David Lindorff - Children Under Attack in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Six children were attacked in Afghanistan and Pakistan this past week. Three of them, teenaged girls on a school bus in Peshawar, in the tribal region of western Pakistan, were shot and gravely wounded by two Taliban gunmen who were after Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old girl who has been bravely demanding the right of girls to an education. After taking a bullet to the head, and facing further death threats, she has been moved to a specialty hospital in Britain. Her two wounded classmates are being treated in Pakistan.

The other three children were not so lucky. They were killed Sunday in an aerial attack by a US aircraft in the the Nawa district of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, not so far from Pakistan. The attack, described by the military as a “precision strike,” was reportedly aimed at several Taliban fighters who were allegedly planting an IED in the road, but the strike also killed three children, Borjan, 12; Sardar Wali, 10; and Khan Bibi, 8, all from one family, who were right nearby collecting dung for fuel.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/17-3

Andrew Bacevich - America's Rising Shadow Wars

As he campaigns for reelection, President Obama periodically reminds audiences of his success in terminating the deeply unpopular Iraq War. With fingers crossed for luck, he vows to do the same with the equally unpopular war in Afghanistan. If not exactly a peacemaker, our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president can (with some justification) at least claim credit for being a war-ender.

Yet when it comes to military policy, the Obama administration's success in shutting down wars conducted in plain sight tells only half the story, and the lesser half at that. More significant has been this president's enthusiasm for instigating or expanding secret wars, those conducted out of sight and by commandos.

President Franklin Roosevelt may not have invented the airplane, but during World War II he transformed strategic bombing into one of the principal emblems of the reigning American way of war. General Dwight D. Eisenhower had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. Yet, as president, Ike's strategy of Massive Retaliation made nukes the centerpiece of US national security policy.

Read More:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/special-operations-military-obama-global-war-ussocom

Tony Cartalucci - US Officially Arming Extremists in Syria

Recently reported in "Brookings Announces Next Move in Syria: War," it was stated that "by the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution's own admission, the Kofi Annan six-point peace plan in Syria was merely a ploy to buy time to reorganize NATO's ineffective terrorist proxies and provide them the pretext necessary for establishing NATO protected safe havens from which to carry out their terrorism from." It was also examined in detail, how in 2007, US, Saudi, and Israeli officials admitted they were creating a militant front of extremists for the sole purpose of causing the destabilization of Syria we see today, and ultimately overthrowing the Syrian government. It was noted how these extremist militants had direct ties to Al Qaeda. 

Now it is fully admitted that weapons, cash, and logistical support is indeed being provided to terrorist forces in Syria by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf States. This, despite a current UN ceasefire the West has continuously berated the Syrian government for violating, indicates that indeed reorganizing, rearming, and redeploying NATO's terrorist proxies is complete, and another round of destructive violence has begun. 

In the Washington Post's article, "Syrian rebels get influx of arms with gulf neighbors’ money, U.S. coordination," not only is this admitted, but claims made by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been confirmed that Syria's historically violent Muslim Brotherhood, stated in 2007 by Seymour Hersh as being a direct proxy of US-Saudi-Israeli funding and support, is also directly arming and funding contingents of extremists committing acts of terror across Syria.

Read More:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30891

Dennis Kucinich - “NATO Talks a Sham: War in Afghanistan is Not Ending”

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today released the following statement as world leaders meet in Chicago for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit.

“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is not a benevolent organization. NATO is not about the North Atlantic and it’s not about our collective defense.

“NATO is a cost-sharing organization that finances aggressive military action. By hiding behind the claim that the organization provides for ‘common defense,’ NATO allows us to wage wars of choice under the guise of international peacekeeping. The most recent example was the unconstitutional war in Libya where NATO, operating under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians, instead backed one side in a civil war and pursued a policy of regime change.

“Today, NATO leaders are meeting in Chicago to discuss the future of Afghanistan. The talks are being billed as discussions of plans to end the war. The war in Afghanistan is not ending. These talks are simply about financing the next phase of the war.

“The Strategic Partnership Agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan commits us to the country for at least another decade, despite public support for the war being at an all time low. The United States will pay for half of the estimated $4.1 billion per year cost of supporting 352,000 Afghan army and police officers. Afghanistan’s contribution will be $500,000. The rest will be financed by our ‘NATO partners.’ It is not surprising that support for the war among NATO members is waning, with France threatening to pull out its troops by the end of this year.

Read More:

http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=296347

Renee Parsons - The Strategic Partnership Agreement and Pakistan

As President Obama has committed to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014, the recently signed Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) with Afghan President Hamid Karzai will implement an 'enduring' strategic partnership that extends a US presence in that country until 2024. A premise for the SPA is that as Islamic extremists find sanctuary within Pakistan borders, a commitment to train Afghan national security forces (ANSF) requires a long term U.S. presence until a strong Afghanistan army and police can defend their own country.

How NATO allies will respond at the upcoming Summit in Chicago to the Agreement's call for extension of the 2014 withdrawal date which the Alliance adopted at its 2010 Lisbon summit remains uncertain. While many NATO nations have indicated an eagerness to depart Afghanistan in 2014 and some have even announced a pre-2014 departure, the Agreement's appeal for a continued Afghan-NATO presence can be expected to agitate the Alliance.

Read More;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-parsons/the-strategic-partnership_b_1499926.html

Gary Younge - Osama bin Laden's death has had zero impact on America's security

Last week, Afghanistan; two coalition troops were injured and one killed by Afghan soldiers; the US reached an agreement with the Afghan governmentto maintain a presence in the country until 2024; and the US failed to break a diplomatic deadlock with Pakistan after the US refused to apologise for killing 25 Pakistani soldiers in November.

This week, the White House will celebrate the anniversary of the assassination of Osama bin Laden as though it were the crowning achievement of its foreign policy. On Wednesday, Obama will hold a rare televised interview in the situation room to discuss the raid in Abbottabad. His campaign has released of a web video in which Bill Clinton says President Obama "took the harder and the more honorable path, and the one that produced, in my opinion, the best result". The video then asks, "Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?"

The man who entered the White House with the message of "hope" and "change" wants to hold on to it with a record of "shoot to kill".

Republicans are right to criticise the president for the crass manner in which he is "dancing around the end zone". Unfortunately, those criticisms ring hollow from a party whose leader played dress up on the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of a war that is still not over, and whosepresidential candidate claims Obama should stop travelling the globe "apologising for" America. Moreover, the problem is not that Obama is exploiting a moment of national unity for partisan gain – though he most certainly is – but that this extra-judicial execution of an unmourned man has proved the only event capable of uniting the country since 9/11.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/01/osama-bin-laden-death-zero-impact

Joe Glenton - Why I refused to return to fight in Afghanistan's brutal occupation

Recent attacks in Kabul confirm the occupation is falling to pieces. Claims about "decisive years" and "turned corners" are little more than cant. Instead for all their lack of air power, drones and high-tech equipment, the Taliban are gaining ascendancy.

The ability to attack up to seven different locations, to hold one for 20 hours, and to attack the fortified compounds of the occupiers and local supporters cannot sensibly be read as a sign that the insurgency is losing ground. Fighting in Afghanistan is seasonal and the Kabul attacks were the season's opening game.

No insurgency can survive without broad support from the local population. The insurgent relies upon the people for intelligence, support, safety and more. The fact that insurgents now control great swaths of the country virtually unchallenged tells us the people have been lost, partially due to the occupiers' bumbling efforts. The argument that Afghans are rejecting the Taliban falls flat.

Let's not forget there is no mandate in law for aggression nor any mention of – or authority for – brutally occupying Afghanistan in the UN resolutions regarding it. Which is why I refused to serve a second tour in Afghanistan. I was sentenced to five months in military prison for it but other soldiers too have refused and are refusing to serve in Afghanistan – as is their right.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/25/why-i-refused-to-fight-afghanistan-occupation

Robert Fisk - The Children of Fallujah - the hospital of horrors

The pictures flash up on a screen on an upper floor of the Fallujah General Hospital. And all at once, Nadhem Shokr al-Hadidi's administration office becomes a little chamber of horrors. A baby with a hugely deformed mouth. A child with a defect of the spinal cord, material from the spine outside the body. A baby with a terrible, vast Cyclopean eye. Another baby with only half a head, stillborn like the rest, date of birth 17 June, 2009. Yet another picture flicks onto the screen: date of birth 6 July 2009, it shows a tiny child with half a right arm, no left leg, no genitalia.

"We see this all the time now," Al-Hadidi says, and a female doctor walks into the room and glances at the screen. She has delivered some of these still-born children. "I've never seen anything as bad as this in all my service," she says quietly. Al-Hadidi takes phone calls, greets visitors to his office, offers tea and biscuits to us while this ghastly picture show unfolds on the screen. I asked to see these photographs, to ensure that the stillborn children, the deformities, were real. There's always a reader or a viewer who will mutter the word "propaganda" under their breath.

But the photographs are a damning, ghastly reward for such doubts. January 7, 2010: a baby with faded, yellow skin and misshapen arms. April 26, 2010: a grey mass on the side of the baby's head. A doctor beside me speaks of "Tetralogy of Fallot", a transposition of the great blood vessels. May 3, 2010: a frog-like creature in which – the Fallujah doctor who came into the room says this – "all the abdominal organs are trying to get outside the body."

Read More:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-children-of-fallujah--the-hospital-of-horrors-7679168.html#

Timothy McGettigan - The Graveyard of Empires: The Debacle that is the US Mission in Afghanistan

On Thursday, April 19, 2012, the Los Angeles Times published photos of US soldiers posing with body parts of Afghans that they had killed. War may be hell, but sometimes it is also an expression of pure stupidity.

A long time ago, on October 7, 2001, the US began dropping bombs on Afghanistan. Those aggressions were a response to the 9/11 attacks that had been masterminded by a condemnable horde of terrorists who were holed up in the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan. As such, Operation Enduring Freedom, as the military campaign was originally titled by President George W. Bush, proceeded under a legitimate--if not altogether trouble-free--mantle of moral authority.

As of 2001, the US was clearly the aggrieved party. The terrorists had struck first, and Operation Enduring Freedom could be characterized as a measured and appropriate response to an unwarranted act of atrocious aggression.

That was then. In the long years since the US launched Operation Enduring Freedom, endless miscues have transformed the mission in Afghanistan from unprecedented early success into America's longest and, increasingly, messiest war. In the weeks following the launch of Enduring Freedom, the US bombing campaign seemed to be making a mockery of the ancient truism that Afghanistan was the Graveyard of Empires. Where previous would-be conquerors, from Alexander the Great all the way to the Soviet Union, had gotten bogged down in interminable, unwinnable struggles, Operation Enduring Freedom swept the Taliban and al Qaeda out of their mountain strongholds like so much dust before a broom.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Graveyard-of-Empires--by-Timothy-McGettigan-120420-573.html

Deepak Tripathi - Delusions of Power: Obama Is No Gandhi

First the video of United States Marines urinating on bodies of Afghans who had been killed. Then the revelation that copies of the Quran had been burned at Bagram Air Base, which also serves as an American prison camp in Afghanistan. Nearly thirty Afghans and several NATO troops died in the violent reaction. The BBC Kabul correspondent described these events, and the violent public reaction to them, as the tipping point for NATO in the Afghan War.

Just as the U.S. commander Gen. John Allen and President Obama hoped that apologies from them would help calm the situation comes another disaster. If official accounts are to be believed, an American soldier left his base in the middle of the night, entered villagers’ homes, woke up Afghan families from sleep and shot his victims in cold blood. The soldier was reported to have turned himself up to U.S. commanders, and was flown out of the country. He has since been named as St. Sgt. Robert Bales. Other reports tell a different story, indicating that a group of soldiers was involved. Looking drunk and laughing, they engaged in an orgy of violence, while helicopters hovered above.

Read More:

http://countercurrents.org/tripathi250312.htm