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WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY
OR UNCLE SAM?
The answer
at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's
power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow
annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would
sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags
the tail.Fifty
years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs
out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the
heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg
in the East Village.Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii
died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher
Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered
them up.CounterPunch
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Now!
As rising U.S. and NATO casualty counts
attest, the war in Afghanistan is heating up. It is doing so
on Afghan time, which is to say slowly. When you have all the
time in the world, why hurry?
An April 7, 2006 study by the
London-based Senlis Council, "Insurgency in the Provinces
of Helmand, Kandahar and Nangahar," paints a somewhat alarming
picture. I do not know who or what the Senlis Council represents,
or what axes it may grind. The style of the report suggests English
is not the first language of those who wrote it. But facts are
still facts, and its report tracks with what I've seen elsewhere.
The study states,
The Insurgency Assessment Report
collates notes, evidence and facts gathered during a field visit
of the three provincesduring the months of February/March 2006.
The visit was conducted by
an independent field team, which met with civil, military and
religious leaders in each of the provinces but also gained access
to farming communities and other grassroots actors, with whom
interviews and group meetings were conducted.
Speaking of all three provinces,
the study says in its Executive Summary,
government control over the
Pashto Belt, even at a limited level, is rapidly diminishing,
with political volatility now reaching urban areas.
Volatility indicators
such as the free movement of insurgent groups in daylight and
in the main cities reveal that increasingly large areas
of the South are falling under the influence of non-state actors.
At the core of this failure
by the U.S., NATO and the Afghan government is a common and often
fatal military phenomenon: conflicting objectives. On the one
hand, the U.S. and its allies want to defeat the Taliban and
other "terrorists." But at the same time, they also
want to stop opium production. If the Senlis Council's analysis
is accurate, attempts to pursue the second objective are pushing
us away from attaining the first.
Looking at Helmand province,
the report says,
In eliminating the sole survival
strategy of many of the farming families, eradication in Helmand
is fueling the insurgency. Anti government forces are winning
over the dilapidated farmers by offering economic assistance
including the cancellation of debts and providing military protection
from eradication.
The Coalition forces mandate
covers counter insurgency and support to counter narcotics activities.
It is being widely reported that eradication activities are being
supervised by the US and British military
Eradication is blunting counter
insurgency efforts by pushing the local population toward the
extremists
The local population has now
come to identify international troops with eradication activities
rather than with reconstruction efforts.
The situation in the other
two provinces is similar. Speaking of Kandahar province, the
report states,
The majority of the Kandahar
population are farmers living in rural areas. The farming communities
of Kandahar are very actively involved in the cultivation and
production of opium. The soil, weather patterns and limited water
supply make opium one of the few viable crops in the region,
and Kandahar farmers admitted that (they) would rather die than
forgo their families' only means of survival...
According to many farmers,
the US and Canadian alternative livelihoods plans are farcical...
Determining strategic objectives,
and ensuring that those objectives are not contradictory, is
the job of the most senior level of command, in this case the
White House. By demanding that U.S. and allied troops pursue
two conflicting objectives simultaneously, the Bush administration
has created a no-win situation. Efforts to defeat the Taliban
only work if they can gain the support of the rural population,
but poppy eradication pushes the rural population toward the
Taliban and its allies. (One could add a third incompatible objective,
promoting women's rights in a conservative Islamic culture.)
President George W. Bush likes
to say, "I'm the decider; I decide." The role of being
the "decider" includes making sure that decisions are
logically consistent. Mr. Bush is, from that perspective, a failed
"decider" in Afghanistan. He failed similarly in deciding
to invade Iraq as part of a global war against "terrorism,"
when the destruction of the Iraqi state proved, predictably,
to work in favor of the "terrorists." He is failing
yet again in picking quarrels with Russia and China when we need
an all-states alliance against anti-state forces.
President Harry S. Truman said,
"The buck stops here," in the Oval Office. When it
comes to deciding on strategic objectives, President George W.
Bush has torn the buck into confetti and tossed it to the winds
of chance.
William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion,
is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the
Free Congress Foundation.
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