My response to a letter from Sen. Kerry to PDA asking for our support around his (very weak) Afghanistan proposal, and appealing to us to see him as the young Lieutenant who became the voice of the Vietnam Vets against the war:
************************
Sen. Kerry,
My hasty and rude comment on your letter to PDA failed to honor your willingness to reach out to us. Please allow me a second chance to respond.
The heart of your letter is a discussion of the problems of decreasing the US commitment to Afghanistan and establishing a stable government while protecting US interests and still defeating the enemies of the US. The underlying unspoken assumptions are that "we" have some right to be there, "we" have some claim to be able to "build" their nation, "we" have lessons to teach in good government and democracy, and "we" have a right to go into other people's countries to kill "our" enemies.
These assumptions come in two flavors: unapologetic Republican and nuanced sugar-coated Democratic. Missing from both is the question: what do you mean by "we"?
Your "we", if I'm not mistaken, is the folks you move among, see every day on Capital Hill, mingle with socially and on business, the folks who come to you for favors and whom you go to for money ... the ruling class and political class and corporate folks who constitute your world and pay for your campaigns. But that's not all of who you are.
You appeal to the connection you have with us from your experience as a leader of the Vietnam veterans. Some of us are old enough to remember that and revere you for the part you played - a part you carried forward into your first years in the Senate around Iran/Contra. I would suggest that it also marked a unique episode in the life of a young man who had been groomed and educated for a life among the powerful and wealthy - an experience of intense involvement with the regular folk of America - the grunts - to the point where you shared our anger and earned leadership as one of us.
As your constituent I read your emails, and have been deeply disappointed by your positions, your framing of issues and your lack of passion for the interests of regular folk. Now, when we are in such distress and our security and very survival needs are under relentless attack, and we need so badly for something different to happen, they have become painful to read. But if there were a way you could somehow reconnect with the passion and anger of young Lt. Kerry, there is an urgent need for someone "on the inside" of the system to come over to us, throw their support to our movements and give expression to our demands for a "new deal" and fresh start - to a Monopoly game that has reached the end and that only a few winners still want to keep going.
The way Roosevelt did in the '30's in a time much like this one.
The need for someone to play this role is urgent. I canvass my neighbors every year around one campaign or another - including several of yours way back when - and I can tell you that the level of bitterness, anger and disillusionment of regular folk with the political and economic system is becoming explosive. When it breaks it will be a lot like Greece, only more chaotic, because our labor movement is so weakened and we lack national leaders who are known and trusted by the millions.
I'm not sure how you would do this. You've drifted pretty deep into the rarified world of the elite. But Lt. Kerry is still there inside you somewhere. Perhaps you could tell everyone you're checking into a rehab hospital, and instead disguise yourself as an unemployed Vet and just start traveling around asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of listening - until you really start seeing the world through our eyes again and feeling our pain and anger as your own, the way you did in '72.
It won't be easy. It would involve incurring the anger and even hatred of many people in your life - perhaps most of your fellow Senators, the members of your clubs, your wife's family, your fellow Bonesmen. It could even be dangerous. Many of them still hate Roosevelt, as I'm sure you've noticed. But you might find an answer in it to the question of why you were put here on this Earth.
Hope that helps.
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
What about Pakistan? And India?
Response to a post by a Pakistani talking about the absurdity of the Pakistani arguments for supporting the US in Afghanistan:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Interesting insights and a good demonstration that the current rhetoric coming out of the Pakistani media is nonsense; but there are so many more dimensions to this situation.
On the one hand there is the matter of what strategic game the global imperialists are playing and why, and on the other hand there are the struggle of the Indian and Pakistani people with their own ruling classes - nationally and locally, politically and day-to-day.
Then there are the struggles between different factions of the Indian and Pakistani ruling classes, and the strategy of the dominant factions for regional hegemony.
Against all of this there is the struggle of the people on both sides of the border for democracy, in India the play of religions against each other in a divide and conquer strategy that always seems to draw in the specter of Pakistan, and in Pakistan the actions of the military officer corps as an apparently semi-autonomous component of the ruling class, fighting not only to keep the people down but to keep its own place in the structure, and justifying its actions by the danger from India which must always be kept alive.
Then there is the influence of the CIA and the multi-national corporations, with their agents, the political and military leaders they have turned, and the corporate leaders on both sides that they have drawn into their web. And add the budding US-Indian alliance and the continuing struggle of China to preserve or regain its special relationship with Pakistan.
And then there's the politics of The Bomb.
Finally toss into this mix the struggles of the little nations along the borderlands for autonomy or independence and the struggle over Kashmir. Like a bunch of wild cards that can turn the game unpredictably.
Now take this pot and turn up the heat on it with a global economic crisis, the US military buildup in Afghanistan and the invasion of Pakistan by flying killer robots and mercenary death squads, arousing the patriotic anger of the people, who have already had a brief, sweet taste of revolution.
Wow.
What about that?
As in many parts of the world this situation has reached a point of great tension, with a lot of stored and repressed energy - like an n-dimensional chess board where only a few pawns have been taken as each player has developed their positions and strategies to the limit. What happens when the denouement begins?
That's the question you are raising. It deserves a deeper answer.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Interesting insights and a good demonstration that the current rhetoric coming out of the Pakistani media is nonsense; but there are so many more dimensions to this situation.
On the one hand there is the matter of what strategic game the global imperialists are playing and why, and on the other hand there are the struggle of the Indian and Pakistani people with their own ruling classes - nationally and locally, politically and day-to-day.
Then there are the struggles between different factions of the Indian and Pakistani ruling classes, and the strategy of the dominant factions for regional hegemony.
Against all of this there is the struggle of the people on both sides of the border for democracy, in India the play of religions against each other in a divide and conquer strategy that always seems to draw in the specter of Pakistan, and in Pakistan the actions of the military officer corps as an apparently semi-autonomous component of the ruling class, fighting not only to keep the people down but to keep its own place in the structure, and justifying its actions by the danger from India which must always be kept alive.
Then there is the influence of the CIA and the multi-national corporations, with their agents, the political and military leaders they have turned, and the corporate leaders on both sides that they have drawn into their web. And add the budding US-Indian alliance and the continuing struggle of China to preserve or regain its special relationship with Pakistan.
And then there's the politics of The Bomb.
Finally toss into this mix the struggles of the little nations along the borderlands for autonomy or independence and the struggle over Kashmir. Like a bunch of wild cards that can turn the game unpredictably.
Now take this pot and turn up the heat on it with a global economic crisis, the US military buildup in Afghanistan and the invasion of Pakistan by flying killer robots and mercenary death squads, arousing the patriotic anger of the people, who have already had a brief, sweet taste of revolution.
Wow.
What about that?
As in many parts of the world this situation has reached a point of great tension, with a lot of stored and repressed energy - like an n-dimensional chess board where only a few pawns have been taken as each player has developed their positions and strategies to the limit. What happens when the denouement begins?
That's the question you are raising. It deserves a deeper answer.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Letter to a Democratic Party forum:
>>>>>>>>>>
Enough already about what a threat Afghanistan was or is to us. Everyone is treating that as the one piece of what Bush and Cheney did which is beyond question, but it's horse-ticky, like the rest of their lies.
Did you know that George Bush Jr. when he was in college was a fanatic player of Risk, the Parker Brothers "Game of World Domination"? And that he was notorious for changing the rules when he was losing? That might give some clue to the mentality of the man who allowed 9/11 to happen and then ordered the invasion of Afghanistan.
The Taliban government of Afghanistan, like most CIA-sponsored regimes, was pretty disagreeable from the point of view of a progressive, but the facts are that it did not organize or support any terrorist act against the US, and there was not one Afghani involved in any of them. Bin Laden and supporters had a training camp in Afghanistan - in territory over which the government had only loose control and involving a few hundred people.
The US demanded that Bin Laden and his supporters be arrested and turned over. The Afghan government did what any self-respecting government that valued its independence would do. They asked that the universal standard of protocol in criminal cases be followed: a presentation of evidence and a formal request for extradition. The Bush government branded this failure to obey - and obey quickly - as defiance and impudence, and responded by ordering an invasion. Our corporate media pulled one of its periodic crescendos of "manufactured outrage", and practically our entire Congress pissed all over themselves to be first in line to support it.
The fact that when US forces had Bin laden surrounded and cornered they let him get away is good evidence that the invasion of Afghanistan was never about catching him.
The map I saw yesterday of where US forces are concentrated in Afghanistan casts further doubt on the official line that "fighting terrorism" is the real mission in Afghanistan. The fighting is mostly south and east of Kabul, but nearly half the US forces are in the desert in the south-western provence. There are reliable reports that they have been supplied with large numbers of main battle tanks (useless against the Taliban.) From there it is a straight shot to Teheran - 700 miles or so of desert to the west, with no mountain ranges, rivers or major fields of sand dunes in the way, just one relatively small ridge to cross.
The whole thing stinks of imperialism, one giant Risk game with nuclear-armed players, and with our own towns and cities as hostages.
Our job, as I see it, is to get the American people to demand an end to these foreign wars, and to demand it so strongly that our Democratic representatives and administration will have to give in to it to keep us pacified. The Democrats can then take credit for it, and an energized people will turn out to reelect them.
That dynamic. around this and a range of other issues, can keep the Democrats in power in 2010 and 2012. Without that, the working people will stay home again, as happened in 1994.
So, paradoxically, to save the Obama Administration we (the people) have to unleash our rage at what he's doing, and take it to "the street". Our Rep. Jim McGovern, Rep. Mike Capuano and other representatives from Massachusetts clearly understand this. Pres. Obama has given us many signals that he does too. But we - the people, with the leadership of Democrats who get this - have to make it happen.
Electing Capuano to the Senate on Tuesday will help.
>>>>>>>>>>
Enough already about what a threat Afghanistan was or is to us. Everyone is treating that as the one piece of what Bush and Cheney did which is beyond question, but it's horse-ticky, like the rest of their lies.
Did you know that George Bush Jr. when he was in college was a fanatic player of Risk, the Parker Brothers "Game of World Domination"? And that he was notorious for changing the rules when he was losing? That might give some clue to the mentality of the man who allowed 9/11 to happen and then ordered the invasion of Afghanistan.
The Taliban government of Afghanistan, like most CIA-sponsored regimes, was pretty disagreeable from the point of view of a progressive, but the facts are that it did not organize or support any terrorist act against the US, and there was not one Afghani involved in any of them. Bin Laden and supporters had a training camp in Afghanistan - in territory over which the government had only loose control and involving a few hundred people.
The US demanded that Bin Laden and his supporters be arrested and turned over. The Afghan government did what any self-respecting government that valued its independence would do. They asked that the universal standard of protocol in criminal cases be followed: a presentation of evidence and a formal request for extradition. The Bush government branded this failure to obey - and obey quickly - as defiance and impudence, and responded by ordering an invasion. Our corporate media pulled one of its periodic crescendos of "manufactured outrage", and practically our entire Congress pissed all over themselves to be first in line to support it.
The fact that when US forces had Bin laden surrounded and cornered they let him get away is good evidence that the invasion of Afghanistan was never about catching him.
The map I saw yesterday of where US forces are concentrated in Afghanistan casts further doubt on the official line that "fighting terrorism" is the real mission in Afghanistan. The fighting is mostly south and east of Kabul, but nearly half the US forces are in the desert in the south-western provence. There are reliable reports that they have been supplied with large numbers of main battle tanks (useless against the Taliban.) From there it is a straight shot to Teheran - 700 miles or so of desert to the west, with no mountain ranges, rivers or major fields of sand dunes in the way, just one relatively small ridge to cross.
The whole thing stinks of imperialism, one giant Risk game with nuclear-armed players, and with our own towns and cities as hostages.
Our job, as I see it, is to get the American people to demand an end to these foreign wars, and to demand it so strongly that our Democratic representatives and administration will have to give in to it to keep us pacified. The Democrats can then take credit for it, and an energized people will turn out to reelect them.
That dynamic. around this and a range of other issues, can keep the Democrats in power in 2010 and 2012. Without that, the working people will stay home again, as happened in 1994.
So, paradoxically, to save the Obama Administration we (the people) have to unleash our rage at what he's doing, and take it to "the street". Our Rep. Jim McGovern, Rep. Mike Capuano and other representatives from Massachusetts clearly understand this. Pres. Obama has given us many signals that he does too. But we - the people, with the leadership of Democrats who get this - have to make it happen.
Electing Capuano to the Senate on Tuesday will help.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Khazei, Capuano and Afghanistan Demo
Khazei and Capuano both look good to me. I'm glad Khazei is taking a stand now against the escalation in Afghanistan. We can't afford to replace Kennedy with a centrist. President Obama is a great speaker, but he needs a backbone, and Kennedy was part of his backbone.
But the problem is much bigger than elections, and a lot of folks who voted for change in 2008 are giving up, because we aren't getting the change we voted for.
Obama is catching a lot of heat from Wall Street and has taken the representatives of the great financial houses into his Cabinet. He talks big, but starts from a compromise position and then compromises that away under pressure. Electing Khazei or Capuano to the Senate will help, but what it will really take to save the Obama Presidency and the change we voted for is the people organizing to pressure him back.
Starting with the demonstration against the escalation in Afghanistan at Lincoln Square, on Wednesday at 4:30!
With enough pressure from the street, the people we elect and send to Washington may yet deliver. Without that, Washington just swallows them up and the things we voted for just disappear!
Posted by ChrisHorton
But the problem is much bigger than elections, and a lot of folks who voted for change in 2008 are giving up, because we aren't getting the change we voted for.
Obama is catching a lot of heat from Wall Street and has taken the representatives of the great financial houses into his Cabinet. He talks big, but starts from a compromise position and then compromises that away under pressure. Electing Khazei or Capuano to the Senate will help, but what it will really take to save the Obama Presidency and the change we voted for is the people organizing to pressure him back.
Starting with the demonstration against the escalation in Afghanistan at Lincoln Square, on Wednesday at 4:30!
With enough pressure from the street, the people we elect and send to Washington may yet deliver. Without that, Washington just swallows them up and the things we voted for just disappear!
Posted by ChrisHorton
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
It's still taboo in America to speak the truth about how the current disaster for women in Afghanistan began; but it was the fruit of the CIA-organized, funded and equipped war against the Afghan revolution and then against the Soviet troops who came into Afghanistan to defend it.
But I remember the accounts every week of US-supported "Mujahadeen" entering towns, burning the school and the health center, killing the doctors and the teachers, and fleeing into the mountains.
And I remember a letter from an AFSC volunteer in an Afghan village who was present when the civil war began in '78, before the Soviet intervention. The revolutionary government in Kabul issued a series of decrees, taken up by the town's revolutionary committee. These were, in order (if I remember it right): a decree that women could appear in public without a veil; a decree that women must be allowed to speak at public meetings; a land reform, redistributing the holdings of the feudal landlords to the peasants; a decree that all girls had to receive a 4th grade education just like the boys; a decree granting women equal rights with men to a divorce; a decree granting women the right to attend college;
and finally a decree abolishing the right of husbands to kill their wives.
It was on the Friday after the last of these decrees that the Mullahs led the outraged faithful (men) out of the Mosques and on a rampage, hanging any communists, supporters of the government or unescorted women they could lay their hands on. Thus began the civil war, with the US supporting one side (with arms so advanced that even its NATO allies weren't allowed to have them) and the Soviet Union supporting the other.
Many young people I've told this story to are unable to guess which side the US was on; but of course it was on the side of the wife-killers. And it was in protest of the Soviet intervention - and in support of the wife-killers - that Jimmy Carter (Lord bless him) withdrew the US athletes from the Moscow Olympics and initiated the rapid arms buildup that marked the beginning of Cold War II - which did not end in the obliteration of our civilization, but could have.
Virtually no one spoke against this madness, because our terror of being accused of being soft on communism was still so great. Even most of the US anti-imperialist movement shied away. The Soviet move seemed outrageous because they no sooner had entered Afghanistan then they presided over the arrest and execution of the Afghan President Amin, who had begged and pushed them to send troops.
They claimed to have proof that he was a CIA agent, who had deliberately sabotaged the revolution by leading a campaign of wanton killing of enemies. This seemed like quite a whopper at the time; but now, in hindsight, I'm not so sure.
But I remember the accounts every week of US-supported "Mujahadeen" entering towns, burning the school and the health center, killing the doctors and the teachers, and fleeing into the mountains.
And I remember a letter from an AFSC volunteer in an Afghan village who was present when the civil war began in '78, before the Soviet intervention. The revolutionary government in Kabul issued a series of decrees, taken up by the town's revolutionary committee. These were, in order (if I remember it right): a decree that women could appear in public without a veil; a decree that women must be allowed to speak at public meetings; a land reform, redistributing the holdings of the feudal landlords to the peasants; a decree that all girls had to receive a 4th grade education just like the boys; a decree granting women equal rights with men to a divorce; a decree granting women the right to attend college;
and finally a decree abolishing the right of husbands to kill their wives.
It was on the Friday after the last of these decrees that the Mullahs led the outraged faithful (men) out of the Mosques and on a rampage, hanging any communists, supporters of the government or unescorted women they could lay their hands on. Thus began the civil war, with the US supporting one side (with arms so advanced that even its NATO allies weren't allowed to have them) and the Soviet Union supporting the other.
Many young people I've told this story to are unable to guess which side the US was on; but of course it was on the side of the wife-killers. And it was in protest of the Soviet intervention - and in support of the wife-killers - that Jimmy Carter (Lord bless him) withdrew the US athletes from the Moscow Olympics and initiated the rapid arms buildup that marked the beginning of Cold War II - which did not end in the obliteration of our civilization, but could have.
Virtually no one spoke against this madness, because our terror of being accused of being soft on communism was still so great. Even most of the US anti-imperialist movement shied away. The Soviet move seemed outrageous because they no sooner had entered Afghanistan then they presided over the arrest and execution of the Afghan President Amin, who had begged and pushed them to send troops.
They claimed to have proof that he was a CIA agent, who had deliberately sabotaged the revolution by leading a campaign of wanton killing of enemies. This seemed like quite a whopper at the time; but now, in hindsight, I'm not so sure.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Pakistan
TThe Taliban are not what most of us would wish on Pakistan or anywhere else, but the April 16 New York Times gives a hint of what is unfolding there, and why we can't "fix" it:
Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH, April 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/asia/17pstan.html?th&emc=th
What this story makes clear is that the Taliban is either leading or unleashing a long-overdue social revolution in the countryside, a rebellion against the power of the big landlords, and that is what all the "experts" have been so concerned about, why they fear and predict this "insurgency" will spread to all of Pakistan!
I've been shaking my head over every story coming out of Pakistan for years, asking: "What is really going on below the surface? This doesn't make sense!" We've been shown a country going unstable, but no satisfactory clue as to why. Finally here's a clue. We can be sure there's more, much more, but this piece of the story at least makes sense!
There are indications in the story that the fact that peasants were rising against their landlords under Taliban leadership was well known to journalists, perhaps five years ago, certainly by three years ago; yet only now has the Times deemed it necessary to share this information with the broader elite, the professionals, academics and "top 1%" who make up most of its readership. A Google search shows that the story was not picked up by other media; perhaps it came with a tag indicating "not for mass consumption"!
How does this square with Bhutto's land reform? Was that incomplete or corupt, leaving unfinished business? What about the Taliban in Afghanistan is unclear. Is the same thing happening there? The revolution of 1978-79 was also a revolt against the landlords, which failed and was crushed despite half a million Soviet troops trying to save it, but the class conflict in the countryside must still be there, as presumably the surviving landlords or their families returned to claim their land. Where is the reporter who will tell us whether unleashing a peasant rebellion is also powering the Taliban's success in Afghanistan?
Nor is there any hint here as to how this affects Pakistan's large urban working class. Are the Taliban championing their cause also? Could urban working people tolerate its call for Sharia Law? Pakistan's labor movement represents barely 2% of the non-agricultural workforce, yet it is active, militant, uniting, and winning victories, working with the basically corrupt Pakistan Peoples Party. What are their leaders thinking and saying? What they will do if Pakistan goes critically unstable? Will they be able to lead the working class? Is there an underground workers party that will suddenly emerge? Will they then join with the Taliban-led peasants or oppose them in a battle of competing revolutions? Our media rarely gives a hint that they exist at all. But without this information, our ability to understand the danger of and motives for US intervention in Pakistan, and our understanding of the need to block the Obama Administration from broadening US involvement, are very weak.
The Pakistan crisis has the potential to develop into a nightmare: US troops and mercenaries, with vast fleets of armed robots, wading into the midst of a titanic struggle between a long-overdue peasant revolution, led by religious fanatics, and a long-overdue workers revolution led by we don't know who, in a nuclear-armed nation ten times the size of Iraq, with India sitting on the wings ready to take advantage! This must not be allowed to happen!
The US can't fix Pakistan or save it from itself. Our "Empire" evidently cannot by its nature bring progress and democracy to anyone, no matter what the intentions of the people at the top, any more than the Soviet Red Army could save a revolution in Afghanistan. Theirs just wasn't that kind of an army anymore, and neither is ours. We've done enough damage already.
For better or for worse, the people of Pakistan (and Afghanistan) must be left free to work this out for themselves! Perhaps we do have a role to play though in persuading India to stay out of it too!
Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH, April 16, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/asia/17pstan.html?th&emc=th
What this story makes clear is that the Taliban is either leading or unleashing a long-overdue social revolution in the countryside, a rebellion against the power of the big landlords, and that is what all the "experts" have been so concerned about, why they fear and predict this "insurgency" will spread to all of Pakistan!
I've been shaking my head over every story coming out of Pakistan for years, asking: "What is really going on below the surface? This doesn't make sense!" We've been shown a country going unstable, but no satisfactory clue as to why. Finally here's a clue. We can be sure there's more, much more, but this piece of the story at least makes sense!
There are indications in the story that the fact that peasants were rising against their landlords under Taliban leadership was well known to journalists, perhaps five years ago, certainly by three years ago; yet only now has the Times deemed it necessary to share this information with the broader elite, the professionals, academics and "top 1%" who make up most of its readership. A Google search shows that the story was not picked up by other media; perhaps it came with a tag indicating "not for mass consumption"!
How does this square with Bhutto's land reform? Was that incomplete or corupt, leaving unfinished business? What about the Taliban in Afghanistan is unclear. Is the same thing happening there? The revolution of 1978-79 was also a revolt against the landlords, which failed and was crushed despite half a million Soviet troops trying to save it, but the class conflict in the countryside must still be there, as presumably the surviving landlords or their families returned to claim their land. Where is the reporter who will tell us whether unleashing a peasant rebellion is also powering the Taliban's success in Afghanistan?
Nor is there any hint here as to how this affects Pakistan's large urban working class. Are the Taliban championing their cause also? Could urban working people tolerate its call for Sharia Law? Pakistan's labor movement represents barely 2% of the non-agricultural workforce, yet it is active, militant, uniting, and winning victories, working with the basically corrupt Pakistan Peoples Party. What are their leaders thinking and saying? What they will do if Pakistan goes critically unstable? Will they be able to lead the working class? Is there an underground workers party that will suddenly emerge? Will they then join with the Taliban-led peasants or oppose them in a battle of competing revolutions? Our media rarely gives a hint that they exist at all. But without this information, our ability to understand the danger of and motives for US intervention in Pakistan, and our understanding of the need to block the Obama Administration from broadening US involvement, are very weak.
The Pakistan crisis has the potential to develop into a nightmare: US troops and mercenaries, with vast fleets of armed robots, wading into the midst of a titanic struggle between a long-overdue peasant revolution, led by religious fanatics, and a long-overdue workers revolution led by we don't know who, in a nuclear-armed nation ten times the size of Iraq, with India sitting on the wings ready to take advantage! This must not be allowed to happen!
The US can't fix Pakistan or save it from itself. Our "Empire" evidently cannot by its nature bring progress and democracy to anyone, no matter what the intentions of the people at the top, any more than the Soviet Red Army could save a revolution in Afghanistan. Theirs just wasn't that kind of an army anymore, and neither is ours. We've done enough damage already.
For better or for worse, the people of Pakistan (and Afghanistan) must be left free to work this out for themselves! Perhaps we do have a role to play though in persuading India to stay out of it too!
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