John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Pompeo says Taliban ‘overreached’ in attack that killed American

“President pulls back from planned peace talks with Taliban at Camp David after bombing that killed 12”

 

Overreached? What does that even mean in this context?

Pompeo’s words are as meaningless as they are arrogant.

We get only lunacy upon lunacy from this White House mob.

Just to remind him, you are invaders in that country, not invited guests.

And you’ve just bragged of having killed about a thousand Taliban in the last ten days.

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Response to a comment about American war crimes in Afghanistan:

Oh, there have been many war crimes. I don’t know whether your reference is to the Jamie Doran documentary, “The Convoy of Death,” about the brutal mass murder of about 3,000 Taliban prisoners. These were prisoners for whom America had a direct responsibility.

The prisoners were packed into containers supposedly for transfer to a prison, the containers sealed and loaded onto trucks. As the men later screamed for some air in the blistering heat or water, American soldiers and troops I believe of the ghastly General Dostum, an American ally with a brutal reputation, stopped and shot into the containers until the shouting stopped.

About four days later, when the containers were opened, most of the prisoners were dead. American Special Forces troops ordered the containers brought to a spot in the desert where any living prisoners were shot, and all of the bodies were buried in mass graves.

That happened shortly after the charming Donald Rumsfeld made an angry demand in Washington about large new batches of Taliban prisoners, saying they should either be walled away forever or killed off. He clearly was taken at his word by some American troops and General Dostum’s men.

There was America’s long series of violent house entries, kicking down doors and using stun grenades, holding terrified families, women and children, at gunpoint while the house was searched and any men in it were bound and marched off as prisoners to who knows where? That happened to countless Afghan families. The men, if they survived, were headed for harsh interrogation with torture.

America’s reckless bombing killed thousands of innocent people. Many times, large groups like wedding parties, celebrating outside, were wiped out by American pilots. American soldiers wantonly shot up villages.

The Americans were bored with being stuck in that searingly hot, very unfriendly place with strange-looking people who didn’t speak their language. Very young men from places in America with no exposure to other cultures, with nothing to do much of the time, and with big guns.

The American military is often desperate for bodies and takes what it can get as recruits. That includes people who enjoy cruelty and the chance to kill others with impunity. Young men much like the members of urban street gangs who occupy large portions of American cities. There was plenty of that kind of activity in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

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Response to a comment about having to get out of Afghanistan:

Well, ultimately, yes.

But Washington cannot admit they ever made a mistake, a terrible mistake.

There was never any real reason to invade Afghanistan.

It had no hand in 9/11.

But America was thirsty for blood and revenge after 9/11, and they didn’t really care if they got the right guys or not.

There is no evidence of Taliban involvement in 9/11. None. The Taliban are concerned about their local tribal blood feuds, much like some of those legendary families in the American Ozarks fighting multi-generational feuds such as the Hatfields and McCoys.

The Taliban gave temporary refuge to Osama bin Laden – a Saudi, but, importantly, someone who rather bravely served in the American-supplied opposition to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s – a man seen as a devout Muslim and a hero, and that’s all.

Of course, we’ve never had any proof that even Osama was guilty of anything except disliking the Saudi Royal family and America’s complicity with them. Early on, when America demanded the Taliban government extradite him, the Taliban, in accordance with international law and custom for such requests, asked for some evidence. Washington ignored them and shortly invaded.

The American invasion also ended the Taliban government’s ban on growing opium poppies, something which resulted in flooding world markets with cheap hard drugs and something we suffer from still with all the urban drug-gang shootings over sales turf and unpaid bills.

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I do think it quite possible that, in fact, no meeting with the Taliban was ever going to happen.

Just as in Syria and a couple of other situations, Trump bellows about what he’s going to do, and it all falls through or simply never happens.

Some important officials he has appointed oppose such steps.

He is just a massive pile of conflicting urges, and he makes no consistent sense ever.

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Response to a comment saying, “Remember when Jack Layton wanted to negotiate with the Taliban and everyone (including the media) started calling him Taliban Jack”:

Absolutely. Thanks for the reminder. God, I admired Jack Layton.

Brave and intelligent leaders often get attacked because there are so many people who simply do not understand them.

By the way, concerning Canada’s sad and pointless involvement in Afghanistan, an Ottawa official said in the early days that the troops were going to Afghanistan because “We owed one to the Pentagon.”

He was referring to the fact that Prime Minister Jean Chretien had turned George Bush down on sending some Canadian troops for the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Well, you do not turn America down in such matters without hearing back a lot of very unpleasant things.

The Canadian contribution to Afghanistan was something of a “peace offering.”

Some reason to join a war, right? “We owe one to the Pentagon.”

But that so characteristic of the bizarre world America has constructed with its endless wars.

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Response to a comment:

The Taliban were the official government of the country before America invaded.

They’re not outsiders or invaders, as the United States very much is.

The Taliban are just one of the basic major divisions of Afghan society, a tough, backward, desperately poor, hardscrabble society.

Thinking you could get rid of them is about the equivalent of talking about getting rid of Baptists in South Carolina.

The entire war has been a stupid, destructive, pointless waste.

But that’s just the way they do things in Washington.

Time after time. Place after place.

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Response to a comment:

That phrase you use, “world’s policeman,” does not fit America’s role in the world today. I’m not sure whether it ever did, but it sure does not fit today.

It was meant to sound benign when it was coined. Korea was called a “police action.” After all, with WWII just a few years behind, officials didn’t want to encourage public fears about a new war.

Today, American activities everywhere are aggressive. They’re about telling others what to do and how to do it. And they’re about hurting and killing those America really does not like.

America is an empire, a rather brutal global empire. Not the law-abiding society of a quiet republic looking out at a big, bad world, as it likes to imagine itself.

No one sensibly calls such behavior “policing.”

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I should have added, importantly, it is an empire in relative decline with the growth of all kinds of competitors that it didn’t have after WWII, its glory days.

Even its reserve-currency dollar, a very great privilege and advantage, is starting to come under threat. It will certainly lose its position in the future. And weaponizing it, as Trump has done with all his illegal enforcement of unreasonable sanctions, if anything, only speeds the day.

In recognition of its relative economic decline and the many competitive changes in the world, America’s establishment has entered now into a ferocious effort to reclaim its unchallenged place of, say, sixty years ago.

They talk in terms of achieving “full-spectrum dominance.” And that’s not only Trump. He’s just the ugly, noisy frontman right now. Republicans and Democrats support this crusade, or it would not happen.

No matter what their varying views on social issues, virtually every one of them supports the American empire. It is what they’ve known all their lives, their careers were built on it, and it is a matter of pride and arrogance, part of Old Glory Patriotism, a powerful secular religious force in the country.

“MAGA” is just Trump’s term for the faded and tattered notion, the “American Dream,” something which arose as a sheer accident of history after WWII when no competitors were left standing and America thrived on selling everything to everyone. It dominated world manufacturing and trade.

But that position cannot be reclaimed. It’s an illusion to think that it can, a dangerous illusion.

Trying to make it happen will yield only angry frustration and angry responses from others. And the natural forces that have been at work reducing America’s relative position are likely to be reinforced by people’s determination to resist being told what to do.

That effort is why we have all the threats and illegal sanctions everywhere. The immense pressures applied to a peaceful China, a peaceful Russia, a peaceful Iran, and others.

We are in a dangerous period, and the United States political system has managed to put genuinely frightening men in charge – angry, intemperate, and even unstable men. Trump. Bolton. Pompeo.

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Response to a comment about whether there ever even was a Trump deal with the Taliban:

See: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/09/to-leave-afghanistan-just-leave-afghanistan.html#comments

This is from a close observer of events, one who is more often right than wrong in his analysis of world affairs.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

I have heard Rick Hillier speak at some length recently on CBC Radio. Naturally, he is out promoting his book.I thought he largely came off as a whiner, rather naïve about the realities of war and politics.Hillier went into Afghanistan literally barking about doing some killing, arrogantly tossing aside Canada’s sense of itself as a peaceful and peacekeeping place.

His words rankled many people, and naturally a control-freak like Harper put limits on Hillier’s mouth.

I tend to agree with Chantal Hebert’s assessment that Hillier’s book, unintentionally on his part, will only contribute to Canada’s not continuing a military commitment in Afghanistan beyond its commitment.

The entire Afghanistan adventure is nothing more than a demonstration of America’s ability to behave much as it pleases in the world. In the aftermath of 9/11, it pulled out all the stops in finance and diplomacy to get UN and NATO recognition of what essentially was vengeance.

The invasion never made any sense, and after America’s superficial “victory,” it had no idea what to do, except to let its brutal special forces loose on villages all over Afghanistan. Its “victory” amounted to a pact with the devils of the Northern Alliance – monsters like the mass-murderer General Dostum being as bad or worse than the Taleban – and it achieved nothing but a great deal of killing and the dispersal of the Taleban.

No NATO country – especially powerful ones like France or Germany – has made a commitment of troops that is in keeping with America’s paranoid assessment of the world dangers of Afghanistan – that fact is telling beyond anything else.

Canadians should never forget that the only reason we sent troops to Afghanistan was a decision in Ottawa that “we owed one to the Pentagon” after having refused to participate in America’s missile shield and its even more disastrous and murderous adventure in Iraq.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOHANN HARI IN THE INDEPENDENT

Thank you, Johann Hari has told the truth succinctly and accurately.

Of course, the Taleban – never the same thing as al Qaeda, but constantly blurred together in American popular media and by dumb national politicians like John McCain – never attacked anyone.

9/11 was the work of Saudis, and the dead perpetrators were virtually all in the United States on valid visas, almost unquestionably part of a secret CIA training program which backfired. There was an American diplomat at the time who raised the issue of great pressure from the CIA for certain embassies abroad to issue visas expeditiously.

The Taleban never had to be an American enemy. They were even willing to extradite those guilty for 9/11, provided that the U.S. offered some evidence for its extradition request, a normal procedure everywhere in the world, but one with which the United States angrily refused to comply.

The United States invaded for vengeance and no other reason, and it got plenty of it with about 50,000 killed just in Kabul.

From the beginning, the United States used propaganda about things like women’s rights to justify its extreme violence, the best propaganda always being based on truth.

The United States only quickly succeeded in its “victory” by using the brutes of the Northern Alliance on the ground fronted by the same kind of carpet bombing it so loved in Vietnam.

It worked, at least dispersing the Taleban, if not producing a genuine victory.

And who were these fine allies in the Northern Alliance?

Brutes like General Dostum, a torturer and mass murderer absolutely. It was likely his troops, under American auspices, who conducted the atrocity of killing 3,000 Taleban prisoners in the early days.

They were put into sealed vans, driven out onto the desert to be suffocated (a la early Nazi experiments with mass killings), then dumped in mass graves – all done while American soldiers watched.

Today, after all those years of occupation and brutal American tactics, outside Kabul virtually all women still wear the burka, and even in Kabul, an estimated half of women wear it.

America’s Potemkin village schools in the countryside for girls are often closed as soon as their photo-op opening is over. The government is unable to fund the schools and pay the teachers, and the local warlords do not want them anymore than the Taleban does.

Imagine going to seventeenth century Spain and trying to force Catholics to give up all their bizarre practices from self-flagellation to nuns’ cumbersome habits or The Inquisition? Ridiculous, of course, but that truly is a parallel for what the U.S. claims it’s doing in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is simply not a country as we are used to thinking of countries. It is collection of tribes living hard-scrabble lives in mountains and deserts, and it is demarcated by arbitrary and historically-meaningless boundaries vis-à-vis Pakistan.

Many people understood the invasion was a mistake before it happened, but the vicious idiots then running the United States ignored them.

The United States spent ten years in Vietnam, killing an estimated 3 million people with their barbaric tactics and throwing Cambodia into instability and “the killing fields” to achieve absolutely nothing.

And that precisely – albeit with a smaller pile of bodies – is America’s achievement to date in Afghanistan.

And note that it is well on its way to de-stabilizing Pakistan with its killer-drones and demands that Pakistan attack its own people, just as it once did Cambodia, and for the same sorry excuse that there occupation troops are affected by activities in the other county.

The real answer is, of course, to swallow its pride and get out.

Note that I only refer to America, and not to NATO or the UN. That is because in the early days after 9/11, the U.S. was able to brow-beat or cajole the appearance of international support for this violent folly. Its influence in these international bodies, heavily financed by the U.S., is great, and it often uses them to cover its unilateral desires.

The reality is that no NATO nation believes that Afghanistan is a genuine threat: we know this from their pitifully small commitments there. Only Captain Ahab America sees Afghanistan as the great white whale that must be killed.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOHN MANLEY IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

More bilge from John Manley.

How does Manley have any idea of turnout to make the statements he makes? We haven’t had a single good report, except that it was very low.

We owe nothing to Afghanistan. It has a crooked government, despite seven years of occupation. Drugs flow like water. Women still wear the burka through most of the country.

Credible reports say that the government’s handling of the election was atrocious with ballot boxes removed from some areas and ballot boxes stuffed in others.

I heard an expert witness on CBC Radio, a woman AP reporter who has a couple of decades of experience in the area.

Considering she is from an American organization, her testimony takes on extra force.

She spent many days talking to people in the street. Many expressed utter disgust with the government. Others actually expressed the notion that if the Taleban came back, maybe they wouldn’t be so extreme.

The tone was overall one of the election really won’t change anything, and I am sure that is right.

Just before the election, the president brought back one of the world’s most evil blackguards, General Dostum, a mass murderer.

And the good General, among many other ghastly acts, is directly responsible for executing about three thousand prisoners early in the occupation, under American supervision.

3,000 men driven in groups in locked vans out to the desert to be suffocated and buried in mass graves, while American soldiers looked on.

And Dostum is not Taleban, he is one of America’s allies of the Northern Alliance.

And of course there is that wonderful piece of legislation passed by the government regarding women’s rights in marriage.

Afghanistan is no more a democracy than Cuba.

It is stuck in the 14th century.

Does the pathetic Manley actually believe we have accomplished anything except kill people – according to the expert AP reporter, 50,000 died in Kabul alone – and set up some Potemkin villages for photo-ops?