Will Obama's Afghan War Spark Its Own Antiwar Movement?

According to multiple accounts, as the White House leaks the news, building up to his speech at West Point on Tuesday, President Barack Obama, channeling a dead president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and mimicking a live one, George W. Bush, will be calling for an escalation in the Afghanistan War. The administration is said to be considering sending 30-35,000 troops to join the 68,000 U.S. troops already deployed there.

Famously, Obama's head general in Afghanistan, former Special Forces General McChrystal -- a man implicated in torture and war crimes -- had called for 40,000 new troops to fulfill his counterinsurgency plans. It appears that some NATO countries -- primarily Britain, Slovakia, Turkey, Georgia, South Korea and tiny Montenegro -- are positioned to make up the shortfall in troops by adding another four to six thousand, up from the approximately 36,000 non-U.S. troops in the NATO force.

But, according to a posting by fflammeau at Firedoglake, top NATO member Germany is balking:

Days before President Obama escalates the American presence in Afghanistan, Germany’s military chief of staff (General Wolfgang Schneiderhan) and his top aide (Peter Wichert) have resigned over accusations that the German military suppressed evidence of the death of dozens of civilians in an airstrike that killed 142 people. General Schneiderhan’s resignation not only is shaking the Merkel government in Germany, it has raised resistance in Germany (and perhaps other Nato countries) to their involvement in Afghanistan just as Obama seeks more troops from them. In late breaking news... reported by the authoritative Deutsche Welle, top politicians in Germany are now calling for a rethink of their role in Afghanistan and a quick exit strategy. In short, the Germans appear reluctant to play "the poodle role" to Obama.

The U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have never been about getting Saddam Hussein, or stopping the Taliban, or helping women achieve literacy. They have been about projecting U.S. dominance in that portion of the world, and was made possible by the collapse of Soviet power in the early 1990s.

Since then, China and the European allies (except Britain) have not been especially happy about the expansion of the U.S. in the newly "unipolar" world, but put up with it for the time being. But the writing is on the proverbial wall: sooner or later, Germany, and possibly France and Italy, will tire of U.S. "leadership", and feel they are not getting their piece of the world pie. This re-eruption of European imperialist ambition will mark a new and dangerous chapter in modern foreign affairs. The "terrorist" enemy of today, who themselves replaced the old specter of a soulless Red Army galumphing over Western Europe, will in the future become fear of a new Chinese Red Army, or a reincarnated Wehrmacht, all intent on destroying "our way of life."

Fox News Chides the Left

Meanwhile, Fox News, which like the broken clock gets it right about two times a day, has published an article salivating over both the inevitable pushback against Obama on the Afghan War issue from the Democratic Party's left wing, and also the likely tepid antiwar response from this same group. Quoting Paul Kawika Martin, political director for Peace Action, Fox writer Stephen Clark writes:

The White House has said that the U.S. won't be in Afghanistan for another eight or nine years. But that won't satisfy liberals, Martin said.

Even though Obama's announcement is sure to reawaken the anti-war movement, Martin said, the protests won't be as intense as they were in the Bush era because the movement has been weakened by the economic recession -- some organizations have shed up to 40 percent of staff in the past year, he said -- and is distracted by the national health care debate. He also said many members of the movement voted for Obama and trust him more than the Bush administration.

"So you don't have that same type of anger," he said.

I don't know Martin or his group, so I don't know how reliable they are as a voice of the left, but I do know that the Democratic Party left has fallen down on the torture issue, once Obama indicated that it was time to "look forward" and not "backwards". A small coterie of liberal bloggers, and the nation's top civil liberties groups, opposed this capitulation and still fight bravely on (see the ACLU's latest batch of FOIA docs on the destroyed CIA torture tapes, and some analysis by Marcy Wheeler here and here), but after some desultory hearings about having hearings by Senator Leahy last March, Congress turned to other issues, turning their backs aggressively on those who have been tortured.

While the left hasn't fielded a large-scale antiwar demonstration in years -- really since the beginning of the current Irag war -- there have been some protests. Antiwar and peace groups have not disappeared, and some very intelligent writing in opposition to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been published of late (see the latest from David Dayen, which notes the opposition to the war from Democrat Bill Hedrick, or Derrick Crowe, or Glenn Greenwald, not to mention the incomparable Chris Floyd).

But the old antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s was spearheaded by a generation of leftists who are no longer on the scene: Stalinists and Maoists, Trotskyists and social-democrats, pacifists and anarchists. If there are some remnants (World Can't Wait gets a hefty amount of organizational drudge work -- and enthusiasm -- from the rank and file of Bob Avakian's old Revolutionary Communist Party), the left as a whole is anemic, and if one is looking for antiwar fervor from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's Congressional Democrats, they will be strain their necks from searching. The most "radical" proposition coming from those ranks is a threat to raise a surtax to pay for Obama's war campaign.

Fox News forgot one important point. The escalation of the Afghanistan War will not work, not even by the standards of the U.S. military. But the current crop of military leaders, and their civilian hangers-one, are drunk on their vision of a unipolar world, led by the progeny of West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, and feeling almost omnipotent, having gotten away with waging a totally illegal war, and spread torture across dozens of countries, all while the populace back home indicated a persistent proclivity for indifference (or fearful complacency, which amounts to the same thing in the end).

Whether Obama is the tool of the hawks, or playing along for time, or even really believes the Global War on Terror inanity (and yes, right-wingers, I know there are dangerous terrorists; they just aren't enough of a danger to anywhere come near changing political and military reality to the degree it has changed, e.g. Patriot Act, torture, invading and destroying other countries), whatever Obama's own intentions are almost doesn't matter.

Days before President Obama escalates the American presence in Afghanistan, Germany’s military chief of staff (General Wolfgang Schneiderhan) and his top aide (Peter Wichert) have resigned over accusations that the German military suppressed evidence of the death of dozens of civilians in an airstrike that killed 142 people. General Schneiderhan’s resignation not only is shaking the Merkel government in Germany, it has raised resistance in Germany (and perhaps other Nato countries) to their involvement in Afghanistan just as Obama seeks more troops from them. In late breaking news... reported by the authoritative Deutsche Welle, top politicians in Germany are now calling for a rethink of their role in Afghanistan and a quick exit strategy. In short, the Germans appear reluctant to play "the poodle role" to Obama.

The U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have never been about getting Saddam Hussein, or stopping the Taliban, or helping women achieve literacy. They have been about projecting U.S. dominance in that portion of the world, and was made possible by the collapse of Soviet power in the early 1990s.

Since then, China and the European allies (except Britain) have not been especially happy about the expansion of the U.S. in the newly "unipolar" world, but put up with it for the time being. But the writing is on the proverbial wall: sooner or later, Germany, and possibly France and Italy, will tire of U.S. "leadership", and feel they are not getting their piece of the world pie. This re-eruption of European imperialist ambition will mark a new and dangerous chapter in modern foreign affairs. The "terrorist" enemy of today, who themselves replaced the old specter of a soulless Red Army galumphing over Western Europe, will in the future become fear of a new Chinese Red Army, or a reincarnated Wehrmacht, all intent on destroying "our way of life."

Fox News Chides the Left

Meanwhile, Fox News, which like the broken clock gets it right about two times a day, has published an article salivating over both the inevitable pushback against Obama on the Afghan War issue from the Democratic Party's left wing, and also the likely tepid antiwar response from this same group. Quoting Paul Kawika Martin, political director for Peace Action, Fox writer Stephen Clark writes:

The White House has said that the U.S. won't be in Afghanistan for another eight or nine years. But that won't satisfy liberals, Martin said.

Even though Obama's announcement is sure to reawaken the anti-war movement, Martin said, the protests won't be as intense as they were in the Bush era because the movement has been weakened by the economic recession -- some organizations have shed up to 40 percent of staff in the past year, he said -- and is distracted by the national health care debate. He also said many members of the movement voted for Obama and trust him more than the Bush administration.

"So you don't have that same type of anger," he said.

I don't know Martin or his group, so I don't know how reliable they are as a voice of the left, but I do know that the Democratic Party left has fallen down on the torture issue, once Obama indicated that it was time to "look forward" and not "backwards". A small coterie of liberal bloggers, and the nation's top civil liberties groups, opposed this capitulation and still fight bravely on (see the ACLU's latest batch of FOIA docs on the destroyed CIA torture tapes, and some analysis by Marcy Wheeler here and here), but after some desultory hearings about having hearings by Senator Leahy last March, Congress turned to other issues, turning their backs aggressively on those who have been tortured.

While the left hasn't fielded a large-scale antiwar demonstration in years -- really since the beginning of the current Irag war -- there have been some protests. Antiwar and peace groups have not disappeared, and some very intelligent writing in opposition to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been published of late (see the latest from David Dayen, which notes the opposition to the war from Democrat Bill Hedrick, or Derrick Crowe, or Glenn Greenwald, not to mention the incomparable Chris Floyd).

But the old antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s was spearheaded by a generation of leftists who are no longer on the scene: Stalinists and Maoists, Trotskyists and social-democrats, pacifists and anarchists. If there are some remnants (World Can't Wait gets a hefty amount of organizational drudge work -- and enthusiasm -- from the rank and file of Bob Avakian's old Revolutionary Communist Party), the left as a whole is anemic, and if one is looking for antiwar fervor from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's Congressional Democrats, they will be strain their necks from searching. The most "radical" proposition coming from those ranks is a threat to raise a surtax to pay for Obama's war campaign.

Fox News forgot one important point. The escalation of the Afghanistan War will not work, not even by the standards of the U.S. military. But the current crop of military leaders, and their civilian hangers-one, are drunk on their vision of a unipolar world, led by the progeny of West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, and feeling almost omnipotent, having gotten away with waging a totally illegal war, and spread torture across dozens of countries, all while the populace back home indicated a persistent proclivity for indifference (or fearful complacency, which amounts to the same thing in the end).

Whether Obama is the tool of the hawks, or playing along for time, or even really believes the Global War on Terror inanity (and yes, right-wingers, I know there are dangerous terrorists; they just aren't enough of a danger to anywhere come near changing political and military reality to the degree it has changed, e.g. Patriot Act, torture, invading and destroying other countries), whatever Obama's own intentions are almost doesn't matter.

The real direction of American politics and society is being decided in this next period. Will it follow the road of Cheney and Bush, albeit with a supposedly kinder face, or will the forces who believe in social justice, world peace, promotion of economic equality, and a fight against the forces of exploitation, torture, and war profiteering, wake up, fight, and realize that failure to act is a profound evil in and of itself? It makes other evil possible.

Bambi Meets Cheney

Last Sunday, Dick Cheney made the television rounds, growling his by now stereotyped plea for the saving graces of torture. It would be Grand Guignol if it weren't so evilly comic. Andrew Sullivan caught this aspect of it in his review of the former vice president's interview with Chris Wallace at Fox "News" Network (H/T Glenn Greenwald):

Now look: there are softball interviews; and then there are interviews like this. It cannot be described as journalism in any fashion. Even as propaganda, which is its point, it doesn't work - because it's far too cloying and supportive of Cheney to be convincing to anyone outside the true-believers. When it comes to Cheney, one of the most incompetent vice-presidents in the country's history, with a record of two grotesquely botched wars, war crimes and a crippling debt, Chris Wallace sounds like a teenage girl interviewing the Jonas Brothers...

CHENEY: I am going to -- if I address that, I will address it in my book, Chris.

WALLACE: It is going to be a hell of a book.

CHENEY: It is going to be a great book.

One day, all the inanity of our society will meet all the evil that came from the lust for power, and crimes such as torture, and we will all be sucked to oblivion in the resulting black hole.

Why isn't anyone writing about that?

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Torture"

Time to move forward? Torturers "just following orders"? Is Cheney right?

Just ask Tom Tomorrow! (H/T Christy Hardin Smith)

And for less cosmic comedy, reflect on the ironies in the following video:

Fox News & Oliver North Involved with U.S. Afghanistan Massacre Cover-up

The UK TimesOnline has posted a video of the aftermath of the killings of dozens of villagers in the Afghan village of Nawabad (called Azizabad in other stories). The U.S. has maintained that seven civilians and three dozen Taliban militants were killed in the combined U.S. Special Forces/Afghan Army/U.S. air operation last August 21. The United Nations and local villagers insist that 92 civilians were killed, over half of them children. According to the article:

In the video scores of bodies are seen laid out in a building that villagers say is used as a mosque; the people were killed apparently during a combined operation by US special forces and Afghan army commandos in western Afghanistan. The film was shot on a mobile phone by an Afghan doctor who arrived the next morning.

Local people say that US forces bombed preparations for a memorial ceremony for a tribal leader. Residential compounds were levelled by US attack helicopters, armed drones and a cannon-armed C130 Spectre gunship.

Besides the UN, the villagers' account is backed up by investigations from an Afghanistan government delegation and what the Times calls Afghanistan's "leading human rights organisation."

Now, NATO command is backing off the official story, noting that there is a "discrepancy" in death toll figures, and expressing the usual "heartfelt sorrow." But , as the Times reports, a new report by Human Rights Watch says that under reporting of civilian deaths in Afghanistan is out of control. (The report criticizes both U.S./NATO and Taliban forces.)

Taking what it says are the most conservative figures available, Human Rights Watch has calculated that civilian deaths as a result of Western airstrikes tripled between 2006 and 2007 to 321. In the first seven months of this year the figure was 119. In the same period, 367 civilian deaths were attributed to Taleban attacks. It accuses US officials of routinely denying reports of civilian deaths.

Perhaps the most amazing political news surrounding the Nawabad massacre is that the Pentagon says it relied for its account, in part, on corroborative evidence by the embedded journalist on the scene: Fox News "reporter" Oliver North! The Times portrays North as coming "to prominence in the 1980s Iran-Contra affair."

Actually, North was convicted for three felonies in regards to his activities during the Iran-Contra scandal. He only escaped a suspended prison sentence and $150,000 in fines because, as his Wikipedia bio describes it, an "appeals court found that witnesses in his trial might have been impermissibly affected by his immunized congressional testimony." North had been deputy director for political-military affairs for the National Security Council under Reagan, until the scandal brought his career to a halt.

North came into the public spotlight due to his participation in the Iran-Contra Affair, in which he was the chief coordinator of the sale of weapons via intermediaries to Iran, with the profits being channeled to the Contras in Nicaragua. He was responsible for the establishment of a covert network used for the purposes of aiding the Contras. U.S. funding of the Contras by appropriated funds spent by intelligence agencies had been prohibited by the Boland Amendment.

North's testimony in front of a congressional committee during the Iran-Contra hearings marked him as an unabashed apologist for covert operations and the projection of American power abroad, irregardless of the will of those in the countries subjected to U.S. intervention. Lying to Congress was justified, in his opinion, because he supported the anti-Sandinista "Contras", whom he labeled "freedom fighters." Since then, and after an unsuccessful foray into politics, he has made his living as a right-wing ideologue, writing books, and establishing himself as a right-wing television commentator.

It looks like North's service to his military masters has never ended. Looking at the video from the Times, which shows rows of dead bodies, including many children, we can only conclude that North has once again lied for the government. It's his specialty, and one shouldn't be surprised. However, North's participation in this U.S. military cover-up vividly calls into question the role of embedded "reporters" among the armed services.

The cover story on Nawabad/Azizabad included U.S. asssurances that the villagers were lying about the casualties. This from Chris Floyd's coverage:

What's more, the Pentagon then claimed that the reports of a wider slaughter were being faked by the villagers, at the behest of the Taliban. The American brass even accused the survivors of the attack of creating fake graves to fool the good-hearted U.S. military inspectors who, it was claimed, quickly visited the scene to ascertain the truth.

But Carlotta Gall is reporting at the New York Times:

Cellphone images seen by this reporter show at least 11 dead children, some apparently with blast and concussion injuries, among some 30 to 40 bodies laid out in the village mosque. Ten days after the airstrikes, villagers dug up the last victim from the rubble, a baby just a few months old. Their shock and grief is still palpable....

A visitor to the village and to three graveyards within its limits on Aug. 31 counted 42 freshly dug graves. Thirteen of the graves were so small they could hold only children; another 13 were marked with stones in the way that Afghans identify women’s graves.

If it takes this concerted of an international outcry to get the truth out of the U.S. government (and they're not admitting to anything on Nawabad yet), how many other instances of U.S. military action can even be believed? Is there anything this government even says or does that has credibility? I know that sounds severe, but that's the price power pays for mendacity and cover-up.

Hat-tip to Grand Moff Texan at Daily Kos for the TimesOnline article

Fox Censors Story on Torture Death of Kim Soo-im

Charles J. Hanley, special correspondent for Associated Press (AP), has written a compelling, fascinating and sad tale of the execution of purported Korean "Mata Hari", Kim Soo-im, at the start of the Korean War. He linked her torture and death to the recent revelations about the more than 100,000 murders of leftists or suspected leftists sympathizers in 1950 by the U.S.-allied (and some would say puppet) regime of South Korea.

This massive human rights crime was covered up by the United States for over fifty years, and it's unclear to what extent U.S. forces participated in the slaughter. We need to understand the history of lies and cover-up perpetuated by the Pentagon, State Department, and executive branch in general, not simply for history's sake, but because the aggressive U.S. militarist policy is accelerating beyond its Middle Eastern goals, and aiming itself at Russia. Placing missiles less than 200 miles from St. Petersburg -- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski signed the deal today -- the U.S. flirts with a Third World War. Such a war would be a disaster of epic proportions, if anyone were left alive afterwards to judge the scope of its destruction.

Does the U.S. government tell the truth, particularly when it comes to war? Here's one story, with some notice of differential press coverage. It mostly follows the details as laid out in Hanley's AP story.

Kim's Story

Wonil Kim, Kim's son by former U.S. Colonel John Baird, has been trying to find out the truth about his mother's death, and the charges of spying for North Korea that led to her death. But recently declassified files, including those of a 1950 U.S. military investigation into the charges of spying by Soon-im, revealed it was known soon after her trial (if not even then) that the charges had no basis. Col. Baird, from whom Kim supposedly stole secrets, had no access to the disputed military information. Her confession had been elicited through waterboarding torture, and perhaps by electric shock and other barbaric physical means.

But like the deaths of many tens of thousands of others in cold blood by U.S. ally South Korea, the truth was hidden from the world. Important aspects of what occurred in Korea over 50 years ago remain unknown. As the censorship work of Fox News demonstrates, if they could, major players in the media would keep the reality of what happened hidden, caged in an ideological prison, unsafe for general distribution, the better to protect the image and behavior of the U.S. from both domestic and international condemnation.

Kim's story begins in 1941, when the glamorous and educated Soon-im married Lee Gang-kook, a German-educated Seoul leftist. Lee ended up on the "Central People's Committee, a broad nationalist coalition that sought to take over Korea from a defeated Japan in September 1945." The Japanese had occupied Korea in a brutal fashion since 1910. In Korea, this period is referred to as the Japanese Forcible Occupation Period.

After Japan was defeated in World War II, the U.S. occupied the southern portion of Korea, and the Soviets occupied the northern area. The dividing line was set at the 38th parallel. According to the AP article, in its full version published by Newsweek (emphasis added):

Cho [Myung-hwa, a film director planning a film on Lee's life,] pointed out a little-known fact: In 1946, a year after the U.S. Army occupied southern Korea at World War II's end, a U.S. Embassy poll found that 77 percent of southerners wanted a socialist or communist future.

Instead, the U.S. military government kept many of Japan's right-wing Korean collaborators in power, and the U.S. commander, Lt. Gen. John R. Hodge, vowed to "stamp out" the communists.

In the version of the story posted by Fox News, the first of the two quoted paragraphs is omitted. This is a "little-known" fact that Fox, and many in this country, would like to keep as obscure as possible. Fox News made one other redaction in AP's story, but I'll get to that in a minute.

After the U.S. occupational forces withdrew in 1949, Kim's former lover, Gang-kook, became a leader in the north, while Kim herself worked for her new lover, Col. Baird, assisting him in his work advising the national police of the new South Korean government. Kim also had a child by Baird, and he set up a house for her and the child, often spending his nights there with her.

Confession by Torture

But in March 1950, as arrests of thousands of leftists or suspected sympathizers in South Korea began in earnest under the right-wing, U.S. backed government of President Syngman Rhee, Kim was arrested. The North Korean invasion was still some three months away. The most serious charge against Soo-im was espionage, which carried the death penalty. Kim was supposed to have given U.S. military information to her former lover Gang-kook. There were assorted other charges, of keeping guns, of stealing government vehicles. There never was any material evidence, nor any eyewitnesses, to back up any of the charges.

"It was witch-hunting," said historian Jung Byung-joon, who has studied the case. "The South Korean police and prosecutors hated her because she was the lover of Lee Gang-kook, and then of Col. Baird, and nobody could touch her. They waited for their chance."

The South Korean prosecutors used torture to obtain a confession. By the third day of the trial, Kim broke down.

Col. William H.S. Wright, head of the Korea advisory group, had testified that her confession was probably forced through "out and out torture," probably near-drowning, or waterboarding, as it's now known.

"The water cure is a very common method," Wright said. "Electric shock and the use of pliers is frequent." [emphasis added]

A Korean source backs this up. In a 2005 Seoul TV report on Kim Soo-im, longtime government propagandist Oh Jae-ho, a staunch anticommunist, said he learned from a police official that the defendant had to be carried into the courtroom to confess on the final day.

For some reason, the Fox News version of the story did not include the middle paragraph quoted above. Was it the claim of the regularity by which a U.S. ally used waterboarding torture that Fox sought to hide? Or was it the use of other barbaric techniques? The use of pliers?

The confession sealed Kim's fate. She was found guilty by the South Korean military court, and executed. A top-secret inquiry by the U.S. military, initiated only weeks after the verdict, found Kim Soo-im innocent of the charges. Her file "was stamped 'case closed.'"

A government recommendation for a court martial for Col. Baird was ignored. The entire affair entered the realm of purported history, another bit of propagandistic lore, meant to display the perfidy of the communists, and the rightness of U.S. intervention and war.

Baird never spoke out to defend his lover, the mother of his son. The U.S. government never released its exculpatory findings, even as her case was used for propagandistic purposes over the years. One teleplay from the 50s said to depict Kim "as Asia's Mata Hari," was introduced by host Ronald Reagan. Cornonet magazine labeled her "The Korean Seductress Who Betrayed America."

As for Lee Gang-kook, an Army intelligence document links him to the CIA's "JACK" program (Joint Activities Commission, Korea). Lee was executed in the North after the war, labeled an American spy. One wonders if the story against Lee weren't concocted by the CIA, in part to build up the credentials of their own agent in Pyongyang. We shall likely never know.

After This, What Redemption?

Thanks to the valiant efforts of Kim's son, who only wanted to know the truth about his mother, Kim's story is being heard again. But in the wild roar that is the rush of 24-hour news, the clamoring of the blogosphere, and the distractions of video, gaming, films, and music, her story will sink back into the anonymity of old historical fact, like a stone dropped forever into the river Lethe.

And yet, poised on the edge of a new "Cold War, and the blood not dry yet from the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, with its own hundreds of thousands dead, and millions of forgotten refugees... and yet, the story of Kim Soo-im has more relevance than ever. The use of torture by a U.S. ally, the cover-up of mass killings and judicial injustice, the censorship of what "foreigners" really think and feel, these lessons must be internalized by the body politic.

A terrible, final war approaches: a nuclear war. Make no mistake about it. If the U.S. keeps up its present direction of provocation and aggression abroad, and secrecy and lies and censorship at home, the convergence of the two will make war inevitable. And this time, missiles will fly, and civilization as we know it will end. The word "hope," cheapened into campaign slogan cant, will be banned, or worse, forgotten.

Only an educated populace, following leaders who are strongly anti-militarist, and recognizing the dangers that unbridled capitalism, imperialism, and nationalism represent for the future of mankind, will be able to take the necessary steps to turn the giant ship of history around, and steer it towards safer waters.