Showing posts with label Empire Building. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Empire Building. Show all posts
Friday, October 22, 2010
Every Known Death In The Iraq War Google Mapped From WikiLeaks Data
"We don't do body counts" ~~General Tommy Franks src
Wikileaks Iraq war logs: every death mapped
"The Wikileaks Iraq war logs provide us with a unique picture of every death in Iraq.
These are those events mapped using Google Fusion tables."
When the Hand Cursor points at a red dot, click once for the specifics of that particular death.
Go To The Guardian (UK) For More
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) responded to the WikiLeaks release on Friday with a statement saying, "We need a true accounting of the war in Iraq. The American people have a right to know how many innocent civilians were killed in a war based on lies."
"We must remember that the Iraqi people are still grieving over the loss of husbands, wives, sons and daughters who were innocent noncombatants," Kucinich stated. "We have a moral responsibility to acknowledge the massive loss to the people of Iraq and the world. ... The suffering of the Iraqi people is unfathomable." source
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Lookit ALL Those "Injuns"! - The Comanche and the Taliban... What The Indian Wars Tell Us About The Taliban, Stephen M. Walt
"...it is a sobering fact to realize that despite its clear interest in victory and its clear advantages in numbers, wealth, and technology, it took the United States nearly four decades to finally defeat the Comanche. If you are seeking a similarly decisive victory in Central Asia, therefore, you'd better be prepared to stay there in strength for a long, long time."(Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University and co-wrote The Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy (2007) with John J. Mearsheimer)
(The Comanche courtesy of Wikipedia)
The Comanche and the TalibanBy Stephen M. Walt
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
One of the most enjoyable books I've read in the past year was S. C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches. It's a terrific, gripping story, and I learned a great deal about aspects of U.S. history of which I was only partly aware.
In brief, the book tells the story of the U.S. effort to subdue the Comanche, the most powerful Native American tribe on the Great Plains. It was a bloody and fascinating struggle, in part because the Comanche proved so hard for the far more numerous and technologically superior Anglos to defeat. If you grew up with a John Ford/John Wayne/Randolph Scott view of the Old West, this book will be something of a revelation. And the saga of Quanah Parker himself, a Comanche war chief whose mother was a white woman kidnapped in 1836 at the age of nine, and "rescued" many years later (when her son Quanah was twelve years old), is itself a heart-rending tale of cultural conflict and personal tragedy.
As much as I enjoyed the book, I couldn't help but read it with the current war in Afghanistan in mind. In both cases, a numerically superior, wealthier, and more technologically advanced United States confronts a tribal adversary fighting on its home ground. And in both cases, the U.S. government faces an adversary that is cunning, ruthless, and by our standards even backward or barbaric.But as my late colleague Ernest May used to warn, when you make a historical analogy, it is a good idea to make a list of the ways the two situations differ, instead of just invoking the similarities.
So lest you think that the ultimate victory of the U.S. government over the Comanche heralds a similar victory over the Taliban, consider the following differences between the two situations...
Saturday, October 9, 2010
The Worthless War Chronicles - Afghanistan, Year Ten
Rethink Afghanistan
Auntie thinks we should all ruminate on what we've achieved in those ten long years.
Corrupt colonial governments?
Yes.
Peace?
No.
Security?
NOT!
Dead soldiers?
Absofuckinglutely!
Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard is tended to by fellow U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.
Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP
But the Pentagon and the other monetarily interested parties in America's wars to feed the gaping maw of the Military-Financial-Educational-Industrial Complex want you to just simply play along with their murderous imperial wars like "Good Americans-cum-Germans" and certainly don't want you to think about... REALLY think about, those Absofuckinglutely dead soldiers.
(Here's what Stars and Stripes thinks too!)
They want you to think of...
"Little America In Afghanistan" (click)
[Pre-1942 American Classroom Salutes Flag]
Source, PoP dEFECT Radio, Courtesy of Skidmark Bob Freek Radio Santa Cruz |
The Way It Was, one day after, October 08, 2010:
Seven more fuel tankers have been burned in Pakistan as the country's security service, the ISI, is being accused of supporting the Talib in those attacks... and in Afghanistan the Talib have killed a politician ostensibly associated with the Northern Alliance (CIA affiliated Opium grower's army) and the Peace Commission/truce meeting is still in it's infancy with much secrecy and no word yet.
Juan Cole with more on our FUBAR involvement in the region:
Sen. Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services Committee announced a report on Thursday on the way the private security contractors hired by the US military (even to guard bases!) are subject to little oversight, are corrupt, and sometimes pass on money or resources to what are essentially Taliban.[Quote Source]
That is, the US may be indirectly hiring the Taliban to hit US bases.
At the same time, the some 3000 Afghans serving in the private CIA army in Afghanistan have been accused of carrying out among the worst attacks in that country. Erica Gaston of the Open Society Institute talks about her own experiences on the ground in this regard.
The Open Society Foundation reports the finding of Open Society Institute social scientists that ordinary Afghans blame US and NATO military actions as much or more than they blame the Taliban for civilian losses.
The tendency to blame the US is visible in Todd Pitman’s excellent piece revisiting Marjah.
Remember Marjah?
This cluster of farm houses in the Taliban poppy-growing region of Helmand Province was supposed to be a demonstration project for Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s counter-insurgency campaign (take, clear, hold and build). All these months later, the US forces have not dislodged the Taliban, and it seems clear that there are places that GIs cannot go without incurring a firefight.
That is, the ‘clear’ phase has hit a Himalayan-sized snage. Much less hold and build. It was on the “success” of the Marjah campaign that the long-delayed attack on the major southern city of Qandahar was to have been modeled. I wouldn’t advise the US to try to attack and occupy Qandahar if they cannot even deal with Marjah.
While it won’t yield results soon, the negotiations of the Karzai government with insurgents are likely to point the way toward the end of the foreign military presence and the establishment of a new, more inclusive government in the medium to long term. [In Full @ Informed Comment]
One Last Thing... from Razer, with Auntie Imperial seconding:
An un-indicted co-conspirator in "Torture under the color of law" dies an early death.
He and his traitorous ilk WILL NOT be mourned.
Scott Caplan, a Portland lawyer who was caught up in a scandal over flying terror suspects to secret prisons, died this week after suffering a heart attack. He was 49.
As reported in The Lake Oswego Review, Caplan was playing tennis Monday at the Lake Oswego Tennis Center when he collapsed from a heart attack. He died on Tuesday morning.
In 2007, WW reported on Caplan’s ties to the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” program flying terror suspects to countries that practice torture.
Caplan’s law practice in large part consisted of acting as a registered agent for companies. In 2003 he set up Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC, a company whose listed owner—Leonard T. Bayard—had no official history and didn’t appear to exist.
In 2004, days after reporters blew open the story of the CIA’s secret flights, Bayard bought one of the program’s busiest planes from a company in Dedham, Mass., that reporters determined was a CIA front. The tail number of the Gulfstream V executive jet was changed, but it continued to make flights to countries like Egypt and Iraq... [More]
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Chris Floyd - In Defense of George W. Bush ("We Did It ALL For You!")
Chris Floyd @ Empire Burlesque:
In Full @ Empire BurlesqueFaced with prosecution for their admitted deeds, the principals of the Bush Administration would have only one defense: precedent. They would have to show that their actions had been accepted practice in American government for many, many years -- from the very beginning, in fact -- and had never been regarded as prosecutable offenses before. To imprison them now -- or even execute them -- for carrying on the standard policies and practices of bipartisan governance stretching back for generations would surely constitute cruel and unusual punishment. It would be selective prosecution. It would be nothing less than the "criminalization of political differences" -- for the historical record clearly shows that aggression and torture have always been treated in the American system as political implements, tools of political policy, and not as criminal matters.
Thus the Bush defense team would have to put forth a mountain of historical evidence, laying out in great detail the use of military aggression and torture (both directly and by client states under American direction, for American purposes) over the entire course of U.S. history. Naturally, they would focus most of their attention on the decades since World War II, as this would involve institutions, agencies -- and even some of the same people -- that serve as instruments of American policy and practice today; It would be easier, and more relevant, to show the continuity with their more immediate bipartisan predecessors. But the older historical material would also be important in setting out the long-established precedents and philosophies in which modern policies are rooted.
It is here that I would want to contribute to the defense. I would gladly act as a lowly researcher for them, sifting through the accumulation of historical fact and insightful analysis provided over the years by such noted writers as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Arthur Silber, Alfred McCoy, Richard Seymour, Fred Anderson and Andrew Clayton, and far too many more to mention. And beyond these overviews and works of synthesis, there are the innumerable, highly detailed articles, studies, monographs, and full-scale scholarly works produced by historians in every field of specialty: political, economic, legal, cultural, military, and so on.
A war crimes trial of George Bush, Dick Cheney and their chief minions would be a public spectacle of perhaps unprecedented scope. Millions of people all over the world would be riveted to it every day; the American public especially would be hanging on its every word. To mount such a defense, on such a powerful platform, would devastate the myth of American exceptionalism like nothing else imaginable. Horrific atrocity, brutal arrogance, deadly ignorance -- again, by both direct and collateral hand -- would all be brought into the glaring light. The principle of violent domination -- continuous, accepted, celebrated, legitimized, institutionalized -- would stand revealed as a core value, if not the core value, of the American way...
Monday, March 15, 2010
So What Did You Expect From American "Democracy" - "Iraq poll results delayed again, amid mounting fraud claims"
Also see: Meet the New Iraqi Government Coalition, (Probably) the Same As the Old Coalition
"Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose State of Law coalition is leading in seven provinces - including Baghdad, which is by far the largest electoral prize in the race - sought to minimise the fraud allegations.In Full @ EarthTimesComplaints presented to the commission... ...will not change the election's results,"
More still @ Informed Comment, Asia Times and the Washington Post
Labels:
al-Maliki,
al-Sadr,
Allawi,
Empire,
Empire Building,
Imperialism,
Iraq Elections
Saturday, March 13, 2010
The Iraqi Elections: "Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss"
Meet the New Iraqi Government Coalition, (Probably) the Same As the Old Coalition
In Full, FiredoglakeBy: Swopa Saturday March 13, 2010 5:00 pm
So the election results are trickling in slowly from the Iraqi parliamentary elections, and the coalition led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is expressing confidence that they will come away with the largest share of the votes — a confidence that may or may not be related to the gradually accumulating accusations of fraud in the ballot-counting process.Although all of the blocs that made up the Iraqi national legislature have frayed somewhat since the last round of elections at the end of 2005, virtually all of the major players are expected to return when the dust settles this time… most likely including al-Maliki as the prime minister.
Labels:
al-Maliki,
Allawi,
Elections,
Empire,
Empire Building,
Imperialism,
Iraq,
Iraq Elections,
War On Iraq
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