How's the Surge Going?

Dial 1-800-NOT-WELL!

As we enter the tenth year of our Afghanistan War/Occupation/Nation-Build, taking stock is as timely as it is inevitable. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published two maps of Afghanistan depicting the progress of NATO's counter-insurgency in Afghanistan.


The contrast was striking!

These maps are used by U.N. and NGO personnel to measure the dangers of traveling and operating in Afghanistan's districts. Nic Lee, director of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office was quoted:

The country as a whole is dramatically worse off than a year ago, both in terms of the insurgency's geographical spread and its rate of attacks .... Vast amounts of the country remain insecure for the unarmed civilians, and more and more areas are becoming inaccessible.

Happy New Year.

Hope, From Now On, Will Look Like This

Hope will only come now when we physically defy the violence of the state.

Chris Hedges gave this speech to the assemblage of Anti-war veterans and activists preparing to be arrested for civil disobedience at the White House gates on Thursday, December 16. Hedges was among the 130+ who were arrested:

Hope, from now on, will look like this.

Hope will not come in trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It will not be realized by chanting packaged campaign slogans or attempting to influence the democratic party. It will not come through our bankrupt liberal institutions-- from the press, to the withered stump that is the labor movement.

Hope will only come now when we physically defy the violence of the state. All who resist, all who are here today, keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become an enemy of hope. They become, in their passivity, agents of injustice.

Richard Holbrooke

I always hearted Richard Holbrooke and mourned his untimely death. Greatly. Even before I read Christiane Amanpour's
Eulogy for Holbrooke. The latter is actually more an eulogy for the times in which Holbrooke contended in behalf of his Nation's interests.

My emphasis added:

What can you say about a problem like Richard Holbrooke? You either loved him or hated him or both. Myself, I loved him. Most of the press did. There is no embarrassment in this. He took us seriously and we took him seriously. We knew how much he valued the platform that we gave to him, but we were not fools and he was not a knave: He plainly wanted the platform just as much, or most of all, not for himself but for his mission. Holbrooke was the rare diplomat who understood the need to make his case publicly—that the press was not always an adversary, but was sometimes an effective method for advancing America’s goals. This was a delicate negotiation—who was the user and who the used, and why; but there were times when America’s goals seemed so obviously right that our professional relationship with Holbrooke, or at least my own, was nothing to trouble our journalistic conscience. He was a very clever man, but in his work he also never lost sight of the moral dimension. He was not a moralist, not by a long shot; but he was a moral man, and he was genuinely committed to using American persuasion and power to lessen the cruelty in the world.

Julian Assange Is Arrested on Another Day in Infamy

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was today refused bail and remanded in custody until 14 December over claims he committed sex offenses in Sweden.

Assange writes today in the The Australian. My excerpts & emphasis:

In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia , was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain ‘s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be “taken out” by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be “hunted down like Osama bin Laden”, a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a “transnational threat” and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

..... Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, ... politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: “You’ll risk lives! National security! You’ll endanger troops!” Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes.

It can’t be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US , with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan . NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting....

.... In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said

“only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”. The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

This is the second time I have posted on Julian Assange in these pages. The first was back on 26 July when I nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not sure I have much to add at this time, except to point out the irony, not to mention the mindless hypocrisy of the self-righteous western media and political leaders when they moralize over Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo's incarceration. He is serving 11 years in China for "inciting subversion of state power".

News Item: More Fraggin' in Afghanistan Goin' On

Afghan police officer kills 6 NATO service members.

ABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan border police officer opened fire on NATO troops during a training mission in the east of the country Monday, killing six NATO service members before he was shot dead, NATO and Afghan officials said.

The shooting — the highest toll for NATO forces since nine Americans died in a Sept. 21 helicopter crash — was the latest in a series of shootouts in which Afghan security forces have turned on their NATO partners.

NATO declined to identify the nationalities of the victims. The majority of forces in Nangarhar are American.

NATO is investigating an incident in which two U.S. Marines were killed earlier this month in southern Helmand province, allegedly at the hands of an Afghan army soldier.

Six NATO Soldiers Killed by Man in Afghan Border Police Uniform

....so the headline reads. Have you noticed how American soldiers killed in Afghanistan are now being described as 'NATO Soldiers'? Softens the blow, doesn't it? That's how propaganda works.

People Keep Trying Give Obama Some Spine....

Read David Cay Johnston's Advice to Barack Obama: Call their Bluff, Mr. President.

Stop the War Coalition

Thousands of protesters took to the streets to march against the war in Afghanistan today as Nato leaders discussed bringing an end to the nine-year conflict.

Demonstrators were led by military families as they carried anti-war placards and banners against cuts to government spending.

As the march moved from Hyde Park, central London, protesters chanted: 'When they say warfare, we say welfare'. The coalition government has stated that Britain's combat role in Afghanistan will end by 2015.

Guardsman Christopher Davies, who was killed on Wednesday in Helmand, was the 100th British member of the armed forces to die this year after being deployed to Afghanistan.

Many of the protesters said the Government's commitment to end Britain's combat role over the next four years was not soon enough.

Clara Torres, 62, said: 'That's far too long for them to be there. They shouldn't be there in the first place.

Ms Torres, a retired nurse from Richmond, Surrey, who marched with her daughter and baby granddaughter, said: 'We don't own them, Afghanistan is nothing to do with us.

'We should leave now.'

Protestors take part in the Afghanistan: Time to Go demonstration, organised by Stop the War

The demonstration came to a halt in front of the fashionable Cookbook Cafe, on Park Lane.

Diners inside the expensive restaurant looked unsettled as they continued with their lunch.

At Trafalgar Square the rally was addressed by a series of speakers.

Seamus Milne, a commentator for the Guardian, said: 'In Lisbon today the Nato leaders will try to make it appear that they are bringing an end to this war, a war that is now in its 10th year

'This talk of an exit strategy is clearly a sham.'

He continued: 'They're stating that their aim is to withdraw combat troops by 2015.

John Hilary, the executive director of War on Want said: 'We have a message for David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat allies.

'Do not dare to tell us that there is no money for public services and public sector workers.

'We want the £11bn that is being spent on the war in Afghanistan to go on things we need in this country.

'Bring home the troops and bring justice to the people of Afghanistan.'