JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

How many reporters has the United States killed in its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?

We know to a certainty that there were cases which closely resemble deliberate murder, as of certain Al Jazeerah reporters and cameramen.

The United States deliberately bombed Al Jazeerah offices in Baghdad, killing three journalists.

One might also ask how many – and there were many – journalists were murdered by juntas like that in Chile or Argentina, regimes the U. S. tolerated, supplied, and supported for years?

How many – and there have been a great many – people have been murdered by Israeli agents on the pretense that they were “militants,” nothing but a fig-leaf term for those who disagree with Israel. Has the U.S. ever called into question this savage way of treating people?

Mullen is a ridiculous hypocrite. He could care less about journalism or free speech or murder of opposition.

His shooting his mouth off in public is nothing but a way to try to put Pakistan’s government on the defensive at a time when it is finally reacting to America’s savage assassinations by means of CIA murder-squads and America’s constant bombing by the drones, a bombing which has killed literally hundreds of innocent civilians.

The United States has become little better than the world’s most heavily armed bully.

____________________

“A country cannot stand on the fence, or take positions of both extremism and counter extremism, and expect to be respected and supported.”

Truly an uninformed comment.

Pakistan is not “stand[ing] on a fence”  (you do mean sitting, don’t you – standing on a fence is pretty much an impossibility) it is reflecting its own national interests.

The United States cares about no one’s interests but its own. Full stop.

Its interests are not the world’s at large, and it is a rather foolish thing to imply they are.

____________________

“And name one country that does not promote self interest?”

I do believe that is clearly implied in my remarks.

If every country reflects its own interests, there is nothing to condemn or disparage in Pakistan, yet we have endless accusations about this or that in Pakistan, mostly the result of the CIA playing what a former senior agent once called his mighty Wurlitzer organ – that is, a set of willing or duped news outlets skillfully manipulated to create a desired impression on the public awareness.

The American view is that its own interests are the world’s interests.

Your comments tacitly assume that falsehood as truth.

The issue at hand, as you oddly put it, is an American military man making a charge about another government – something which in the first place is inappropriate under the supposed American system of the military being the servant of government and not making statements about policies or political matters.

And the military man is a gross hypocrite because he and his government have busied themselves with the murder of many, including journalists – not an unimportant consideration.

Any threat of Pakistan’s sinking into chaos – a much exaggerated notion if you understand the history of Pakistan’s military – is owing entirely to American interference.

Bush virtually threatened Musharraf into cooperation, then followed that up with pets on the head by forgiving debts and letting go of America’s firm policy opposing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Musharraf was a genuine Pakistani patriot, but Bush’s people turned him into a reluctant servant of American interests.

Ever since, and to a growing extent, America has interfered in Pakistan’s affairs, leaving its government looking weak in the face of bullying and violent attacks.

That is what happened in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. A neutral government, not aligned with America’s self-interested policies, was thrown into instability by massive secret bombings and incursions by American troops.

When the Prince fell, the Khmer Rouge took over. America then washed her hands of all responsibility for the horror which followed, and somewhere between 800,000 and 1.5 million souls perished

When the victorious government of Vietnam – victorious against America’s long intervention in which it killed perhaps 3 million people – interceded to stop the horror (and people today often forget or do not know this) America just idiotically sat back, saying, “See, we told you, the domino theory is true.”.

It is repeating the same stupidity in Pakistan.

Anywhere on the globe, a government seen by its people as allowing another government decide whether hundreds of its own citizens should die in assassinations would be viewed with contempt.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

SERIES OF POSTED RESONSES TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“The road to Afghan victory runs through Pakistan.”

I am sorry, Jeffrey Simpson, to see you give any recognition to this ugly business.

The US had no business in Afghanistan in the first place – no Afghan attacked them, and Americans never even tried to offer evidence of complicity in 9/11 for purposes of extradition. Britain joined in the insane crusade, we know, because they truly feared the US was close to using nuclear weapons.

Now to “win” the US is exporting its pointless, destructive war to still another country.

The parallel with Vietnam and Cambodia is genuine and frightening. The US bears major responsibility for the Cambodian Killing Fields by its weakening of a neutral government through secret bombing and incursions. It is always demanding “cooperation” from people not involved or interested in its bloody adventures.

Few people realize that the border to which you and American officials refer is no border at all. The Durand Line is a relic of British imperialism, and it was never even properly finalized.

The Pashtun – the major pool of Taleban recruits – live on both sides of the Line as though it did not exist, which indeed for them is the case. It’s like talking about the border between Quebec and Eastern Ontario.

Musharraf, for all his faults, kept at bay the US effort to spread its war into Pakistan, but they managed to get him out through manipulations, bribes, and black ops. He was a dictator but an honorable one with the best interests of his country in mind.

Now they have a somewhat cooperative government from the US point of view. All you have to do is ask what that means in terms of Pakistan’s own interests and understanding of interests. It goes precisely against them.

The US assassinates groups of people – often complete innocents – every week with drones and Hellfire missiles.

Now they’ve pushed the Pakistani army to fight its own people. They are killing their own people and creating tens of thousands of refugees fleeing their homes on behalf of the views of lard-ass bureaucrats in Washington sitting in leather chairs, gazing out at the Potomac.

Of course, Canada’s involvement is no different in kind, just in extent. We are there because we owed one to the Pentagon. How very meaningful.

Gee, I wonder how long it will be before Washington equips the drones they’ve started flying along our border with Hellfire missiles? After all, major officials in Washington, including the last Republican presidential candidate, still blubber paranoid nonsense about the 9/11 bunch having come through Canada.

And just think of the government we will have to stand for our interests: Harper, a man who just cannot grovel enough to American interests, or Ignatieff, an adopted American, who may well even be a CIA mole.

_________________

The Taleban did NOT refuse to hand over people after 9/11.

To say that is plainly ignorant.

The US requested extradition of certain people, and the government of Afghanistan, then the Taleban, asked for some evidence to support the request.

The US refused.

Yet that is the standard operating procedure everywhere with extradition treaties: the requesting state must supply some evidence to support the request.

But the US simply refused.

And to this day, we have not been given one shred of genuine evidence that Osama bin Laden did what everyone assumes he did.

Why does everyone assume that?

Because the US government says so, and because the major corporate media have repeated the assertion endlessly.

Again, if you want a world of laws and civility, then you must respect the laws and be civil yourself.

The US seems to believe it is above that principle, and its only excuse is its power.

Might makes right.

_________________

How short memories are.

Clinton not only rained down missiles in Afghanistan killing God knows how many people, he bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, killing a number of people and destroying a valued facility in a poor part of the world.

Absolutely no evidence has ever been given that that plant was anything but what was claimed, a pharmaceutical plant.

Of course, this fact also shows American meddling in Sudan going back a long time.

Any wonder it is a mess there?