We have previously discussed Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated inclinations toward the Taliban and harsh treatment of women. Then there was Karzai’s recent position that women are worth less than men — presumably even those American women keeping Karzai and his corrupt family and friends in power. This week Karzai has added that Americans are “demons” and no better than the Taliban. Karzai then called for divine intervention to defeat the Americans and the Taliban — a dangerous call in a nation known for religious fanaticism: “Let’s pray for God to rescue us from these two demons. There are two demons in our country now.”
Karzai insisted that there will be no forgiveness for the Americans regardless of claims that the recent burning of Korans was done by mistake. Karzai has declared that those “Satanic acts that will never be forgiven by apologies.” He went out of his way to tell citizens that they should not believe this was an isolated incident. Noting that the recent massacre of civilians by an American soldier was just the latest atrocity committed by the American “demons.” That shooting, he insisted, “was not the first incident, indeed it was the 100th, the 200th and 500th incident.”
Karzai’s words will only encourage those people in the Afghan military who continue to kill Americans. We have had regular occurrences of Afghan soldiers turning their weapons on their fellow U.S. soldiers at checkpoints and military bases. Karzai’s statements will only reinforce the view that dying in such attacks are religiously justified and constitute martyrdom to secure a place in paradise.
Just for the record, the United States and its allies have lost 2,845 “demons” in Afghanistan fighting for Karzai and his people. Wounded personnel are over 7,000. Added to this sacrifice are the hundreds of billions spent by our government while we slash our own educational, scientific, and social programs across the country.
In the meantime, the Karzai family and its allies continue to be accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars. The U.S. has continued to pump in billions despite the widespread corruption — treating thefts as a cost of doing business in the country with only occasional efforts to curtail the practice. Yet, one Afghan official stated “Karzai wants revenge on the U.S. because of the systematic insults he has suffered, that he feels his family suffered, because of Kabul Bank.”
The Obama Administration continued the Bush policy in keeping forces in the country and spending billions as polls showed growing hatred toward the United States and growing instability in the Karzai regime. We continued this support as Karzai and his government embraced medieval religious practices and repeatedly denied basic rights to religious dissidents and women. The result has been years of support for a government that rejects the core principles upon which our nation is founded and has increasingly denounced our military forces as evil and the enemy. It is perfectly Felliniesque.
Source: NY Times
Blouise Presidents come and go … the CIA remains.
And from the look of it this is really a ‘click’ of the people in the Skull & Crossbones…and a few other well connected families…
Bron,
There are corporations and there are corporations. You have your own business correct? I know many people like you. They mostly work their butt off and they are usually providing a needed service in our society. This kind of business must obey the govt. unless the owner has a connection to one of the many petty authorities who will smooth the way for her or him to flout the law. That is one kind of corporation.
Now you have another kind. These are companies which do not have national boundaries. They buy govt.’s around the world and they have successfully purchased our own. They use the govt. as cover to set their own monetary policy, write regulations that help them wipe out legitimate competition (yes,they do like regulations), allow them to commit open fraud and accumulate public wealth into their private hands. I truly urge you to go to naked capitalism to read about these types of things.
For example, Obama’s new mortgage deal has made it lawful to foreclose on a home in error. That home could be yours, mine or really any other person who doesn’t have the money or connections to stop the foreclosure. You don’t have to be in arrears, you could have made every payment and be on your last one, but they can still take your home. Investors will also be screwed with this new deal. Yes, technically it was the govt. apparatus which allowed this but it was the bankers, the really big fraudulent bankers, who wanted this, wrote it and got it done. Tyranny comes not just from govt. but from any entity which has no controls over it.
Military contractors have “better”, even more deadly equipment that US special forces. They are able to use this power to subdue populations in other nations. True, they use our tax funds to do so but they are law unto themselves. They are already involved in helping to crush OWS. They shot 4 people right after Hurricane Katrina. They are here. They are what capitalism is all about now. These are the new “rules”. You will not be free under the tyranny of private contractors or large banks.
Bron, you have to see past ideology on this one. This isn’t capitalism the way conservatives like yourself think about that. This is raw, brutal force done by private companies. For now they are working in the US mostly through the govt. But in other nations they don’t really need a govt. to play pretend. They just run things in the open. That’s what is coming here unless people rise to meet the challenge.
TD,
Yep, that’s right. Remind me to tell the story of the two Afghan dykes who were trained helicopter pilots, part of a larger story—-incredible.
Anyway the point now
The Russians were after resources, just as when GB and we cut them out of the Iranian oil pool pre WW2. Other incentives too, there always were.
But one can ask how did they succeed so well as you write in changing local families into taking the “veil” off the women? Did they really, or was it for show in Kabul only?
As for Bales the fall guy, the contracted scape goat.
Here’s what Greenwald selected from the NYTimes to quote:
“(4) I have an Op-Ed in The Guardian on the quick removal of Bales from Afghanistan and the resulting exclusion of Afghans from the investigation into what happened. Today, The New York Times explains the serious difficulties this could pose to Bales’ prosecution:
“The case could founder in the courtroom on questions of evidence collected under difficult conditions thousands of miles away, . . . .Gathering evidence and securing the cooperation of witnesses can be bedeviling in far-flung places, and contributed to the collapse of the prosecutions against Marines linked to the killings of 24 men, women and children in the Iraqi city of Haditha. Charges were dropped against most of the Marines who were tried in that case.”” End NYTimes.
My feel: It was a CIA/mercenary job, leaving purposely proof for Afghan parliamentary investigators to find that it was a multi-man op. The use of helicopters was for that purpose also. The mercenaries could well with GPS have found their way to the op area several klicks away from a drop area. It was a FU gest to Karzai and the peoples’ reps.
Bales was given a deal he could not refuse: all he had to do was to leave under arranged conditions, go hunker down and await a signal to returns, and confess. His chances of getting off with a medical discharge are excellent after a symbolic misdemeanor charge. The sympathy drums have been beaten since the deed was announced. Don’t need to repeat them.
He’ll be well-compensated for life. His case will be closed quietly after the election. And it’s a warning to Karzai: “We can take you out whenever we wish, protests or no”
Our government is just as interested of evidence as the Sanford FLA police were.
Hope you understand. It’s all staged. like the trials in ’38 in USSR. Only with other outcomes. But definitely for scare effect and public consumption.
Jill:
the government and corporations are not the same. The government has the power and corporations must dance to the piper’s music or suffer economic consequences.
If the government told you to do something or face economic sanctions or extended litigation what would you do? Most corporations are in the exact same position we are, except their pockets are deeper for the picking.
You clean up government and corporations will behave.
If we look back 32 years the Soviets occupied Afghanistan. They were occupiers with troops and an agenda. They allowed women to go to college and take off the head scarf. Progressive things. America, in its exceptionalism, did not want the Soviets in Afghanistan and so we undermined them by giving money, guns, training to the only opposition we could find– Islamic holy rollers like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We created the al qaeda and Taliban.
Today I would take the Soviet occupation over ours. What do you folks think?
You know folks, it is odd. Most of this has already been played out in SF.
It’s not even deja vu to see it now, there’s not surprise value in seeing it happen in reality.
Like Glenn Greenwald just wrote; He can’t pose a hypotherical to test the limits of what Obama can violate. It’s all already in place. How do we describe this?
“…Benjamin tells some of the stories of the families shattered by drones and the hatred created by the constant buzzing sound that the drones make in the skies above the homes of people who know that at any instant they can be killed. President Obama has instructed the government of Yemen to keep a reporter locked up whose crime appears to be having reported on the victims of a U.S. drone strike. When the drones strike in Pakistan, local death squads swoop down on the area to grab anyone whom they suspect of having collaborated with the Americans. Families live in fear of both the drones and the raids that follow. Over a million
people, by Amnesty International’s estimate, have fled the areas of heavy drone bombing.
Drones have killed Americans in “friendly fire,” including on April 6, 2011, in Afghanistan. Afghans have killed CIA drone pilots and other U.S. officials inside their offices. Even drone “pilots” working in the United States can commit suicide. They are suffering extremely high rates of stress and burnout, according to the Air Force. Pilots who actually fly in planes often do not see what they kill. Drone pilots sometimes watch a family for days, feel like they’ve gotten to know the people, and then blow them all up, and watch the suffering…” warisacrime.org/David Swanson
Is this who we are?
From article:
“Just for the record, the United States and its allies have lost 2,845 “demons” in Afghanistan fighting for Karzai and his people.”
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There are no selfless wars I can recall in my lifetime and there are no selfless reasons we have ever been in Afghanistan. We armed the ‘rebels’ the Taliban, to fight the Russians, then we paid the warlords and peasants to not grow opium, then we put boots on the ground to deny Al queda safe havens and then the rationale, the goalposts were moved again and again. Now, in the face of rampant corruption and hatred by the locals and Afghan government, I don’t know why we are there. Seriously, are we still there to help train the police so they can secure their own country from something or other?
Decade+ long wars without clear goals or exit strategies, waged arbitrarily, have made me cynical. We’re there because we can be and it served some purpose we were probably never told the truth about to begin with. That’s the best I can make of it these days. It’s way past time that we should have left.
Blouise,
Who are you pointing at?
—————
“Another American Dream brought to you by your friendly CIA operatives.”
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I once said you must be a CIA translator since you were making the rounds on what might have been Moroccan blogs. And you came back with needing to read recipes, with harissa.
So ‘fess up.
As ro your comment, I can at least say they are doing something.
When Ishmael Jones was stationed stateside and wanted to get overseas they didn’t do doodly squat where he was. Don’t know if you’ve read his book.
He as a former wall streeter was proficient in making cold calls, so when he got to that domestic CIA office, he sat down with the phone book and the same day started making cold calls to possible agent recruits. There immediately developed a panic in that office. A fun read.
Bron,
I think that you are not seeing that govt. and corporations are the same entity with different names. This is more clear in other nations, (see Shell in Nigeria) but because of propaganda, isn’t so clear to US citizens.
However, we could do something about both. We could use our vote to elect people who aren’t war mongers and financial criminals. Many people think they cannot do this, but they can. They are terrified of having a specific war and financial criminal in power but not horrified by having someone who is a war and financial criminal in power as long as it’s “their” party. This has only one result-more war, more financial crimes, more human misery.
Corporations and the govt. are an interlocking directorate. That directorate needs to be widely exposed to our citizens. Corporations put people in place in govt. and the govt. sends their people to run corporations. I read your Stossel article and was struck by how on message both right and left wing propaganda is. He was shilling for the banks as surely as Obama. Free enterprise needs rule of law to function. We don’t have rule of law anymore and this is in the process of tearing down a functioning system of commerce and govt. Bad news on every account.
We do agree that people must care about others in order for things to get better.
Karazi is negotiating for a future with Taliban ascendence. The writing is on the wall. He knows the US needs him as a prop, but that’s all.
Presidents come and go … the CIA remains.
Jill:
pretty good.
I would disagree on one point. Government makes all of this possible. The corporations are taking advantage of an opportunity like trout take advantage of a hatch.
We just need to change the senate and the congress every 4-6 years. Vote for the independent if they believe in limited government and individual freedom.
Stop voting your party and start voting for people who will protect our rights.
I want to hear a candidate say “get rid of the fed, set term limits on congress, go back to having states pick the senators, eliminate lobbying and have a 2 year waiting period before a congressman or senator could go to work for a company doing business with the federal government”.
We could clean this up in 2 election cycles if people actually gave a rat’s ass. Congress likes that power and if you humble those scumbags a few times maybe they will get the idea. If this keeps going on like it is, one day we are going to throw them out and they wont leave.
The other thing is to make it a whole lot easier to fire federal employees who arent doing their jobs.
Yes, we do have an excellent track record on supporting tyrants, even ones like Karzai who are only pretending to turn on us so other warlords won’t overthrow him.
Dredd and Greenwald make important points that US citizens should not turn away from. Our soldiers do appear like demons to many of the world’s civilian populations. US soldiers are not committing isolated atrocities. They are put in a positions where atrocities should be expected as the norm, which they are.
What this govt. is doing, both to our soldiers and other nation’s civilians is unconscionable. This cruelty, this human misery, is all being done for the financial profit of a few people at the top of the food chain. US puppets grab what they can, while they can. They also care nothing for the welfare of their people or nation.
There are reasons that US citizens do not see pictures of what is really happening in the govt.’s many wars of empire. They are the same reasons we are told our soldiers are heroes and why sporting events are filled with tributes to war and death. We cannot be allowed to see the truth because we might stop what is happening. Further, we might not give over our children to the brutal suppression and slaughter of innocents this govt. engages in. We might not want our own children so brutalized and used by a govt. that cares nothing for their welfare.
Stop this cruelty! Use every peaceful means.
Another American Dream brought to you by your friendly CIA operatives.
Shouldn’t most nations?
Afghans have been fighting for freedom since 4000 years
We aren’t really all that good at instituting puppet governments are we? They always seem to turn on us.
Christine Noble,
Was that Karzai or Obama you were referring to?
It may have been irony, since we’ve all lost our cherry to our politician long ago.
But don’t believe the Afghans are naive about Karzai. They are not, but there is a power structure there, just as here; which requires certains speechs in order to retain support. Of course you know that, excuse me for mentioning it.
Dredd,
’44 quote.
“….while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.”
ROTFL.
Supreme. Can’t be topped.