Traducción en español del video aquí Source: Democracy Now! It’s been a week since Rolling Stone published its article on General Stanley McChrystal that eventually led to him being fired by President Obama. Since the article came out, Rolling Stone and the reporter who broke the story, Michael Hastings, have come under attack in the mainstream media [...]

You have only to look around in Kabul and elsewhere, as I did this month, to see that the more American military there is, the more insurgents there are; the more insurgent attacks, the more private security contractors; the more barriers and razor wire, the more restrictions on freedom of movement in the capital for Afghans and internationals alike; and the more security, the higher the danger pay for members of the international community who choose to stay and spend their time complaining about the way security prevents them from doing their useful work. And so it goes round and round, this ill-oiled war machine, generating ever more incentives for almost everyone involved -- except ordinary Afghans, of course -- to keep on keeping on. It goes round and round, this inexorable machine, this elaborate construction of corporate capitalism at war, generating immense sums of money for relatively small numbers of people.

If Obama's Afghan decision was a cave-in to the brass and a potential generals' revolt, the president also added that kicker of a deadline to the mix, not only placating his political base and minimizing Democratic unhappiness in Congress, but creating a trap of sorts for Petraeus and McChrystal. The message was clear enough: deliver the goods, and fast, or we're heading out, whether the job is finished or not. Afghanistan is the place where theories of warfare go to die, and if the COIN theory isn't dead yet, it's utterly failed so far to prove itself. The vaunted February offensive into the dusty hamlet of Marja in Helmand province has unraveled. The offensive into Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and a seething tangle of tribal and religious factions, once touted as the potential turning point of the entire war, has been postponed indefinitely. After nine years, the Pentagon has little to show for its efforts, except ever-rising casualties and money spent. Perhaps Obama is still counting on U.S. soldiers to reverse the Taliban's momentum and win the war, even though administration officials have repeatedly rejected the notion that Afghanistan can be won militarily. David Petraeus or no, the reality is that the war will end with a political settlement involving President Karzai's government, various Afghan warlords and power brokers, the remnants of the old Northern Alliance, the Taliban, and the Taliban's sponsors in Pakistan.

l presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, negó que la destitución de Stanley McChrystal como jefe de las fuerzas en Afganistán implicara diferencias sobre la estrategia militar. Pero puso de manifiesto la búsqueda de una salida a una crisis política cada vez más profunda. El motivo más ostensible de la destitución, este miércoles, fueron las indiscretas declaraciones formuladas por McChrystal a la revista estadounidense Rolling Stone, donde criticó al gobierno de Obama y a sus asesores. Pero el hecho de reemplazarlo por el general David Petraeus, actual jefe del Comando Central de Estados Unidos, fue claramente el resultado del descontento de la Casa Blanca con cómo McChrystal manejó la guerra en Afganistán.

Bajo su compromiso con una diplomacia de voz suave y más allá de las zonas de combate de Afganistán e Iraq, el gobierno de Obama ha expandido considerablemente una guerra en gran parte secreta de EE.UU. contra al-Qaida y otros grupos radicales, según altos responsables militares y gubernamentales. Las fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales han crecido en número y presupuesto, y están desplegadas en 75 países, en comparación con unos 60 a comienzos del año pasado. Aparte de unidades que han pasado años en las Filipinas y en Colombia, hay equipos operando en Yemen y en otros sitios en Oriente Próximo, África y Asia Central.

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author by Kathy Kelly If the U.S. public looked long and hard into a mirror reflecting the civilian atrocities that have occurred in Afghanistan, over the past ten months, we would see ourselves as people who have collaborated with and paid for war crimes committed against innocent civilians who [...]

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 [...]

Source: TomDispatch 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 [...]

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 [...]

Source: TomDispatch 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 [...]