Afghanistan: A Veteran’s Perspective

 

E Battery Royal Horse Artillery escaping from the overwhelming Afghan attack at the Battle of Maiwand, from “Maiwand: Saving the Guns” by Richard Caton Woodville. In the public domain.

by Michael J. Corgan

I don’t consider myself a pacifist. I believe there will always be those who choose to resort to war for little or no good reason and others of us must deal with them. However, sometimes we ourselves are the ones who resort to war for little or no good reason.

Those of us who were in the military as a profession have a particular moral responsibility to speak out.

Like my longtime colleague Andy Bacevich, I am a service academy graduate. I served several tours in wars whose justification was uncertain at best. Like him I am concerned about our propensity to get into wars with no justification: Mexico in 1846, Spain in 1898, Woodrow Wilson’s 20th century Latin American invasions, Granada and Panama in 1982, Iraq in 2003, and others.

At the Naval War College in the late 1970s we began  studying Thucydides and Clausewitz to try to determine why we, a supposed 1st-rate military power, lost to North Vietnam, a supposed 4th-rate military power.

From Thucydides one learns how easily the arrogance of power leads to foolish and disastrous military adventures, in which many are killed for no worthy aim.

From Clausewitz a more important lesson, know when to quit–when you’re not going to ‘win’ and all you’re doing is killing people, however worthy the original reason.

What prompts my concern now is our war in Afghanistan, the longest war in our history. According to New York Times interviews with commanders there,  we are farther from ‘winning’ than ever.

According to international law, we probably had justification for going to war after the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11 – that group operated with either the acquiescence of the Taliban or the inability of Taliban to prevent using their country as the operations base. But after 14 years, what is our justification for continuing this war that kills civilians without end?

Five hundred years ago, the Mongols couldn’t control the land; 200 years ago the British began their futile attempt to control it; in the last century the Russians also failed.  Now, in our arrogance we think we can create a stable country- though we come as foreigners, don’t speak any of the languages, and are infidels.

It isn’t working. and meanwhile people who want no part of either side are dying. There needs to be a solution to problems in that unhappy land but we and our war aren’t providing it even with all our incredible precision weapons and dropping of the largest conventional bomb ever.

The only right thing to do is to extract ourselves and admit the final answer, if there is one, will be attained by those who live there. The moral imperative is that we must go home.

 

The Continuing Horror of 9/11

9/11 Memorial logo. Author: National September 11 Memorial & Museum. In the public domain.

Monday, September 11, 2017

By Barbara Kidney

The Continuing Horror of 9/11

Sixteen years later, and tragically, the horrific legacy of 9/11 lives on. Manhattan is my home town. My Mom, like her own Mom, had been born in Manhattan.  My Dad (the the Irish-American Brooklynite) worked on Maiden Lane, in lower Manhattan. He had been retired for many years at the time of 9/11, and I had left even more years ago.

At the time of the 9/11 attack, I was living in the Hudson Valley, with friends & neighbors working in Manhattan, including possibly my own husband, working as courier driver.  Eventually I found out that no one close to me had died in the attack, but the brother of an acquaintance (the brother had been a Manhattan chef) was killed, and the young adult son of a lovely, typically cheerful friend of mine, on his way to visit his fiancé across the country, was on board one of the planes that hit the towers.

People caught in the attack, NYC Transit workers, police, firefighters, EMT and other emergency personnel, exerted heroic efforts to prevent further deaths and to otherwise respond to the tragedy. As a native of NYC, I certainly was not at all surprised to hear of the various stories of sudden heroism by ordinary New Yorkers, who typically rise to such occasions with down-to-earth decency, humble and amazing courage, and competence.  Many of these have had their lives impeded and shortened by harm to their health, from the asbestos and toxins they breathed in, from the lack of protective equipment, and from our nation’s unique failure to provide adequate healthcare to all but the wealthy and the electeds.

And, I am proud to say, like so many of my fellow New Yorkers, including those who lost loved ones in the attack, the very last thing I wanted to have happen after 9/11 was for more civilians to be violently attacked and killed.  The last thing we wanted to have happen is for normal humans doing normal activities – people caring for their babies, caring for each other, caring for their pets, going to their jobs, taking their kids to school, growing crops (and flowers), creating art, healing the sick, making music, pursuing scientific enquiry, falling in love- the last thing we wanted after that hellish day, was to have some Americans choose to continue the work of the devil, and go around bombing people, who are just trying to live their lives in their own communities.

However, the very thing we most abhor, the killing of other humans, just trying to live their own human lives, was what those Americans with the most decision-making power chose to do.  After arranging for Bin Laden’s family in the U.S to be flown safely out of the US without questioning right after 9/11, W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, chose to violently kill, maim, torture Afghanis and Iraqis.

Had the governments of Afghanistan or Iraq declared war on us or even attacked us? No, they had not.  Which country, besides possibly our own, was most responsible, for 9/11?  Our dear friend, Saudi Arabia, to whom we give billions of US tax money for their weapons of terrorism – W. Bush, Obama, Trump…one thing these presidents all have in common is that. Many self-identified liberals and progressives opposed the invasion of Iraq during the W. Bush years, but then supported the US war on the Middle East during the Obama years.

According to well-respected human rights institutions such as Amnesty International, Reprieve, and Human Rights Watch, US military violence in the Middle East has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, displaced millions, and under Obama, sneak drone murders of civilians in several countries has increased about tenfold compared to W., resulting in thousands of civilians being murdered, and Trump continues the dronings.  I use the word “murders” advisedly – bombing people with drones operated across the world, and then bombing the first-responders who come to render aid to the victims, is officially a crime according to international courts of justice, as well to anyone with the least exacting of moral compasses.

US presidents have much decision-making power, but it takes the many to empower their decisions. So many ways to enable US military terrorism.  Even though US wars and other military actions have been unjust and often illegal according to international standards, join the military or the National Guard, encourage young people to do so, and thank military members for their service (to Commanders-in-Chief with track records of violently sociopathic policy decisions).

Repeat the malarkey that the US military defends our freedoms (no, we do not have the freedom to kill people in other countries.  Are they invading us? No, we are invading them.  Are they threatening our Bill of Rights? No, we are doing that to ourselves, with, for example, the “Patriot” Acts, NSA, and Border Patrol allowed to do whatever they want to whomever they want, whenever). Repeat the malarkey that US military are all heroes.  Keep silent when others mouth the malarkey.  Never speak up about the blatant immorality of US declared and undeclared wars and the drone murders. Never join or support a peace group. Call violence “patriotic” and call failure to support mass murder “unpatriotic,” call those who try to protect their communities against US military violence “insurgents” like that’s a bad thing (hey, remember 1776 – who were the insurgents then?).  And when you hear others speak this way, be sure to remain silent. Never write a letter to the editor against US military decisions, never contact your electeds to protest US military actions.

Because fact is, those who can decide to initiate violent militaristic activities, would be utterly helpless to enact them, if it weren’t for all the myriad enablers making all those atrocities possible.

Special acknowledgement to all who remain silent about all that- the ongoing hellish legacy of 9/11 would be impossible without you. So, about three thousand people killed on 9/11/01, and since then, via military actions, the US has killed or otherwise adversely impacted well over a million people, who had, incidentally, nothing to do with 9/11.

To those who did have something to do with 9/11, we continue to give heaps of our tax money and weapons.  Can we stop yet?  Can we stop the hellish legacy of 9/11?   A reminder – in sharp contrast to the Democratic Party, as well as to the Republican Party, the Green Party accepts no corporate (think arms and drone manufacturers) funding, and the official political platform of the Green Party clearly supports peace.  Thou shalt not kill.  Is this really such a hard directive to follow? What will you do?

Barbara Kidney HVGP Co-Chair

Reprinted from Hudson Valley Green Party Blog, with permission of author.

Barbara Kidney, Ph.D., a counseling psychologist in private practice, resides in the Hudson Valley of NYS and does what she can to promote the welfare of Earth and Earthlings. She is a member of American Psychological Association’s Division 48, the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, and a founding member of Hudson Valley Green Party and of the Drone Alert – Hudson Valley project 2012 – 2015.

 

Unjustifiable wars and moral imperatives: Another veteran speaks out

Ross Caputi in Iraq.

by Michael J. Corgan

I am writing in response to the recent post on anti-war veteran activist, Ross Caputi.  I don’t consider myself a pacifist since I believe there will always be those who choose to resort to war for little or no good reason and others of us must deal with them.

However, sometimes we  ourselves are the ones who resort to war for little or no good reason; those of us who were in the military as a profession have a particular moral responsibility to speak out.

Like my longtime colleague Andy Bacevich, I am a service academy graduate and served several tours in wars whose justification was uncertain at best. Like him, I am most concerned about our propensity to get into wars for which there was no justification: Mexico in 1846, Spain in 1898,  Woodrow Wilson’s  Latin American invasions, Granada and Panama in 1982, Iraq in 2003, to name just the clearest cases.

At the Naval War College in the late 1970s we began the study of Thucydides and Clausewitz to try to determine why we, a supposed 1st-rate military power lost  to North Vietnam, a supposed 4th-rate military power.

From Thucydides one learns how easily the arrogance of power leads to foolish and disastrous military adventures in which many are killed for no worthy aim. From Clausewitz a more important lesson: know when to quit when you are not going to ‘win.’

What prompts my concern now is our war in Afghanistan, the longest war in our history.  According to New York Times interviews with commanders there,  we are farther from ‘winning’ than ever.

According to international law, we probably had justification for going to war after the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11; that group operated with either the acquiescence of the Taliban or the inability of the Taliban to prevent  use of their country as an operations base for the attackers. However, after 14 years, what is our justification for continuing a war that kills civilians and is no closer to being concluded than it ever was?

Five hundred years ago,  Mongols couldn’t control the land. Two hundred years ago,  the British began their futile attempt to control it. Then, in the last century, the Russians also failed. All that resulted was a lot of people dead.

Now, in our arrogance, we think we can create a stable country. How can we be effective nation builders when we are foreigners, don’t speak any of the languages, and are infidels. It  isn’t working. Meanwhile people who want no part of either side are dying. There needs to be a solution to problems in that unhappy land but we and our war aren’t providing it even with all our incredible precision weapons and dropping of the largest conventional bomb ever.

The only right thing to do is to extract ourselves and admit the final answer, if there is one, will be attained by those who live there. The moral imperative is that we must go home.

Michael J, Corgan is Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston University.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, Part 3

“September 11, 1973″ by Carlos Latuff; depicts the U.S.-backed attack on democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.”

by Stefan Schindler

Disturbing facts from American history, continued:

11 – The first 9/11 occurred on September 11th, 1973, when Nixon and Kissinger overthrew the elected government in Chile, the longest running democracy in South America, beginning’s America’s subsequent support of the 16-year Pinochet dictatorship and slaughter of liberal activists.

12 – The Carter administration launched a terror campaign against the newly elected social democratic government of Afghanistan in 1979, leading to the Russian counter-intervention in 1980, which led to Reagan’s eight-year creation, arming and financing of Al Queda to fight “the godless communists” occupying Afghan territory and preventing the installation of American pipelines for the transport of Iraqi oil.

13 – In the first five years of his administration, Ronald Reagan transformed America from the largest creditor nation in the world to the largest debtor nation in the world.

14 – Ronald Reagan conducted an eight-year terror campaign against the social democratic government of Nicaragua, which had finally overthrown 40 years of American supported dictatorship.

15 – The Bush-Cheney wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were an updated repeat of the lies that led to America’s Indochina Holocaust (euphemistically called The Vietnam War to obliterate memory of U.S. devastation of Laos and Cambodia).

16 – The Bush-Cheney Administration’s continuation of Reagan’s attempt to unravel Roosevelt’s New Deal for the American people, with its regulatory safeguards, led directly to the all too predictable economic meltdown of 2008: the largest stock market crash since 1929, from which millions of Americans, and many people around the globe, are still suffering.

17 – The single greatest factor leading to the outbreak of World War Two was the U.S. stock market crash of 1929.  That crash had ripple effects around the globe, including the implosion of Germany’s already impoverished economy.  In desperation, the German people elected a charismatic lunatic named Hitler.

18 – America’s neutrality during the so-called Spanish Civil War (actually a coup d’état) from1936 to1939 – the only place in Europe where ordinary citizens were actively fighting the rise of fascism – led to the overthrow of Spanish democracy by a cabal of Hitler-supported bankers, bishops and generals, and persuaded Hitler that he could continue Nazi expansion into other parts of Europe, including Czechoslovakia and Poland.

19 – American banks and corporations (including Ford and General Motors) helped Hitler build his war machine, and sanctioned Hitler’s persecution of German socialists (hoping that Hitler would invade Russia and put an end to the Soviet experiment in communism).

20 – Japan was begging to surrender in late 1945, asking only that their emperor, Hirohito, be left in place as the nation’s nominal leader.  Truman refused to accept Japanese surrender because of that single condition.  No American troop invasion of Japan was necessary to end the war.  Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki primarily as a warning to the Soviets.  After Japan’s surrender, Hirohito was allowed to maintain his nominal political title.

21 – During World War Two, the American air force was ordered not to bomb Nazi war-making factories owned by Ford and General Motors.  After the war, the CEOs of Ford and General Motors were awarded millions of taxpayer dollars in compensation for “collateral damage,” instead of being tried and convicted for treason.

Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha’i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey Foundation, Dr. Schindler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, worked one summer in a nature preserve, lived in a Zen temple for a year, did the pilot’s voice in a claymation video of St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, acted in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and performed as a musical poet in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City.  He also wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon.  He is now semi-retired and living in Salem, Massachusetts.