Today's Stories

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 14, 2009

Where the Occupiers Become Deranged

The Afghan Rubik's Cube

By CONN HALLINAN

Afghanistan is a gatherer of metaphors: “crossroads of Asia,” “graveyard of empires,” and the “Great Game,” to name a few, although it might be more accurate to think of it as a Rubik’s Cube, that frustrating puzzle of intersecting blocks that only works when everything fits perfectly. The trick for the Obama Administration is to figure out how to solve the puzzle in a time frame rapidly squeezed by events both internal and external to that war-torn central Asian nation.

At first glance, the decision to send 21,000 more U.S. troops into a conflict that has dragged on for almost 30 years seems to combine equal parts illusion and amnesia: illusion that the soldiers could make a difference, amnesia in trying something that failed disastrously in 2005.

But then, Afghanistan seems to have a deranging effect on its occupiers.

In the spring of 2005, British Lt. Gen. David Richards, then commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization  (NATO) forces in southern Afghanistan, told a press conference in Khandahar that quadrupling the number of allied troops in Helmand Province would spell the end for the Taliban. Three years later Helmand is unarguably the most dangerous province in the country.

As former British Foreign Service officer Rory Stewart argues, “when the decision to increase the number of troops in 2005 was made, there was no insurgency.”  Indeed, it was the surge—and the civilian casualties which accompanied it—that ignited the current resistance movement. Back then the Taliban controlled 54 percent of the country. Today that figure is 72 percent and rising. In February, Taliban soldiers attacked Kabul, killing scores of people and besieging several government buildings.

The illusion is that adding 21,000 troops to the 38,000 U.S. soldiers and 50,000 NATO soldiers could possibly make a difference. The U.S., with 500,000 soldiers, could not prevail in South Vietnam, a country of 67,000 square miles and 19 million people. Afghanistan has half again that population and 250,000 square miles of some of the planet’s most unforgiving terrain.

As Brig. Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith, Britain’s top military officer in Afghanistan, bluntly told the Sunday Times, “We’re not going to win this war.”

So has the madness that seems to seize Afghanistan’s invaders infected the White House?  Maybe not.

First, if Obama were serious about a military victory in Afghanistan he would have sent 40,000 soldiers, not 17,000 combat troops and 4,000 trainers. The former figure—which the Administration initially discussed—would fulfill the Pentagon’s formula of soldiers to population counterinsurgency strategy.

Second, unlike the Bush Administration, the White House included Iran in a regional conference on the war, and the President has hinted he is open to talking with at least some of the Taliban. Neither of these moves suggests the Administration is only thinking in terms of a military “victory” in Afghanistan.

In a sense the Administration has little choice.

 The price tag alone should give the White House pause. According to the Congressional Research Service, Afghanistan has cost $173 billion and is on track to cost $1 trillion.

And, increasingly, the U.S. is on its own. In recent NATO meetings the Europeans made it clear that they would not be joining the “surge.” Polls show a substantial majority of Germans, British, French and Italians are opposed to sending any more troops to Afghanistan.

The U.S. is also facing trouble among its regional allies.

The 2005 surge not only revitalized the Taliban, it spread the war to Pakistan and sparked the creation of a Pakistani Taliban that now has a major presence in the Swat Valley and most of the Northwest Territory and Tribal Regions. This war has killed over 1500 Pakistani soldiers, innumerable civilians, and cost Islamabad at least $35 billion. With the country’s economy in serious trouble, pouring money into the U.S. war on terrorism is deeply unpopular. According to polls, 89 percent of the Pakistani population opposes it.

The widespread use of U.S. drones to assassinate Taliban leaders has also angered Pakistanis , in part because one wing of the local Taliban has responded to the attacks by launching a bombing campaign. Pakistanis are also unhappy with Washington’s cavalier attitude toward their nation’s sovereignty. 

According to senior officials in the Obama Administration, the U.S. intends to increase the use of drones and expand their attacks into Baluchistan, which will almost certainly increase civilian casualties. While the U.S. strategy of using drones avoids fatalities among its own forces, Pakistanis caught up in the retaliatory bombings and attacks are not so lucky.

The war has also ratcheted up tensions between Pakistan and India.

India has deployed the paramilitary Indo-Tibetan Border Patrol in Afghanistan to protect its road building projects from Taliban attacks. But for the Pakistanis, their traditional enemy now has troops on both borders. Indian and Pakistan have fought three wars since the 1947 partition of the two countries, and India is currently in the middle of a major expansion of its military. 

Another point of tension is the 123 Agreement between the U.S. and India that allows New Delhi to bypass the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and may ignite a nuclear arms race between the two countries, a race which neither can afford and which will measurably increase the possibility of nuclear war in South Asia. Both countries came perilously close to one in 1999.

There is widespread suspicion that the 123 Agreement was a quid pro quo for India’s growing involvement in Afghanistan. The Bush Administration needed regional allies and India was only too willing to play that role—for a price. The price was a nuclear agreement that allows India to import uranium for its civilian nuclear power industry, while using its domestic supplies to fuel its nuclear weapons program.

 The right wing Hindu fundamentalist BJP, jockeying for position in the upcoming Indian elections, has called for a military retaliation, including the blockade of the port of Karachi, for the recent attack on Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants.

In the meantime, the political situation within Afghanistan is growing increasingly unstable. President Harmid Karzai, once the darling of Western powers, has come under intense criticism for his regime’s widespread corruption, and the U.S. and NATO may not back him in the upcoming August elections.

And ominously for the allies, a BBC poll of Afghans shows 73 percent are opposed to an increase in U.S. military presence, with a majority now supporting a negotiated end to the war, even if that means a coalition government that includes the Taliban.

While Afghanistan looks increasingly unstable, the Taliban appear to be getting their act together. According to Saeed Shah of the McClatchy newspapers, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, has forged an alliance with the fractious Pakistan Taliban that will direct the power of both organizations toward fighting “the occupation forces inside of Afghanistan.”

The pact declares a truce on attacks against “the Pakistan security forces” and “fellow Muslims in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan,” which Omar says is “harming the war against the US and NATO forces.”

According to retired Pakistani General Talat Masood, the pact is the reason for the recent truce in the Swat Valley and an end to the fighting in Bajaur Province in the Tribal Territories.

The recent round of attacks by the Taliban in the Punjab appears to be a response to U.S. drone attacks, not a breakdown in the Mullah Omar-negotiated peace pact.

With NATO falling away, regional allies at each other’s throats, growing turmoil inside of Afghanistan, and the Taliban uniting, this is a “lions and tigers and bears” moment for the Obama Administration .

But manipulated just right, the Rubik’s puzzle is solvable.

For instance, while the Taliban have united to fight, Mullah Omar, through Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, also made a seven point peace offering that no longer requires the western forces to withdraw before opening talks. The plan proposes setting a timetable for withdrawal, forming a “consensus government,” and consolidating the Taliban forces into a national army.

The inclusion of Iran suggests that U.S. is correctly viewing the Afghan war as a regional problem, but one that will force the White House to grasp one of South Asia’s thorniest problems: Kashmir. While New Delhi says this issue if off the table, if the U.S. is serious about resolving regional tensions it will eventually have to visit the what may be the most dangerous flashpoint on the planet.

To make all the Rubik’s cubes fit together, the Obama Administration will have to recognize that the U.S. is only one player at the table, and that the interests of other parties, both inside and outside of Afghanistan, must be given equal weight. It will also need to reconsider the Bush Administration’s ill-advised nuclear agreement with New Delhi, which not only increases tensions in the region, but also threatens to unravel a critically important international nuclear treaty.

What the Obama Administration must avoid is an aggressive military surge like the one in 2005 that will only further destabilize Afghanistan, as well as the dead-end tactic of refusing to talk with people you don’t agree with.

Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net

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