(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ussocom_ru)

Article published in Amauta with special permission from the author

A shorter version of this article originally appeared at Consortium News

by Ray McGovern

Nothing highlights President Obama’s abject surrender to Gen. David Petraeus on the “way forward” in Afghanistan than two cables U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry sent to Washington on Nov. 6 and 9, 2009, the texts of which were released Tuesday by the New York Times.

No longer is it possible to suggest that Obama was totally deprived of wise counsel on Afghanistan; Eikenberry got it largely right.  Sadly, the inevitable conclusion is that, although Obama is not as dumb as his predecessor, he is no less willing to sacrifice thousands of lives for political gain. Read the full story

Source: TomDispatch

(Image: truthout)

by Tom Engelhardt & Nick Turse
January 3, 2010

According to the Chinese calendar, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger.  We don’t name our years, but if we did, this one might prospectively be called the Year of the Assassin.

We, of course, think of ourselves as something like the peaceable kingdom.  After all, the shock of September 11, 2001 was that “war” came to “the homeland,” a mighty blow delivered against the very symbols of our economic, military, and — had Flight 93 not gone down in a field in Pennsylvania — political power.

Since that day, however, war has been a stranger in our land.  With the rarest of exceptions, like Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan’s massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, this country has remained a world without war or any kind of mobilization for war.  No other major terrorist attacks, not even victory gardens, scrap-metal collecting, or rationing.  And certainly no war tax to pay for our post-9/11 trillion-dollar “expeditionary forces” sent into battle abroad.  Had we the foresight to name them, the last few years domestically might have reflected a different kind of carnage — 2006, the Year of the Subprime Mortgage; 2007, the Year of the Bonus; 2008, the Year of the Meltdown; 2009, the Year of the Bailout.  And perhaps some would want to label 2010, prematurely or not, the Year of Recovery. Read the full story

Fuente: Global Research
Traducción: Germán Leyens, Rebelión

por Rick Rozoff
15 de diciembre, 2009

Tal vez sea imposible determinar el momento exacto en el cual un sediciente guerrero santo apoyado por EE.UU. –entrenado para perpetrar actos de terrorismo urbano y derribar aviones comerciales– deja de ser un combatiente por la libertad y se convierte en terrorista. Pero una suposición segura es que eso ocurre cuando ya no es útil para Washington. Un terrorista que sirve los intereses de EE.UU. es un combatiente por la libertad; un combatiente por la libertad que no los sirve es un terrorista. Read the full story

Source: TomDispatch

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: jamesomalley, The U.S. Army, Eddi 07)

by Tom Engelhardt
December 3, 2009

Let others deal with the details of President Obama’s Afghan speech, with the on-ramps and off-ramps, those 30,000 U.S. troops going in and just where they will be deployed, the benchmarks for what’s called “good governance” in Afghanistan, the corruption of the Karzai regime, the viability of counterinsurgency warfare, the reliability of NATO allies, and so on.  Let’s just skip to the most essential point which, in a nutshell, is this:  Victory at Last!

It’s been a long time coming, but finally American war commanders have effectively marshaled their forces, netcentrically outmaneuvering and outflanking the enemy.  They have shocked-and-awed their opponents, won the necessary hearts-and-minds, and so, for the first time in at least two decades, stand at the heights of success, triumphant at last. Read the full story

Case for escalating the war is based on premises that turn to dust on inspection

51 per cent of Americans polled by the Washington Post say the war in Afghanistan is 'not worth fighting' (The Independent)

by Johann Hari
October 21, 2009

Is Barack Obama about to drive his Presidency into a bloody ditch strewn with corpses? The President is expected any day now to announce his decision about the future of the war in Afghanistan. He knows US and British troops have now been stationed in the hell-mouth of Helmand longer than the First and Second World Wars combined – yet the mutterings from the marble halls of Washington DC suggest he may order a troop escalation. Read the full story

por Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, 16 oct (IPS) – Un coronel del ejército de Estados Unidos sostuvo que el envío de más tropas a Afganistán promovido por el comandante de las fuerzas occidentales en ese país, general Stanley A. McChrystal, terminará fortaleciendo al movimiento extremista Talibán.

En un informe personal de 63 páginas que circula a todos los niveles de Washington, el teniente coronel Daniel L. Davis, veterano de las guerras en Afganistán e Iraq, opinó que ya es demasiado tarde para que las tropas internacionales derroten a la insurgencia afgana. Read the full story

illustration by Zina Saunders (The Nation)

by Tom Hayden
October 14, 2009

Let us say, hypothetically, that American forces kill or capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, enabling President Obama to declare victory and bring our troops home. Would he? Not according to the Pentagon’s plan for a fifty-year “Long War” of counterinsurgency spanning Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and beyond.

Military intellectuals envision a prolonged cold war against Al Qaeda, with hot wars along the way. It happens that the Long War is over Muslim lands rich with oil, natural gas and planned pipelines. The Pentagon identifies them as hostile terrain where Al Qaeda and its affiliates are hidden. Read the full story

The US is expected to announce a significant surge of up to 45,000 extra troops for Afghanistan after Gordon Brown said that 500 more British troops would be sent to the country.

Barack Obama holds a briefing on Afghanistan and Pakistan with his National Security Team. It is understood he would announce a surge in troop numbers. Photo: GETTY

by James Kirkup and Andrew Hough
October 14, 2009

President Barack Obama’s administration is understood to have told the British government that it could announce, as early as next week, the substantial increase to its 65,000 troops already serving there.

The decision from Mr Obama comes after he considered a request from General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to send tens of thousands of extra American troops to the country. Read the full story

by Andrew J. Bacevich
October 11, 2009

NO SERIOUS person thinks that Afghanistan – remote, impoverished, barely qualifying as a nation-state – seriously matters to the United States. Yet with the war in its ninth year, the passions raised by the debate over how to proceed there are serious indeed. Afghanistan elicits such passions because people understand that in rendering his decision on Afghanistan, President Obama will declare himself on several much larger issues. In this sense, Afghanistan is a classic proxy war, with the main protagonists here in the United States. Read the full story

English (original) version below

Londres, 1898; Kabul, 2009

por Tom Engelhardt
8 de octubre, 2009

Un párrafo común y corriente en un artículo en mi periódico local me llamó la atención hace poco. Llevaba el título “Casa Blanca cree que Karzai será reelegido,” pero a medio camino Helene Cooper y Mark Landler del New York Times se volvían a la “opción de redespliegue” del comandante de la Guerra Afgana, general Stanley McChrystal. El monótono párrafo en cuestión era el siguiente: “La opción del redespliegue requiere que se transfiera soldados de áreas escasamente pobladas e ingobernables del campo a áreas urbanas, incluidas Kandahar y Kabul. ‘Será mejor dejar a los Predator’ muchas áreas rurales, dijo un funcionario del gobierno, refiriéndose a los aviones drones [sin tripulación].” Read the full story