Category Archives: Middle East

UPDATED: The Media-Military-Industrial-Complex & The Afghan Massacre

Media, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, War

The military is a “menacing and hyper-masculine,” “feral fighting force,” and so it should remain. “Mold the military into a friendly purveyor of soft power that fits with a political, social-engineering agenda—nation building—and you are guaranteed that cynical, unethical master manipulators will continue to use and abuse it” (“Grunts, Get In Touch With Your Inner-Muslim”). Those power-hungry members of the media-military-industrial-complex were out in full force today justifying the continued deployment of American men in Afghanistan, even though these men are losing their minds.

Ryan Crocker, America’s ambassador to Afghanistan, appeared on the Voice of the Empire (FoxNews) to make the rickety case—you’ve heard these simplistic, deeply stupid arguments many times before—that the intentional, methodical massacre of at least 16 civilians, 9 of them children, by a United States Army sergeant, should in no way alter the magic mission underway in that region.

Residents of three villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province described a terrifying string of attacks in which the soldier, who had walked more than a mile from his base, tried door after door, eventually breaking in to kill within three separate houses. The man gathered 11 bodies, including those of 4 girls younger than 6, and set fire to them, villagers said. [New York Times]

Yes, this solider is individually responsible for his horrific acts. Above all, however, blame lies with the people who keep him and his fellow combatants locked in that country—these poor sods cannot desert this immoral occupation (or refuse to carry out nightly raids on private homes) for fear of being court-martialed, now can they?

Blame the King’s comitatus as well for penning these men like animals in that blighted and benighted country—blame “the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals” (“Our Overlords Who Art in D.C.”).

And don’t forget “America’s neoconservative pundettes. Never underestimate the contribution neoconservative women in the scribbling and broadcasting professions have made to sexing up war. When babes with bursting décolletages quake and quiver for action, their fans do more than just look, they listen” (“To Pee Or Not To Pee is Not the Question”).

UPDATE: An RT commentator (who else?) pointed out that a war such as the one waged in Afghanistan gives rise to atrocities. This is because soldiers have no clear enemy or mission. The enemy is everywhere. The enemy is the Afghan people who’ve fought against invaders forever; who are waging a war of resistance against an occupier. This enemy strikes at our men and melts back into the landscape. Men lose their brothers, and they lose it. Since the enemy is ephemeral, soldiers, some of whom are on their fourth or fifth tour, lash out indiscriminately.

An impressive man, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen—he commands Western troops in Afghanistan—took the liberty of speaking on behalf of the Afghan people today, on Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room. The mission is not in peril, promised a resolute Allen. The 90,000 or so US troops currently in Afghanistan are going nowhere (I’m sure they’ll be overjoyed to hear this).

Allen also assured his listeners that the massacre over the week-end was the act of a lone wolf. I’m sure that the scores of victims and their families are comforted by such statistical assurances.

This is the second time I’ve heard Allen refer to the Afghans as “The noble Afghan people.” What’s up with that? Is he trying to sound like “Lawrence of Arabia”?

UPDATED: ‘Three Blind (NEOCONSERVATIVE) Mice’

Classical Liberalism, John McCain, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, War

“They have been called everything from the three amigos, the three blind mice and the ‘axis of error’,” RT editorializes. They are “Senators John McCain, Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham,” who “are just about as close as anyone in the US Senate. They travel together, make joint media appearances and seem to sing the same song in their appeals to the American people. That song often revolves around the need for more war.”

And they’re gunning for Iran and Syria.

The origin of the words to the Three blind mice rhyme are based in English history. The ‘three blind mice’ were three noblemen who adhered to the Protestant faith who were convicted of plotting against the Queen – she did not have them dismembered and blinded as inferred in Three blind mice – but she did have them burnt at the stake!(Here)

The moniker doesn’t work for McMussolini and the other two for many reasons, one of which is that the modern-day ignoble trio will come to no harm for their treason.

UPDATE (March the Eighth): How opportune. In his New American column, Jack Kerwick, Ph.D., has a fabulous primer on the strongmen of neoconservative thinking. Pay attention, in particular, to Jack’s meticulous habit of mind in tracing the sin of abstraction in the thinking examined, whereby “reason and morality are dislodged from the flow of history.”

Kerwick concludes:

“… For neoconservatives, reason consists of universal, abstract moral principles in accordance with which societies everywhere must be organized. For conservatives, in glaring contrast, reason and morality are embodied in culturally and historically-specific traditions.”

READ “An Honest Assessment of Neoconservatism.”

UPDATED: Grunts, Get In Touch With Your Inner-Muslim (Annals of Pillage In Afghanistan)

Feminism, Foreign Policy, Gender, Islam, Jihad, Middle East, Military, Multiculturalism

The following is an excerpt from my new column, “Grunts, Get In Touch With Your Inner-Muslim,” in which I “hit both sides of aisle for reactions to Quran-burning incident”:

“Just the other day, America was debating whether it was OK for our soldiers to pee on people they had killed in Afghanistan. There was no quarrel over whether it was OK to kill the peed-upon, in the first place.

Building on the skewed, To-Pee-Or-Not-To-Pee diversion, the question du jour is whether the same soldiers should say sorry for incinerating Qurans on a bonfire in the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.

Built by Kellogg Brown & Root, which was ‘until recently a subsidiary of Halliburton,’ the Bagram Base ‘is located on a sere plain beneath snowcapped spurs of the Hindu Kush,’ writes author Cullen Murphy in ‘Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome.’

‘In the Past, Bagram has yielded glassware and bronzes from as far away as imperial Rome.’ But,

Bagram today is an outpost of American, not Hellenic, civilization. … Bagram Air Base supports a population of more than 5000. The base perimeter, nine miles around, is ringed not with walls of stone or mud but with chain-link fencing and concertina wire and arrays of bright lights and electronic sensors.

With its rows of ‘prefabricated dwellings,’ stacked ‘shipping containers’ (‘giant bladders of water and fuel’), ‘American-style stores’ and hospitals; with, precincts packed with hundreds of contractors who cater to the troops, with checkpoints, multi-denominational chapels, which double-up as Vegas-style, quickie naturalization centers for Afghan recruits—Bagram embodies ‘imperial overstretch’: “The idea that one’s security needs, military obligations, and globalist desires increasingly outstrip resources available to satisfy them.’ (‘Are We Rome,’ p. 71.)

The dilemma over an apology is only the froth on the top. It is the elephantine character of the American entanglement in Afghanistan that underpins the fury. …”

The complete column is“Grunts, Get In Touch With Your Inner-Muslim.”

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UPDATED (March 5): Annals of pillage in Afghanistan, via RT, which is honest about Russia’s role in the destruction.

UPDATE II: ‘Absolute Invulnerability for America Means Absolute Vulnerability For Others’

Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Middle East, Propaganda, Republicans, Russia, Terrorism

Truth is truth no matter who propounds it (and why, pray tell, am I forced to repeat this no-brainer year-in and year-out?). The next statement is immutably true—even profound—although Americans will first look at the man who uttered it, and will denounce his wise words, given that he is not a member of the DC duopoly and the comitatus that props these Demopublicans up (i.e., the “the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals”).

Via Eurasia Review:

“’The Americans are obsessed with the idea of ensuring their absolute invulnerability – a thing, I would point out, that is utopian and achievable neither from a technological nor a geopolitical standpoint.
And herein lies the problem. Absolute invulnerability for one means absolute vulnerability for all the others. It is impossible to agree with this perspective.’
Addressing the unrest in the Arab world, Putin said Russia would not permit a ‘Libyan scenario’ to take place in Syria, where he said Moscow wanted to see an immediate halt in violence and a national dialogue to resolve the crisis.
He defended the decision by Russia and China to veto a resolution earlier this month pushed by Washington and its European and Arab allies that Moscow said would have opened the door to foreign military intervention in Syria.
Russia in particular faced blistering criticism that ‘bordered on hysterical’ from Western countries for its decision, Putin said, adding that Moscow strongly hoped the United States and others would not resort to force in Syria without UN approval.
Referring more widely to the Arab Spring, Putin said that efforts backed by the United States and the West to bring about ‘democracy with the help of violent methods’ were unpredictable and often led to precisely the opposite result.

UPDATE I (Feb. 28): Finally, China stands up to the ludicrous Hildebeest:

“The United States’ motive in parading as a ‘protector’ of the Arab peoples is not difficult to imagine,” it said in a commentary. “The problem is, what moral basis does it have for this patronising and egotistical super-arrogance and self-confidence?”
“Even now, violence continues unabated in Iraq and ordinary people enjoy no security. This alone is enough for us to draw a huge question mark over the sincerity and efficacy of US policy,” it added.

UPDATE II (March 4): “Putin [has] said the main problem is that the United States wants ‘to acquire complete invulnerability’ through missile defense. He also mentioned Washington’s refusal to provide written guarantees that the system will never be aimed at Russian territory.” [RT]