Again or Still? Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Libya

Seems like there is rarely a mention of Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Libya in the mainstream news anymore, and more importantly, from the oral cavities of U.S. politicians. Maybe we might hear about the occasional bombing that happens in Iraq each day nationally since U.S. forces invaded the country and left, in particular in Sunni dominated areas, to live along side al Qaeda just to survive, or a word or two from a lame-brained republican about Benghazi, but really that is about it.

I am even more assured that we will not hear about Afghanistan (with the exception of their lunatic of a President Hamid Karzai) or Libya. In particular from the hawkish John McCain, Lindsey Graham and more exacting, from the lips of President Obama.  Especially now with the feces hitting the proverbial Ukrainian fan.

America is really in a leadership, or even more basically, hand-holding vacuum.  See real leaders, or better yet statesmen can walk the walk while holding the hands of folks who require baby steps to make any progress on anything. In Iraq for example, it is coming to pieces, it may be three or even four states by time all the smoke clears. Last year alone, more than 10,000 people died, and most likely many more. And just in the first month of 2014 alone, more than 1000 Iraqis were killed in car and suicide bombings, most of which were civilians.

If we were hearing about Iraq, we would be reminded of how we meddle into affairs that were not ours, on a completely other side of the globe and which we leave in shabbles. If Obama or the media mentioned Iraq, they would have to show how the al Qaeda group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has taken over the region, a region were al Qaeda never existed be for the U.S. Invasion and occupation of Iraq. Or how refugees from the Western part of Iraq and in the Anbar provinceare making fast motion to become refugees in Jordan. Or even worse, how the man we installed as Prime Minister (Nouri al-Maliki) has provided no service to Sunnis, made them focus of attacks, and used government troops to squash any open and “democratic” protest against his government. Now unbelievably, Sunni side with ISIS against another U.S. backed regime. And Libya is definetly out of the question with the Islamic extremist being in control of ALL the oil and even shipping it to North Korea. And God forbid i mention that the Libyian Parliment ousted Prime Minister Ali Zeidan out of office Tuesday. 

Now back to Ukraine, am I the only one that considers the hypocrisy of U.S. Foreign policy with respect to the rhetoric hurled towards Russia?  If my history is correct, the only nation I recall Russia, since the break-up that is going to war with was Georgia in 2008.  For Obama to say that Russia needs to respect the borders of sovereign nations is kind of lames, and like someone not living in my home telling me what to cook: given the U.S. has had at least four wars (all undeclared) with Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and currently bomb without any respect of “territorial integrity” to use the words of Secretary of State John Kerry of places like, Yemen, Somalia, Kosovo, Serbia Bolivia and you name it.

It is even more ironic when one includes U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert Kagan), be caught and recorded telling the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine which leaders of the Ukrainian coup should be placed in a new government and which ones should not when she quipped, “Fuck the EU.” How is it that a simple statement is considered more news worthy than the content of her telling a “sovereign” nation to put who the U.S. want in office and not the people of said nation?

Even to consider the Ukraine as a ground for the start of a “liberal democracy” is ridiculous, when we all know it will only become a western puppet nation run by feudal oligarchical landlords. Not to mention everybody seems to forget that if the EU and America were not sitting on their hands, they would have been able to have played a role other than watching the game from their living room sofa’s.

U.S. hypocrisy regarding the Ukraine is shameful and beyond ridiculous. We say or Describe Putin as being like Hitler (Hillary Clinton’s historical inaccuracy) yet taking U.S. tax payer money to the tune of $1 billion to send to a government filled with nationalist fascist yet they don’t have any money to spend on behalf of American job seekers. We say it is anti-democratic and wrong for people to desire and practice self-determination in the Crimea but ok for all else in Egypt, Libya and Syria. Which suggest according to this Administration and the many before him, self-determination is only cool when it serves the U.S. and no one else? We all know that it was Obama that described the desire of the Crimean people to vote, and want to vote on their future as “undemocratic” and “illegitimate.”

But none of this won’t be told or mentioned by our government or news media. The reality is if they did bring up Syria, or Libya, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, out hypocrisy would be on the red carpet for all to watch and document and equal to them shooting themselves in the foot..

Video: Afghan Heroin Brings CIA $50 Billion A Year, Covers US War Expense

Introduction to O-bushian Nationalism 101

A decade later and we are still in Afghanistan. Those on the campaign trail for the GOP nomination are pontificating out the sides of their necks, John McCain is inveighing nonsense and the Obama administration is taking hits left and right – and rightly so. I have expressed my view on the US occupation of the central Asian nation eve prior to Obama, but clearly to no avail. I regrettably do not have the ears of the President or media pundits. And God knows I would love to hear urban radio adduce such a discussion with clarity. However, it seems that discussions on the photographs of Whitney Houston in her coffin, her nineteen year old daughter and wondering whether or not Chris Brown and Rihanna will get back together are more important conversations to have in our communities. Not to mention any topic that panders to the absolute support and defense of President Obama regardless of the cost or reality.

First I need to address the assassination recently carried out by a US solider (Robert Bales) in the heart of the region. Since the event, I have only heard sentiments of justification of his behavior, namely that he must have been mentally ill. I agree. But what strikes me as bazaar was that no such acceptance of mental illness (which is obvious to me) was ever pronounced for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who allegedly opened fire inside Fort Hood in Texas killing thirteen people and wounding 30 people. Any who.

To properly understand our central Asian foreign policy, a brief history of our approach to foreign policy philosophy is in order. After World War II, the significance of American exceptionalism supported and justified our interventionist policies. Basically, that as the “cosmic policeman”, righteousness of our nationalism evinced the position that only the U.S. was the last best hope of mankind and the world. This was code for American aspirations of hegemony over much of the world and defined overtly that democratic globalism rather than the national interest of the United States were the central issues at heart when considering the utility of military intervention. As if our self-proclaimed moral righteousness was eugenically paramount over pragmatism.

Although the Cold War mentality was supposedly over, it continued to exist and it legacy revamped, via a conservative movement that pursued no strategic alternatives in our foreign other than military action. That leads us to present day Iraq and Afghanistan. First, we fail to recognize our approach to borders versus the people is setting us for failure. Until we deal with such as a Pashtun issue, we will continue to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. The region is occupied by what history would call the Scythians or the Saka, those folks who live on the land from the Black sea to china. This is where most of our concern is presently and our presence is cloaked under the guise of wanting a stable democratic government fin the region albeit facts assert that the characteristics required for the formulation of such governments are not existent in Afghanistan or Iraq.

This however has not stopped Bush or Obama for attempting to produce such an outcome. Even Bill Clinton, who supposedly was a progressive, had the same approach to foreign policy in Central Asia. All three have never provided any well defined objectives other than perpetual peace through the dream of a universal democratic order on the American model. This desire to see American political structure manifest in other regions is a consequence of our historical imperialistic and colonial roots and is no different under Obama as it was Bush. Look at Yemen for example. It is really just another open ended war designed to make us look good and feel good. But all it accomplishes is to add more debt and more ant-American sentiment in the region. Before this there was Iraq, a nation of only 24 million that was destroyed by U.S. military power with a 12-year U.S.-led economic embargo prior to the war and daily bombing which our Air Force destroyed most of Iraq’s water purification plants and sewage systems, resulting in the deaths of more than 500,000 children from water-borne disease and lack of medicines alone. And all to protect the people and bring about peace through democracy. One thing we were able to accomplish was to increase the presence of Shia death squads that inflicted untold violent acts on Sunnis. Paul Wolfowitz, said that invading Iraq would cost a mere $40 billion and would be paid for by taking over its oil.

Post-Saddam Iraq will not be a pro-Western model of democratic stability. In particularly under the autocratic rule of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, It will be a quasi-democratic state with a strong pro-Iranian orientation. Likewise in Pakistan, we will be left with a corrupt and ineffectual government run by President Hamid Karzai where the Taliban remains at full strength and growing. Was this what was our desire for producing a democracy under of the US model in a pursuit for universal peace?

I can’t answer this, but I will assume the answer is no or else we would have not entered Libya. I mean, it too was based on humanitarian principles, to defend the civilian population based on the “responsibility to protect” doctrine that was used to justify Libya. Strange since it is used selectively – not for Syria or the Sudan. Especially given that such an argument is more valid for Syria and the Sudan than it did in the case of Libya. Assad’s and Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir’s militaries have killed way more people compared to just a few hundred deaths at the time of NATO’s intervention against Gaddafi.

Fact is just as the Neoconservatives in the Bush administration, Obama is on a similar crusade to transform the Middle East. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have hidden the cost of our current Central Asian interventions from the American people by refusing to pay for it through taxes. Both continue the post-cold war legacy of the quest for universal democratic order based on the American democratic model and the desire to transform the Middle East and central Asia. The question is how are American interest defined in these military interventions outside of emotional terms? It is as if we have not received the memo.

Remember it was Hillary Clinton’s State Department who suggested that Egypt appeared stable and opposition forces would not topple Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. WRONG and what we do know after elections is that a democratic Egyptian government won’t be pro-U.S.

This is the definition of O-bushian nationalism. It means we spend trillions of dollars and the lives of thousands for the purposes of accomplishing nothing but establishing and entrenched hatred for America across the Muslim world with nations being more dangerous than when our troops first arrived. And all for merely not wanting to show weakness politically, for wanting to develop a stable democratic government without the request of the occupied nation with merely a threat on our emotions called terror and no US interest involved.

will we ever learn

Ok, if I am not mistaken, we have just passed the eight year mark of being in Afghanistan. Yet our idiot politicians and media dumb fcks seem to not understand or know what is being done and worse, what should be done. They are so caught up on this us versus them mentality among themselves, that they, like a wine sauce, have been reduced to bickering and pointing fingers among each other.

But such is the nature of supremacist, who tend to take the Alexander Pope purview of the world as being the center of the Universe. As a former Western power attempting to reclaim our global throne, we don’t get it and miss the picture completely. Albeit we talk a good game regarding a geopolitical strategy that includes Pakistan when we speak of Afghanistan, our policy and actions state otherwise and we have no firm objective for we have not or cannot learn from the lessons of history or geography.

To begin, Pakistan was formed in 1947, after India gained independence from Great Britain. as a homeland for India's Muslim population. I even remember when it was divided into East and West Pakistan. What we call Pakistan today is really West Pakistan since in the early 1970s, East Pakistan succeeded after war to become what is now Bangladesh. A similar history can be said with respect to its neighbor Afghanistan. What is consistent about both nations is their history of colonial interference and the impact of imperialism, as well as the presence of Muslim Nationalism. Add to that a history of incessant marginalized citizenship by the west and the problem begins.

First, in both countries, the majority ethnic group is the Pashtun (Muslims) and Pakistan was founded on the equation Pakistani=Muslim. This is our problem for what we see is not seen by the folks who live in both countries for they cannot visualize, and rightly so, the Taliban being terrorists in their own land. Not to mention we have yet to put any substantive efforts to get the figure head of Kabul, Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari together on the same page.

What we as imperial and colonialist nations of the past fail to integrate into present problem solving regarding the region is that both Afghanistan and Pakistan’s political mode of operandi has never been accountable, especially with respect to international and geopolitical measures for the central dogma for both is based on radical Islamic doctrine. We never speak in terms of politics and solutions just in aggression and ego. Pakistan’s largest mainstream religious political parties, the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islami, freely support the Taliban openly, even against the country's own military. And we cannot complain for we in addition to the Saudi’s started this with our anti-Soviet mujahedeen movement in Afghanistan some 25 to 30 years ago.

America really aint concerned about winning the war as it is on the image of winning. Which shows me we learned nothing from Russia’s adventure for not only was its image damaged by getting it’s ass whupped but also for wasting billions of dollars it spent during the war. In fact it could be suggested the ferocity and venom the US and NATO faces there currently is a consequence of the hatred that developed for richer western nations. Strange aint it: we gave the Afghan guns and anti-aircraft missiles that shoot and kill our troops today. Just like the Russians who went into Afghanistan in 1979, we too want to influence the region politically.

Truth be told Hamid Karzai aint jack and only has power and control, if that, in the capitol. The rest of the country is under the Taliban and tribal Klan leaders. I just wonder if 200 to 300 thousand soviet and Afghan troops, funded by heroin loot ,could not defeat the Pashtuns in ten years, what can we and NATO forces do?

We will never get it, in math we have least common denominators, not in American politics for all politicians, especially if they are Republican or Democrats are the same. Truth is that the Pashtun will always support their own, which are the Taliban as history has shown us. Alexander the Great conquered Afghanistan but had to leave as did the colonialist East India Company after an unprofitable occupation. And I won’t even mention the Persians (Iranians) or the Mongols. Again, we seem not to know history or even worse learn from history. We look for Osama bin Laden like the British did searching the Fakir of Ippi for more than 20-years - who was never caught and died in 1960.

We call our mission "anti-terrorist" and the people in the aforementioned countries see it as anti-Pashtun. They see it as another Anglo-Afghan War like that in 1880. The Russians did not plan or prepare adequately for their mission in Afghanistan nor did they study or learn from history. And like the Russians, we still cant connect history or its lessons with the influential role of Islam in the Afghan and Pakistan social order. We, the US fail to see or connect that our concerns in both nations, especially Pakistan is associated with the aforementioned. The recent increase in attacks, like the car bomb last week outside the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan's capital demonstrates the resolve of the people connected to the area; not the Taliban. In 1989, Soviet forces left Afghanistan. Billions of dollars had been spent annually in Afghanistan and at one point there were at least 200,000 troops there yet they were not able to defeat the mujahidin we train and funded.

Currently, we and NATO side with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who will get a second term when we know it was full of fraud. This is why Obama's Afghanistan is even more tumultuous. He supports the ineptness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who in order to have won, besides cheating, had to deal with corrupt politicians and "warlords" to win the recent elections. This means that Pashtuns, who we know hate the Taliban, will deal with their brothers and family any way even if the disagree politically about the future vision of both countries because the have even more disdain for ANY Army backed by foreign nations, even the US.

Yet we make it all worse by giving the Pakistani government loot and arm twisting, to wage battle against their own kind, the Pashtun people. We the same country that funded and supplied the Taliban and Pashtun to overthrow an Afghan government buttressed by Russia. In fact the Clinton White House encouraged Pakistan to help put the Taliban in Kabul. All we really care about are natural resources and to make Afghanistan and Pakistan lever arms of our geo-political goals.

Again, I don’t blame Obama, but I note his ineptness and ignorance. Now true he is not as ignorant as the former president, but ignorant none the less. Afghanistan has never been colonized and in their eyes they see, the Pashtuns, no difference in the borders of the two nations western colonial and imperial powers created. We just don’t see or get it.

blinded by the Obamafication of America

Now I know most of yawl are in awe of the prospect of the first African American President in the history of these United States of America, and as well you should be. In fact it is nice seeing people being caught up in history when so many of us don’t know much about the subject. However, with the Obamafication (my own word) of America, there has been a tendency to look away from other things that are important and are historical in their own right. In fact, things that may make his presidency, if he wins in November, even more problematic and deterministic with regards to his success or failure.

This whole campaign started with hoop-la. By that I mean we were in a recession and we were engaged in war on three fronts (Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia). Yep, Somalia, but we wouldn’t know because we get our information from media magnates that we never question or even on our own, search to find out what is really going on in our world. But such is the myopia of a self-centered nation.

If you have not noticed, we don’t hear much about Afghanistan anymore. One should ask why? The way I see it, it is because we have lost ground in the country and region and because we do not want to hear such. We are happy in our frivolity of possibility without the recourse of mental anguish.

Things are hardcore in Afghanistan. Just a few years ago we were claiming victory over the Taliban because they had been removed from power and scattered into the hinterlands. We were claiming a change since we were able to install President Hamid Karzai into what we felt was a fledgling democratic government. Now true, recent reports have noted that Hundreds of Afghans (not thousands) have been holding demonstrations in support of his leadership, however we don’t know why and don’t even ask why. Namely because they are scared and don’t think he has the balls to keep the Taliban from reclaiming the country. Yep, I said it. We don’t either.

Hundreds if not thousands of Taliban have been reclaiming the country as it did before by force. A few weeks ago, like it was something out of Sun Tzu’s the art of war or the hand Book of Guerrilla warfare, the Taliban implemented a rather hep and precocious assult on Kandahar’s prison that resulted in the freeing of all the prisoners. Now not any prisoners, Taliban fighters. After this they have been able to take over a number of villages just outside of the largest city in southern Afghanistan, Kandahar, forcing US, Afghan and NATO troops to redeploy to meet the threat. Redeploying for me says two things, they did not think or expect such and that they do not have enough troops to deal with the Taliban.

So it is still on in this small poppy rich, land-locked country. But we wouldn’t know, because we are caught in to watch political play-offs and many of us would rather focus on the Obamafication aspect of this political season, than issues of war and economics – although we say otherwise. vote

of Bushes,Turks & the Taliban

Jones main, it’s on. The news has not even made it yet but it appears as if the fragile whatever you call it we put up in Iraq to represent a government has officially dissolved. You see, while most of us up in this camp were sleeping last night, the Turks were sending warplanes over into Iraq to bomb the Kurds. I suspect they were targeting a political group called the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The Turks have outlawed the group, but it seems kind of feculent to outlaw an organization in another country, which operates basically autonomously. The say these raid were some 60 miles into Iraq.

Meanwhile on the otherwise of the field (it is football season), all I read about Afghanistan' from this side of the block, is that we are winning the battle, that more and more Taliban fighters are being killed and that each day we work with or favorite Dictator in Pakistan to make progress in terror (that is if progress includes more videos circulating in Pakistan that show 12 year olds beheading a Pakistani's accused of being U.S. spys). The Taliban is always executing and beheading folks who they claim to be spys for the US, we just never see it on TV unless the spies are actual US citizens. I mean Bush and the US media obviiously think that it take four such acts or more to equal one US life. But at the same time, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai is asking for more help to develope his armed forces.

Well I guess the Bush administration has some good news to report by their standards, after all the aforementioned and said dictator, just lifted the emergence rule he just placed over his country because they would not vote for him (during a period in which HE amended the country's constitution). At least we can be thankful hat George W. Bush isn’t a general, no telling what he would have done by now.