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November 06, 2009 C-SPAN

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Blue America's Rep. Eric Massa went on the House floor and made an impassioned call to end the Afghanistan war.

Massa: Enough is enough. It is time to bring our troops home. More than any other issue that I have studied, sought counsel on and drawn from my own life's experience for my own guidance since becoming a member of the United State's Congress, the expansion of the war in Afghanistan has drawn my late night focus. There in the quiet of the office, I have arrived at the inevitable conclusion that the deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan and the continuation of this conflict is not in the best interests of our nation and is in fact in on a par with the potential error of the size of our initial invasion in Iraq.

Eric Massa writes:

Last night, November 4th, I spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives to mark the 2,950th day of the war in Afghanistan and formalized my call to draw this conflict to a conclusion. As a freshman member of Congress that served in the United States Navy for 24 years, it has been my honor to serve on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, and because of my background and experience, I think it's my duty to speak out on this issue.

To date, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, the American taxpayer has spent or committed $300,000,000,000 to fund this war. That breaks down to:

• $101,694,915.25 per day for 2,950 days;
• $986.84 per person since our population is roughly 304 million;
• $3,947.36 for each American family of four.

And the greatest cost of this war is of course the 912 American troops killed, and 4,198 wounded. This of course does not include the thousands of internal wounds that our troops must bear for the rest of their lives.

My fellow Americans, the time to bring this war to a conclusion is now and we must stand with a clear voice and demand it. The war in Afghanistan has lasted five times longer than World War I and twice as long as World War II. When 1/3 of Hamid Karzai's ballots were thrown out for voting fraud and Abdullah Abdullah declined the runoff election due to the rampant corruption in the system, the world saw what we already knew - it is simply impossible to impose a democracy on a nation that does not want it.

If you can---please donate a few bucks to Blue America's "No Means No!" act blue page where you will find Eric Massa's name added to the list of those that are standing up to end the occupation in Afghanistan.

We're proposing that netroots donors consider rewarding this good behavior by donating to the re-election campaigns of these members who have already done something very politically difficult by breaking with their own president on a national security issue.
If terrorist threats to our Nation reemerge from Afghanistan, we will strike, but we are not an occupying force

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If America wasn't bogged down in the two misguided George Bush wars, all the money that we've spent there could easily pay for health insurance reform for all Americans each year. Afghanistan is a country that has never had a central government, and to try and force one down their throats is never going to work.

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From Lou Dobbs Tonight, the Face Off Segment with The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill, the Council on Foreign Relations’ neoconservative Max Boot and the World Policy Institute’s Patrica DeGennaro. The topic was our troop levels in Afghanistan. Scahill did a great job when he was allowed to talk, which Dobbs made sure to keep to a minimum.

DOBBS: President Obama today congratulated Afghanistan's President Karzai on his election victory. The president, President Obama, is still weighing his choices for forces in Afghanistan. The strategy for those forces. That is the subject of our face-off debate.

Joining me now is Jeremy Scahill. He's journalist and fellow at the Nation Institute. Good to have you with us. Patricia Degennaro, senior fellow at the World Policy Institute. Good to have you with us. Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you for being with us. Good to see you again.

Let's turn to, first, what happened here? Last week, there was going to be a delay as we had a -- all of that nasty fraud in the election. There had to be a runoff on the 7th of November. Suddenly, now, in the 2nd of November, the president sort of blesses Karzai and says we're done just because his opponent withdrew.

MAX BOOT: I think Abdullah Abdullah realized he would lose the runoff election, just as he had lost the initial election. And the reality is, there was fraud. There was a lot of fraud. Hamid Karzai's still the most popular politician in Afghanistan. He still has a lot of legitimacy, especially amongst the Pashtuns where the insurgency is based. And I think we've been focusing too much on the election because the people I spoke to in Afghanistan when I was just there were more concerned about what their government is delivering for them, rather than how it was selected. I think there's still a good opportunity to work with Hamid Karzai, work with the governors, to increase the kind of governing capacity that Afghanistan has to defeat the Taliban --

DOBBS: You're not saying corruption be damned, give the people what they want and they'll be fine?

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Linda R. Monk, J.D.: Let Us Now Praise Uppity Women (h/t Where’s the Outrage?)

The Plum Line: Harry Reid calls GOP's transparency bluff: Is your health care bill a secret, or merely non-existent?

AMERICAblog News: Top McCain campaign advisor running out of insurance. He has a "pre-existing condition."

Apoliticus: Top 5 annoying talents of President Obama

Bill in Exile (not work safe) : New York Twenty Three

Family and Friends blog: Our Achilles Heel

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Fareed Zakaria talks to former Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh who recently resigned as a Political Officer in Afghanistan. You can watch the entire interview here.

ZAKARIA: Matthew Hoh is the young Foreign Service officer who resigned this week from his post in Afghanistan. He joins me now.

Matthew, I'm going to just start by reading a bit from your resignation letter. You say, "I fail to see the worth or value in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is truly a 35-year-old civil war."

And then you go on to say, "Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured that their dead have been sacrificed for a purpose worthy of such futures lost, love vanished and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can any more be made. As such, I submit my resignation."

These are very strong words.

Give us some sense of what this insurgency that we are fighting looks like. What did you think people were fighting U.S. troops for?

MATTHEW HOH, FORMER MARINE CAPTAIN AND U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: The first place where I really had -- where this was codified for me and where I started to understand what we were doing and how we were involved -- the Korengal Valley, which I'm sure a lot of your viewers are familiar with. It's been on the cover of TIME Magazine. The "New York Times" refers to it as the valley of death. Off the top of my head, unfortunately, I can't remember how many American soldiers we have lost there, but it's probably 30 or 40.

This is a valley, I don't know, 15, 20 kilometers long. There's only 10,000 people in it. They speak their own language. They speak Korengali. In the year 2009 we have a valley with people who speak their own language. Their only trade is the timber trade. And when they move their timber, they don't even leave their valley. Most of the time, I believe, they just take it to the Mazar Valley, and a middleman picks it up and brings it to Pakistan for them.

We show up. We enter their valley. We occupy the richest man's timber mill. And then we bring in Afghan army and Afghan police, who aren't from there.

And then what do we do? Then we have the Afghan police and Afghan army. They say to the Korengalis, they say, "These mountains here that your families have been cutting trees down, sustaining yourselves for hundreds of years, you don't own them. The central government does. And you have to pay tax on that."

I'm not sure how many people anywhere else in the world wouldn't take up arms against something like that.

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Just like we here outside the Beltway Bubble, sometimes you've just had enough and there's no more need for diplomacy:

President Barack Obama is “getting bad advice from… clowns” on Afghanistan and “sucking up to the wrong people” on health care, U.S. Rep. John Conyers told a Detroit radio audience this morning, according to show host Rev. Horace Sheffield.

Conyers, a Detroit Democrat, made the comments during a discussion about the effects of the economic recession on the urban poor, Sheffield said. The liberal congressman expressed frustration that health care legislation pending in Washington, D.C., was too solicitous of insurance companies and special interests, Sheffield said.

“He wasn’t angry. He was just deeply concerned that some of the issues being focused on don’t address the human reality,” said Sheffield, who hosts the program “On The Line” on WGPR-FM radio.

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I don't agree with Bob Schieffer all that often but I do agree with most of his points on this one. From CBS News' Face the Nation, Nov. 1, 2009--A Class in Nation-Building 101:

SCHIEFFER: Finally today, as the president tries to develop a new strategy in Afghanistan, I wonder if this is the real lesson that we’ve learned in Afghanistan so far, that nation-building, like charity, probably begins at home, at least the way we seem to be going about it in Afghanistan.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Terrorism poses a threat to America’s national security, but is trying to build a Western-style nation in Afghanistan by funneling money to its leaders really the best way to combat terrorism?

I guess what set me off is that story about how we’ve secretly put the president of Afghanistan’s brother on the CIA payroll. He’s the one who is supposed to be mixed up in the drug trade. The idea was that, by doing that, he’ll help us pave the way to building a democracy there. Now, that’s good work if you can get it. But I don’t see how that is making us safer.

Whatever the size of the military force the president decides on for Afghanistan, I think he needs to be paying more attention to where the money is going for the non-military spending there. Incredibly, no one really seems to know. The judge by what we’ve gotten from it so far, we’d be much better off with some nation-building back home. Our infrastructure is already a mess.

We could start at the Oakland Bay Bridge, where a 5,000 pound part of the top fell off into the traffic below. That would certainly make us safer, for sure.

In Afghanistan, we’re having to relearn what we should have already known, that we can help others but we can’t do it for them. And when we have to pay others to help themselves, I don’t see how that helps anyone but the guy getting paid.

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From This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the Pentagon released the names this week of 25 servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Army SPC Eric N Lembke, 25, of Tampa, FL
Army PFC Kimble A Han, 30, of Lehi, UT
Marine Cpl Gregory MW Fleury, 23, of Anchorage, AK
Marine Capt Eric A Jones, 29, of Westchester, NY
Marine Capt David S Mitchell, 30, of Loveland, OH
Marine Capt Kyle R Van De Giesen, 29, of North Attleboro, MA
Army SGT Eduviges G Wolf, 24, of Hawthorne, CA
Army PFC Devin J Michel, 19, of Stockton, IL
Army SPC Brandon K Steffey, 23, of Sault Sainte Marie, MI
Marine LCpl Cody R Stanley, 21, of Rosanky, TX
Army SSG Luis M Gonzalez, 27, of South Ozone Park, NY
Army SGT Fernando Delarosa, 24, of Alamo, TX
Army SGT Dale R Griffin, 29, of Terre Haute, IN
Army SGT Issac B Jackson, 27, of Plattsburg, MO
Army SGT Patrick O Williamson, 24, of Broussard, LA
Army SPC Jared D Stanker, 22, of Evergreen Park, IL
Army PFC Christopher I Walz, 25, of Vancouver, WA
Army CWO Michael P Montgomery, 36, of Savannah, GA
Army CWO Niall Lyons, 40, of Spokane, WA
Army SSG Shawn H McNabb, 24, of Terrell, TX
Army SGT Josue E Hernandez Chavez, 23, of Reno, NV
Army SGT Nikolas A Mueller, 26, of Little Chute, WI
Army SFC David E Metzger, 32, of San Diego, CA
Army SSG Keith R Bishop, 28, of Medford, NY
Army SCP Robert K Charlton, 22, of Malden, MO

In addition, 3 agents from the DEA and an American UN security guard were killed in Afghanistan.

This week's casualties bring the total number of allied servicemembers killed in Iraq to 4,673; in Afghanistan, 1,502. During the same period, Iraq Body Count lists 69 Iraqi civilians killed. This has been the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan since the beginning of the invasion.

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Bill Moyers ended his show this week with an editorial comment on what he thinks we should do if President Obama chooses to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending more troops--bring back the draft.

I would agree with him if the end result wouldn't be what always happens when this country has had a draft. The poor go fight and the rich find a way out of it. If we could make sure every neocon war monger had to go first, I'd say hell yes, but that's not going to happen.

BILL MOYERS: Watching the CBS Evening News on Afghanistan this week I thought for a moment that I might be watching my grandson playing one of those video war games that are so popular these days.

REPORTER: An American military convoy traveling northwest--

BILL MOYERS: Reporting on the attacks that killed eight Americans, CBS turned to animation to depict what no journalists were around to witness. This is about as close to real war as most of us ever get, safely removed from the blood, the mangled bodies, the screams and shouts.

October, as you know, was the bloodiest month for our troops in all eight years of the war. And beyond the human loss, the United States has spent more than 223 billion dollars there. In 2010 we will be spending roughly 65 billion dollars every year. 65 billion dollars a year.

The President is just about ready to send more troops. Maybe 44 thousand, that's the number General McChrystal wants, bringing the total to over 100 thousand. When I read speculation last weekend that the actual number needed might be 600 thousand, I winced.

I can still see President Lyndon Johnson's face when he asked his generals how many years and how many troops it would take to win in Vietnam. One of them answered, "Ten years and one million." He was right on the time and wrong on the number-- two and a half million American soldiers would serve in Vietnam, and we still lost.

Whatever the total for Afghanistan, every additional thousand troops will cost us about a billion dollars a year. At a time when foreclosures are rising, benefits for the unemployed are running out, cities are firing teachers, closing libraries and cutting essential maintenance and services. That sound you hear is the ripping of our social fabric.

Which makes even more perplexing an editorial in THE WASHINGTON POST last week. You'll remember the "Post" was a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, often sounding like a megaphone for the Bush-Cheney propaganda machine. Now it's calling for escalating the war in Afghanistan. In a time of historic budget deficits, the paper said, Afghanistan has to take priority over universal health care for Americans. Fixing Afghanistan, it seems, is "a 'necessity'"; fixing America's social contract is not.

But listen to what an Afghan villager recently told a correspondent for the "Economist:" "We need security. But the Americans are just making trouble for us. They cannot bring peace, not if they stay for 50 years."

Listen, too, to Andrew Bacevich, the long-time professional soldier, graduate of West Point, veteran of Vietnam, and now a respected scholar of military and foreign affairs, who was on this program a year ago. He recently told "The Christian Science Monitor," "The notion that fixing Afghanistan will somehow drive a stake through the heart of jihadism is wrong. …If we give General McChrystal everything he wants, the jihadist threat will still exist."

This from a warrior who lost his own soldier son in Iraq, and who doesn't need animated graphics to know what the rest of us never see.

So here's a suggestion. In a week or so, when the president announces he is escalating the war, let's not hide the reality behind eloquence or animation. No more soaring rhetoric, please. No more video games. If our governing class wants more war, let's not allow them to fight it with young men and women who sign up because they don't have jobs here at home, or can't afford college or health care for their families.

Let's share the sacrifice. Spread the suffering. Let's bring back the draft.

Yes, bring back the draft -- for as long as it takes our politicians and pundits to "fix" Afghanistan to their satisfaction.

Bring back the draft, and then watch them dive for cover on Capitol Hill, in the watering holes and think tanks of the Beltway, and in the quiet little offices where editorial writers spin clever phrases justifying other people's sacrifice. Let's insist our governing class show the courage to make this long and dirty war our war, or the guts to end it.

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The nation's most "fair and balanced" network gave up over 20 minutes of its premiere Sunday "news" show to nation's loudest conservative voice. With little resistance, Fox News' Chris Wallace allowed Rush Limbaugh to continually attack President Barack Obama. Limbaugh called Obama "the man-child president," accused him of visiting the families of fallen troops for a photo op and said the president doesn't care about the war in Afghanistan.

"You suggest that he is taking all of this time to decide what to do in Afghanistan to keep his left wing base on board for health care reform," suggested Wallace.

"Well, it's partly that, but I also don't think he cares much about it," replied Limbaugh. "See, this is -- I know this is going to sound controversial, but i don't think he cares."

Limbaugh went on to call health care reform an "attack on liberty" and an "attack on freedom."

"We've never seen this kind of radical leader at such a high level of power in this county," said Limbaugh.

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Lawrence O'Donnell tears into Liz Cheney for her remarks criticizing President Obama for his visit to Dover AFB. Liz Cheney lies again. Chip off the old block.

O'DONNELL: When President Obama honored our Afghanistan war dead by taking part in a military ritual at Dover Air Force Base yesterday, it was easily predictable that a Republican would criticize him for it. And in our fourth story on the Countdown, the former Vice President's pet attack dog, his daughter Liz Cheney, has now done just that. And once again, she wasn't going to let the facts get in the way.

On the John Gibson radio show yesterday, Ms. Cheney was rehashing her father's fact-free critique of President Obama's war in Afghanistan, and then Mr. Gibson asked her about the President's appearance at Dover Air Force Base.

LIZ CHENEY (RADIO AUDIO): I don't know why he went to Dover. I mean, I think that clearly it is very important for a commander-in-chief, whenever he can in whatever way it possible, to pay tribute to our fallen soldiers, our fallen military folks. But, I think, you know, what President Bush used to do was do it without the cameras, and I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking the family if you can take pictures. I just... that's really hard for me to get my head around—I think it's an honorable and important thing for us to pay tribute. There's no greater sacrifice people make to the nation. But, it was a surprising way for the President to choose to do it.

O'DONNELL: As we mentioned yesterday, President Bush never went to Dover Air Force Base to honor dead American soldiers on their final journey. And Vice President Cheney... never did either.

Hey Liz, have you ever lost a relative in battle? I have. My cousin Johnny, West Point graduate like his father before him. I wish the President or the Vice President had met his casket on the way home.

You know what 'never' means, Liz? It means zero. It means that in over seven years of two wars, your dad never left the comfort of his White House office or the Vice President's mansion and got himself up to Dover to bear witness to how his warmongering fell on families of dead American soldiers. Never, not once.

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Fried Green al-Qaedas: Putting things in perspective

Pruning Shears: It isn't reform unless it gives Goldman an aneurysm

Raw Story: Pentagon officials won't confirm Bush propaganda program has ended

The Washington Independent: Wingnut smackdown: Birther lawsuit dismissed

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October 28, 2009 CBC The National

If you don't read anything else about Afghanistan, make sure that this NY Times article on President Karzai's brother is the one you read. It's a very interesting piece, and has implications far beyond the immediate shock waves that it will inevitably cause.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.
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These military and political officials say the evidence, though largely circumstantial, suggests strongly that Mr. Karzai has enriched himself by helping the illegal trade in poppy and opium to flourish. The assessment of these military and senior officials in the Obama administration dovetails with that of senior officials in the Bush administration.

Now the fact that Mr. Karzai is profiting both from the drug trade and from supporting the CIA's operations is not in and of itself particularly amazing or outlandish to most people who understand the Afghani culture and who have to demonstrate short-term progress against the Taliban. A former CIA intel officer is quoted in the article:

“Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade,” he said. “If you are looking for Mother Teresa, she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”

The CIA has a long record of supporting bad actors in the name of getting intelligence or achieving progress against other countries whose goals are inimical to US interests, and that may be understandable in some situations, except when that practice runs counter to official US policy in those particular regions. The brother to the president of Afghanistan uses his position to profit from the drug trade and also is a prime suspect in trying to fix the election (in a disappointingly transparent and amateurish fashion). That might be acceptable except for the fact that he's not helping the US government advance its efforts to stabilize the country.

Our government's goals do not align with the brothers Karzai's goals. Mr. Karzai's interests are to protect the drug lords in the south provinces, who in turn pay and rely on the Taliban for protection. Those are the same provinces where US, British, and other forces are fighting and dying every day. Until the current Afghani government is replaced by a legitimate group which has a real desire to advance the Afghani people's needs and interests, there is no way that a strategy based on COIN tactics will work. And if there is no way that COIN tactics will work, then there is no reason to support Gen. McChrystal's request for 40,000+ additional troops.

Of course, there is the possibility that our government's actual goal is to develop Afghanistan into "a horrific, full-fledged quagmire by 2012."

(This is a follow-up on Heather's earlier post on same subject)

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Rachel Maddow reports on some breaking news from The New York Times-Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll:

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

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Steve Hynd has more over at Newshoggers--Karzai's Narco-Trafficking Brother Is On CIA's Payroll

The New York Times, in what must be a measure of how sure they are of their information, rolled out the big guns today - Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen - to write the story of how Afghan president Hamid Karzai's brother has been on the CIA payroll for years. [...]

What the CIA has done, and done for most of the last eight years apparently, directly undermines any population-centric counter-insurgency that was ever possible in Afghanistan. The leaking of its ties to Karzai's brother is a disaster of nightmare proportions for any chance of COIN success there, the icing on the cake. Added to all the other factors - the election, the civilians bombed, the abysmal state of the Afghan security forces, the very fact of a foreign occupation - the occupation has passed its tipping point for sure. [...]

Although that will be bolting stable doors after the horses have all bolted. It's a pity in many ways that this will land on Obama's doorstep when it was obviously a Bush administration initiative. My advice to the current White House would be to forget about the usual "we don't comment on intelligence operations" bulls**t. We're talking a potential Iran/Contra level mess here - spill the beans.