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id="summarylist">
<li>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="#1">How The War Is Spun: Mass
Killings Mean ‘Progress’</a>
</li>
<li>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="#2">The Cherry-Picking Fantasy
Land of Elliot Abrams</a>
</li>
<li>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="#3">Coalition Tries to
Undermine Afghan Traditional Governance</a>
</li>
<li>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="#4">Latin America Beware: The
Imperial Pretext Is Changing</a>
</li>
<li>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="#5">Addicted to Militarism,
Despite Repeated Failures</a>
</li>
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<p style="margin:1em 0 3px 0;">
<a moz-do-not-send="true" name="1"
style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif;font-size:18px;"
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E3/3AmWtD1BZ24/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">How
The War Is Spun: Mass Killings Mean ‘Progress’</a>
</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:#555;margin:9px 0 3px
0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;"><span>Posted:</span>
16 Aug 2011 12:50 PM PDT</p>
<div
style="margin:0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;color:#000000;">
<p>That’s the title of <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/how-the-war-is-spun-mass-killings-mean-progress-military-says-1.152255">Kevin
Baron’s piece at Stars and Stripes</a>, which
explains how propaganda is wrapped around the
insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan to make them seem
as if they’re on the losing end.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Politico’s Morning Defense shared <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.politico.com/morningdefense/"
target="_blank">an email Monday</a> that is pure
military public affairs gold. How do you interpret a
suicide bombing assassination attempt north of Kabul
that killed at least 20 people into an obvious sign
the war was going as planned?</p>
<p>An International Security Assistance Force
spokesman emailed MD’s Chuck Hoskinson a response
claiming the attack was “a resounding failure”
because: 1) the target, a provincial governor
survived, 2) the Afghan security forces reacted
“autonomously” and 3) the attack did not target U.S.
forces.</p>
<p>The ISAF spokesman explained those points are
important to make because they are “crucial to
undermining the Taliban’s attempt to obtain a
propaganda victory from their failed attack.”</p>
<p>Judge for yourself who won the victory, propaganda
or otherwise. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/insurgents-attack-afghan-governors-compound-killing-at-least-20/2011/08/14/gIQAtD5fEJ_story.html?hpid=z2"
target="_blank">According to The Washington Post</a>,
the attack occurred in a relatively secure Parwan
province, north of Kabul. A car bomb blew up an
entrance to the governor’s compound, five insurgents
breached the facility and a two-hour gunfight
commenced where five explosions “shook the
building.” ISAF reported <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/isaf-releases/isaf-joins-president-karzai-in-condemning-the-attack-in-parwan-province.html"
target="_blank">at least six IEDs</a> in addition
to the car bomb were detonated.</p>
<p>In far worse carnage, bombings in at least 17 Iraqi
cities on Monday killed more than 60 people in “<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/15/3077493/60-killed-as-wave-of-violence.html"
target="_blank">bloodbath</a>” scenes of scattered
human flesh.</p>
<p>Stars and Stripes’ Erik Slavin, in Iraq, reports <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.stripes.com/news/u-s-servicemembers-in-iraq-not-attacked-but-mission-targeted-1.152245"
target="_blank">U.S. servicemembers were not
attacked</a>and Iraqi forces had to call for
American assistance just once.</p>
<p><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=65029"
target="_blank">U.S. Forces Iraq spokesman Maj.
Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan</a>, in the Pentagon Monday,
said the attacks show Iraq remains dangerous but do
not threaten the government and the insurgency
remains an unpopular shadow of its former self.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is notable, but of course just barely scratches
the surface. I’ve <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/08/08/media-subservience-ignoring-the-crimes-of-america/">written</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/08/08/a-warrior-for-christ-a-warrior-for-our-country/">variously</a>
about <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/05/27/saudi-arab-spring-policy-imitates-u-s-media-cant-see-it/">systematic
bias</a> <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/06/02/media-keeps-iraq-tyranny-on-down-low/">throughout
the media</a>, which is particularly potent when it
comes to war. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans
still develop their opinions about American foreign
policy, and these wars in particular, from “news
anchors” and pundits on the major networks. This
results in systematic misunderstandings about U.S.
foreign policy and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://antiwar.com/donate/">obviously needs to
change</a>.</p>
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<a moz-do-not-send="true" name="2"
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sans-serif;font-size:18px;"
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E3/QEFleIZMZWM/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">The
Cherry-Picking Fantasy Land of Elliot Abrams</a>
</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:#555;margin:9px 0 3px
0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;"><span>Posted:</span>
16 Aug 2011 11:47 AM PDT</p>
<div
style="margin:0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;color:#000000;">
<p>At the blog for the Council on Foreign Relations, <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2011/08/16/will-ariel-block-peace/">Elliot
Abrams concludes</a> that people who think illegal
settlement construction hinders the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process are not living “in
the real world.”</p>
<p>Abrams has argued before, amazingly, that settlements
in the West Bank are “<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67943/elliott-abrams/the-settlement-obsession?page=show">not
a critical issue</a>” (to which <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/06/27/pro-israeli-falsehoods-on-the-flotilla-settlements-and-statehood/">I
responded</a>). In this latest fantasy land post,
Abrams pushes back against the condemnations for <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/15/israel-announces-yet-more-settlement-expansions/">the
newest set of approvals for 277 new homes in the
West Bank city of Ariel</a>. He argues that because
these are new units within an already existing
settlement, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=it%27s%20all%20good">it’s
all good</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The new units are to be constructed in the center
of the town, it was also announced. This is a
significant fact, for construction of new units at
the edges of the town would mean that the security
perimeter would need to be extended to protect the
new housing and the people in it. But this will not
happen, and Ariel will expand in population but not
in land area. It is not, in the usual Palestinian
Authority parlance, “taking more Palestinian land.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Right, they’re just increasing the population of
previously stolen Palestinian land. Not only is this
virtually a distinction without a difference, but it
pretends dishonestly that “expanding in population but
not in land area” is typical for West Bank settlement
construction. Abrams leaves out the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/11/israel-approves-4300-new-homes-in-east-jerusalem-2/">4,300
new units Israel approved last week for construction
in Palestinian East Jerusalem</a> (which Abrams
calls “Israel’s capital”). These thousands were in
addition to the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/04/israel-announces-930-homes-in-east-jerusalem-settlement-expansion/">930
new homes approved for construction around the same
area</a> just days earlier. Abrams is intentionally
white-washing the fact that Israeli demolitions of
Palestinian homes <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110802/wl_mideast_afp/israelpalestiniansconflictdemolish">has
skyrocketed this year with 356 structures demolished
and 700 people displaced in the first six months
2011</a>. These were not instances where new units
were built in the center of existing settlements, but
rather where innocent Palestinian people were expelled
from their homes so that they could be demolished and
given to Israeli settlers. Like, for example, the
incident at the end of July where <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/07/27/israel-subsidies-untouched-by-us-budget-crisis/">the Israeli
government sued a group of poor Bedouin Palestinians
in the Negev desert for over $500,000</a>, the
claimed costs of demolishing their village each time
they rebuilt it. Israeli authorities destroyed, and
the Bedouin rebuilt, the homes in al-Araqib more than
20 times.</p>
<p>Abrams leaves out those nasty little details so he
can keep his imaginary framework for the entire
conflict nice and neatly undisturbed. And then of
course he chimes in with this little number:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is not reasonable to view it as a violation of
international law and a threat to a peace agreement
every time bricks and studs and drywall show up at
the center of an Israeli settlement in the West
Bank.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Except that it is. They are a violation of
international law according to the consensus view of
the international community. The Geneva Conventions <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/380-600056">clearly
states</a> that forcible transfers and deportations
people in occupied lands is prohibited, as is the
transfer of “parts of its own civilian population into
the territory it occupies.” Not to mention that
numerous <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/5fldpj.htm">international
agreements</a>, as well as the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1671.pdf">International
Court of Justice</a>, have declared the settlements
illegal. Heck, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/02/israeli-court-orders-settlement-dismantled/">even
Israel sometimes admits certain settlements to be
illegal</a>.</p>
<p>Not Elliot Abrams though. He’s a bit too far down the
rabbit hole…</p>
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<a moz-do-not-send="true" name="3"
style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif;font-size:18px;"
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E3/ZuGNlMEUihY/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Coalition
Tries to Undermine Afghan Traditional Governance</a>
</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:#555;margin:9px 0 3px
0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;"><span>Posted:</span>
16 Aug 2011 09:45 AM PDT</p>
<div
style="margin:0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;color:#000000;">
<p>The Associated Press headline pushes the occupation
line that <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110816/ap_on_re_as/as_afghan_learning_to_govern">the
“coalition” is trying to “build”</a> a cadre of
leaders, but a perusal of the text makes clear that
Kabul and its Western masters are actively demolishing
age-old local governance traditions in a probably
futile attempt to establish a European-style central
state.</p>
<p>The piece begins describing a failed, underattended
shura in far-southern Helmand province, organized by
Kabul carpetbaggers. Why did only seven men show up?
Gee, could it be this:</p>
<p>“The army commander had invited locals to the small
fortified camp, but <strong>sometimes those
invitations were extended during gunfights when
soldiers and U.S. Marines were using private Afghan
homes and farmers’ poppy fields for cover</strong>.”</p>
<p>*door smash*</p>
<p>“We’re using your house as a shield against gunfire
from your neighbors. Obey us or die. Also, wanna go to
a cool party next week? It’ll be about how great it
will be to have a Ministry of Sport.”</p>
<p>The article describes the various problems suffered
by the few local elders who have decided to jump on
the government bandwagon. One of them is that constant
fighting and threats of assassination make it, hm,
difficult? to extend authority. Also, reports AP
matter of factly, “Some are corrupt.” Nowhere is it
noted that if one side of the fight withdrew, the
other side would have nothing — or at least a lot less
— to fight. After all, local insurgents didn’t pick
this war. It came to them.</p>
<p>To illustrate the utter stupidity of trying to
surreptitiously form a state in a tribal area, one of
the elders who did show up to the shura said he
obtained permission — from the Taliban. That’s pretty
cocksure for an insurgency we’re often told is on the
wane.</p>
<p>Don’t we already have many guides as to the success
rate of slamming Eurostates onto tribal societies with
ancient and viable alternative modes of governance?
Somalia is an ongoing nightmare of violence, due in
large part to the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/11/24/somali-american-terrorists-victims-of-unfortunate-labeling/">neverending
attempts</a> to smash its <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://mises.org/daily/2701">traditional
law-based society</a> and bring back the sort of
state that brutalized Somalis for decades. Even
Pakistan has never been able to truly tame its tribal
areas. It’s the same in many other cases.</p>
<p>But how are America’s partners, the Brits, helping
demonstrate the fabulousness of Western-style secular
government?</p>
<p>Oh they’re building a million-dollar mosque. </p>
<p>Which NATO blew up.</p>
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America Beware: The Imperial Pretext Is Changing</a>
</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:#555;margin:9px 0 3px
0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;"><span>Posted:</span>
16 Aug 2011 08:17 AM PDT</p>
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<p>During the Cold War, the pretext for reigning terror
down upon the masses in Central and South America
through U.S. imperialism was the creeping communist
threat. This was used as a justification for our <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.fff.org/comment/com0502f.asp">1954
overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically elected
government of Jacobo Arbenz</a>, <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB11/docs/">implementing
a systematic campaign of political assassinations,
arming murderous right-wing militias there for
decades,</a> etc. Of course, the same commie
justification held for the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm">CIA-orchestrated
coup to oust the democratically elected government
of Salvador Allende in Chile</a> and installing the
repressive dictatorship of General Pinochet. The
elusive Soviet threat was also the pretext for
Reagan’s terror war in <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/nicaragua-contras">Nicaragua</a>
and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://libcom.org/history/articles/el-salvador-counterinsurgency">El
Salvador</a>. You get the picture.</p>
<p>After the wall fell, the pretext became the drug war
and terrorism. Bush I <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Panama">invaded
Panama</a> with the justification of capturing a
minor thug Manuel Noriega (previously on CIA payroll),
violent militias were continually funded to fight the
drug war (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/08/15/interventionism-south-of-the-border-teaching-drug-cartels-how-to-kill/">like
now</a>), Clinton and Plan Colombia <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/07/28/supporting-atrocities-in-columbia/">which
continues to now</a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela">Bush
II attempted a coup against Hugo Chavez</a> because
apparently he was ‘against us’ as opposed to ‘with
us,’ etc.</p>
<p>Apparently the pretext for U.S. domination of Latin
America is set to change yet again. <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/15/the_americas_not_the_middle_east_will_be_the_world_capital_of_energy">Amy
Myers Jaffe’s piece in <em>Foreign Policy</em></a>
doesn’t mention anything about U.S. intervention, but
she intelligently predicts that the energy “center of
the world” so to speak will shift to the Americas,
instead of staying in the Middle East.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For half a century, the global energy supply’s
center of gravity has been the Middle East. This
fact has had self-evidently enormous implications
for the world we live in — and it’s about to change.</p>
<p>By the 2020s, the capital of energy will likely
have shifted back to the Western Hemisphere, where
it was prior to the ascendancy of Middle Eastern
megasuppliers such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the
1960s.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She writes the “reasons for this shift are partly
technological and partly political,” but oil and
natural gas are likely to frame the geopolitical
understanding of the Americas in the coming years.
That will attract the attention of the U.S. who has
been trying to exploit and command the whole region
since 1823 with <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine">the
Monroe Doctrine</a>. If she’s right, and if Latin
America’s recent moves towards strong independence
movements doesn’t continue to resist the weight of
U.S. pressure, we may be looking at a whole new
pretext for a whole new set of ugly wars and
interventions south of the border.</p>
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<a moz-do-not-send="true" name="5"
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sans-serif;font-size:18px;"
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E3/2dkNungBu-A/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email">Addicted
to Militarism, Despite Repeated Failures</a>
</p>
<p style="font-size:13px;color:#555;margin:9px 0 3px
0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;"><span>Posted:</span>
16 Aug 2011 07:00 AM PDT</p>
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<p>Richard Falk has an insightful and somewhat
dispiriting piece at al Jazeera called “<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201181592644232878.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_medium=MasterAccount&utm_term=tweets">Why
the Afghanistan War Won’t End Soon</a>.” He writes
about the prescience of the so-called ‘Vietnam
Syndrome’ (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/06/06/war-fatigue-is-far-too-late/">once
referred to as “sickly inhibitions against the use
of military force”</a>), and about the systematic
tendency for America, as the planet’s military
superpower, to aggressively apply military solutions
to non-military problems. I was reminded of the
opportunity to avoid unnecessary war after 9/11 by
treating the attacks as a criminal act instead of an
act of war (how many lives and dollars would have been
saved, how many laws never broken…). But Falk focuses
on conflicts like Afghanistan, say, which have
available solutions towards ending war but which are
treated to the Petraeus counter-insurgency magic
described by Falk as “gradually expanding the war by
means of a surge of troops combined with a ten-fold
increase in drone attacks” with little regard for
civilian casualties. Why the insistence on applying
ineffective and destructive militarist solutions when
they are not applicable?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why do intelligent people persist in doing stupid
things? If we had a completely convincing answer to
this question we would have a far clearer
understanding of the dysfunctional underbelly of
US/NATO foreign policy.</p>
<p>To get such clarity, we probably need to delve into
the collective unconscious of the warmakers, but
even without such Freudian probes, there are some
obvious dark forces at work in the West. For Europe
especially, but also the United States, there is a
definite nostalgia for the colonial period when
military intervention was efficiently triumphal and
conspicuously rewarded with prestige, markets, and
resources. There lingers in the West a sense that
there must be a way to restore those happy days of
global ascendancy despite the formal elimination of
colonial rule. Closely connected with this residual
imperialism, given some credibility by way of
economic globalisation in the 1990s, is the parallel
adherence to the realist belief that it is military
power that continues to shape world history.</p>
<p>What follows from this search for explanations is
what might be described as <strong>‘militarism,’
here defined as the compulsive or addictive
reliance on hard power for conflict resolution
that is not altered by repeated experiences of
failure.</strong></p>
<p>[...] Whether American militarism is better
regarded as insanity or addiction is not so
significant, but that its compulsiveness discourages
a proper diagnosis and cure is a distressing
reality. It has led to a succession of prolonged
bloody confrontations that bring misery and
encourage extremism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Add to these explanations the fact that the last
decade has seen <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/15/defense-industrys-growth-since-911/">a
truly unique expansion of military capacity and
defense industry booms</a>, all of the most readily
available (and profitable) tools are military in
nature. So no wonder that is the most popular and
proximate diagnosis.</p>
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