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The War Profiteers

Historically, waging wars to occupy independent countries had two main objectives. First, to establish geographical hegemony over the land and, second, to plunder its indigenous resources. In recent times, however, the US invaded independent states and changed their regimes to not only gain control over their land and resources but pre-eminently promote the interests of the Military-Industrial Complex.

President Eisenhower, a renowned US military commander, first coined the phrase Military Industrial Complex in his farewell speech on January 17, 1961. He warned the nation against its expanding influence. During the Second World War, the US armament industry developed on a colossal scale. Eisenhower cautioned, “We recognise the imperative need for this development…We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

He forewarned the federal governments against collaborating with an alliance of military and industrial leaders, as it was vulnerable to abuse of power. Also, he advised the American citizens to be vigilant in monitoring the influence of such an alliance. But the US citizenry has remained ignorant either wilfully or kept so by the corporate media, dominated by the armament conglomerate.

Under the pretext of the War on Terror, the US attacked Afghanistan in October 2001. Its air force bombed the poor land for 76 days consecutively and dropped more than 18,000 bombs. A US air force B-2 bomber made history by conducting a 44 hours long sortie. And according to an HRW report, “The United States dropped about 1,228 cluster bombs containing 248,056 bomblets between October 2001 and March 2002. Cluster bombs represented about 5 per cent of the 26,000 U.S. bombs dropped during that period.”

George Bush Jr. claimed that Shia-Sunni divide between the Muslims would never bridge and hence must be exploited.

Nonetheless, the US occupation of Afghanistan ended after more than two decades of war of attrition, costing the US taxpayers $2.26 trillion (Brown University Report). US taxpayers may have lost money; many American parents may have lost their sons and daughters, but the war profiteers made hay. Always a win-win situation for them whatever be the outcome of the war.

Tom Stevenson in his long article “The Most Corrupt Idea of Modern Times” in the London Review of Books analysed Simon Akam’s book – The Changing of the Guard: The British Army since 9/11. Stevenson’s article is an excellent read for those interested in knowing the factual story of the Iraq war, which is much different from the stories propagated by the corporate media.

About the British Army’s performance in Iraq, Akam describes it as “an institution in a state of constant insecurity about its reputation with the Americans, but the US military had long since become disillusioned with British claims to expertise. American generals produced their own counterinsurgency manuals, with the aim of building up Sunni tribes against the Shia militias in classic colonial mode – the ramifications are evident today.”

Akam, however, believes that “British soldiers create entanglements and then get out of them and receive medals and citations.” That shows how the US and British brass embellish their chests with rows upon rows of medals.

George Bush Jr claimed that the Shia-Sunni divide between the Muslims would never bridge. Hence, it must be exploited in the Middle East. To our misfortune, the western powers succeeded in widening the sectarian schism to their profit, if the prolonged war in Yemen is any evidence. Simply, it’s a sinister arrangement of Saudi petrodollars buying western armament to spill Muslim blood. Painful indeed! The beneficiaries of the existing situation in Yemen are the US, Britain and France in the corresponding order. According to a Swedish research institute, the US global share of arms exports increased by 37 per cent in the last five years, despite the pandemic. The Middle East absorbed 47 per cent of it while Saudi Arabia alone accounted for 24 per cent of total US arms exports.

Primarily, it’s human greed that triggers wars. Mark Twain put it most succinctly: “Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out… and help to slaughter strangers of his species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel…And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for ‘the universal brotherhood of man’ – with his mouth.”

Some wisdom there for those who wish to see it. Iraqis and Libyans did the US no harm nor did the bearded cave dwellers in Afghanistan. They were victims of imperial greed and hubris.

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Failing to learn the lessons of Vietnam, again

By standing up to all those who wanted to prolong the US military presence in Afghanistan, Joe Biden united a broad front against him, ranging from traditional warmongers eager to assert US supremacy to ‘liberal interventionists’ who claim to care about the plight of Afghan women. Yet Biden’s political record offers ample proof that he’s no dove. All he has done in Afghanistan is end a deployment that had neither halted Taliban advances nor prevented the development of a regional branch of Islamic State (Islamic State-Khorasan Province, IS-KP), which is a far bigger threat to the US than the Taliban.

The collapse of the Afghan government and the tragic chaos that accompanied the final phase of the withdrawal of US and allied troops from Kabul was, however, a fitting end to the 20-year cycle of the ‘war on terror’ that the George W Bush administration initiated after 9/11. As far as projecting US power goes, this cycle resulted in a heavy defeat, the second of its kind since 1945, the Vietnam war being the first.

The war on terror’s failure in Iraq was actually more serious than in Afghanistan, even if the US withdrawal from Baghdad was more orderly. That is because the strategic stakes in Iraq were greater than those in Afghanistan, as the Gulf region has been a US priority since 1945.

In 1998 the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative thinktank, urged President Clinton to invade Iraq. The PNAC had both Democrat and Republican members, and their open letter to Clinton was signed by some who would later hold key posts in George W Bush’s administration.

Two of them, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, even called for an invasion of Iraq immediately after 9/11. But the military insisted the first response should be in Afghanistan, where Al-Qaida was based. Initial US troop levels in the two countries nevertheless revealed their relative priority: under 10,000 in Afghanistan in (...)

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Human cost of US, EU, UN sanctions

Sir, – Sanctions imposed by the United States, the United Nations and the European Union have been causing the deaths of millions of people in the most impoverished countries of the world.

Various humanitarian agencies within the UN have been highlighting the hundreds of thousands of children who have died as a result of such sanctions for many years. Just one example were the sanctions on Iraq during the 1990s imposed by the UN Security Council and implemented by the US and its European allies. A very credible Unicef report in 1999 estimated that these sanctions caused the deaths of up to 1.5 million Iraqi people, including over 500,000 children.

At present, the US is imposing sanctions on up to 30 countries, or on individuals or organisations within these countries, while the EU (which includes Ireland) is likewise imposing sanctions on up to 32 countries and the UN (which also includes Ireland) imposes sanctions on at least 15 countries.

The peoples of some of the most impoverished countries in the world are victims of these sanctions, imposed by or enforced by all three of the US, UN and the EU, especially the impoverished peoples of Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, all of which have been left in ruins by wars of aggression by the US and its Nato and Middle Eastern allies.

Children especially are dying in huge numbers due to these sanctions. Ireland is sitting silently on the UN Security Council that is helping to impose these murderous sanctions. By our silence we are complicit.

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US occupation forces continue to smuggle Syrian oil to Iraq: SANA

Local sources, requesting anonymity, told Syria’s official news agency SANA that 33 US military vehicles along with several oil tankers from the al-Ya’rubiyah region entered the Iraqi territories after crossing al-Waleed border crossing.

“Over the past hours, a convoy of 33 US occupation vehicles including tankers laden with stolen oil from the Syrian al-Jazeera region headed for the Iraqi territory through al-Walid illegitimate crossing,” local sources from al-Ya’arubyia were quoted as saying.

The convoy was also accompanied by dozens of new Hummer military vehicles and a number of vehicles belonging to the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF, a US-backed alliance of Kurdish militants operating against Damascus, currently controls areas in northern and eastern Syria.

According to SANA, several columns of US forces have crossed through the al-Walid crossing between Iraq and Syria and have been redeployed in bases in north and northeast Syria over the past few days.

The US military has stationed forces and equipment in northeastern Syria, with the Pentagon claiming that the deployment is aimed at preventing the oilfields in the area from falling into the hands of the Daesh Takfiri terrorists. Damascus, however, says the deployment is meant to plunder the country’s resources.

Syrian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Bassam Tomeh told state-run and Arabic-language al-Ikhbariyah Syria television news network on March 18 that the United States and its allied Takfiri terrorist groups are looting oil reserves in the war-stricken Arab country, revealing that Washington controls 90 percent of crude reserves in oil-rich northeastern Syria.

Former President Donald Trump of the US had openly admitted on several occasions that oil was the main reason which kept US troops in Syria. In July 2020 and during a Senate hearing, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hinted at the matter. During his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Pompeo confirmed for the first time that an American oil company would begin work in northeastern Syria.

The Syrian government strongly condemned the oil agreement, saying that the deal was struck to plunder the country’s natural resources, including oil and gas, under the sponsorship and support of the Trump administration.

US military airlifts 40 Daesh terrorists in Syria from al-Houl prison to its base

Al-Houl prison lies east of Hasakah city and is run by the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

US President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Pentagon’s Middle East desk once said Washington “owned” Syria’s oil and gas resources in the northeast.

In an interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) back in October 2019, Dana Stroul said the US military was using the territory as “leverage” in the conflict. “The United States still had compelling forms of leverage on the table to shape an outcome that was more conducive and protective of US interests.”

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The US-Taliban deal on Afghanistan is not a ‘model’

Nearly 75 days after the Taliban seized full control of Afghanistan, the economic and political situation in the country is already pulling Western states back into dealing with the new regime. Reports state that the European Union may reopen its mission in Kabul within weeks, and the United States (US) is close to a deal with Pakistan to operate “over the horizon”military capacity in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, the February 2020 deal struck by the US with the Taliban in Doha to effectively withdraw from the war today has a tendency of being marketed as a model for engagement with insurgencies and extremist groups to find middle-path solutions to long-running conflicts. The fact is that there should be no space to romanticise the US-Taliban agreement, which gave significant room for political and militaristic manoeuvre to the Taliban while restricting the US to concentrate on its withdrawal from a two-decade long conflict, with the Taliban agreeing to not conduct attacks against US troops in that period.

Ultimately, it was a recipe to hand the Afghan geography to the insurgency itself, with the Afghan government abandoning its people and the country’s armed forces dissolving within months of this agreement.

The architects of the deal, from President Donald J Trump and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who later joined President Joe Biden in doubling down on implementing it and seeing it to its catastrophic end, successfully managed to reorient the narrative around the US presence in the conflict as one that was led by counterterror narratives against Al Qaeda, and not nation-building, or institutional strengthening of the State, despite doing exactly that for two decades.

This view piggybacked on the fact that Afghanistan did not feature anywhere near the top of American public opinion concerns, and that a diminished al Qaeda threat did not affect US homeland anymore due to it being 12,000 km away. While this helped exonerate the US from any further direct responsibility in Afghanistan, the impact on regional geopolitics ranging from South Asia and stretching into Central Asia has been significant from a security perspective.

While there have been many instances of dialogue leading to negotiated peace deals between State and non-State militant actors in the past, including more institutionalised efforts where peaceful surrender of violent means has been at the core, both in the counter-terror and counter-insurgency spaces, the US-Taliban deal upended those already precarious and delicate mechanisms.

While there have been many instances of dialogue leading to negotiated peace deals between State and non-State militant actors in the past, including more institutionalised efforts where peaceful surrender of violent means has been at the core, both in the counter-terror and counter-insurgency spaces, the US-Taliban deal upended those already precarious and delicate mechanisms.

It allowed the Taliban to retake what the insurgency had lost in 2001, post the US military operations in the aftermath of 9/11. To make matters worse, the US-Taliban deal, a four-page long text, had next to no mechanisms to hold the Taliban accountable on the agreement’s far and few dos and don’ts, including on terrorism.

The fragility of the deal and the eventual full withdrawal of the US was celebrated by the Taliban as a victory. Beyond Afghanistan, others saw the deal as a potential way forward in dealing with Washington DC.

In February 2021, as the US inched closer to ending its Afghanistan chapter, leader of Syrian jihadist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who had previously aligned with both al Qaeda and the Islamic State, exchanged his usual military fatigues for a crisp suit to give an expansive interview to America’s PBS network in an apparent attempt for an image makeover, and hopes for a dialogue-led approach with the West and others.

It is not unreasonable to think that the long diplomacy leading to a deal for the Taliban is inspiring others to explore similar paths of engagement. In Somalia, where a much more covert US war on terror against al Qaeda affiliate, Al Shabaab, has been underway for years, many similarities between Shabaab and Taliban exist, such as control over territory, parallel economic (mostly taxes) and Islamic judicial systems imposed on a population that more than often agrees to these new norms for their own security and lack of other options. Recently, scholar Mohammed Ibrahim Shire suggested that this was the correct time for a larger design of engagement with Al Shabaab by the Somali government (which is tactically backed by Western forces) on an ideological level to prepare the ground for peace talks. In other words, once again, we are witnessing a very questionable reading of trade-off between peace and political patronage for extremist groups that have larger agendas in mind beyond power-sharing.

The US-Taliban deal has somewhat drowned into the background due to on-ground events in Afghanistan, but the document must be subjected to consistent academic scrutiny as an agreement that was designed for a safe exit passage from a theatre of war for the US, not stability for Afghanistan or the Afghan people. It is not a model to be replicated or to be inspired by.

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THE UNITED STATES LEFT AFGHANISTAN TO PREPARE FOR A WAR IT WILL PROBABLY NEVER FIGHT

When the United States prepared to withdraw from Afghanistan during the last days of the Trump administration and first days of Biden’s presidency, the urgency of refocusing on great-power competition was offered as a leading justification. Mark Esper, Trump’s last confirmed secretary of defense, praised troop reductions as helping “free up time, money and manpower,” while Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken later declared, “We have other very important items on our agenda, including the relationship with China, including dealing with everything from climate change to Covid. And that’s where we have to focus our energy and resources.” By the late 2010s, the counter-terrorism interests that had justified wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had without question sunk on America’s list of national security priorities. The “new Cold War” with China, as some have called it, now reigned supreme.

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The logic on Afghanistan was linear: Withdrawal from Afghanistan frees up resources, including money and troops, which can be reappropriated to the Pacific theater, to help deter Chinese aggression.

But it was also flawed. The thought process assumes that China (or Russia or Iran) intends to fight the United States and its allies in combat, on a battlefield or at sea, heavyweight military against heavyweight military — and that deployments to Afghanistan and the Indo-Pacific are therefore zero-sum. But the past suggests America’s adversaries do not intend to fight conventional wars. Instead, the future of warfare is irregular, set to be fought on political, covert, psychological, and digital battlefields. And America is critically underprepared — as the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan starkly showed.

The United States has often been criticized for strategic mistakes in Afghanistan. But the latest American foreign policy debacle was more accurately down to failures of grand strategy: notably, the notion that Afghanistan, and other so-derided “forever wars,” represent a lost or wasted cause. No, the United States will not “win” the war on terror — it will never “win” a war on terror, because terrorism is a tactic, a means to an end, not the end itself. But the discussion should long ago have shifted from “winning” and “losing” to “managing” and “accepting” such a conflict and commitment. America was not winning in Afghanistan, but it was also not losing.

Should the United States Even Have Left Afghanistan?

The decision to depart Afghanistan, and the ignominious manner in which it played out, have been widely panned by national security experts and politicians. Casualties had plummeted (which, as Richard Haass points out, coincided with an Obama-era decision to end combat operations, not with Trump’s signing of a “peace deal”). The initial mission was being completed successfully — the United States went in to prevent another 9/11, and its presence there contributed to the successful effort to keep the homeland safe from terrorist threats from Afghanistan. And, as a bonus, many Afghan people were enjoying a greater degree of freedom and human rights.

Much of U.S. national security policy today is driven by ensuring sufficient resources for an allegedly coming conflict with China — projected to be over Taiwan or in the South China Sea. But even if America does end up in a conventional war, Afghanistan was beneficial preparation. The war provided an arena to train and conduct real joint operations both between services and with NATO allies. Chinese leaders have publicly discussed their fear of so-called “peace disease” — the fact that China rarely fights wars, and that its soldiers almost uniformly have no real military experience. That is not the case for the United States, and continued engagement for America’s most elite soldiers ensured readiness and fitness should a more serious conflict break out. Presence in Afghanistan also provided forward basing, through installations like Bagram Air Base. And Afghanistan sits in a strategically important location. America’s three leading adversaries blanket Afghanistan from the west (Iran), the north (through former Soviet republics, still heavily influenced by the Kremlin), and the northeast (where China holds a short border).

But more importantly, it provided an arena for the United States to practice the kind of irregular warfare that leading national security scholar Seth G. Jones argues in his latest book, Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare, is likely to define the next generation of competition. In its 20-year Afghan quagmire, the U.S. military repeatedly failed to adapt its enormous capabilities to so-called “low-intensity conflict.” In so doing, it reinforced a crucial message from Vietnam — technological superiority and conventional military power do not always win the day, and the United States is vulnerable to nonstate actors, particularly when domestic energy and morale wane. Refusal to heed that lesson in Afghanistan, and willingness to walk away in defeat, has therefore again highlighted an effective path forward for U.S. adversaries seeking to undermine American influence: inflaming third-world insurgencies which seek to force Western armies into long-term engagements, which they do not seem able to win. The United States should not be surprised to see adversaries return to that playbook repeatedly.

The withdrawal was fundamentally about realigning the military for a conventional confrontation with China. But, as Jones shows, “Chinese military strategy generally aims to avoid a conventional war. China’s goal is to weaken and surpass the United States without fighting.” Withdrawal from Afghanistan to prepare for war with China, then, is further evidence of the American military’s bias towards fighting the war it wants, not the war it likely faces. As one U.S. Army officer wrote after the withdrawal, “If America takes nothing else from its experience there, it should adopt a more realistic outlook on the limits of its massive, conventional military in small, irregular wars.”

Afghanistan’s Future

Afghanistan now is likely to sink back into terrorist sanctuary, with the Taliban providing safe haven for al-Qaeda and affiliated networks. But, as has generally been the case in Afghanistan, its future will be determined in large part by the desires of the next state to intervene. China, Russia, and Iran will all likely see important reasons to engage in Afghanistan — if nothing else, for defensive purposes. When they do, it will more than likely be through irregular means — not tanks and battalions, but information and psychological warfare, intelligence units and covert action, special operations, and economic coercion.

Some, including Jones, have argued that leaving the Afghanistan quagmire for Russia or China to clean up will bog down those countries. But China, in particular, has shown an adeptness at dealing with unsavory actors and situations. Its leaders’ willingness to work with the Taliban — a longstanding challenge for the United States, given that terrorist group’s alliance with al-Qaeda — will help dampen any costs of their engagement in the country. China will also likely aim to infuse Afghanistan with economic investments as part of its Belt and Road Initiative — buying loyalty that it hopes will help allay its counter-terrorism concerns. As one analysis reads, “In Beijing’s view, if China could rebuild and stabilize Afghanistan, the China model would be proved superior and, consequently, China would be proved superior to the United States as a global leader.”

Russia, too, has laid the groundwork for collaborating with the Taliban in Afghanistan — at one point possibly even offering bounties to the Taliban for killing American troops. Moscow has hosted Taliban delegations for peace talks for several years. Russia, of course, sees risks in engaging in Afghanistan. How could it not given the Soviet Union’s own fatal mission there? But those risks will be outweighed by the blow to U.S. credibility and global standing, as Anna Borshchevskaya writes: “As desperate Afghans cling to sides of American airplanes leaving Kabul while Biden told the American public he does not regret his decision, Moscow’s (like Beijing’s) clout can simply grow by default.”

For Iran, perhaps the adversary with the most immediate stake in Afghanistan, U.S. withdrawal presents an enormous propaganda boon: more evidence that the United States cannot survive in the region and ultimately should leave altogether. Afghanistan will likely join the long list of Middle Eastern and Asian countries — already including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen — where Iran supports and empowers proxy actors in a bid to expand its regional influence.

Each state does have serious national security interests in Afghanistan, chief among them counter-terrorism. Where each side will likely accept relations with the Taliban, rogue terrorist groups like the Islamic State in Afghanistan will be uniformly rejected and pursued. Russia and China both have Muslim enclaves in their countries, which in both countries have sparked jihadist uprisings against the regime. Moscow and Beijing will both carefully watch any safe havens that emerge, to ensure Afghanistan does not become a destination for jihadists from the Caucasus or the largely Uyghur Xinjiang province. Iran, meanwhile, has long warily watched the emergence of Sunni jihadism across its border with Afghanistan (the two nations almost warred in the late 1990s over a Taliban attack). Its “marriage of convenience” with several senior leaders of al-Qaeda throughout the years suggests it will also make peace with the Taliban in exchange for their avoiding Iran in any international terrorist campaigns.

The main drawback to Jones’ argument over the coming predominance of irregular warfare is the classic chicken-or-the-egg question: Which comes first? If the United States did focus on unconventional warfare, might that embolden China, Russia, and Iran to in fact pursue the far more threatening conventional military measures? And will those countries really press forward with their irregular strategies now that the United States is seemingly committing fully to rebuilding its conventional powers? The Afghanistan withdrawal might pose the ultimate test. Should U.S. adversaries embrace America’s withdrawal, and seek to press their own advantages in this critical strategic arena, Jones will be proven right—Afghanistan will become the latest battlefield in their increasingly successful irregular warfare campaigns against the United States. Should they withdraw inward, nervously fencing with the Taliban while focusing on building their own conventional forces to respond to America’s latest moves, he will not.

Flaws in U.S. National Security Strategy

In certain respects, U.S. adversaries’ constant activity has highlighted their own priorities: Russia seeks to undermine U.S. democracy, believing that disharmony in America’s heartland damages Washington’s foreign policy credibility; China unleashes waves of propaganda to defend its conduct in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, seeking to maintain its own credibility and competency on the international stage; and Iran spends inordinate amounts funding proxy groups around the region, seeking to maximize its influence all around the Middle East and South Asia. They all share a desire to undermine the United States without direct military confrontation — which may even lead to collaboration in post-U.S. Afghanistan.

The United States, then, by insisting on continuing to build up its conventional military capabilities, misses the point. It must be willing to fight the enemy where the enemy wishes to fight it. And, as Jones argues, “While conventional warfare—clashes between large military forces—defined twentieth-century power, irregular warfare will increasingly define international politics in the coming decades.” This may include Cold War-style irregular proxy wars, where both sides fight kinetic wars through third parties in third countries. The main counterargument is whether America needs to actively fight in order to better prepare for either irregular or conventional combat, or if it can build its capabilities from afar. But such a mindset would inevitably lead America to step away from its engagements around the world, opening vacuums for adversaries to fill and expand influence and leaving the U.S. without forward basing for responding to national security emergencies.

The most critical flaw in America’s current strategy, however, is its insistence that great-power competition and counter-terrorism are mutually exclusive — they are not. Many of the same irregular warfare initiatives that helped the United States defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War — and that should now be deployed against China and Russia — also carry counter-terrorism benefits. Public diplomacy and influence operations that promote and celebrate American values do not just counter authoritarian propaganda in third world countries, they undermine the narratives perpetuated by anti-Western extremist groups. Strong international diplomatic and military alliances do not just deter Chinese or Russian aggression, they provide the United States greater reach in its more militaristic counter-terrorism pursuits. Providing economic and governance support to countries around the world does not just align them closer to the United States, it strengthens their capacity to defeat extremism within their own borders. If the United States intends to largely deprioritize counter-terrorism — and, more broadly, irregular warfare — in this “new Cold War,” it will miss out on some of its most effective tools.

Sun Tzu, oft-quoted by Jones, implored his followers to attack weaknesses — to strike where the enemy cannot defend. U.S. adversaries, across the board, have concluded that America’s weaknesses exist in the so-called “gray zone” — the range of activity between “peace” and “war.” And in response, it appears, the United States will continue building its conventional warfighting capabilities, to prepare for a fight that will probably never happen.

Jones’ concluding note, though, is an encouraging one. Russia, China, and Iran will forever be underdogs in global competition with the United States and its allies, because they share governing systems that repress people, and that are fundamentally unattractive. “[T]he principles and objectives that guide US foreign policy,” Jones writes, “should be linked to the country’s democratic values, and US policy should leverage all the instruments of power, such as military, diplomatic, financial, development, intelligence, and ideological.”

America and its allies will always be favorites — as long as they fight the right way.

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Colonial feminism and the un-liberation of women in Iraq

This past September, former US president George W. Bush made an appearance in Beverly Hills as a marquee speaker for the so-called Distinguished Speakers Series of Southern California. Yet his speech was disrupted by Mike Prysner, a veteran of the Iraq war, demanding that Bush apologises for his lies leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, which has claimed the lives of one million Iraqis.

While Pryzner's act was motivated by Bush's lie regarding weapons of massive destruction, there is another lie utilized by the Bush administration that did not receive the same attention in the media: the so-called empowerment of Iraqi women.

To give "moral legitimacy" to the war, the US government engineered several "humanitarian" lies leading up to its attack. The first was related to the idea of the war being fought to overthrow a tyrant. The second lie was based on the idea of establishing democratic regimes in the Middle East and throughout the world, even if this requires the use of force. The third lie promoted by the Bush administration was on the rights of Iraqi women.

Improving the lives of Iraqi women was the "best" pretext for American "humanitarian imperialism" after the "weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" argument was losing steam, and hence, the US official discourse shifted attention to the "benefits" Iraqi women would gain from removing Saddam Hussein.

"While Pryzner's act was motivated by Bush's lie regarding weapons of massive destruction, there is another lie utilized by the Bush administration that did not receive the same attention in the media" A good illustration of this shift is the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, Paula Dobriansky who answered criticism over the US government for its invasion of Iraq by defending the administration's record concerning Iraqi women: "We are working to advance the interests of Iraqi women in every area, from human rights to political and economic participation to health care and education."

Dobriansky added: "Our commitment to the women of Iraq is part of a broader effort to support the empowerment of women across the Middle East. Through the president's Middle East Partnership Initiative, we are launching programs to train female candidates, fund literacy programs for girls and women, sponsor female entrepreneurs in business exchange programs and support civil society groups working to empower the women of the Middle East. We do not believe that any country can achieve its potential if it disenfranchises or otherwise sidelines half its population.”

Similarly, to justify the war, Charlotte Ponticelli, the US Department of State Senior Coordinator for International Women’s Issues, made the following false public statement: “Iraqi women, just like their Afghan counterparts, had been prevented by Saddam Hussein from entering schools and universities."

The reality in Iraq was that despite the numerous atrocities committed by the previous Saddam regime, Iraqi women were until quite recently among the most educated in the region due to the previous regime’s policy of “state feminism” that sought to centralize women in the country’s modernization project. As a result of the oil price boom experienced in the 1970s and 1980s, state policies promoted the vision that the 'good Iraqi woman' is an 'educated working woman.'

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Forum, Oct. 23: Iraq War a big blot on Powell’s record

The invasion and conquest of Iraq was the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history. It resulted in fractured societies, massive destruction, increased terrorism and untold misery for tens of millions of people in the Middle East and beyond. And it is a major factor in the decline of the U.S. in world prestige, influence and power.

Iraq was a modest regional power surrounded by adversaries. To equate Saddam Hussein with Hitler and Nazi Germany was ridiculous. Study after study by experts, including Hans Blix, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had concluded that Iraq had no “weapons of mass destruction.” But the George W. Bush crowd was determined to have a “glorious war” anyway, supported by a lackey Britain whose leader, Tony Blair, dreamed of Churchillian grandeur.

Virtually all the world’s governments and people opposed the war. But in the waning weeks, to my mind, only two people might have stopped it — Blair and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Blair could have reversed and vigorously opposed it. Powell could have refused to be the fall guy for the war crowd and misrepresent before the United Nations.

Instead, he could have resigned with fanfare, and immediately made a major speech to the American people, possibly at a joint session of Congress, opposing the war.

Powell was a member of Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired in Washington. In conversations, the fact that he abetted the war rankled him, a huge blot on an otherwise distinguished career. And in Britain today, Blair is often called “Phony Tony.”

RAYMOND MALLEY

Hanover

The writer is a retired senior diplomat for the U.S. Department of State and the Agency for International Development and a member of Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired.

A call for action against hate It seems impossible that a member, or members, of the communities we love and represent in Concord could defile a monument in Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park with antisemitic messaging. And yet that is where we appear to find ourselves as popular culture and public discourse increasingly spiral downward toward ever-baser realms (“Park defaced with Nazi imagery,” Oct. 14).

We call for concerted community action to emphatically demonstrate our communities’ commitment to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Jewish sisters and brothers in the face of racialized hate. Place a menorah in your window. Put a yellow star on your mask. Speak up and confront fascist ideology.

In our homes and our houses of worship, our cultural organizations and our retail establishments, our schools and our workplaces, there must be zero tolerance for hate. Say it loud and say it proud: There is no place here for the demonization or degradation of ethnic or religious minorities, or for race-, religious- or gender-based violence against people or property.

LEE OXENHAM

Plainfield

BRIAN SULLIVAN

Grantham

SUZANNE PRENTISS

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Oxenham and Sullivan represent the Sullivan 1 district in the New Hampshire House. Prentiss represents District 5 in the New Hampshire Senate.

Matt Mooshian has proven leadership credentials Claremont elections are coming up. With all City Council seats up for re-election, we have the chance to choose new voices for the city, especially among the at-large seats.

I’m supporting Matt Mooshian for an at-large seat because I believe he will use the position to stand up for a community that serves everybody.

Mooshian’s background is in human services. He knows what it’s like for people struggling to make ends meet.

He’s worked with folks who are displaced and are looking for housing and with parents struggling to find quality child care and a good-paying job.

That’s why his priorities as a councilor would be promoting new and affordable housing as well as promoting smart zoning and land use policies that are resident-friendly.

He knows how to organize and work with people. Whether working with fellow councilors or statewide leaders, he will use his strong collaborative skills to build relationships with statewide leaders to enhance our community’s resources.

In particular, he hopes to create an arts commission to explore opportunities to build on Claremont’s budding status as a regional arts center. We already have several downtown organizations that focus on music, dance and the performing arts. Another is on the way, with the West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts renovating the old Claremont National Bank building.

We should reflect as a community on how best to advertise and grow our strength in this area as a means to draw even more people into Claremont.

Claremont has momentum. Downtown is getting a giant makeover. Buildings all around are being refurbished and repurposed.

Our next City Council will have the important task of stewarding the city through an important growth period.

Mooshian has proven leadership credentials. He started a nonprofit from the ground up, a job that took as much strategic planning as it did bridge-building.

That is the kind of leadership we need as we try to bootstrap our way back to being the regional jewel Claremont once was. Vote Matt Mooshian for Claremont on Nov. 2.

SAMANTHA BOOTH

[colebrownsblog]

"US Did Not Defeat Taliban", Ex Afghanistan Envoy Recounts "Struggle"

Washington: The United States was losing the war to the Taliban so it chose negotiations as an alternative, said the former US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad. Talking to CBS News, Khalilzad said the US military tried many times to strengthen its position on the battleground, but it failed.

"The negotiation was a result of--based on the judgment that we weren't winning the war and therefore time was not on our side and better to make a deal sooner than later," Tolo News quoted Khalilzad said.

Khalilzad blamed the then-president Ashraf Ghani for the disintegration of Afghanistan's security sector, saying his escape triggered the chaos in the Afghan capital.

He said that Washington chose the calender-based approach in its decisions on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and did not take into account the real situation in the country.

Despite remaining challenges and past failures, Khalilzad believes that the US counterterrorism mission in the country succeeded as "the terrorist threat from Afghanistan is not what it used to be" and al-Qaeda has been "devastated."

At the same time, the ex-envoy admitted that in the 20 years of American military presence in Afghanistan, the country did not become a democracy.

"On the issue of building a democratic Afghanistan, I think that the US did not succeed. The struggle goes on. The Talibs are a reality of Afghanistan. We did not defeat them," he said, noting that the Taliban have a different vision for the country, but there are hopes the more moderate views will prevail since the movement is fractured.

[colebrownsblog]

'He lost everything.' Muslims whose lives were upended by 9/11 detainment want justice

Umair Anser came home from middle school on Oct. 3, 2001, and found his house in Bayonne torn apart after some 20 federal agents had swept in to question his parents.

His father, Anser Mehmood, was one of 1,200 Muslim men detained in the anxious weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Pakistani immigrant believed he would return home after the agents cleared him of any link to terrorism.

Instead, he was held at a maximum-security federal detention center in Brooklyn for seven months — four of them in solitary confinement — before his transfer to the Passaic County Jail in Paterson and eventual deportation. When his family was able to visit, they were shocked.

“He was in chains,” Anser, now 33, said of his father. “He was treated like a terrorist, and he was confused because he didn’t know what was going on.”

Anser Mehmood is pictured during a visit to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida 1998. Mehmood, a Bayonne homeowner, was among Muslim men detained after 9/11.

The sweeping arrests did not lead to any terrorism convictions but did succeed in striking fear within Arab, South Asian and Muslim communities in the United States. In some cases, families did not know where their loved ones were for weeks. Some detainees were subjected to solitary confinement and reported abuse in jail. Their detentions upended lives and careers and left families without income. Advertisement

Two decades after 9/11, detainees and their families are calling for the government to acknowledge harm and mistreatment. Their advocates — people who fought for their release and launched court battles in their defense — say accountability also means dismantling the powers and policies that allowed for religious and ethnic profiling, unwarranted surveillance and wrongful detentions.

“If you are remembering those who lost their lives and the ways their lives changed, you should also recognize the people who were picked up in the wake of events whose lives were destroyed,” Umair Anser said in a phone interview from Lahore, Pakistan, where he lives with his family. Advertisement

“You should remember their sacrifice as well. The FBI just said they wanted to question him. He said, ‘OK, I will answer everything they ask me.’ And he lost everything.”

Picture of abuse and uncertainty

In the highly charged environment after the 9/11 attacks, the United States was on high alert and federal officials warned that "sleeper cells" could be under cover waiting to launch the next terrorist attack.

Attorney General John Ashcroft directed the FBI and other federal law enforcement personnel to use "every available law enforcement tool" to arrest persons who "participate in, or lend support to, terrorist activities."

Within a week, the FBI received more than 96,000 tips or potential leads from the public, according to a 2003 report by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. The tips were “often quite general in nature,” the OIG found.

Among those tips, the FBI investigated a person who appeared nervous while renting a truck and a grocery store deemed suspicious for employing “too many people,” the report stated.

'Breaking stereotypes': How 9/11 shaped a generation of Muslim Americans

In Mehmood’s case, the FBI got a tip that “a male possibly Arab” left a fake Social Security card at the state Department of Motor Vehicles, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy organization that has represented detainees including Mehmood in their lawsuit.

Another report, by the American Civil Liberties Union, said the FBI was investigating a report that Mehmood, a truck driver, did not make a delivery on Sept. 11 to Washington, D.C.

Court documents, reports by the U.S. government and human rights groups and the family’s own recollections paint a picture of abuse and uncertainty.

The day after agents detained him, Mehmood was shackled by his hands and feet and taken in a van to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where “high interest” detainees were held. He was dragged out of the van and slammed into walls, breaking his left hand, according to his son and reports about jail conditions.