Let’s make it really simple so everyone can understand what a monkey in the middle looks like. The United States flies over Pashtun territory, bombing indiscriminately, so they can release headlines through their corporate media to justify more spending — because the next fiscal year is about closing in on Iran and you can’t do that without an Eastern Front. That’s just War for Dummies.

The job of the European contingent is to wander around on the ground looking for people pissed off enough to think they look like the arseholes in the jets. It’s not that they’re the only people that don’t know where the landmines are. The Euro Americans planted those when they came to make the place a showdown town for the “War” against the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, it’s been a bit too undeniable that most of the Coalition’s casualties have been innocent, but most importantly — harmless, civilians. But we’re going to take care of that. We’ve just shipped in a fresh supply of ostensibly militant poop shooters in on the planes arriving to pick up heroin. From Bosnia.

And just for laughs, we’re going to blame it on the Iranians.

Put ‘em on the defensive. That’s how it all starts.

No idea what’s taking ‘em so long. They should surely be way more pissed off by now than they are. Must be they just can’t hear the heckling. Maybe they need to brush up on their English.

Or we need to work on our Farsi. The problem is, you can’t really get expat Royalists to sign on to the Project for Converting Persia to Rubble. For some reason. We’re having a tough time getting them excited about climbing on board for that one.

I guess they think Iraq doesn’t look so good. And Iran is going to have to look 10 tens more trashed, since we’ve run out of boots and all that’s left is . . . .

Well. Let’s just say there probably aren’t going to be any survivors for the next 250 million years.

But winnable? You bet. Cause Einstein was Our Guy.

All that counts is who’s the last man standing. If you’re the guy to draw the last breath, you win!

We gotta speed things up a bit though, the market’s melting out from under us.

OPEN QUOTE

The collapse of the market in US subprime mortgages has claimed another European victim. On Friday it was announced that SachsenLB, a bank owned by the German state of Saxony, had to be bailed out to the tune of 17.3 billion euros ($23.3 billion)

END OF QUOTE but.

Don’t worry. We’ve got a Plan B, of course we do :

OPEN QUOTE

Details emerge of vast scope of US domestic spying law

END OF QUOTE Global Police State Here We Come

More markets for high tech gazeeches to scare the shit out of one and all.

And US Army Suicides are at a 26 year high. Collateral Damage. What are ya gonna do? Stuff happens.

Luckily we have OPEN QUOTE

more than 630 war contracting companies working in Iraq for the United States . . . [c]omposed of some 180,000 individual personnel drawn from more than 100 countries . . .

END OF QUOTE

No one needs to know what that casualty rate is.

microdot The United States flies over Pashtun territory, bombing indiscriminately, so they can release headlines through their corporate media to justify more spending

But this is drivel. You must know that. This statement by you contains no usable insight. It only shows that you are a bad propagandist talking to your readers as if they were very stupid.

You did read it though, Izzy, so maybe he has a point.

The entire notion that Afghanistan is winnable betrays the absolute lunacy of the thinking going on here. It’s like talking about the police winning against crime. It’s not a situation you win or lose, it’s a situation you manage. It doesn’t have an end point. It doesn’t have a victory. It’s not a battle. We literally cannot win because there’s nothing to win. The question is, is it worth it for us to spend the foreseeable future managing that shithole. My answer? Timur Leng, the Soviets, the Persians, the Mongols, and the Greeks all tried and eventually concluded that it was a giant fucking waste of time and they gave it up. I see no reason why it should be worth it now, for us, so fuck it.

Good point Snark.

Snarko, you are basically correct in your assessment. Just keep in mind that we are nearing the home stretch as far as the modernization of all non-African countries are concerned. There are local people in Afghanistan who want to modernize the country’s institutions. So the question is to what extent should we help these people against the reactionary forces of people who actually believe this religious hocus pocus.

You may have a point that we are better off just staying out. Our question however, is to what extent do we help the righteous in third world countries during this final century of political history that is coming up.

Sorry Hitla, thought I was just reminding everybody.

OPEN QUOTE

Civilian casualties inflicted by US air strikes have been openly blamed by a British officer for the level of attacks on their forces in Helmand. An unnamed “senior British commander” told the New York Times last week that he had asked the US military to withdraw its small special forces’ units operating in the province. The indiscriminate bombing missions they call in when attacked are causing large numbers of innocent deaths. British bases and patrols bear the brunt of Afghan reprisals.

Independent researcher Michael Shaikh told the British Observer on Sunday that some 348 civilians have been killed in Helmand by US and NATO operations in the first six months of 2007. Shaikh described it as a “very bloody period” and accused the occupation troops of “indiscriminate and disproportionate” use of force.

Independent researcher Michael Shaikh ?

OPEN QUOTE

Michael is the Asia Program’s Advocacy and Research Analyst based in New York. Michael re-joined Crisis Group in August 2007 after returning from Afghanistan and Pakistan where he worked first as an Analyst for Crisis Group and then as the Afghanistan Researcher for Human Rights Watch. Before moving to South Asia in 2004, Michael worked and studied in China, Japan and Jordan. He holds an MA in International Policy Studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a BA in Political Science and Asian History from Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

ABOUT CRISIS GROUP

The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation, with some 130 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict.

Crisis Group’s approach is grounded in field research. Teams of political analysts are located within or close by countries at risk of outbreak, escalation or recurrence of violent conflict. Based on information and assessments from the field, it produces analytical reports containing practical recommendations targeted at key international decision-takers. Crisis Group also publishes CrisisWatch, a twelve-page monthly bulletin, providing a succinct regular update on the state of play in all the most significant situations of conflict or potential conflict around the world.

Crisis Group’s reports and briefing papers are distributed widely by email and printed copy to officials in foreign ministries and international organisations and made available simultaneously on the website, www.crisisgroup.org. Crisis Group works closely with governments and those who influence them, including the media, to highlight its crisis analyses and to generate support for its policy prescriptions.

The Crisis Group Board – which includes prominent figures from the fields of politics, diplomacy, business and the media – is directly involved in helping to bring Crisis Group reports and recommendations to the attention of senior policy-makers around the world. Crisis Group is co-chaired by the former European Commissioner for External Relations Christopher Patten, and former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering. Its President and Chief Executive since January 2000 has been former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans.

Crisis Group’s international headquarters are in Brussels, with advocacy offices in Washington DC (where it is based as a legal entity), New York, London and Moscow. The organisation currently operates twelve regional offices (in Amman, Bishkek, Bogotá, Cairo, Dakar, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jakarta, Nairobi, Pristina, Seoul and Tbilisi) and has local field representation in sixteen additional locations (Abuja, Baku, Beirut, Belgrade, Colombo, Damascus, Dili, Dushanbe, Jerusalem, Kabul, Kampala, Kathmandu, Kinshasa, Port-au-Prince, Pretoria and Yerevan). Crisis Group currently covers nearly 60 areas of actual or potential conflict across four continents. In Africa, this includes Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Western Sahara and Zimbabwe; in Asia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar/Burma, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Phillipines, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; in Europe, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Georgia, Kosovo and Serbia; in the Middle East, the whole region from North Africa to Iran; and in Latin America, Colombia, the rest of the Andean region and Haiti.

Crisis Group raises funds from governments, charitable foundations, companies and individual donors. In 2006, 40 per cent of Crisis Group’s operating income came from 22 different governments, 32 per cent came from 15 philanthropic foundations, and a further 28 per cent came from a variety of family foundations, corporate donors, individuals and others. For a full list of donors please click here. A breakdown of our 2006 expenditures by region and activity is shown here:

LOL. I LOVE that Pie.

So the question is to what extent should we help these people against the reactionary forces of people who actually believe this religious hocus pocus.

You wanna help people fight reactionary fundamentalism? Build schools.

OMG, did you guys know that the Padilla “jury” appeared in court with one row of jurors dressed in red, one in white, and one in blue ?

speaking of reactionary fundamentalism.

Shit, I didn’t realize he was married either. PCR suggests that the only reason the Jury convicted Padilla is they couldn’t understand why anyone would want to learn Arabic if they weren’t a terrorist.

I’d have to agree, that’s the best explanation for the conviction I’ve heard so far.

High-Level Support Ebbs for Surge

OPEN QUOTE

Washington’s policy makers are growing dissatisfied with the George W. Bush administration’s troop surge in Iraq and a majority agrees that the world is becoming more dangerous for the United States, according to a poll released Monday.

The nonpartisan poll, called The Terrorism Index and released by the Centre for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine, surveys more than a hundred foreign policy experts, including former secretaries of state, top commanders in the U.S. military, senior intelligence professionals and academics, to assess the effectiveness of how the United States is fighting the “war on terror”.

In this year’s results, 91 percent of participants said the world is becoming more dangerous for the United States, while only 2 percent said it was safer and 84 percent of poll participants disagreed that the U.S. is winning the war on terror.

The ongoing war in Iraq appeared to be the cause of the experts’ pessimism, with 92 percent of them saying the war was negatively affecting U.S. national security, up 5 percent from a year ago.

Opposition to the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq was most noticeable in the 53 percent of respondents who now say that the surge of about 165,000 troops is having a negative impact, up 22 percent from six months ago.

Despite claims from Bush administration officials and presidential candidates that a withdrawal from Iraq will lead to further terrorist attacks in the United States, 88 percent of experts polled agreed that a troop withdrawal from Iraq would have no correlation or was unlikely to lead to future terrorist attacks within the U.S.

More than half of the experts surveyed believe that the current U.S. policy of providing aid to Pakistan — which has dramatically increased since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan — is having a negative impact on national security.

The question is, is it worth it for us to spend the foreseeable future managing that shithole. My answer? Timur Leng, the Soviets, the Persians, the Mongols, and the Greeks all tried and eventually concluded that it was a giant fucking waste of time and they gave it up. I see no reason why it should be worth it now, for us, so fuck it.

Shithole? Us managing a shithole?

Hmmm, I don’t much like your comment here and let me explain why. If my interpretation is incorrect, do feel free to set me straight.

So here is why your analysis rubs me the wrong way. It projects Afghanistan as a sort of eternal shithole that various different foreign configurations, for many thousands of years, have tried to ‘manage.’ This of course is a gross over-generalization that perhaps was committed owing to lack of proper reflexion on the issue (maybe you were rushed at work or something)?

The fact of the matter is that Afghanistan has given much to the world, and is not easily reducible to a ‘shithole.’ The elders in our area of India can recount to you many a story of Pathan (or Pashtun) wonder that expresses a rich complexity of human affirmation. Anyone out there like Buddhism? Then recognize that it was from the Afghan heartland that these teachings would spread out from South Asia and into the East. The confluence of histories and cultures that have been expressed through Afghan poetry and art offer much hope for the possibility of human co-existence, believe it or not. There are also a fair share of brutal injustices, both past and present, but these do not define the Afghans absolutely.

I would counter that it is not so much that ‘we’ are trying to manage a ‘shithole.’ Much like the Soviets and Americans in the 80s, and the British before then, the Western coalition is seeking to crush the Afghan people in order to project imperial power in Central Asia (against the SCO block for example). The gross fundamentalism that makes itself known in Afghanistan is a direct outcome of earlier imperial endeavours. The insecurity of livelihood in Afghanistan has much to do with the global power dynamics that have played out within its geography. Thus, it is not so much that we are external agents seeking to intervene in a shithole. We are in fact constituting forces in the ongoing historical processes that lay waste to entire geographies, such as happened in Afghanistan in the 80s, and has now happened in Iraq, Lebanon, and Somalia.

I don’t think that the Soviets, British, Americans, etc, have left or will leave because they got sick and tired of trying to manage a barbaric ‘shithole.’ They got beaten plain and simple. There is a fierce independence amongst the Pathan tribes (developed perhaps out of historical necessity) that should preclude any thought of managing anything. The media likes to throw everything on the Taliban, who no doubt constitute a central organizing force in the insurgency – but there is also a very strong element of sovereign minded farmers who want to expel the foreigners – who, one would imagine, they do not see as would be ‘managers’ but rather as 2000 pound bomb dropping cowardly empire builders.

So the question is not whether it is worth it for ‘us’ to manage that shithole.

The question that should be posed is in fact how the language of ‘us’ ‘intervening’ in ‘localized’ shitholes (or in UN speak ‘conflict zones’) serves to obscure the concrete material objectives (global capital accumulation, oilflows, geopolitical hegemony in the context of challenges to Western domination, etc) that have both figured into the historical basis of the ‘conflict zone’ as well as into any solution that ‘we’ pose to the conflict.

We need to get the fuck out and stay the fuck out. And then lets talk about historical redress and reparations. I think the Afghans are still waiting for us to honour the bill from round one.

Precedent set, move on to Haiti. No development, no civilizing mission, no modernization theories. Just justice. Reparations, reparations, reparations.

Eventually though we will need to confront that overarching regime that leaves no ecology alone that does not submit to its violent and expansionary logic of profit and accumulation.

Death to Kapital!

We need to get the fuck out and stay the fuck out

Well, at least those of us with guns, an MBA or the personal blessing of Pat Robertson.

Yes well, Singh, the Soviets were INVITED into Afghanistan.

The Drunken Capitalists will get out because their Shithole otherwise known as Global Finance, is collapsing around their ears while Global Warming is making a joke out of their Fossil Fuel business models.

And let’s not forget that they’re also running out of boots. Part of the reason might be because word is getting out that vets aren’t getting healthcare or even a roof over their heads.

OPEN QUOTE

Veterans for America estimates that 10,000 veterans of the two wars are living on America’s streets, joining the estimated 400,000 veterans of earlier wars—200,000 Vietnam veterans alone—who regularly have nowhere to sleep.

“The entire notion that Afghanistan is winnable betrays the absolute lunacy of the thinking going on here. It’s like talking about the police winning against crime. It’s not a situation you win or lose, it’s a situation you manage. It doesn’t have an end point. It doesn’t have a victory. It’s not a battle. We literally cannot win because there’s nothing to win. The question is, is it worth it for us to spend the foreseeable future managing that shithole. My answer? Timur Leng, the Soviets, the Persians, the Mongols, and the Greeks all tried and eventually concluded that it was a giant fucking waste of time and they gave it up. I see no reason why it should be worth it now, for us, so fuck it.”

Good thing there are no Afghani’s posting here. I think that comment would probably piss them off.

And who is this grand “us” that you are speaking for?

I have a funny feeling that if we were talking about Tibet you would have a much different reaction.

“The question that should be posed is in fact how the language of ‘us’ ‘intervening’ in ‘localized’ shitholes (or in UN speak ‘conflict zones’) serves to obscure the concrete material objectives (global capital accumulation, oilflows, geopolitical hegemony in the context of challenges to Western domination, etc) that have both figured into the historical basis of the ‘conflict zone’ as well as into any solution that ‘we’ pose to the conflict.”

Exactly.

Good thing there are no Afghani’s posting here. I think that comment would probably piss them off.

Which one? The one saying that fucking around with their country any more is a mistake? I know a couple of Afghanis, and they agree wholeheartedly with that statement.

I have a funny feeling that if we were talking about Tibet you would have a much different reaction.

Not an analogous situation, though if the Chinese fucked off from Tibet I think it’d be peachy.

And who is this grand “us” that you are speaking for?

The US and the West in general.

It projects Afghanistan as a sort of eternal shithole that various different foreign configurations, for many thousands of years, have tried to ‘manage.

I should clarify that it’s a shithole at the present moment. And, no offense to Afghan culture or to Afghanis, it is a mine-riddled, war-torn, poor shithole right now, ruled by religious nutcases and warlords on the take. In the past, at various times, it has been lovely and it has been a shithole, again usually through very little fault of its own. But it’s not up for debate that various foreign powers have tried to take it over and manage it for thousands of years; that’s why it’s currently a shithole. I’ll retract my blanket characterization of it as a shithole, however.

This of course is a gross over-generalization that perhaps was committed owing to lack of proper reflexion on the issue (maybe you were rushed at work or something)?

I should have clarified more. And yeah, I was posting at work. Heh, procrastination what?

The fact of the matter is that Afghanistan has given much to the world, and is not easily reducible to a ‘shithole.

I know it has given much to the world, and that’s why it pisses me off that, at this time, it has been largely reduced to a shithole, or more precisely the benighted pawn of outside powers who see it only as a means to their ends, rather than a place that’s given much to the outside world. But as I said, I’ll retract my characterization of it as such, as it’s not fair.

The elders in our area of India can recount to you many a story of Pathan (or Pashtun) wonder that expresses a rich complexity of human affirmation. Anyone out there like Buddhism?

Wasn’t Padmasambhava thought to have been Afghani?

There are also a fair share of brutal injustices, both past and present, but these do not define the Afghans absolutely.

Point taken.

So the question is not whether it is worth it for ‘us’ to manage that shithole.

From a US foreign policy standpoint, sure, I think it’s a valid question. The question being asked of policymakers is, is it possible to win in Afghanistan. My response was refuting the validity of that question. It’s not a question rooted in a sensible understanding of the situation. It’s rooted in the concept that Afghanistan can be reduced to our pawn, which is our definition of victory. But Afghanistan cannot be reduced to our pawn, because it doesn’t let anybody push it around for long or to any great extent. So victory is impossible, the only thing the US can hope for is to manage it for some temporary period until it spits us out, and it’s not worth it to beat our (our being the US and the West in general) foreheads against a brick wall that has withstood many other foreheads.

What I’m saying, essentially, is that we can’t win, we can only hold back the tide for so long, and so why not just get the fuck out now, pay reparations, and quit wasting our military and our money on a situation that is fundamentally untenable.

I don’t think that the Soviets, British, Americans, etc, have left or will leave because they got sick and tired of trying to manage a barbaric ‘shithole.’ They got beaten plain and simple.

I don’t disagree. But that’s what I’m saying; Afghanistan is not ‘manageable’ because it’s fiercely independent, not particularly unified, and has a towering resentment of foreigners coming and trying to reduce them to pawns.

The question that should be posed is in fact how the language of ‘us’ ‘intervening’ in ‘localized’ shitholes (or in UN speak ‘conflict zones’) serves to obscure the concrete material objectives (global capital accumulation, oilflows, geopolitical hegemony in the context of challenges to Western domination, etc) that have both figured into the historical basis of the ‘conflict zone’ as well as into any solution that ‘we’ pose to the conflict.

I’ll buy that.

We need to get the fuck out and stay the fuck out. And then lets talk about historical redress and reparations. I think the Afghans are still waiting for us to honour the bill from round one.

Word.

Singh recognize that it was from the Afghan heartland that these teachings (Buddhism)would spread out from South Asia and into the East.

Woe, snarko was talking about this century and when he says shithole, what comes to my mind is the religious fanatacism of backward people blindly acting out the violent fantasy of a religion.

the violent fantasy being zeebiggy brajinsky’s or however you pronounce his name. Dealing with all those polish jokes growing up must have really been a rough ride.

Having to ride in Henry’s wake thereafter can’t have been all that much fun either.

Poor zeebiggy.

Snark, thanks for taking the time to clarify. Blanket statements are never fun, especially when it comes to people ducking and diving from B-52s.

Micro – You could not be more on the money when it comes to Global Finance. I foresee interesting shifts in the long run trajectory of the world economy…Has Giovanni Arrighi been onto something with his Braudelian thesis on the long centuries of capitalism? I mean, his analysis of a potential shift from New York to Shanghai is appearing a little more plausible these days, though I remain to be convinced by his assertion that this shift is more preferrable than an emergent non-capitalist sphere of life processes on planet earth.