support jet, the Marine Harrier jet, and specially equipped F16 fighter jets. The Navy also switched from DU ammunition to tungsten ammunition in its Phalanx anti-missile ship defense system because of health and environmental concerns with the DU ammo.

In both wars, a high percentage of troops have returned with many physical ailments–auto-immune problems, cancers, and later, birth defects in offspring–which have been referred to as Gulf War and now Iraq War Syndrome. As many as a quarter of returning vets from the Gulf War have reported strange illnesses and cancers and the numbers are rising for Iraq War vets. As well, statistics from the National Institutes of Health show that counties hosting bases and test facilities where DU has been uses also show high cancer rates. This is certainly true for Hawaii's Big Island, which has the highest cancer rates for the Hawaiian archepelago. Meanwhile, the lung cancer rate for the Ft. Knox area is 105-127 per 100,000 for the 2001-2005 period, high by state and national standards. The rate is among the highest in the state of Washington for Pierce County, where Ft. Lewis is located.

The Pentagon denies that it uses depleted uranium in bombs, missiles and cruise missile warheads, but military personnel have reported their use in all three delivery systems, and reports exist of DU bunker-buster bombs, DU-tipped penetrator warheads on Tomahawk cruise missiles and on some air-to-ground missiles.

It’s a good bet that all US munitions containing DU have been widely tested at various US military bases and testing grounds.

The bottom line is that at the same time that US government is continuing to warn about the danger of terrorists acquiring the materials to make a “dirty” bomb that could spread radioactive material in the US, the US military has for years been doing exactly that, and continues to do so, with no intention to clean up its messes, many of which are allowing depleted uranium to percolate into ground water or flow down streams to more populated areas.

Of course, it could have been worse. The M101 mortar that litters Pohakuloa was actually designed as a range-finder for the Davy Crocket mortar, which back in the late 1950s and the 1960s, and up until 1971 was designed to allow infantry troops to fire a small “tactical” nuclear mortar shell at targets just one to two miles distant. Some 700 of these “little nukes”, that had a power of “just” several kilotons or less, were made and actually made their way into the arsenals of troops in Europe and elsewhere during the Cold War. Fortunately there are no reports of any of them having been fired off at any of the military’s firing ranges–especially given that their radiation effect radius was larger than their firing range, meaning that launching one was an automatic suicide mission.

Davy Crockett mini nuke, in test-firing at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (Actually firing it would have been suicide.)

Then again, the Pentagon doesn’t exactly have a sterling record about telling the truth where nuclear weapons and DU weapons are concerned. (You start to notice as you look into this stuff that with uranium weapons, the military's attitude towards troop safety is not a whole lot better than its attitude towards the people at the downrange end of the line.)

Nor is the NRC to be relied on to protect the American public. As an administrative judge wrote in a ruling on a case involving DU contamination at Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana, the NRC exhibited a “more than casual attitude with regard to decommissioning of sites on which radioactive materials remain as a potential threat to public health and safety and to the environment.”

In another case, involving cleanup of the ShieldAlloy Metallurgical Corp.’s site in Newfield, NJ, where DU weapons were made, a judge said, “at the very least, the (NRC) staff has countenanced…a situation that will leave the citizens in the area surrounding the activity site in doubt for close to two decades regarding what measures will ultimately be taken for their protection.”

Stop the Escalation, Out of Afghanistan Now!

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:16 GMT

A Call to all Anti-War Activists from Elaine Brower, member of World Can't Wait Steering Committee:

PROTEST IN THE STREETS THE DAY AFTER AN ANNOUNCEMENT IS MADE TO SEND MORE TROOPS INTO AFGHANISTAN

We in the anti-war movement have been tirelessly and endlessly calling upon the government to end the occupations. We want our troops out of the middle east, and an end to the drone bombings that are killing thousands of innocent civilians.

Letters have been written, petitions signed, arrests made but the wars drone on. And now we are grimly awaiting the announcement by the Obama Administration of an escalation of troop levels once again in Afghanistan.

It is impossible to predict when this announcement will come, but it will, and we must be ready. Everyone of conscience who can't stand one more day or one more minute witnessing the death and destruction being wreaked upon countries and its people, under the guise of “bringing democracy” or “helping women” or “ending the poppy production” or “protecting civilians”, or the best yet, “fight the war on terror”, must join together, show unity, and strength against this scourge.

We must stop flying our own banners announcing our “affiliations” and fight our common enemy, those who chose to continue wars of aggression in our names, and we must fight cohesively and with one message, and in one voice: END THE WARS, ALL TROOPS HOME NOW!

Soon the announcement will be made to send more young men and women to die and to kill. We don't want it, we have told those who have taken power that it must end. But slowly we have come to realize that our cries fall on deaf ears, and it is in our hands and our hands only to enter the belly of the beast and show them what the people can do united.

We must have a national day of resistance against these occupations, and when the announcement is made to send more troops to Afghanistan, it is time for ALL of us to get into the streets and stop business as usual.

It may mean going out in your community during the week! It may mean expressing our anger in the form of non-violent civil disobedience.

But if hundreds of people around the country picked a location where they live and formed alliances to make sure this happened, our message would be heard, loud and clear. We owe it to the troops and to the people of other countries who are looking to us for their salvation.

If Obama makes his announcement on a weekend, then we as a collective group of anti-war activists, with a plan in place, go to a pre-determined location the next business day at 5 PM and shut down the streets in the name of PEACE.

If we are truly determined to face our enemy then we must do it with resolve. We must be relentless, unafraid and staunch in our demands and demeanor.

It is way past time to join together and move forward to a more peaceful world. But without hundreds if not thousands out there around the country being arrested in the name of peace at the same time and on the same day, we will not move one inch from where we are now. It is a step forward, a small brave step, but if we do it in unison we will find strength in our numbers. The world is counting on us!

Losing the Moral High Ground

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:41 GMT

Last week Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spent three days in Pakistan defending U.S. Policy before a variety of groups. Some of the audiences were blunt and combative, reflecting the dramatic decline in popularity of U. S. policy. The Pakistani criticisms include U.S. interference in Pakistan's internal affairs, U.S. failure to allow Pakistani textiles into American markets in desired quotas, and the growing U.S. relationship with India particularly on nuclear matters.

But the issue that drew the most attention and anger is the U.S. use of unmanned drone airplanes to kill people in Pakistan, a program guided offshore by civilians from as far away as western United States. Some Pakistanis told Clinton that the program amounted to “execution without trial”. Others asked Clinton if she viewed these drone attacks as terrorism. “No, I do not”, she replied, but refused to comment further.

This CIA program is aimed at terrorism suspects around the world including countries where U.S. troops are not based. The program was initiated in the Bush administration, continued by Obama, and is now one of the fastest-growing programs of the U.S. military. After September 11, Bush signed a secret memorandum of notification giving the CIA the right to kill members of Al Qaeda and confederates virtually anywhere in the world.

Targeted killing has become official U.S. policy although the U.S. has a law forbidding assassination. The CIA furnishes the intelligence and selection of victims. It depends on the quality of the intelligence and whether cash bounties to informers and personal revenge influence the execution decisions. Errors in targeting have led to civilian deaths of innocents especially members of families of the targeted.

The CIA keeps broadening categories of the condemned, from Al Qaeda to Taliban to insurgents. Opponents of the program say that it is more effective `to arrest suspects than to kill-in order to obtain intelligence from them. Dead men tell no tales.

The CIA has farmed out the killing to commercial contractors who hire and train civilians to make the life and death decisions under pressure, a system that makes many uneasy. Other critics point out that the drone is not a decisive weapon but its use is likely to inspire hatred of America and even create more enemies seeking revenge. And as Clinton found out in Pakistan, a longtime U.S. ally, the drone program could cause America to lose the moral high ground, from time immemorial an important asset in rallying the nation, attracting allies, and deterring rivals.

Is Worshipping the Military Patriotic?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:51 GMT

by Ivan Eland, Independent Institute

A recent article in the New York Times reported that the military has become frustrated with President Barack Obama because he hasn’t quickly decided to risk more of their lives in an Afghan war that is likely to be unwinnable. In a post-World War II world that has featured a non-traditional militarized foreign policy of profligate interventions into the affairs of other nations, the U.S. military and its opinion have acquired great prestige and are accorded hushed reverence in American society. The military and flag are worshiped as never before. But is this really patriotism?

The nation’s founders would roll over in their graves at what patriotism has become. After their bad experience with British colonial military abuses and seeing European citizens paying with blood and treasure for the frequent wars of their monarchs, the founders feared standing armies for undermining liberty. The U.S. Constitution rejected European militarism in favor of tight congressional controls over the employment, organization, and funding of the U.S. armed forces. Since World War II, those controls—such as congressional declarations of war—have been severely eroded.

And the American public, still feeling guilty over the admittedly terrible treatment of returning draftees from the Vietnam War, has retained its awe of the now voluntary military as an institution, even as it has soured on the Iraq and Afghan Wars. Even while fighting two unpopular wars, the public has supported huge defense budgets all out of proportion to what is needed to defend the country. Is this healthy for a republic?

The politically incorrect answer to this question is a resounding “no!” Being genuinely patriotic means supporting the country’s society and culture. Excessive reverence for the U.S. government, military, and flag is merely nationalism and is similar to episodes in Russia, Germany, and Japan in the last century. And slathering the military with too many resources tempts politicos, such as George W. Bush and Madeleine Albright, to dream up unneeded military adventures overseas, which many times end in disaster.

True American patriotism, following in the tradition of the founding, rejects militarism without rejecting an appropriate role for the military. According to the Constitution, the active military should “provide for the common defense” and nothing more. This limited role should rule out the military being used to invade other nations for ostensibly lofty purposes.

To be even more politically incorrect, on 9/11, the U.S. military failed in this primary mission. No one was fired over this tragic fiasco. Since then, the military has been used to make things worse and actually undermine U.S. security. Armchair quasi-patriots—unfortunately, most of the country—don’t like to acknowledge what triggers al-Qaeda’s heinous attacks in the first place: U.S. interventions in Islamic countries. In both the counterproductive Afghan and Iraq invasions and occupations, the military made huge mistakes before having to relearn counterinsurgency warfare tactics purposefully forgotten in the wake of its debacle in Vietnam. Does repeated incompetence deserve veneration?

One might then say so much for the military organization and its leaders, but shouldn’t we still have reverence for the frontline soldier who risks his or her life for our freedom? Unfortunately, military personnel—like the general public from which they come—are under the same aforementioned delusion about what “patriotism” should be. One could argue that war is sometimes necessary for defense—although the current U.S. offensive-defensive strategy is unneeded, unconstitutional, and counterproductive—but war rarely leads to increased freedom, as the founders knew. The civil liberties erosion under the “war on terror” is illustrative. Also, military personnel should know, or take the time to learn if they don’t, that the U.S. has been the most aggressive country on the planet during the Cold War and since in terms of the number of foreign military interventions.

Therefore, a new patriotism is needed. As a start, let’s stop worshiping the military and flag and bring back the founders’ old-fashioned respect for liberty and the Constitution.

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He is author of the books Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, and Recarving Rushmore.

Two Puppets Are Not Better Than One

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:49 GMT

by Eric Margolis

Here we go again with more political theater in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

The last vote, held in August, was so blatantly rigged that Washington put a gun to the head of its Afghan client, Hamid Karzai, and forced him into the humiliation of holding a runoff vote in November against rival Abdullah Abdullah.

As Henry Kissinger once observed, being America’s ally can be more dangerous than being its enemy.

Poor Hamid Karzai, the amiable former business consultant and CIA “asset” installed by Washington as Afghanistan’s president is another doleful example. As the US increasingly gets its backside kicked in Afghanistan, it has blamed the powerless Karzai for its woes and bumbling.

You can almost hear Washington rebuking, “bad puppet! Bad puppet!”

Karzai, derided as the “mayor of Kabul,” has no real army or police. He would be swept from office in days were it not for the Western troops that protect him. He is even surrounded by US-controlled bodyguards. He remains a figurehead behind which real power in Kabul is wielded by the Tajik/Uzbek/Communist Northern Alliance and a camarilla of drug-dealing regional warlords.

The US Congressional Research service just revealed it costs a staggering $1 million per annum to keep a US soldier in Afghanistan. That does not include the mammoth cost of 24/7 air and naval support, bribes to Afghan and Pakistani politicians, depreciation of equipment or building bases.

The US government has wanted to dump the hapless Karzai, but could not find an equally obedient but more effective replacement. There has been talk in Washington of imposing an American “chief executive officer” on him. Or, in the lexicon of the old British Raj, an imperial Viceroy. This may yet happen.

Washington’s last effort to shore up Karzai’s regime and give it some legitimacy was the national election in August. The UN, which has increasingly become an arm of US foreign policy, was brought in to make the vote kosher.

No political parties were allowed to run. Only individuals supporting the Western occupation of Afghanistan were allowed on the ballot. The vote was conducted under the guns of a foreign occupation army – a clear violation of international law. The US funded the Election Commission and guarded polling places from a discreet distance.

The US media simply ignored this fact and trumpeted the government’s party line on the elections.

The New York Times, an ardent backer of the current war in Afghanistan, gushed over the vote. But during US-directed elections in South Vietnam in 1967, the NY Times also enthused, “83% of voters cast ballots …in a remarkably successful election…the keystone to President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of the constitutional process in Vietnam.”

As I predicted well before the August, 2009 election, it was all a great big fraud within a larger fraud designed to fool American, Canadian and European voters into believing democracy had flowered in Afghanistan. Cynical Afghans knew the vote would be rigged. Most Pashtun, the nation’s ethnic majority, didn’t vote at all, either from disgust with the Western-imposed Karzai regime, or because of threats by Taliban which damned the vote as a treasonous act.

The “election” turned out to be a hugely embarrassing fiasco for Karzai and his Western backers. The Soviets were much more subtle when they rigged Afghan elections during their ten-year occupation.

To no surprise, Hamid Karzai won. But his supporters went overboard in stuffing ballot boxes to avoid a possible runoff with rival Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, another American ally. The Karzai and Abdullah camps, both Washington’s men, were bitterly feuding over division of US aid and drug money that has totally corrupted Afghanistan.

The vote was discredited, thwarting the Obama administration’s plans to use the election as justification for sending more troops to Afghanistan. So now the White House’s Plan B is to force its two feuding “assets,” Karzai and Abdullah, into a coalition or “unity government.”

But two puppets on a string are no more effective than one – and maybe less so.

In Afghanistan, ethnicity and tribe trump everything else. Karzai is a Pashtun, but has almost no roots in tribal politics. Most Pashtun see him as a Quisling and traitor.

The suave Abdullah, who is also in Washington’s pocket, is half Pashtun, half Tajik. But he is seen as a Tajik who speaks for this ethnic minority which detests and scorns the majority Pashtun. Tajiks will vote for Abdullah, Pashtun will not. If the US manages to force Abdullah into a coalition with Karzai, Pashtun – 55% of the population – won’t back the new regime which many Afghans will see as Western yes-men and Tajik-dominated. Which will likely make the US-backed government even less stable and more isolated.

Dr. Abdullah also has some very unsavory friends from the north: former Afghan Communist Party bigwigs Mohammed Fahim and Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostam – both major war criminals. Behind them stand the Tajik Northern Alliance and resurrected Afghan Communist Party, both funded by Russia and backed by Iran and India.

Ironically, the US is now closely allied with the Afghan Communists and fighting its former Pashtun allies from the 1980’s anti-Soviet struggle. Most North Americans have no idea they are now backing Afghan Communists and the men who control most of Afghanistan’s booming drug trade.

If Hamid Karzai really wants to establish himself as an authentic national leader, he should demand the US and NATO withdraw their occupation forces and let Afghans settle their own disputes in traditional the ways.

Eric Margolis is contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada. He is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.

The Case Against Wars of Convenience

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:01 GMT

The Great French Philosopher Voltaire once observed “ It is dangerous to be right when your Government is wrong”. I am afraid that observation comes very close to the political climate of the United States in this day and time.

Voltaire made that observation after he had been exiled to a penal colony Island by the King of France who didn’t take more harsh action because Voltaire was loved by the public who agreed with his writings that the King was a despot.

When we consider our Government, it follows that we need an accurate explanation of what is meant by “ when the Government is wrong”. And that explanation might be best described by using illustrations or examples.

Of course the most disruptive and harmful conflict is one of immoral or unnecessary conflicts of choice – armies conducting invasions, killing and destroying – for profits to war Industries or for Empire building. However there are many kinds of war – war between nations, religious wars, class wars, wars against drugs, wars against terrorism, even wars between political Parties. And certainly we shouldn’t forget Husband/Wife or Parent/Child conflicts.

But the sobering realization should be that all wars could be avoided. And as you raise your voice to condemn such an absurd statement, all I ask is that you hear me out since it has been proven that the human brain does not work well when it is inundated with facts that it does not want to hear. So lets see if we can agree on something:

War must have something to initiate it. And that thing must emanate from one or both of the potential combatants. Are you with me so far? When conflict arises there is always the opportunity for one or both sides to seek common ground. If either side fails to seek that common ground, physical conflict is likely to arise. The only scenario where armed aggression arises, when one side is seeking peace, is when the other side doesn’t want peace.

The question then becomes, does one side or either side really want peace? If one side doesn’t want peace, then there will be none. But even with this scenario, there doesn’t have to be war – it starts simply because one side chooses to start one. The other side then is forced to defend itself.

Has our Government sought peace in any one of the more than fifty incursions that we have been involved in since World War II? Or were we that side that refused a chance at peace simply because we had the might to assert our will? If you think we started wars only for peace, could you give a good reason why we didn’t invade Russia in the last half of the last century? Why didn’t we invade China? Why did we invade Iraq? Why does our Government want to invade Iran? Could it be that our Government has become a warrior Nation bent on building Empire? Can an honest American claim that all these fifty plus conflicts we have entered into since WWII have been “Wars for Peace”?

Would our Government be wrong if it is correct, that we have not sought peace? Would it be dangerous to oppose such a Government? Even for the citizen of the Government? How badly things can go wrong in a war is best illustrated by the Iraqi War. Remember, the Iraqis were predicted to greet us with flowers as our invading army marched in.

Our Government un-leased a war on Iraq for no reason other than to provide a profit stream for the War Industry and to provide fertile grounds for immoral Corporations to rape the Iraqi resources. While achieving this they used Depleted Uranium (DU) tipped munitions, a volatile radioactive weapon that is spread by wind currents and causes cancers, leukemia, and grotesque birth defects, and will continue to do so for up to 4.5 Billion years. Iraq today is staggered by the high rate of simply hideous birth defects that is causing Iraqi potential mothers to have to make a choice about chance.

Historians could very likely judge this atrocity to be the most heinous crime ever committed against human beings in the history of mankind. Dave Lindorff just recently wrote about this tragedy done to mankind. I hope you read it. What are we going to do about the criminals who are even today enjoying their Blood Profits? Smart money says we will never even scold them.

And to think, this war was wanted by no one except the War Industry, the Neo-Cons of the Republican Party, and the Energy Corporations. Could this historic massacre have been avoided? Absolutely! Should we let it go unpunished? Absolutely not! If we do, what does it say about us as a people? For thousands of years after History no longer remembers George Bush and Dick Cheney, the people of a land that was once Iraq, the cradle of civilization, will still be dying and grotesque births will still be occurring because of what we allowed to transpire in Iraq in the early twenty-First Century. And it may even spread far and wide, even to the United States, a once Great Nation, now just dust in History’s past, once hailed as the Ideal of moral and ethical people, who could even then lie in still radioactive graves, the detritus of an un-necessary war.

In the past year there was serious consideration given to enacting legislation that would approve the prosecution of “Thought Crimes”, with penalties including every thing from torture to imprisonment without trial and all the atrocities done in the name of this War on Terror, but this time the legislation was for prosecution of American Citizens as well as “Terrorists” – can you think “ For Thought Crimes against the State”?

And in spite of all the evidence of the evils of DU, the United States military still uses DU all over the World, and even in the United States.

Think long and hard before you answer those questions I have posed.

War, Negation and Muslim Identity Revisited

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:58 GMT

A Muslim writer begins an article with, ‘who says the campaign for animal rights was started in the West ..' She goes on to argue that Islam provided the original treatise on the humane treatment of animals. Her case was poorly constructed, inadequately executed, although the essence of her idea was to a degree, accurate. Islamic tradition has indeed laid a foundation, with clear boundaries regarding the humane treatment of animals.

But why did the author, like so many others, choose to turn what should have been a constructive argument, into a diatribe? Was it necessary to charge Western discourses, resorting to the ever predictable classification of “us and them”, instead of trying to find a common cause?

The same point can be made regarding other discussions, whether pertaining to human rights (women’s rights in particular), the environment, labor rights, and many others.

In her defense, Amirah Sulaiman was simply following an existing pattern, commonly used to delineate one’s cultural or religious progression, at the expense of another.

But it’s more than that, it’s also a defense mechanism, a haunting reminder that the alleged civilizational clash, although more imagined and politicized, than real, pervades many aspects of our perception of ourselves and of others.

Among Muslim intellectuals, as in societies, this paradigm is omnipresent.

Cultural animosity, collective defensiveness, racism (and Orientalism), among other overriding cultural trends existed long before distained US foreign policy in the Middle East became the defining norm, before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. But these events emboldened existing arguments on both sides, with Muslims solidifying as a collective victim, and the US, from a Muslim point of view, seen as a vulgar, but true representation of the West.

Of course, Muslims and Islam had their own ominous representations in the US, thus ‘Western’ media, culture and psyche – the dagger wielding bearded man, who abuses women, whenever he takes time away from blowing up infidels. As comical as I intended this to sound, as disturbingly true such a depiction is in the minds of many.

It would be utterly unfair and largely inaccurate to equate the ‘Western’ misrepresentation of Islam and Muslims, with the latter’s misrepresentation of the West. The former approaches its caricatured depiction from a chest thumping, Fox News mentality of militarily powerful and economically stable countries. Its view of the other is largely hegemonic and its standard solution to bringing wars to an end is with military surges and the increasing of military assistance (with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan being the current cases in point.)

Collective Muslim identity however is largely fragmented, between governments that only represent themselves, and peoples facing many forms of oppression: political tyranny at home, external repression (war, foreign interventions, etc), economic uncertainty (fuelled by inequality and compounded by unfiltered globalization), and extremism.

The so-called war on terror, for obvious reasons, cemented that fragmentation. On one hand, it reinforced many Muslims’ growing sense of victimization; a notion that itself resulted in both submissiveness and extremism. On the other it inspired a re-think, positive at times, self-negating at others: it kindled a affirmative sense of identity and pride among a generation desperate to identify itself according to its own priorities and on its own turf, while, on the other hand, it led to a (minor) movement of intellectual migration, which sought in the ‘West’ an escape from the oppressive reality, of which, of course the ‘West’ is equally responsible.

But it was not war alone (and in itself) that shaped Muslim perceptions of the ‘West’; it was rather the US’ and (to lesser extent Britain’s) insistence that their war championed an essentially Western discourse on democracy and human rights. Such arguments took place in an already hostile atmosphere: incessant media and academic mutterings about Islam’s shortcomings, and a growing right wing, racist tendencies in various Western countries targeting immigrants and minorities, many of whom are Muslims.

When such political, military and intellectual encroachment is backed by such statements as that made by US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Lieutenant General William G. Boykin (now retired), then the plot thickens, and the collective polarization of both societies grows. Boykin, author of “Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom,” became famous for his infamous quote, several years ago, in reference to a Muslim militant in Mogadishu: “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

This was a lone quotation, of course, in a sea of bigoted references that defined many officials and media pundits during the Bush Administration. Such voices are now, somewhat mute, although, its hard to believe that the advent of President Barack Obama has altered a culture in its entirety.

It takes generations for genuine trust to take hold, and the countdown cannot possibly start as long as one US solider is stationed in a Muslim country for the purpose of conducting war and occupation.

Yet again, there is more to all of this. Reversing intellectual dogmas and collective realizations is too convoluted a process; it requires time, action and good will.

In the meantime, Muslims, who insist on living in the shadow of the ‘West’ as unreserved aficionados or obsessed detractors must redefine their own discourses. As for the latter, they must not allow war alone, MTV consumer media culture, hegemonic globalization and racist remarks by a politician or a born again evangelical to taint their entire view of what are essentially unique, diverse and in many ways impressive civilizations that have done much good. Indeed, there is the like of Boykin, but there are millions of others who are peace-loving, ordinary people, some of whom are ardent advocates of human rights, anti-war campaigners, including the thousands who have repeatedly broken the siege on Gaza, and previous to that Iraq. Muslims too must quit caricaturing them, reducing them to enemies, juxtaposing Muslims’ essential righteousness with ‘Western’ essential depravity. Not only are such reductions inaccurate and self-defeating, they also break down possible alliances between the forces of good in this world, in a time when they are of essence.

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