Posts Tagged ‘rifles’

War on Afghanistan Lasts until 2014
by Jack A. Smith / May 19th, 2013

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/05/war-on-afghanistan-lasts-until-2014/

Hamid Karzai has let the Pentagon’s cat out of the bag — to the displeasure of the Obama Administration. The Afghan president revealed inside information about President Obama’s war plans after all U.S. “combat troops” completely withdraw in 17 months at the end of 2014.

As was known in recent years, the Obama Administration actually plans to keep troops in Afghanistan after the “withdrawal” at least to 2024. They won’t be “combat troops,” so Obama didn’t actually mislead the American people. Instead they are to be Special Forces troops, who certainly engage in combat but are identified by a different military designation, as well as U.S. Army trainers for the Afghan military, CIA contingents, drone operators, and various other personnel.

The White House has kept other details secret, such as troop numbers and basing arrangements, until it is certain a final Strategic Partnership Declaration is worked out with the Kabul government. When that occurs, the White House expects to make the announcement itself at a time of its choosing, sculpting the information to convey the impression that another 10 years of fighting is not actually war but an act of compassion for a besieged ally who begs for help.

On May 9, however, during a speech at Kabul University, President Karzai decided to update the world on the progress he was making in his secret talks with the U.S., evidently without Washington’s knowledge.

“We are in very serious and delicate negotiations with America,” Karzai said. “America has got its demands, Afghanistan too has its own demands, and its own interests…. They want nine bases across Afghanistan. We agree to give them the bases.

“Our conditions are that the U.S. intensify efforts in the peace process [i.e., talks with the Taliban], strengthen Afghanistan’s security forces, provide concrete support to the economy — power, roads and dams — and provide assistance in governance. If these are met, we are ready to sign the security pact.”

Washington evidently was taken aback by Karzai’s unexpected public revelations that made it clear President Obama is anxious, not hesitant, to keep American troops in Afghanistan. Few analysts thought there would be as many as nine bases. Neither the White House nor State Department confirmed requesting them but both emphasized that any bases in question were not intended to be permanent, as though that’s the principal factor.

If American engagement lasts until 2024 it will mean the U.S. has been involved in Afghan wars for most of the previous 46 years. It began in 1978 when Washington (and Saudi Arabia) started to finance the right wing Islamist mujahedeen uprising against a left wing pro-Soviet government in Kabul. The left regime was finally defeated in 1992 and the Taliban emerged as the dominant force among several other fighting groups in the mid-90s.

The CIA remained active in Afghanistan and was joined by the rest of the U.S. war machine weeks after the Sept. 11, 2000, terror attacks in Washington and New York. The objective was to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda, which also emerged from the Washington-financed wars. The U.S. swiftly took control of Kabul and al-Qaeda fled to Pakistan. Since then, the American foreign legion has been fought to a stalemate by a much smaller poorly equipped guerrilla force, which is where the situation remains today.

The U.S. has engaged in secret talks with the Taliban off and on for a couple of years. The hope is that the Taliban will agree to stop fighting and subordinate itself to the Kabul government in return for money, and a certain amount of administrative and political power within the national and certain provincial governments.

The Taliban will agree to nothing at this stage but an immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces and the closure of bases. The White House evidently thinks that a combination of U.S.-trained Afghan forces plus the remaining Americans might bring their opponents to the bargaining table. The nine bases also provide the U.S. with a strong bargaining chip to relinquish at the right time.

Washington has additional reasons for remaining in Afghanistan, as we wrote in the May 31, 2011, issue of the Activist Newsletter — and little has changed:

The U.S. has no desire to completely withdraw from its only foothold in Central Asia, militarily positioned close to what are perceived to be its two main enemies with nuclear weapons (China, Russia), and two volatile nuclear powers backed by the U.S. but not completely under its control by any means (Pakistan, India). Also, this fortuitous geography is flanking the extraordinary oil and natural gas wealth of the Caspian Basin and energy-endowed former Soviet Muslim republics such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Lastly, Iran — a possible future imperial prize — is situated directly across Afghanistan’s western border.

The U.S. wants to keep troops nearby for any contingency. Washington’s foothold in Central Asia is a potential geopolitical treasure, particularly as Obama, like Bush before him, seeks to prevent Beijing and Moscow from extending their influence in what is actually their own back yard, not America’s.” Soon after this was written the Obama Administration revealed its “pivot” to Asia. Remaining in Central Asia is now part of what we have called America’s “ring of fire” around China, singeing North Korea as well.

Karzai occasionally makes strong public statements that criticize the U.S. They seem mainly intended to bolster his position by showing the Afghan people he is not Uncle Sam’s total puppet, but he’s to be praised for these statements.

For example, he often complains openly when the U.S. commits war crimes in his country, which have been numerous. He has demanded the U.S. discontinue night raids on homes. In late February, according to the Guardian, he ordered “U.S. Special Forces to leave one of Afghanistan’s most restive provinces, Maidan Wardak, after receiving reports from local officials claiming that the elite units had been involved in the torture and disappearance of Afghan civilians.” He recently charged that Washington was allowing the Taliban to increase its violence to make it necessary for him to approve the U.S. demand to remain until 2024.

Washington named Karzai acting president soon after the Bush Administration’s aggressive invasion 12 years ago. His job was to serve the interests of the United States while governing Afghanistan. Karzai was elected president with decisive U.S. backing two years later. The Obama Administration maneuvered to oust him in the 2009 election, charging him with gross corruption, but its candidate withdrew just before the voting. Karzai legally cannot run for another term, but intends to continue playing a powerful role if he can pull it off.

Karzai is shrewd and realizes America’s intentions are far more corrupt than his own because he only wants money, power and a somewhat better deal for Afghanistan, while the hypocritical U.S. wants everything there is to grab for its own geopolitical interests. He has long been on the CIA’s generous payroll and also distributes payoffs to various warlords, some of whom are closer to the CIA than to the government. A week before the 2001 invasion the CIA was inside the country smuggling money to the warlords to join the impending war on the Taliban.

The White House dislikes the Afghan leader but he’s all they have at the moment. They desperately need him now, particularly until signing a final agreement on having U.S. troops remain until 2024. President Obama well remembers his humiliation when Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rejected demands to keep troops in Iraq after the “withdrawal” date, Dec. 30, 2011.

Obama pressured Maliki for years to permit up to 30,000 U.S. troops in Iraq after the “combat troops” pulled out. In mid-October 2011 the Iraqi leader finally accepted 3,000 to 5,000 troops in a training-only capacity. The Iraqis then insisted that they remain largely confined to their bases, and refused Washington’s demand to grant legal immunity to the soldiers when they entered the larger society.

That was the deal-breaker. Washington routinely demands legal exemption for its foreign legions as a matter of imperial hubris, and would not compromise. The day after the deal collapsed, Obama issued a public statement intended to completely conceal his failure. “Today,” he said, “I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.”

Several important issues in the Washington-Kabul post-2014 negotiations seem to have been decided, including a U.S. payment of at least $10 billion a year to train and pay for some 400,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers. Among the remaining issues are two of considerable importance — troop strength and legal immunity for American personal (both for soldiers and tens of thousands of U.S. “contractors” who will remain in the country).

Reports circulated in the last few months that between 3,000 and 20,000 U.S. troops, mainly Special Forces, CIA contingents, drone operators and contractors of various kinds, will remain after 2014. The main air cover is expected to come from Navy aircraft carriers probably stationed in the Arabian Sea or Indian Ocean. Drones are expected to play a major role in battle as well as surveillance. Last year there were some 400 drone attacks in Afghanistan and that number is expected to continue increasing.

The New York Times reported Jan. 3 that “Gen. John R. Allen, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, has submitted military options to the Pentagon that would keep 6,000 to 20,000 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014…. With 6,000 troops, defense officials said, the American mission would largely be a counterterrorism fight of Special Operations commandos who would hunt down insurgents. There would be limited logistical support and training for Afghan security forces. With 10,000 troops, the United States would expand training of Afghan security forces. With 20,000 troops, the Obama administration would add some conventional Army forces to patrol in limited areas.”

The May 11 New York Times reported that “The Obama administration has yet to decide how large a force it would like to keep in Afghanistan, but administration officials have signaled that it is unlikely to total more than 10,000 service members. They said it was more important now to hash out a range of issues, like whether American troops would continue to have legal immunity in Afghanistan after next year, than to talk about the specifics of where troops would be based.”

The big remaining issue is immunity for U.S. personnel. Our guess is that, unlike in Iraq — where conditions are far different — Washington will find a way around the issue. It is difficult to see how the Kabul government of Karzai or his successor in next year’s elections can survive for long without substantial American financial support for a prolonged period.

American forces are engaged in Obama’s drone wars in western Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and soon Africa. Regime change in Libya would not have occurred had the Obama Administration refused to participate. President Obama has been fanning the flames of regime change in Syria for nearly two years, and now he’s about to up the ante. He’s strangling Iran with unjust sanctions and keeps warning that war is possible. He calls Hezbollah, the Shia self-defense organization in Lebanon, a terrorist organization, as he does Hamas in Gaza, the victim of overwhelming Israeli hatred and violence. And now Obama in moving more military power to East Asia to confront China.

If George W. Bush was in the White House today, a huge American peace movement would be out on the streets demanding an end to America’s endless immoral wars. But now a Democrat officiates in the Oval Office, his Nobel Peace Prize wisely hidden in a dark closet lest his militarist propensities provoke an unseemly contrast.

Obama’s many wars are but extensions of Bush’s wars plus killer drones, but the great majority of Americans either seem to have forgotten or simply don’t care about the wars, even though their tax money will amount to $80 billion for Afghanistan in fiscal 2014. Meanwhile, Pentagon generals anticipate various new wars of one kind or another well into the future. The battle against al-Qaeda is expected to last 20 more years. The world has become America’s battlefield.

Afghanistan? Didn’t we have a war there once? Oh, that’s right, it ended when we got rid of Bush, didn’t it?

Jack A. Smith is editor of the Activist Newsletter and a former editor of the Guardian (US) radical newsweekly. He may be reached at: jacdon@earthlink.net.

http://whitereference.blogspot.com/2013/05/crowded-indonesia-casting-covetous-eyes.html

Crowded Indonesia Casting Covetous Eyes At Comparatively Empty Australia, And The Indonesian President Wants A Stronger Military Than Australia

Indonesia comprises a group of relatively crowded islands teeming with over 242 million residents. In contrast, Australia to the south is comparatively empty, with less than 23 million people. Thus I was always concerned about the possibility that some Indonesian leader would look south and decide his country needed some “lebensraum”. Politically-savvy Stormfronters have already picked up on the implications.

That concern has now become public and much more overt. ABC News Australia is reporting that as 16,000 Indonesian troops prepare for joint military exercises in East Java, Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono says his country should strive to have a more powerful military than Australia, Singapore, and Malaysia. And this isn’t just talk; Indonesia has embarked on a military upgrade program, building warships and drones, as well buying fighter jets, helicopters and rockets. Currently, Indonesia’s military boasts 470,000 active troops, while the Australian Defence Force has just over 80,000 full-time personnel and reservists, which means Indonesian troops outnumber Australian troops by a 5-to-1 margin. Traditional military doctrine holds that an invader must outnumber defenders by a 10-to-1 margin to successfully occupy an area.

One day after President Yudhoyono’s speech, the Australian government responded by unveiling a 2013 White Paper outlining their defense roadmap. Without explicitly referring to Indonesia by name, it appears the Aussie government wants to use China and India to checkmate Indonesia, while still emphasizing the importance of close military ties with the United States. Australia’s defense roadmap also includes a commitment of $1.53 billion to buy 12 specialized Super Hornets fighter jets and outlines plans for 12 submarines. However, the Canberra Times criticizes the new defense roadmap, saying that it should have done a better job of addressing the spiralling cost of Defence. The Times notes the procurement costs for each new generation of aircraft, ship or land vehicle far exceed those it replaces. For instance, it is estimated that Australia will pay around $134.5 million for each F-35 JSF. Allowing for inflation, this is roughly three times what we paid for each F-111C and 220 times the cost of each P-51 Mustang in 1945. To counter this, the Times advocates an even closer military relationship between the U.S. and Australia.

Undoubtedly, Australia’s military is qualitatively superior to Indonesian forces. But at some point, quantitative superiority can become overwhelming, particularly if an invading commander is willing to throw bodies at an objective like Ulysses Simpson Grant did at Vicksburg. This explains why Josef Stalin once said that quantity has a quality all its own. If Indonesian forces swamped Australia’s defenders, they could quite literally overwhelm them. The fact that Australia and Indonesia currently have economic, humanitarian and cultural ties and that some Indonesian officers have received their military education in Australia in the past might not necessarily serve as a deterrent to Indonesian imperialism; on the same day that the Wehrmacht launched Operation Barbarossa, Soviet trains and trucks were delivering goods to Germany.

Australia’s government has been mindful of the population disparity between Indonesia and Australia, and one of their strategies has been to promote more immigration into the country. The problem is that much of the immigration is from non-White sources who might be immigrating solely for economic reasons. Australia has solicited immigrants from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, as well as from White countries. While a White immigrant from South Africa, the United Kingdom, or the United States might quickly identify with being an Australian, how quickly would a Chinese or Indian immigrant identify with the country? In fact, non-White immigrants tend to cause more social problems by their reluctance to assimilate; in 2005, about 5,000 mostly White Australians had to take direct action to run predatory Lebanese immigrants off Cronulla Beach. It’s easier to assimilate when the people with whom you’re assimilating look like you.

Australia would benefit by adopting a more overly pro-White immigration strategy. They should openly appeal to Whites living in nations under siege from multiculturalism to immigrate to Australia. Of course, this would have to be limited to quality immigrants; in an article entitled “Premature Populism”, Dr. Greg Johnson writes “…we have to stop coddling every stray dog of humanity who shows up at our door because we are just so desperate to hear from new people who seem to understand. We have to stop counting the crazies in front of us and think instead of the legions of superior people they are keeping away”. Australia may have been founded by convicts, but convicts cannot sustain a nation. Australia should become a large-scale continental version of Harold Covington’s proposed Northwest American Republic; its isolation and existing White population would provide a solid foundation for success.

Of course, the first step White Australians would need to take is to replace whiggers like Julia Gillard with a racially-conscious White person like Pauline Hanson.

Gen. Paul K. Van Ripper, the Marine General who killed 20,000 Americans in the Middle East

In 2002 the Pentagon created the “Millennium Challenge 2002”, a massive wargame combining both live exercises and complex computer simulations. Costing $250million, the wargame was designed as a test of America’s military forces and how it would fair in a hypothetical invasion of a rogue Middle Eastern power, such as Iran or Iraq for instance. The simulation was divided into two teams, “Blue” represented the United States, “Red” represented the unknown Middle Eastern rogue state. The Pentagon chose a retired Marine Corps commander, Lt. General Paul K. Van Ripper as the head of the Red team. A hardened combat veteran of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War, Gen. Van Ripper was known as a tough but intelligent opponent. The Blue team expected fierce opposition from Van Ripper, they did not expect he was out to win and that he wasn’t going to fight by the book.

The strategies of Van Ripper were brilliant to say in the least. Rather than attempt a muzzle to muzzle conventional war with the Blue team he used very unorthodox tactics. First and foremost he silenced all electronic communication among his forces. When the US strikes among their first targets are communication systems, as well the US has such complete technological supremacy that they can intercept and decrypt any electronic message whether radio or internet. Instead Van Ripper went back to traditional methods of communication, using men on motorcycles to relay messages as well as World War II era light signals to launch aircraft. Since this type of communication is very slow, Van Ripper abandoned the top down chain of command approach, instead giving regional commanders the power and initiative to conduct their own campaigns as they saw fit. Typically the start of an American attack usually begins with attacks on anti-aircraft defenses by stealth bombers, which are invisible to radar. Van Ripper turned off all his anti-aircraft missile units. An anti-aircraft system with active radar just makes a juicy target for stealth bombers to pick off, so he shut them down making them invisible to American forces.

As many can probably remember from the Gulf War and Second Iraq War, the United States likes to start an invasion by sending a massive naval task force to bomb the crap out of their opponents. The second Invasion of Iraq was preceded by a week long “shock and awe” campaign of cruise missiles and bombs. The first Gulf War was preceded by months of strategic bombing. Van Ripper understood this and planned to hit the Blue team before they could organize and conduct such a campaign. When Blue’s task force made its ultimatum to surrender, Van Ripper responded with an all out assault by waves of aircraft, submarines, torpedo boats, suicide boats, suicide ships, suicide planes, and missiles. The assault was so massive and fierce that it overwhelmed the fleet’s defenses. While the attack was very costly, it crippled Blue’s task force, sinking an aircraft carrier, ten cruisers, and five of six amphibious ships. Overall Blue suffered 20,000 dead and it was only day 1 of 13, an American military disaster if it were real.

Let’s just say that the Pentagon probably wasn’t happy with the stunning defeat at the hands of Van Ripper. They paused the simulation, reset the clock, and “refloated” the sunken ships. The rules of engagement were changed where Van Ripper was forced to use electronic communications and forced to activate his anti-aircraft units. Furthermore he was discouraged from attacking the Americans, and instead was made to follow a scripted battle plan which involved him conveniently moving his forces so the US Marines could land unchallenged. At that point Gen. Van Ripper told the Pentagon to “go fudge themselves” and resigned from the simulation. He was replaced and in a stunning victory Blue swept the field of battle.

Fortunately for the real Blue team, the Iraq Invasion of 2003 was successful and the real Red team did not use Van Rippers strategies, though the nation building of Iraq afterwards was a bit more tenuous. After Millennium Challenge 2002 Gen. Van Ripper joined several retired generals calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. Currently he enjoys his retirement in Bethel, PA and mostly spends his time peacefully tending his championship prized rose garden.
Actually I don’t know what he does with his free time.

(Source: pbs.org)

Why is the United States Really in Afghanistan?
by Howard Uhal / April 17th, 2013

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/04/why-is-the-united-states-really-in-afghanistan-2/

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

— Ernest Hemingway

Over the past twelve years we have been treated to a litany of reasons why the United States invaded Afghanistan. President Bush said we initially attacked that country “to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.” His successor President Obama continued down that shining path to “achieve our objective of defeating the core of al Qaeda.” Along the way we hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden (who was hiding in neighboring Pakistan) and built schools, hospitals, and chicken processing factories in a mostly futile effort to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

But alongside such publicized goals there is a list of things we also achieved by invading and occupying Afghanistan, most of which are not at all commendable. In the interest of fairness and understanding, we ought to ask ourselves what role these unstated reasons may have played in the decisions to attack Afghanistan and to (apparently) stay there indefinitely. They are, after all, a part of the lasting legacy of Operation Enduring Freedom. A list of these potential reasons, in no particular order, and a discussion of their possible impact follows.

Potential Reason #1: To protect and maintain the opium poppy crop

Afghanistan is by far the world’s largest producer of opium. One of the few good things the Taliban did was to curtail the planting and harvesting of opium poppies.1 This no doubt angered the drug lords and their beneficiaries in the global ruling class. But not to worry! Team America soon came to the rescue and set the Taliban to flight. Now in spite of over ten more years of war, Afghanistan has been restored to its rightful place as the mother of all opium fields.2 And with US troops actually guarding the poppy crop, the world’s supply of this vital resource should be guaranteed for generations to come.3

Potential Reason #2: To control the flow of heroin from the region

Apparently neighboring Pakistan harbors many of the factories which process Afghan opium into heroin, and business is booming. 4 From there and from other facilities in the region, heroin flows to the United States, Europe, and other addicted nations around the globe. 5 It is easy to imagine that the Pentagon’s “full spectrum dominance” capabilities allow America’s war lords to track and perhaps even control this flow of heroin, especially the part that comes into the United States. I have always been perplexed as to how a US intelligence apparatus that can track the path of every dime that goes to a Muslim charity (i.e., “terrorist cell”) cannot notice a tidal wave of drugs and drug money invading the country, but obviously in the bigger scheme of things this is not a great concern to the powers that be.

Potential Reason #3: To brutalize, punish, and/or kill our own troops

So far our fighting men and women in Afghanistan have sustained over 2,200 deaths and 12,300 wounded.6 Many of their wounds have been horrendous: horrible burns, multiple amputations, and the loss of genitals.7 In spite of successful, heroic efforts to save those wounded in battle, many war veterans die while waiting for care through the VA system.8 And the number of active duty military personnel and veterans committing suicide has risen to alarming levels. 9 Should any President ever declare Operation Enduring Freedom to be a “victory”, it will have been a Pyrrhic victory at best. One might even suspect that the true purpose of this war was to destroy the US Army and the National Guard instead of our declared enemies the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Potential Reason # 4: To train our troops for nighttime, warrantless break-in-and-search operations anywhere in the world, including inside the US

The signature mission of our ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been nighttime break-in-and-search operations.10 As might be expected, such successful battlefield methods are now being employed by police departments to fight US gangs.11 The use of such methods and the militarization of our police, far from being of concern to just the “black helicopter crowd”, also has caught the attention of domestic and international civil rights groups. 12 The facts that the Department of Homeland Security is buying armored vehicles and billions of rounds of ammunition13, while the US Army is conducting unannounced urban warfare drills in Galveston and Houston, Texas, and in Miami, Florida, should cause everyone to ask just what the heck is going on. Is our government preparing to impose martial law?

Potential Reason #5: To keep the most patriotic Americans out of the US so they can’t interfere with what the government is doing to the rest of us

In most countries the military is among the most influential and respected of institutions. The United States is no exception. And, in general, military personnel are among the most patriotic members of our society. In many countries, including America’s client states, the military often intervenes directly (e.g., by staging a military coup) in times of national crisis. By keeping patriotic Americans who have military training engaged in endless conflict in a distant quagmire, the government prevents them from taking a direct role in any future domestic struggles. The other segment of the population which might be able to stage a coup of sorts, the militias, have been and are being discredited by entrapment, bad jacketing, and their own misguided attempts at domestic terrorism to ensure their concerns cannot gain traction with a discontented and disoriented public.

Potential Reason #6: To give the government an excuse for losing or not counting military ballots

Adding insult to physical injury, not only are our military patriots imprisoned and wounded in distant quagmires like Afghanistan, somehow their ballots are either lost or not counted in nearly every election.14 Since the government knows both the location of our troops and the dates on which elections occur, one would think that getting the ballots to them and back to the US in time would not be a problem. Somehow it always is. Is it because the government is intentionally disenfranchising this segment of the population to influence election results?

Potential Reason #7: To squander our national treasure

The cost of our war in Afghanistan and its companion in Iraq has been estimated to be between $4 trillion and $6 trillion.15 To pour that amount of money down those two figurative rat holes, especially in this time of fiscal upset, is nothing less than a national calamity. Even worse, we have squandered the good will the United States previously earned in 237 years as a global beacon of freedom. The loss of that national treasure may turn out to be even more costly than our monetary losses. The vanishingly low return on these expenditures suggests that our leaders may be intentionally trying to wreck this country.

We may never learn all the true reasons the United States invaded and occupied Afghanistan, but the consequences of Operation Enduring Freedom will be with us for a long time. Afghanistan has been called many things: the graveyard of empires, a highway of conquest, and a cradle of empire.16 For the United States it now appears to be all three: a potential graveyard of the republic, a highway of conquest of our enemies in the region, and a cradle of the growing empire apparently being crafted by the global ruling class.

——

Howard Uhal is a Vietnam era veteran of the US Army and a former nuclear submarine officer. He has held various positions in the nuclear and environmental industries and has degrees in Geology and Environmental Systems Engineering. He writes the satirical blog “The Apocalypse of Saint Howard”. He can be reached at htuhal@gmail.com Read other articles by Howard, or visit Howard’s website.

Iraq War Fatalities: The White Man’s Burden

http://www.vdare.com/posts/iraq-war-fatalities-the-white-mans-burden

By Steve Sailer on March 21, 2013 at 7:00pm

With the most spectacular element of the Bush Administration’s Invade the World – Invite the World grand strategy now a decade old, it’s worth taking a look at the U.S. military death tolls by ethnicity and sex. This is an infrequently covered subject of scant interest to the press because women and minorities were not hit hardest.

In the mid 2000s, non-Hispanic whites made up about 61% of the 25-year-olds in the U.S. But through this 2009 report by Hannah Fischer of the Congressional Research Service, whites made up 74.7% of Iraq war fatalities, while minorities only accounted for 25.3%. So, whites gave the last full measure of devotion at an 89% higher per capita rate than nonwhites in Iraq.

The sacrifice gap was even larger in Afghanistan through 2009, with whites dying at a per capita rate 146% higher than nonwhites.

And, of course, the white man’s rate was even higher compared to the rest of the population of young adults of both sexes: roughly 500% higher in Iraq, and over 650% higher in Afghanistan.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Next time, maybe not?

On Tenth Anniversary, Israel Partisans Behind Iraq War Still at Large
by Maidhc Ó Cathail / March 12th, 2013

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/03/on-tenth-anniversary-israel-partisans-behind-iraq-war-still-at-large/

Three years ago this month, I wrote a piece entitled “Who’s to Blame for the Iraq War?” to mark the seventh anniversary of the US invasion. My sole purpose in compiling a by-no-means-exhaustive list of 20 Israel partisans who played key roles in inducing America into making that disastrous strategic blunder was to help dispel the widespread confusion — some of it sown under the guise of “progressive investigative journalism” by likely crypto-Zionists – about why the United States made that fateful decision. As the tenth anniversary approaches, there is no excuse for anyone genuinely interested in the facts to deny the ultimate responsibility of Tel Aviv and its foreign agents for the quagmire in Iraq. Nevertheless, it’s an appropriate time to remind ourselves of some of the chief architects of the devastating Iraq War.

1. Ahmed Chalabi, the source of much of the false “intelligence” about Iraqi WMD, was introduced to his biggest boosters Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz by their mentor, a University of Chicago professor who had known the Iraqi con man since the 1960s. An influential Cold War hawk, Albert Wohlstetter fittingly has an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference centre named in his honor.

2. In 1982, Oded Yinon’s seminal article, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s” was published in Kivunim, a Hebrew-language journal affiliated with the World Zionist Organization. “Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets,” advised Yinon. “Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.”

3. “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” a report prepared for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, recommended “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq—an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.” Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board during the initial years of the George W. Bush administration, was the study group leader.

4, 5. A November 1997 Weekly Standard editorial entitled “Saddam Must Go” opined: “We know it seems unthinkable to propose another ground attack to take Baghdad. But it’s time to start thinking the unthinkable.” The following year, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative group, published a letter to President Clinton urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein on the pretext that he was a “hazard” to “a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil.” PNAC co-founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan also co-authored the “Saddam Must Go” editorial.

6. In Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, published by AEI Press in 1999, David Wurmser argued that President Clinton’s policies in Iraq were failing to contain the country and proposed that the US use its military to redraw the map of the Middle East. He would go on to serve as Mideast adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to mid-2007.

7. On September 15, 2001 at Camp David, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz attempted to justify a US attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan because it was “doable.” In the lead-up to the war, he assured Americans that it was “wildly off the mark” to think hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to pacify a postwar Iraq; that the Iraqis “are going to welcome us as liberators”; and that “it is just wrong” to assume that the United States would have to fund the Iraq war.

8. On September 23, 2001, Senator Joe Lieberman, who had pushed for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that there was evidence that “suggests Saddam Hussein may have had contact with bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network, perhaps [was] even involved in the September 11 attack.”

9. A November 12, 2001 New York Times editorial called an alleged meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague an “undisputed fact”. Celebrated for his linguistic prowess, columnist William Safire was egregiously sloppy in his use of language here.

10. A November 20, 2001 Wall Street Journal op-ed argued that the US should continue to target regimes that sponsor terrorism, claiming, “Iraq is the obvious candidate, having not only helped al Qaeda, but attacked Americans directly (including an assassination attempt against the first President Bush) and developed weapons of mass destruction.” The professor of strategic studies at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University who made these spurious claims was Eliot Cohen.

11. George W. Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union address infamously described Iraq as part of an “axis of evil.” It was David Frum, Bush’s Canadian-born speechwriter, who coined the provocative phrase.

12. In a February 2002 article entitled “How to win World War IV,” Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary magazine, asserted: “Yet whether or not Iraq becomes the second front in the war against terrorism, one thing is certain: there can be no victory in this war if it ends with Saddam Hussein still in power.”

13. Kenneth Adelman, Defense Policy Board member and PNAC signatory, predicted in a February 13, 2002 Washington Post op-ed: “I believe that demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”

14. On August 3, 2002, Charles Krauthammer, the psychiatrist-turned-Washington Post columnist, enticed Americans with this illusory carrot: “If we win the war, we are in control of Iraq, it is the single largest source of oil in the world…. We will have a bonanza, a financial one, at the other end, if the war is successful.”

15. In a September 20, 2002 Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “The Case for Toppling Saddam,” current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Saddam Hussein could be hiding nuclear material “in centrifuges the size of washing machines” throughout the country.

16. “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel.” Despite this candid admission to a foreign policy conference at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, Philip Zelikow, a member of President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, authored the National Security Strategy of September 2002 that provided the justification for a preemptive war against Iraq.

17. According to a December 7, 2002 New York Times article, the role of convicted Iran-Contra conspirator Elliott Abrams during Colin Powell’s efforts to negotiate a resolution on Iraq at the United Nations was “to make sure that Secretary Powell did not make too many concessions to the Europeans on the resolution’s wording, pressing a hard-line view.” Abrams was senior director of Near East and North African affairs at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration.

18. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff until he was indicted for lying to federal investigators in the Valerie Plame case, helped draft Colin Powell’s fraudulent February 5, 2003 UN speech.

19. According to Julian Borger’s July 17, 2003 Guardian article entitled “The spies who pushed for war,” the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) “forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon’s office in Israel” to provide the Bush administration with alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq. Douglas Feith was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy who headed the OSP.

20. Bernard Lewis, a British-born professor emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University whose 1990 essay “The Roots of Muslim Rage” introduced the dubious concept of a “Clash of Civilizations,” has been called “perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq.”

–

Maidhc Ó Cathail writes extensively on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East.

Chuck Hagel And A Sense Of Humor
By Steve Sailer on March 1, 2013 at 12:27am

http://www.vdare.com/posts/chuck-hagel-and-a-sense-of-humor

In contrast to Bryan Caplan’s advice to the GOP to make itself more popular by bending over backward to mollify the sensitivities of newcomers, the state of Israel, and Israel hobbyists in the U.S., follow a strategy of constant strident self-assertion.

As the Hagel debate showed, the essential problem for the GOP is this: You know how T. Boone Pickens has spent a couple of hundred million dollars building his alma mater, Oklahoma State, into a college football powerhouse? Does T. Boone Pickens want to negotiate peace on the football field, to sit down with Oklahoma’s backers and call the whole game off? Of course not. What would be the fun of that? He wants to WIN.

Well, a lot of the big money behind the GOP (and behind the Democrats, too — e.g., Hillary’s main money man Haim Saban) feels toward Israel the way Pickens feels toward the Oklahoma State Cowboys. Pickens doesn’t want peace on the football field, he wants victory. Similarly, much of the big money and the big media don’t really want peace in the Middle East. They want their favorite country to win, to crush its foes, or, at minimum, for the game of nations to go on and on to give them something to talk about. It’s their hobby. It’s a perfectly natural male rooting urge.
But, here’s the GOP’s problem: You can’t mention this. You can joke about Pickens’s obsession with OK St. winning, but you can’t joke about, say, Sheldon Adelson’s obsession with his wife’s native country crushing their foes.
Poor Chuck Hagel vaguely alluded skeptically to this massive phenomenon a couple of times over the last couple of decades, and got roasted alive for it to, as Voltaire would say, “encourage the others.”

The problem is that what goes unsaid, eventually goes unthought, enstupefying the Party.
So, the first thing Republicans need is the freedom to joke about the neocons’ infatuation with Israel.

Is that too much to ask?

At present, yes.

Israel instructs Obama: “Iranian and Syrian Sanctions are Not Painful Enough!” …impose an international blockade now!

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/02/22/israel-instructs-obama-iranian-and-syrian-sanctions-are-not-painful-enough-impose-an-international-blockade-now/

Franklin Lamb

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

Damascus

On 3/26/2013 Iran is expected to meet with other world powers in Astana, Kazakhstan to discuss its nuclear program. Discussions that the occupiers of Palestine fervently hope will not be successful. It is toward this end that their key demand this week to the US Congress, the White House and the European Union is “to cast responsibility on the Iranians by blaming them for the talks’ failure in the clearest terms possible.”

According to the Al-Monitor of 3/19/13, Israel also demands that the countries meeting in Kazakhstan “make it perfectly clear that slogans such as ‘negotiations can’t go on forever’ are their marching orders to the White House, and they want the Kazakhstan attendees to act “so severely that the Iranians realize that they face a greater threat than just Israeli military action.” “The message must be that this time the entire west, behind Israel’s leadership, is contemplating the launch of a massive military action.” Unsaid is that “the entire West” is expected to confront Iran militarily while Tel Aviv’s forces will mop up Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Syria if necessary.

Pending the above arrangements, Israel this week is further demanding that the Obama White House issue another Executive Order dramatically ratcheting up the US-led Sanctions against Iran and Syria while it prepares for a hoped for “ game changing international economic blockade, including no-fly zones enforced by NATO.

To achieve yet another lawyer of severe sanctions, and at the behest of AIPAC, a “legislative planning” meeting was called by Congressman Eliot Engel, who represents New Yorks 17th District (the Bronx) and who is the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Ros-Lehtinen (Florida’s 27th District), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. The session was held in a posh Georgetown restaurant and participant’s included representatives from AIPAC, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain plus half a dozen Congressional staffers.

Congressman Engel has co-sponsored virtually every anti-Arab, anti-Islam, anti-Palestinian, anti-Iran, and anti-Syrian Congressional broadside since he entered Congress a quarter-century ago. His campaign literature last fall stated: “I am a strong supporter of sanctions against those who repeatedly reject calls to behave as responsible nations. (Israel excepted-ed). I have authored or helped author numerous bills which have been signed into law to impose sanctions against rogue states including Iran and Syria.” Ros-Lehtinen and Engel led all members with AIPAC donations on the House side in last fall’s Congressional elections. They are ranked number one and two respectively as still serving career recipients of Israel-AIPAC’s “indirect” campaign donations.

Some Congressional operatives accuse Rep. Ros-Lehtinen of being a bit lazy and neglecting the bread and butter needs of her Florida constituents. But others argue that it depends on which constituents one has in mind. Her election mailings and her Congressional website claim that the Congresswoman “led all Congressional efforts tirelessly to generate votes to block what she views as anti-Israel resolutions offered at the former UN Commission on Human Rights.”

A big fan of US-led sanctions against Iran and Syria, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen introduced the Iran Freedom Support Act on January 6, 2005, which increased sanctions and expanded punitive measures against the Iranian people until the Iranian regime has dismantled its nuclear plants. Rep. Ros-Lehtinen also introduced H.R. 957, the Iran Sanctions Amendments Act, which she claims “will close loopholes in current law by holding export credit agencies, insurers, and other financial institutions accountable for their facilitation of investments in Iran and sanction them as well.” In addition, H.R. 957 seeks to impose liability on parent companies for violations of sanctions by their foreign entities. She also co-sponsored H.R 1357 which requires “U.S. government pension funds to divest from companies that do any business with any country that does business with Iran.” Her campaign literature states that, “She was proud to be the leading Republican sponsor of H.R. 1400, the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act. This bill applies and enhances a wide range of additional sanctions.”

In addition, last year Illeana introduced H.R. 394, which enlarges US Federal Court Jurisdiction regarding claims by American citizens their claims in U.S. courts. Unclear is whether she realizes that one consequence of her initiative would be to open even wider US courtroom doors to Iranian-Americans and Syria-Americans who today are being targeted and damaged by the lady’s ravenous insatiable craving for civilian targeting economic sanctions.

But Ileana and Elliot appear to be fretting.

So is Israel.

The reasons are several and they include the fact that the US-led sanctions have failed to date to achieve the accomplishments they were designed to produce. These being to cripple the Iranian economy, provoke a popular protest among the Iranian people over inflation and scarcity of food and medicines, weaken Iran as much as possible before adopting military measures against it, and, most essentially, achieving regime change to turn the clock back to those comfortable days of our submissive, compliant Shah.

Zionist prospects for Syria aren’t any better at the moment. Tel Aviv’s to intimidate the White House into invading Syria have not worked. Plan A has failed miserably according to the Israeli embassy people attending the Engel-Ros Litinen’s informal conflab. Neither did the “how about we just arm the opposition” plan that originated last year with David H. Petraeus and was supported by Hillary Clinton while being pushed by AIPAC. The goal was to create allies in Syria that the US and Israel could control if Mr. Assad was removed from power. Moreover, the White House believes that there are no good options for Obama. It has vetoed 4 recent Israeli proposals including arming the rebels and is said to believe that Syria is already dangerously awash with “unreliable arms.”

The recent shriveling in Israeli prospects for a dramatic Pentagon intervention in Syria reflect White House war weariness. And also Israel’s predilection to bomb targets itself in Syria, as it did recently to assassinate a senior Iranian officer in the Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Hassan Shateri. Contrary to the false story that Israel attacked a missiles convoy, some unassembled equipment was damaged but that was not the primary target according to Fred Hof, a former U.S. State Department official. Gen. Shateri was.

Making matters worse for Tel Aviv, the Israeli military is reportedly becoming skittish due to its deteriorating political and military status in the region and its troops have recently completed subterranean warfare drills to prepare them for a potential clash with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Jerusalem Post reported on 2/20/13. “Today during training, we simulated a northern terrain, that included what we might encounter,” Israeli Lt. Sagiv Shoker, commander of a military Reconnaissance Unit of the Engineering Corps, based at the Elikim base in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon explained. Shoker added that his units spent a week focused on how to approach Hezbollah’s alleged underground bunkers and tunnels in South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley quietly and quickly. Israeli forces commander Gantz has been complaining recently to the Israeli cabinet that Hezbollah Special Forces are gaining much valuable experience in Syria fighting highly skilled and motivated al Nusra jihadists and his troops may not be prepared to face them on the battlefield if a conflict erupts. It has been known since 2006 that Israeli soldiers “are having motivation deficits” as Gantz and others have complained.

Ordinary citizens in Iran and Syria with whom this observer met recently, including some with whom he has shared lengthy conversations while posing many questions, cannot ignore the burden of the US-led sanctions in various aspects of their lives. Nor can the Iranian or Syrian governments or their economic institutions. At the beginning of the summer of 2010, and even more so since the summer of 2012, the US-led civilian targeting sanctions imposed were significantly tightened by the Obama administration and its allies. The administration realized that the sanctions imposed on Iran until then were ineffective and understood that Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear power capability would quickly leave the US with no alternative than the acceptance of a nuclear Iran. But the administration, according to former State Department official Hof, believed that unless it took more drastic measures against Iran, Israel would launch a military strike against Iran which would likely destroy Zionist Israel- a prospect not every US official and Congressional staffer privately laments. Congressional sources report that the White House now feels that Iran has achieved deterrence and that Israel would be dangerously foolhardy to attack the country.

While Israel advocates an economic blockade of Iran and Syria, under binding rules of international and US law, economic blockades are acts of war. They are variously defined as surrounding a nation with hostile forces, economic besieging, preventing the passage in or out of a country of civilian supplies or aid. It is an act of naval warfare to block access to a country’s coastline and deny entry to all vessels and aircraft, absent a formal declaration of war and approval of the UN Security Council.

All treaties to which America is a signatory, including the UN Charter, are binding US law. Chapter VII authorizes only the Security Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, or act of aggression (and, if necessary, take military or other actions to) restore international peace and stability.” It permits a nation to use force (including a blockades) only under two conditions: when authorized by the Security Council or under Article 51 allowing the “right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member….until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security.”

As International law Professor Francis Boyle reminds us, Customary International Law recognizes economic blockades as an act of war because of the implied use of force even against third party nations in enforcing the blockade. Writes Boyle, “Blockades as acts of war have been recognized as such in the Declaration of Paris of 1856 and the Declaration of London of 1909 that delineate the international rules of warfare.” America approved these Declarations, thereby are became binding US law as well “as part of general international law and customary international law.” US presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy, called economic blockades acts of war.
So has the US Supreme Court.

In Bas v. Tingy (1800), the US Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of fighting an “undeclared war” (read extreme economic sanctions). It ruled the seizure of a French vessel (is) an act of hostility or reprisal. The Court cited Talbot v. Seaman (1801) in ruling that “specific legislative authority was required in the seizure. In Little v. Barreme (1804), the Court held that “even an order from the President could not justify or excuse an act that violated the laws and customs of warfare. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that a captain of a United States warship could be held personally liable in trespass for wrongfully seizing a neutral Danish ship, even though” presidential authority ordered it.
“The Prize Cases” (1863) is perhaps the most definitive US Supreme Court ruling on economic blockades requiring congressional authorization. The case involved President Lincoln’s ordering “a blockade of coastal states that had joined the Confederacy at the outset of the Civil War. The Court….explicitly (ruled) that an economic blockade is an act of war and is legal only if properly authorized under the Constitution.”

Iran and Syria pose no threat to the US or any peaceful law abiding nation. Imposing a blockade against either violates the UN Charter and settled international humanitarian laws as well as US law. It would constitute an illegal act of aggression that under the Nuremberg Charter is the designated a “supreme international crime” above all others. It would render the Obama administration and every government of other participating nations criminally liable.

Contrary to what the occupiers of Palestine may fantasize, if the White House wants an economic blockade of Iran or Syria it must declare war, letting the American people be heard on the subject and convince the UN Security Council to pass a UNSCR under Chapter 7.

The White House cannot legally, morally or consistently with claimed American humanitarian values continue to target civilian populations with economic sanctions on the cheap.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and can be reached c/ofplamb@gmal.com

INCOG’s Army Recruitment Poster Concept (rejected)