Baltimore Nonviolence Center: August 2021

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Baltimore Activist Alert -- September 1 - 4, 2021

32] Write a letter to a voter in Virginia– Sept. 1

33] Japan-Taiwan Ties in 2021 – Sept. 1

34] Takoma Park Mobilization – Sept. 1

35] The True Costs of our Post-9/11 Wars – Sept. 1

36] The Under-recognized Workforce – Sept. 1

37] Coffee and a Column – Sept. 1

38] Phonebank for a Green New Deal – Sept. 1

39] Phone bank AZ voters for a pathway to citizenship – Sept. 1

40] For the People Act! – Sept. 1, 2 & 4

41] Nuclear Bombshell – Sept. 1

42] Jews United for Justice meeting – Sept. 1

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32] – Zach VanHouten, People for the American Way [alerts@pfaw.org] has the perfect volunteer opportunity you can do from your couch. Help Get Out the Vote in Virginia this year by signing up to write letters to voters! The upcoming statewide election in Virginia is likely to have major implications for the national midterms that are right around the corner. Often viewed as a bellwether to the national political climate, Virginia has been crucial in proving the popularity of progressive policies and the national shift towards a more progressive electorate. This year, the Republican candidate for governor is a Trump idolizer, who despite his seemingly moderate campaign pledges, has proven to be really nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Someone who would advocate for a far-right and regressive agenda if elected - such as his opposition to gun safety reforms, opposition to common-sense COVID safety measures, and more.

Voter turnout is going to be crucial in the Virginia election and People For is proud to once again be partnering with our friends at Vote Forward for a unique letter-writing Get Out the Vote campaign. Sign up now at https://votefwd.org/pfaw to participate in the September 1 “World Letter Writing Day” campaign! Send a personal letter encouraging them to vote in the election!

33] – On Wed., Sept. 1 from 8 to 9 AM ET, go online to hear Changing the Discourse on Taiwan: Japan-Taiwan Ties in 2021. In 2021, the public discourse about Taiwan in Japan has shifted, with affirmations of the importance of Taiwan for regional security from political leaders and discussion of Taiwan in the annual defense white paper. How do these unprecedented changes impact Japan-Taiwan relations and Taiwan’s engagement with international partners? Join the discussion, sponsored by the Stimson Center, with Madoka Fukuda, Hosei University; and Hung-jen Wang, National Cheng Kung University. Sign up at https://www.stimson.org/event/changing-the-discourse-on-taiwan-japan-taiwan-ties-in-2021/.

34] – Takoma Park Mobilization [info@tpmobilization.org] announced that the Climate Action Coffee is back on the first Wednesdays of the month at Busboys and Poets in Takoma, 235 Carroll St. NW, one block from Takoma Metro, from 9 to 10:30 AM! The next meeting will be on Sept. 1. Support the generous friends at Busboys and Poets who have shown creativity and resilience during the pandemic and enjoy the best fair trade coffee in town -- on the house! You can also Zoom weekly on the remaining Wednesday mornings at https://zoom.us/j/387972672?pwd=aFE3eXRRSUFjVERmZHB5VXJlM09PUT09. The Meeting ID is 387 972 672 with the Password being 227728. Dial-in at 646 876 9923. Note Zoom meetings are 8 to 9:30 AM, while in-person meetings at Busboys and Poets will be 9 to 10:30 AM.

35] – 20 Years Later: The True Costs of our Post-9/11 Wars will take place on Wed., Sept. 1 from 10 to 11:30 AM ET. In anticipation of the 20-year mark since September 11, 2001 and the subsequent launch of the post-9/11 wars, lead researcher Dr. Neta Crawford will present the Cost of War Project's updated estimates on the most comprehensive and widely-cited assessments of the financial and human costs of the past 20 years of war. The last time the Project released these numbers was in 2019, estimating that the post-9/11 wars had cost $6.4 trillion and 801,000 lives. The event, hosted by Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept, will also feature a panel on the broader implications of these costs with Dr. Catherine Lutz and Dr. Linda Bilmes of the Costs of War Project, and Dr. Maha Hilal of the Justice for Muslims Collective. Reflections will also be offered by Senator Jack Reed and Representatives Barbara Lee, David Cicilline, and Ro Khanna. RSVP to https://watson.brown.edu/events/2021/20-years-later-true-costs-our-post-911-wars, and you will receive the livestream link.

36] –Victoria Ballesteros, National Immigration Law Center [info@nilc.org] announced on Wed., Sept. 1 at noon ET there is a panel discussion on “The Under-recognized Workforce that Is Leading Us through the Pandemic and to Recovery.” ‌Labor Day is right around the corner. Approach the celebration of America’s workers by including the millions of immigrant workers who have shown up every day, putting their lives on the line to help our country get through the COVID-19 pandemic. Discuss how we can create a more just and equitable society that supports immigrant workers, including with a pathway to citizenship. The panel will include NILC Executive Director Marielena Hincapié, Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX), and Resilience Force Executive Director Saket Soni, and the conversation will be moderated by Dara Lind from ProPublica and Vox’s “The Weeds.”

37] – James J Zogby [jzogby@aaiusa.org] wants you to join him on Wed., Sept. 1 at 2 PM for Coffee and a Column to discuss his take on Ben & Jerry's boycott and the lessons learned. I'll also be sharing some new polling and analysis on American reactions to the boycott. You can read the column here: https://www.aaiusa.org/library/lessons-from-the-ben-amp-jerrys-boycott?emci=20f53f50-e709-ec11-981f-501ac57ba3ed&emdi=2eba09e8-610a-ec11-981f-501ac57ba3ed&ceid=389907. Please register at https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUld-Ctrz0qEt2zmoZCW-3lGNelFZhDg1-E?emci=20f53f50-e709-ec11-981f-501ac57ba3ed&emdi=2eba09e8-610a-ec11-981f-501ac57ba3ed&ceid=389907 to receive the dial-in information for the Zoom call. After you register, you will automatically get the dial-in information for the call.

38] –Phonebank for a Green New Deal with Sunrise National on Wed., Sept. 1 from 4 to 5:30 PM ET. Sign up to call Sunrisers and ask them to demand a bold climate infrastructure package from their representatives. Sunrise will provide all the training you need and a lot of fun and hype too! Register at https://www.mobilize.us/sunrisemovement/event/403248/?emci=16326b3a-a4ff-eb11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&emdi=7c2e4f48-a5ff-eb11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&ceid=177631.

39] – United We Dream Action [info@uwdaction.org] is teaming up to phone bank AZ senators in support of a pathway to citizenship in the reconciliation package! Undocumented people have been in the front lines of this pandemic as essential workers and have not had access to any relief funds. Call for permanent protection for millions! RSVP now to join the phone bank on Wed., Sept. 1 at 5 PM EDT: https://www.mobilize.us/luchaaction/event/405536/?utm_source=UWDA&link_id=0&can_id=4b9d4061aec5469758759317ac0f5285&email_referrer=email_1275121&email_subject=we-knocked-doors-in-az-heat-to-demand-citizenship-now.

40] –Join activists around the country at a virtual phonebank to urge voters in key states to demand their senators’ support of the For the People Act! The August deadline for 2022 is fast approaching! Our democracy is in crisis: with redistricting around the corner and hundreds of voter suppression laws being introduced in states across the country, we do not have time to wait. Every day we’re getting closer to a very real deadline to take action to pass the For the People Act (S.1): If the Senate does not overcome the filibuster and pass S. 1 by late August, states will not have enough time to implement the legislation’s regulations before the 2022 midterm elections! Join activists around the country at a virtual phonebank to urge voters in key states to demand their senators’ support of S. 1! RSVP at https://www.mobilize.us/pfaw/event/376178/?utm_source=PFAW to call on Wed., Sept. 1 from 6 to 8 PM ET, Thurs., Sept. 2 from 3 to 6 PM and 6 to 8 PM ET and Sat., Sept., 4 from noon to 2 PM, from 4 to 6 PM and 6 to 8 PM ET.

41] – Rachel at Beyond the Bomb [team@beyondthebomb.org] wants you to attend a showing of Nuclear Bombshell on Wed., Sept. 1st at 6 PM ET! This will be repeated on Wed., Sept. 1 at 6 PM ET. Get ready for our first debriefing with the BombSquad! Watch the short film, get updates on Beyond the Bomb campaigns, and connect with other members of the BombSquad. SIGN UP HERE https://beyondthebomb.org/campaigns/bombsquad-monthly-low-down/?link_id=1&can_id=4b9d4061aec5469758759317ac0f5285&source=email-join-our-first-national-call&email_referrer=email_1258527___subject_1663452&email_subject=join-us-for-the-premier-of-the-nuclear-bombshell.

42] – Rachel Kutler, Jews United for Justice [info@jufj.org] needs you to attend the Baltimore Action Team meeting on Wed., Sept. 1 at 7 PM ET. Do you care about holding our police accountable, about water justice, or maybe about renters' rights in Baltimore? Do you wish that the legislative process was more accessible to residents, or that you had more tools to better engage with and organize your community? Share updates on the local campaigns and brainstorm how to move the work forward. Whether you are a regular attendee or a first-timer, everyone is welcome! Register at https://jufj.org/event/bat-sept-1/?sourceid=1020680&utm_campaign=bmore&utm_source=ea&utm_medium=newsletter&emci=03457f2a-0505-ec11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&emdi=c568267d-8206-ec11-981f-501ac57ba3ed&ceid=3403859.

Right after you join the meeting, stay for an organizing training on base building at 8 PM ET! At Jews United for Justice, the theory of change is grounded in the belief that we can make systemic change by empowering people to take action. Through campaigns, the idea is to develop leaders, build the Jewish grassroots community, shift the consciousness of our community, and build the collective power needed to undo systemic racism and inequality. In order to build that collective power, we need to first ensure we have the collective tools to do the work. This is a new, cross-jurisdictional "Organizing Base-ics" training series with JUFJ staff members and fellow volunteer leaders. Register at https://jufj.org/event/organizing-basics-1/?sourceid=1020680&utm_campaign=bmore&utm_source=ea&utm_medium=newsletter&emci=03457f2a-0505-ec11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&emdi=c568267d-8206-ec11-981f-501ac57ba3ed&ceid=3403859.

To be continued.

Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Monday, August 30, 2021

Debacle in Afghanistan

Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)

Debacle in Afghanistan

Tariq Ali

August 16, 2021

New Left Review Side Car

The fall of Kabul to the Taliban on 15 August 2021 is a major political and ideological defeat for the American Empire. The crowded helicopters carrying US Embassy staff to Kabul airport were startlingly reminiscent of the scenes in Saigon – now Ho Chi Minh City – in April 1975. The speed with which Taliban forces stormed the country was astonishing; their strategic acumen remarkable. A week-long offensive ended triumphantly in Kabul. The 300,000-strong Afghan army crumbled. Many refused to fight. In fact, thousands of them went over to the Taliban, who immediately demanded the unconditional surrender of the puppet government. President Ashraf Ghani, a favourite of the US media, fled the country and sought refuge in Oman. The flag of the revived Emirate is now fluttering over his Presidential palace. In some respects, the closest analogy is not Saigon but nineteenth-century Sudan, when the forces of the Mahdi swept into Khartoum and martyred General Gordon. William Morris celebrated the Mahdi’s victory as a setback for the British Empire. Yet while the Sudanese insurgents killed an entire garrison, Kabul changed hands with little bloodshed. The Taliban did not even attempt to take the US embassy, let alone target American personnel.

The twentieth anniversary of the ‘War on Terror’ thus ended in predictable and predicted defeat for the US, NATO and others who clambered on the bandwagon. However one regards the Taliban’s policies – I have been a stern critic for many years – their achievement cannot be denied. In a period when the US has wrecked one Arab country after another, no resistance that could challenge the occupiers ever emerged. This defeat may well be a turning point. That is why European politicians are whinging. They backed the US unconditionally in Afghanistan, and they too have suffered a humiliation – none more so than Britain.

Biden was left with no choice. The United States had announced it would withdraw from Afghanistan in September 2021 without fulfilling any of its ‘liberationist’ aims: freedom and democracy, equal rights for women, and the destruction of the Taliban. Though it may be undefeated militarily, the tears being shed by embittered liberals confirm the deeper extent of its loss. Most of them – Frederick Kagan in the NYT, Gideon Rachman in the FT – believe that the drawdown should have been delayed to keep the Taliban at bay. But Biden was simply ratifying the peace process initiated by Trump, with Pentagon backing, which saw an agreement reached in February 2020 in the presence of the US, Taliban, India, China and Pakistan. The American security establishment knew that the invasion had failed: the Taliban could not be subdued no matter how long they stayed. The notion that Biden’s hasty withdrawal has somehow strengthened the militants is poppycock.

The fact is that over twenty years, the US has failed to build anything that might redeem its mission. The brilliantly lit Green Zone was always surrounded by a darkness that the Zoners could not fathom. In one of the poorest countries of the world, billions were spent annually on air-conditioning the barracks that housed US soldiers and officers, while food and clothing were regularly flown in from bases in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It was hardly a surprise that a huge slum grew on the fringes of Kabul, as the poor assembled to search for pickings in dustbins. The low wages paid to Afghan security services could not convince them to fight against their countrymen. The army, built up over two decades, had been infiltrated at an early stage by Taliban supporters, who received free training in the use of modern military equipment and acted as spies for the Afghan resistance.

This was the miserable reality of ‘humanitarian intervention’. Though credit where credit is due: the country has witnessed a huge rise in exports. During the Taliban years, opium production was strictly monitored. Since the US invasion it has increased dramatically, and now accounts for 90% of the global heroin market – making one wonder whether this protracted conflict should be seen, partially at least, as a new opium war. Trillions have been made in profits and shared between the Afghan sectors that serviced the occupation. Western officers were handsomely paid off to enable the trade. One in ten young Afghans are now opium addicts. Figures for NATO forces are unavailable.

As for the status of women, nothing much has changed. There has been little social progress outside the NGO-infested Green Zone. One of the country’s leading feminists in exile remarked that Afghan women had three enemies: the Western occupation, the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. With the departure of the United States, she said, they will have two. (At the time of writing this can perhaps be amended to one, as the Taliban’s advances in the north saw off key factions of the Alliance before Kabul was captured). Despite repeated requests from journalists and campaigners, no reliable figures have been released on the sex-work industry that grew to service the occupying armies. Nor are there credible rape statistics – although US soldiers frequently used sexual violence against ‘terror suspects’, raped Afghan civilians and green-lighted child abuse by allied militias. During the Yugoslav civil war, prostitution multiplied and the region became a centre for sex trafficking. UN involvement in this profitable business was well-documented. In Afghanistan, the full details are yet to emerge.

Over 775,000 US troops have fought in Afghanistan since 2001. Of those, 2,448 were killed, along with almost 4,000 US contractors. Approximately 20,589 were wounded in action according to the Defense [sic] Department. Afghan casualty figures are difficult to calculate, since ‘enemy deaths’ that include civilians are not counted. Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives estimated that at least 4,200–4,500 civilians were killed by mid-January 2002 as a consequence of the US assault, both directly as casualties of the aerial bombing campaign and indirectly in the humanitarian crisis that ensued. By 2021, the Associated Press were reporting that 47,245 civilians had perished because of the occupation. Afghan civil rights activists gave a higher total, insisting that 100,000 Afghans (many of them non-combatants) had died, and three times that number had been wounded.

In 2019, the Washington Post published a 2,000-page internal report commissioned by the US federal government to anatomize the failures of its longest war: ‘The Afghanistan Papers’. It was based on a series of interviews with US Generals (retired and serving), political advisers, diplomats, aid workers and so on. Their combined assessment was damning. General Douglas Lute, the ‘Afghan war czar’ under Bush and Obama, confessed that ‘We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan – we didn’t know what we were doing…We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we’re undertaking…If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction.’ Another witness, Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy Seal and a White House staffer under Bush and Obama, highlighted the vast waste of resources: ‘What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion? … After the killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan.’ He could have added: ‘And we still lost’.

Who was the enemy? The Taliban, Pakistan, all Afghans? A long-serving US soldier was convinced that at least one-third of Afghan police were addicted to drugs and another sizeable chunk were Taliban supporters. This posed a major problem for US soldiers, as an unnamed Special Forces honcho testified in 2017: ‘They thought I was going to come to them with a map to show them where the good guys and bad guys live…It took several conversations for them to understand that I did not have that information in my hands. At first, they just kept asking: “But who are the bad guys, where are they?”’.

Donald Rumsfeld expressed the same sentiment back in 2003. ‘I have no visibility into who the bad guys are in Afghanistan or Iraq’, he wrote. ‘I read all the intel from the community, and it sounds as though we know a great deal, but in fact, when you push at it, you find out we haven’t got anything that is actionable. We are woefully deficient in human intelligence.’ The inability to distinguish between a friend and an enemy is a serious issue – not just on a Schmittean level, but on a practical one. If you can’t tell the difference between allies and adversaries after an IED attack in a crowded city market, you respond by lashing out at everyone, and create more enemies in the process.

Colonel Christopher Kolenda, an adviser to three serving Generals, pointed to another problem with the US mission. Corruption was rampant from the beginning, he said; the Karzai government was ‘self-organised into a kleptocracy.’ That undermined the post-2002 strategy of building a state that could outlast the occupation. ‘Petty corruption is like skin cancer, there are ways to deal with it and you’ll probably be just fine. Corruption within the ministries, higher level, is like colon cancer; it’s worse, but if you catch it in time, you’re probably okay. Kleptocracy, however, is like brain cancer; it’s fatal.’ Of course, the Pakistani state – where kleptocracy is embedded at every level – has survived for decades. But things weren’t so easy in Afghanistan, where nation-building efforts were led by an occupying army and the central government had scant popular support.

What of the fake reports that the Taliban were routed, never to return? A senior figure in the National Security Council reflected on the lies broadcast by his colleagues: ‘It was their explanations. For example, [Taliban] attacks are getting worse? “That’s because there are more targets for them to fire at, so more attacks are a false indicator of instability.” Then, three months later, attacks are still getting worse? “It’s because the Taliban are getting desperate, so it’s actually an indicator that we’re winning”…And this went on and on for two reasons, to make everyone involved look good, and to make it look like the troops and resources were having the kind of effect where removing them would cause the country to deteriorate.’

All this was an open secret in the chanceries and defense [sic] ministries of NATO Europe. In October 2014, the British Defense [sic] Secretary Michael Fallon admitted that ‘Mistakes were made militarily, mistakes were made by the politicians at the time and this goes back 10, 13 years…We’re not going to send combat troops back into Afghanistan, under any circumstances.’ Four years later, Prime Minister Theresa May redeployed British troops to Afghanistan, doubling its fighters ‘to help tackle the fragile security situation’. Now the UK media is echoing the Foreign Office and criticising Biden for having made the wrong move at the wrong time, with the head of the British armed forces Sir Nick Carter suggesting a new invasion might be necessary. Tory backbenchers, colonial nostalgiaists, stooge-journalists and Blair-toadies are lining up to call for a permanent British presence in the war-torn state.

What’s astonishing is that neither General Carter nor his relays appear to have acknowledged the scale of the crisis confronted by the US war machine, as set out in ‘The Afghanistan Papers’. While American military planners have slowly woken up to reality, their British counterparts still cling to a fantasy image of Afghanistan. Some argue that the withdrawal will put Europe’s security at risk, as al-Qaeda regroups under the new Islamic Emirate. But these forecasts are disingenuous. The US and UK have spent years arming and assisting al-Qaeda in Syria, as they did in Bosnia and in Libya. Such fearmongering can only function in a swamp of ignorance. For the British public, at least, it does not seem to have cut through. History sometimes presses urgent truths on a country through a vivid demonstration of facts or an exposure of elites. The current withdrawal is likely to be one such moment. Britons, already hostile to the War on Terror, could harden in their opposition to future military conquests.

What does the future hold? Replicating the model developed for Iraq and Syria, the US has announced a permanent special military unit, staffed by 2,500 troops, to be stationed at a Kuwaiti base, ready to fly to Afghanistan and bomb, kill and maim should it become necessary. Meanwhile, a high-powered Taliban delegation visited China last July, pledging that their country would never again be used as a launch pad for attacks on other states. Cordial discussions were held with the Chinese Foreign Minister, reportedly covering trade and economic ties. The summit recalled similar meetings between Afghan mujahedeen and Western leaders during the 1980s: the former appearing with their Wahhabi costumes and regulation beard-cuts against the spectacular backdrop of the White House or 10 Downing Street. But now, with NATO in retreat, the key players are China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan (which has undoubtedly provided strategic assistance to the Taliban, and for whom this is a huge politico-military triumph). None of them wants a new civil war, in polar contrast to the US and its allies after the Soviet withdrawal. China’s close relations with Tehran and Moscow might enable it to work towards securing some fragile peace for the citizens of this traumatized country, aided by continuing Russian influence in the north.

Much emphasis has been placed on the average age in Afghanistan: 18, in a population of 40 million. On its own this means nothing. But there is hope that young Afghans will strive for a better life after the forty-year conflict. For Afghan women the struggle is by no means over, even if only a single enemy remains. In Britain and elsewhere, all those who want to fight on must shift their focus to the refugees who will soon be knocking on NATO’s door. At the very least, refuge is what the West owes them: a minor reparation for an unnecessary war.

Tariq Ali is a British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, political campaigner, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books.

Read on: Tariq Ali, ‘Mirage of the Good War’, NLR 50.

This is Sidecar, the NLR blog. Launching in December 2020, Sidecar aims to provide a space on the left for international interventions and debate. A buzzing and richly populated left-media landscape has emerged online in the past decade, but its main English-speaking forms have been largely monoglot in outlook and national in focus, treating culture as a subsidiary concern. By contrast, political writing on Sidecar will take the world, rather than the Anglosphere, as its primary frame. Culture in the widest sense – arts, ideas, mores – will have full standing. Translation of, and intellectual engagement with, interventions in languages other than English will be integral to its work. And while New Left Review appears bi-monthly, running articles of widely varied length, Sidecar will post several items a week, each no longer than 2,500 words and many a good deal shorter.

Source URL: https://portside.org/2021-08-21/debacle-afghanistan

Meet the Former US Generals Making Bank Off Afghan War Bloodshed

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/08/26/meet-former-us-generals-making-bank-afghan-war-bloodshed?utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis (L) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Then U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis (L) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford prepare to testify before the House Armed Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 12, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Meet the Former US Generals Making Bank Off Afghan War Bloodshed

PRATAP CHATTERJEE

August 26, 2021

Many of the military generals who directed the war in Afghanistan over the last two decades have taken up lucrative jobs as members of the boards of directors of major military contractors that take in billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon every year.

Take General Joseph Dunford Jr., who was in charge of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. Back in 2012, Dunford testified in the U.S. Congress that he was very optimistic about the situation in Afghanistan. “When I look at the Afghan national security forces and where they were in 2008, when I first observed them, and where they are today in 2012, it’s a dramatic improvement,” he said.

He was rewarded by President Barack Obama with the job of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2015 where he served until his retirement in September 2019. Six months after he retired, Dunford joined the board of Lockheed Martin, the biggest military contractor in the U.S. and was asked to lead a bipartisan panel charged by the U.S. Congress to examine the February 2020 peace agreement with the Taliban.

“It’s not in anyone’s best interest right now for precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Dunford concluded in May 2021.

Certainly it was not in the interests of Lockheed Martin which was awarded $74.2 billion in U.S. government contracts in 2020 alone, mostly from the Pentagon. Nor was it for Dunford who is paid over $300,000 a year by Lockheed to attend occasional board meetings. (In his previous job as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was paid just shy of $190,000 a year.)

Or take General James Mattis, who effectively took a leave of absence from the board of directors of General Dynamics to serve as Secretary of Defense [sic] from January 2017 to January 2019 under President Donald Trump. He assured the Washington Post that the U.S. military efforts were succeeding.

“The Taliban's goal is to take over this country and they've been stopped in that at great cost to the Afghan people, at great cost to the Afghan army,” Mattis said in 2019. “If you read [the articles], you'd almost think it's a total disaster, and it's not that at all. It's been hard as hell but it’s not just one undistinguished defeat after another. They [the Taliban] are the ones on the back foot.”

Mattis is now paid $127,458 to serve on the board of General Dynamics, which received $22.6 billion in U.S. government contracts in 2020.

Then there is General Mark Welsh III, a former Air Force Chief of Staff, who played a major role in growing the drone pilot program as well as in directing air strikes in Afghanistan. He was elected to the board of Northrop Grumman in 2016 just after he retired, where he was paid $299,261 a year, more than double what he would make if he had kept his Air Force job. Northrop Grumman was awarded $12.7 billion in U.S. government contracts in 2020.

Another former four star general, Jack Keane, who has been making the rounds to condemn the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, was a member of the Defense [sic] Policy Board Advisory Committee that advised President George Bush on the invasion of Iraq. Today he is a national security analyst on Fox News where he stated that Biden “made a terrible mistake in pulling our troops out and giving the Taliban the opportunity to take the country over.” Keane is a former board member at General Dynamics where he was paid $257,884 in 2016, and is now the chairman of AM General, the company that makes military Humvees.

Other members of top military contractors include General Bruce Carlson, a retired Air Force general, who now serves on the board of both Lockheed & L3 Harris Technologies, and Admiral James Winnefeld Jr., the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who directed the operation to bomb Afghanistan in October 2001 from the USS Enterprise. Today Winnefeld serves on the board of Raytheon where he is paid $292,446. His employer received $27.4 billion in U.S. government contracts in 2020.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Pratap Chatterjee is an Indian/Sri Lankan investigative journalist and progressive author of two books about the war on terror: "Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War" (2009) and "Iraq, Inc." (2004). He is the executive director of CorpWatch and serves on the board of both Amnesty USA and the Corporate Europe Observatory.

Asking If Afghanistan Will Become Breeding Ground for Terror Is the Wrong Question

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/08/27/asking-if-afghanistan-will-become-breeding-ground-terror-wrong-question?utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email

bush_cheney

President Bush and Former American Vice President Dick Cheney in the Presidential Limousine. Image courtesy George W Bush/National Archives, 2015. (Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).

Asking If Afghanistan Will Become Breeding Ground for Terror Is the Wrong Question

Bush & Cheney have gotten away with lying us into two wars & wildly enriching their friends; meanwhile, more people are dead & the media won't even ask the right questions. Will we ever learn?

THOM HARTMANN

August 27, 2021

The big question in the media today is, "Will Afghanistan again become a 'breeding ground' for terrorists who may again attack America?" It's the wrong question.

We've all heard that question asked, in a dozen variations, probably a hundred times in the past few months in the media. And it's not just the wrong question: it strengthens the GOP frame that lets George W. Bush off the hook for many of his worst failures and crimes.

Afghanistan had little to nothing to do with 9/11.

It's time to put this tired and deceptive canard to bed. The 9/11 attacks were not planned, hatched, developed, funded, practiced, expanded, worked out or otherwise devised in Afghanistan. That country and its leadership in 2001, in fact, had pretty much nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.

But wasn't Bin Laden running a "terror training camp" in Afghanistan? Yes, he was, but, again, it had little to nothing to do specifically with 9/11. It was more like the backwoods training camps that various US rightwing militias run, teaching low-level soldier-wannabee grunts (with the money to pay) how to use weapons and get into physical shape.

But an operation as detailed, well-funded and sophisticated as 9/11 had nothing to do with those yahoos. Bin Laden, who we generously funded during the Reagan administration to help evict the Soviets from Afghanistan, was running Al Qaeda at the time, and while he wrote the checks to pay for 9/11, the actual planning and management of the operation was done out of Pakistan and Germany by Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Even the 9/11 Commission Report notes that one of the German plotters, Zakariya Essabar, became the courier to update Bin Laden that the attack was imminent. "Shortly before the 9/11 attacks, he would travel [from Germany] to Afghanistan to communicate the dates for the attacks to al Qaeda leadership" notes the Commission report on page 165.

From Germany, the plotters moved to Florida, where they organized the final plans and Mohammed Ata and others trained and received their pilots' licenses. Of the 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudi citizens, 2 were citizens of the UAE (that funded Jared Kushner), and one each were from Egypt and Lebanon. None were Afghans.

Further, none of the money came from the government of Afghanistan or Afghan nationals; Bin Laden had a substantial family fortune, and the Reagan administration had given him additional millions of dollars. And, increasingly, it appears that some of the funding may have come from Bin Laden's native Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan had nothing to do with it.

But doesn't Afghanistan hate America?

But, the "Afghan connection" press will ask, didn't "they" hit us on 9/11 because the Taliban hated American "values"?

First, the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11 other than tolerating Bin Laden's presence in their country, something for which some corrupt officials were apparently well compensated. They really didn't care much at all about "American values" as long as we stayed the hell away from their country.

They'd just driven out the Soviets, and done so to the British, Greeks, Mongols and Persians in the centuries before that. They just wanted to be left alone. (This is the big battle between the Taliban and ISIS-K right now: the former wants to run Afghanistan while the latter wants to become a regional/international caliphate.)

It was all about sacred Saudi soil!

Bin Laden, though, was upset with the United States in September of 2001; it was because we were defiling the holy land of his home country, Saudi Arabia, a leftover from pappy Bush's "little war" in Iraq.

GHW Bush had put US soldiers on the ground in Saudi Arabia for the first time in generations to stage the invasion of Iraq, and those soldiers stayed long after pappy Bush's 3-day war was long over.

That infidel men, US soldiers who were Christian or Jewish were watching porn and drinking alcohol on holy Saudi soil was intolerable to Bin Laden and his fellow fundamentalists. And the fact that "loose" American women were also there, showing their elbows and driving cars in clear violation of Saudi law and customs, was doubly infuriating.

As early as 1998, Bin Laden threatened to strike America if we didn't withdraw Bush's troops and stop "defiling" Bin Laden's native holy land, Saudi Arabia. On September 2, 1996, he publicly threatened to "launch a guerrilla war against American forces and expel the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula."

As he told a reporter for The Guardian in 1998: "We believe that we are men, Muslim men, committed to defend the grandest house in the universe. The Holy [Saudi] Kaaba [land] is an honor to die and defend. So this is our aim—to liberate the lands of Islam from the sinners."

In a "letter to America," Bin Laden wrote: "Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures."

This was, he said repeatedly, the reason why he ordered America struck in what we now refer to as the 9/11 attacks. He wanted us to remove daddy Bush's troops from the Bin Sultan Air Force Base in Saudi Arabia.

George W. Bush gave Bin Laden what he wanted.

As a result, Bush Jr. withdrew US those troops soon after 9/11: he was no dummy. Again, it had nothing to do with Afghanistan.

George W. Bush was warned multiple times that 9/11 was coming. Richard Clark told me, live on the air, that he told Condi Rice; he also said that he knew Al Gore had told Cheney and Bill Clinton had told Bush that Bin Laden was coming after us if we didn't pull out of Saudi Arabia.

Bush put Cheney in charge of a task force to follow up on the warnings, but Cheney was so busy planning his attack on Iraq and dividing up its oil fields among international buyers in anticipation of that 2003 invasion and oil-well-theft that his Al Qaeda task force never met until late August of 2001—and then did nothing.

But after 9/11 Bush and Cheney had to do something!

America had suffered a big bloody nose, an attack even more audacious than Pearl Harbor, and admitting that they'd ignored the intelligence warnings—particularly at a time a majority of Americans had doubts about the legitimacy of Bush's Supreme Court-appointed presidency itself—would have been politically disastrous.

And Bush and Cheney were seriously interested in getting re-elected in 2004, and Bush had told his biographer, Mickey Herskowitz, back in 1999 that being a wartime president with an active war going on at the time was the very, very best way to get re-elected.

Afghanistan was, at that time, the second poorest country in the world, with an average per-person income of around $2 per day. Their entire GDP was less than $2 billion a year. Their army was a joke, their air force almost non-existent, and their alliances were frazzled; in short, they were a sitting duck for a US president looking to make a name for himself on the cheap.

Which is exactly what Bush did. He sold us the fiction that 9/11 was planned and executed out of Afghanistan (much easier than attacking Hamburg, Germany or Venice, Florida), lied that it was funded by Afghans (much easier than biting the Saudi hand that fed the Bush family and Al Qaeda), and said that a revenge strike there by the world's largest military force would satisfy America's need for "closure."

Bush and Cheney ignored (indeed, they actively ridiculed) the threat Bin Laden presented to the US; then, after 9/11, they directed blame away from their friends in Saudi Arabia and toward the dysfunctional Taliban government of Afghanistan.

That Afghan Taliban government, hit hard with our initial bombing, then offered to arrest Bin Laden and turn him over to a third country for prosecution but, as The Washington Post's 9/15 headline noted, "Bush Rejects Taliban Offer On Bin Laden."

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney wanted a war and they got it.

For Bush it ended speculation about his Supreme Court-assisted illegitimate claim to the White House. For Cheney it meant hundreds of billions in no-bid contracts for his failing Haliburton company, which he had formerly led and was heavily invested in.

The war was over in less than three weeks when the Kabul government fell, and then began a 20+ year occupation that's just now coming to an end, another important distinction almost never mentioned in the media.

It's time to end the fiction that poverty-ridden failed states run by throwbacks to Bronze Age versions of modern religions were or are the source of well-funded and sophisticated attacks on fully developed countries like the United States.

It all goes back to Pappy Bush's "Gulf War"

Had George HW Bush not lied us into the first Gulf War as a failed 1992 re-election stunt (there were no babies being thrown from incubators: that was a lie told to Congress by a daughter of the Kuwaiti royal family at the suggestion of a US PR firm) and stationed US troops in Saudi Arabia to prosecute his "little war" (much like Reagan's "little war" in Grenada) Bin Laden never would have had the least concern with us.

It's said that nations that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

We should have learned from LBJ lying us into Vietnam that false wars and long occupations never work out well. Hell, we should have learned that from the Mexican American War and the Spanish American War, both also conflicts American presidents lied us into.

But we hadn't learned any of that as of 9/11, and news coverage today suggests we still haven't learned the clear lessons of our own history.

As a result, the reputations of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are enjoying a revival and those two and their [sic] defense contractor friends are laughing all the way to the bank.

Our media need to start asking the right questions:

· How did Bush and Cheney get away with lying us into a war and 20-year occupation with Afghanistan—and nearly that long in Iraq—without political or historic consequences?

· Why did the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, all knowing these occupations were a lost cause and a waste of American blood and treasure, not get us out before now?

· And what can we do in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world, if that is our goal, to promote peace, modernity and democratic values without using warplanes, drones, soldiers and bombs?

This article, which appears here with permission, was first published on The Hartmann Report.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.

Sunday, August 29, 2021

Baltimore Activist Alert -- August 30 - 31, 2021

21] Nuclear Bombshell – Aug. 30

22] For the People Act phonebank -- Aug. 30

23] Learning the Lessons of Afghanistan, Part 1 – Aug. 30

24] National Organize to Win Call – Aug. 30

25] Protest JHU’s weapons research – Aug. 31

26] Black People Ride Bikes – Aug. 31

27] National Renters Rising call – Aug. 31

28] Conversation with Perú's former Foreign Minister Héctor Béjar – Aug. 31

29] Pardon Whistleblower Daniel Hale – Aug. 31

30] Save a Black man’s life – Aug. 31

31] Want to text with Fair Fight? – Aug. 31

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21] – Rachel at Beyond the Bomb [team@beyondthebomb.org] wants you to attend the premier of Nuclear Bombshell on Mon., Aug. 30 at 5 PM ET. This will be repeated on Wed., Sept. 1 at 6 PM ET. Get ready for our first debriefing with the BombSquad! Watch the short film, get updates on Beyond the Bomb campaigns, and connect with other members of the BombSquad. SIGN UP HERE https://beyondthebomb.org/campaigns/bombsquad-monthly-low-down/?link_id=1&can_id=4b9d4061aec5469758759317ac0f5285&source=email-join-our-first-national-call&email_referrer=email_1258527___subject_1663452&email_subject=join-us-for-the-premier-of-the-nuclear-bombshell.

22] – Join activists around the country at a virtual phonebank to urge voters in key states to demand their senators’ support of the For the People Act! The August deadline for 2022 is fast approaching! Our democracy is in crisis: with redistricting around the corner and hundreds of voter suppression laws being introduced in states across the country, we do not have time to wait. Every day we’re getting closer to a very real deadline to take action to pass the For the People Act (S.1): If the Senate does not overcome the filibuster and pass S. 1 by late August, states will not have enough time to implement the legislation’s regulations before the 2022 midterm elections! Join activists around the country at a virtual phonebank to urge voters in key states to demand their senators’ support of S. 1! RSVP at https://www.mobilize.us/pfaw/event/376178/?utm_source=PFAW to call on Mon., Aug. 30 from 4 to 6 PM and 6 to 8 PM ET or Tues., Aug. 31 from 5:30 to 8 PM ET.

23] – Cole Harrison, Massachusetts Peace Action [info@masspeaceaction.org] hopes you will join in on Mon., Aug. 30 at 7 PM ET for Learning the Lessons of Afghanistan. Part 1. In the first of two sessions, hear from Erik Edstrom, Afghanistan War veteran and author; Valentine Moghadam, Iranian-born scholar of Middle East social movements and feminism; and Fahima Gaheez, executive director, Afghan Women's Fund. The conversation is moderated by David Borris of Chicago Area Peace Action. Register at https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0kfuqurjMvE9SHFKgGZP-nLuVZVWiLxpKa?emci=4fd920f5-3905-ec11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&emdi=aef8c90d-df05-ec11-b563-501ac57bf4cb&ceid=269591.

24] – Our Revolution [info@ourrevolution.com] wants you on the National Organize to Win Call on Mon., Aug. 30 at 8.30 PM ET! Get the latest on the PRO Act and the budget bill from US Rep. Andy Levin; hear from Laborer’s Union organizer Taft Mangas and Rideshare Workers about modern day union-busting schemes; and get an update on Revolution Recess from Our Revolution South Carolina leader & National Board member Lucero Mesa! RSVP at https://www.mobilize.us/ourrevolution/event/148017/?akid=1927.8252965.4G9Zxc&rd=1&t=8you.

25] – There is a Vigil to say "No Drone Research at JHU" at 33rd and N. Charles Sts. on Tuesdays from 4:30 to 5:30 PM. Contact Max at mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot net or 410-323-1607. You may consider contacting President Ron Daniels and telling him that the university should reject all military contracts, including those for killer drone and nuclear weapons research. The president’s mailing address is Office of the President, 242 Garland Hall, The Johns Hopkins University, and 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, Maryland 21218. You can also reach his office by Phone: (410) 516-8068, Fax: (410) 516-6097 or email: president@jhu.edu.

26] – On Tues., Aug. 31 from 5 to 7 PM ET, join Black People Ride Bikes to learn about the NACTO Lake-to-Lake grant before the ride! You have the chance to win giveaways! BikeMore will be tabling to share information on the upcoming infrastructure improvements along Druid Park Lake Drive. The Big Jump will be enhanced with concrete barriers in the spring. Graham Projects will install art on the barriers. The intersection of 33rd & Hillen will also receive traffic calming installments, including additional bike lanes, flex posts, and painted islands to help better direct motor, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic. Go to https://www.bikemore.net/event.

27] – Renters Rising [tenantsorg@populardemocracy.org]is asking renters to be on a call on Tues., Aug. 31 from 6:30 to 8 PM ET. That is why Renters from all over the country are coming together for the first ever National Renters Rising call! Sign up at https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAldOGurD4uGNW9JMM4i7FoZxV-l8ZkfGSY?emci=3e1c6255-3c05-ec11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&emdi=e0d20e3a-be05-ec11-b563-501ac57bf4cb&ceid=447376.

28] –Alliance for Global Justice [afgj@afgj.org] is hosting a webinar on Tues., Aug. 31 at 7 PM. Enjoy a conversation with Perú's former Foreign Minister Héctor Béjar. See https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hBjGRrp_TYewW_4QfmRNiQ. Register at bit.ly/solidarityperu2. His resignation as Peru’s foreign minister is undoubtedly the first and hardest blow against the current government of President Castillo and the process of change that the president is trying to promote. Bejar was the most important member in Castillo’s entire cabinet, the one with the greatest ideological formation and with deep knowledge of Peru. What does his sudden exit from Pedro Castillo’s cabinet mean? What does the appointment of a new ultra-right wing chancellor mean?

29] – Cole Harrison, Massachusetts Peace Action [info@masspeaceaction.org] would like you to participate in Pardon Whistleblower Daniel Hale on Tues., Aug. 31, at 7 PM EDT. Hale served in the US Air Force, participating in the drone program from 2009-2013. In July 2021, Hale was sentenced to over 3.5 years in prison for providing The Intercept with the source materials for “The Drone Papers.” Hear from Danaka Katovich, campaign coordinator at CODEPINK. Go to https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMpcOiorT4jGtUUJCEyBYVI-wUq94MnUAfY.

30] – Team Grassroots Law [info@grassrootslaw.org] is inviting you on Tues., Aug. 31 at 8 PM ET for the launch of the critical first step to save a Black man’s life. See https://www.mobilize.us/grassrootslawproject/event/409452/?akid=4784.3544589.X2wKk0&rd=1&source=em20210829-4784&t=2&utm_source=em20210829-4784. By signing up, you’ll get everything you need to tune into the event. Each person who joins helps build our momentum, grow the movement, and will help save a life.

31] – Want to text with Fair Fight? Join a texting training to see what texting with Fair Fight looks like, the texting platform, how to set up your account on it and get you all the information you need to text with Fair Fight in the future! This is a training, NOT a text bank. No texting during this training. To text with Fair Fight you will need either a smartphone OR a computer (you can set up the texting system on either or both). The next texting trainings are on Tues., Aug. 31 from 8:30 to 9:15 PM ET. Sign up at https://www.mobilize.us/fairfight/event/380601/?emci=1ec65536-76f5-eb11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&emdi=9099f5e0-77f5-eb11-b563-501ac57b8fa7&ceid=1234726.