5 UK soldiers shot dead by a "rogue" Afghan policeman
lo yeeOn
last updated at 08:43 GMT, Wednesday, 4 November 2009:
Five British soldiers have been shot dead in Helmand Province, in an
attack the UK military says was carried out by a "rogue" Afghan
policeman.
It is the highest number of UK soldiers killed in a single incident of
"combat" since the US-led invasion of 2001.
An investigation into the attack is under way. The soldiers' next of
kin have been informed of the deaths.
BBC Kabul correspondent Ian Pannell said sources indicated the
attacker was a police officer called Gulbuddin who had fled the scene
after the shooting. It appears he could have been involved in a
dispute with his commander, but tribal sources have pointed to a link
with the Taliban.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the latest deaths were a "terrible
loss".
"They fought to make Afghanistan more secure, but above all to make
Britain safer from the terrorism and extremism which continues to
threaten us from the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
My online Oxford says: Rogue: a dishonest or unprincipled man
I wonder whether Gordon Brown or the Afghan policemen who killed the
UK soldiers whom Gordon Brown sent there to die, in the name of making
England safe, is more a rogue person.
There is absolutely no justification for the US or UK or any other
country to have troops in Afghanistan except Afghanistan itself.
lo yeeOn
========
lo yeeOn
Former Afghan foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, who quit the
presidential poll race recently, says Hamid Karzai's re-election has
"no legal basis".
Mr Abdullah, Mr Karzai's main rival, said the current government
cannot bring legitimacy to the troubled nation and will fail to
control corruption.
He also criticised the election commission for declaring Mr Karzai
the winner of the 20 August poll.
On Sunday, Mr Abdullah announced that he was withdrawing from the
election.
The commission proclaimed Mr Karzai the victor on Monday, cancelling
a planned runoff and ending a political crisis two and a half months
after a fraud-marred first round.
Hundreds of thousands of votes were discounted from August's first
round of voting.
An investigation by the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission
(ECC) said Mr Karzai's share of the vote was 49.67% - below the
crucial 50% plus one vote threshold needed to avoid a second round.
Since yesterday, Obama told the world that Karzai's "re-election" was
"legal", his adminstration would have to fight this one out with the
Afghan politician.
And of course, Karzai's government will never be seen as legetimate,
nor is the US occupation with the help of our soldiers and those of
our NATO allies.
lo yeeOn
========
In article <hcrgh0$scu$1...@reader1.panix.com>,
lo yeeOn
Harry Merrick <home...@hotmail.com> wrote:
The bloodshed, the tragedy could have been avoided.
>Rogue policemen disguised as allies have to be few and far
>between.
For the loved ones of those who were killed, every life is precious.
So, if it could be avoided, then it should be avoided.
>However, the presence in Afghanistan by NATO troops, which include
>the UK, is vital for any number of reasons.
You haven't offer any. If you're talking about those presented by
Dick Cheney, George Bush, Tony Blair, and the neocons who advocate
fighting decades-long wars far away from America, then they have been
discredited a long time ago and continues to be discredited, the
latest being the high profile protest resignation from Colonel Matthew
Hoh, a military "grunt" who has served in Iraq and a high-level State
Department diplomat in assignment in Afghanistan recently. He not
only questions the official line for the occupation war in Afghanistan
but also explains why it doesn't make any sense. In other words, your
unstated "any number of reasons" do not exist.
From the UK Independent:
Mr Hoh wrote,
The US involvement was simply fuelling the insurgency, and was
causing American servicemen to die "in what is essentially a
far-off civil war", or more accurately a number of small local
wars in which the sides are united only in their resentment of a
foreign intruder.
[Hoh's] problem was not _how_ Washington was pursuing the war - the
issue Mr Obama is grappling with in round after round of
consultations with his top national security and military advisers -
"but _why_ and _to what end_" his country was fighting it in the
first place.
(The emphases on "how", "why", and "to what end" are mine.)
[As Hoh pointed out, the Afghans have been fighting a civil war with
all kinds of foreigners for some 35 years now. And he continues:]
"I fail to see the value or worth in continued US casualties... in
support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old
civil war
"Like the Soviets we continue to bolster a failing state, while
encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted
by its people
"If the history of Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United
States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously,
in a tragedy that... has violently and savagely pitted the urban,
secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural,
religious, illiterate and traditional.
. . .
>To say different is either cowardice, ignorance, or you support the
>Taliban, or you are a traitor. Which is it?
So, are you ready to lob these insults at Colonel Hoh? Or, is it your
way to intimidate a voice who speaks of the futility and lie of the
wars? Whichever it is, it is bad for freedom and bad for democracy!
lo yeeOn
========
About the Fort Hood tragedy:
lo yeeOn wrote:
>Apparently he (Malik Nidal Hassan, the shooter) is still alive.
>
As they say, the rumor of his demise has been greatly exaggerated:)
But it's actually a better outcome than to have the guy killed and for
us know not the reason for his killing or whether he was acting out on
his impending deployment to Iraq which he has apparently resisted with
great efforts or as a part of a terrorist group.
Just a day agp, five UK soldiers in an Afghan military base was killed
in cold blood by an Afghan policeman they were training/mentoring.
It's just too much violence today. And America has a responsibility
to stop the endless bloodshed.
The killer with the UK situation is dead and the most plausible
explanation is the US occupation of Afghanistan with NATO countries
sacrificing their young men to help secure by force. Nobody should
think the people of the country we occupy by force at the cost of many
civilians killed are not grieved by our barbarous act. What happened
to the UK soldiers are tremendous losses to their loved ones back home
in England; but think at the same time how many Afghanis NATO planes
have bombed into smithereens and how chaotic the country has become.
In the Texas Fort Hood case, the following BBC report is telling us
something too - also entirely related to our foreign war enterprise:
Apparently, the guy has been working as a military psychiatrist at
Walter Reeds. And lately he's due to be sent to Iraq. He resents
his impending deployment so much that he's hired a military lawyer to
help him get out of his contract with the military. He even proposes
to pay the government back what it has paid him.
I can imagine that having seen all those who have been crippled by
their services in Iraq and Afghanistan has had a profound effect on
his pysche about going to Iraq, a country torn apart and devastated by
our bombs and missiles wrapped in big government lies.
I remember Columbine which took place near the end of Bill Clinton's
savage bombing of Yugoslavia to break it up. And I thought to myself
Uncle Sam is setting up a very bad cycle of karma/example for everyone
including kids. Things of this nature simply gotten worse.
In the case of the UK soldiers murdered by the Afghan whom they
mentored/trained to become a tough policeman on his own countrymen
wouldn't have to die if the UK hadn't committed them to their task.
In the case of the Fort Hood murder by a soldier of our own who is
fighting his Iraq deployment could have been avoided had he not be
forced to serve.
And the Columbine school massacre could likely have been avoided, had
children been shown the example of peace instead of war.
In all cases, the bloodshed, the tragedy could have been avoided.
And the government has a duty to pursue peace and avoid forcing its
will down people's throats.
But instead, it continues to use lie to sustain its hegemonic endeavor
to dominate the world and call it self-defense. Even as the majority
of the people in the US and that in the UK are opposed to these wars.
People were so tired of these wars and their rulers got so unpopular
that new rulers come in promising change. Like Obama, he was elected
largely because he was running on the credential that he had been
consistently opposed to the Iraq war.
But once he went to the White House. He kept the same "Defense"
secretary who had been presiding over the two wars and continued to
pursue the policy of militarily occupying both Afghanistan and Iraq,
even at the cost of an expanded military involvement and even as he
was borrowing over a trillion from the future and took the blame of
being a big spender. But the biggest expenditure goes to financing
the Iraqi and Afghan occupations.
Yet people continue to be tired of these wars. But Obama and Gordon
Brown in the UK have both been compromised by their job description,
head of a government which is committed to preserve continuity of its
policy, irrespective of the people who administer it.
Continuity of the government and continuity of its policies. It's a
fundamental dogma for all politicians who want to remain within the
establishment strucutre, in D.C. and in London, respectively.
Too bad for democracy. It doesn't matter what the voters have to say
at the polls. Government policy shall continue.
So the governments continue to say that if we don't keep fighting to
keep Iraq and Afghanistan occpuied, we'd have another 9/11. And this
is so even if 9/11 was an immoral act allowed to happen by hawks in
D.C. who wanted to rile up the American people to support a series of
wars planned by the PNAC authors/proponents/supporters.
So, Obama by becoming President of the US accepts the government dogma
and is duty-bound to uphold the war banners in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and even Pakistan and Iran to make sure that we may be bankrupting
ourselves, but we have to keep fighting and killing people and have
our soldiers killed. And they have to go even if they don't want to
go, despite the facade that we have a voluntary army.
This is how sad America has become. We're obliged to ride the beast
the warriors inside our government have created and to keep riding it
and can't get off. Causality or karma, anyway you want to call it,
the blood we've spilled in Iraq and Afghanistan continues to haunt us.
They say: "Oh, very tragic of course, but for any number of reasons,
we have to keep occupying those countries . . . and intimidate you
with personal attacks like "Why . . . are you ignorant, a coward, a
Taliban supporter, or a traitor?" if you try to point the causality.
So, we say we have democracy in the US and the UK. Yet, our elections
mean nothing. And voters' desires are consistently ignored. And they
even go so far as to stifle free speech by calling you a traitor when
you are saying that the wars are hurting not only others but us alos.
Such is the "democracy" we have today, no doubt a far cry from what
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others envisioned a couople
of hundred years ago.
And as for the line that these wars are needed for domestic security,
Colonel Matthew Hoh has spoken eloquently that it is a big lie.
"I fail to see the value or worth in continued US casualties... in
support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old
civil war
"Like the Soviets we continue to bolster a failing state, while
encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted
by its people
"If the history of Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United
States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously,
in a tragedy that... has violently and savagely pitted the urban,
secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural,
religious, illiterate and traditional.
lo yeeOn
========
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8345713.stm
BBC report: Page last updated at 03:59 GMT, Friday, 6 November 2009
A US army major has opened fire on fellow soldiers at the Fort Hood
military base in Texas, killing 12 people and injuring 31, officials
say.
Base commander Lt Gen Bob Cone said that the gunman had not been
killed, as earlier stated, but was in custody.
Two other suspects were questioned, but the army now says only one
gunman was involved in the incident.
Lt Gen Cone said the motive for the shooting was not known. One of the
dead was a policeman, others were soldiers.
President Barack Obama described it as "a horrific outburst of
violence".
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, he said: "It is
difficult enough when we lose these brave men and women abroad, but it
is horrifying that they should come under fire at an army base on US
soil."
He extended his condolences to the families of the victims, adding:
"We will make sure that we get answers to every single question about
this horrible incident."
'Racial harassment'
Eleven victims were initially reported dead, but one of the injured
died, bringing the death toll to 12.
Barack Obama: 'A horrific outburst of violence'
The gunman has been named as Major Nidal Malik Hasan. He is now said
to be wounded after being shot a number of times, but in a stable
condition in custody.
"His death is not imminent," said Lt Gen Cone.
Maj Hasan, aged 39, was a military psychiatrist and was reportedly due
to be sent on a mission to Iraq.
His cousin said Maj Hasan - a US-born Muslim - had been resisting such
a deployment.
"He hired a military attorney to try to have the issue resolved, pay
back the government, to get out of the military. He was at the end of
trying everything," Nader Hasan told Fox News.
He also said that Nidal Malik Hasan had been battling racial
harassment because of his "Middle Eastern ethnicity".
Prior to Fort Hood, Maj Hasan served as a psychiatrist at the Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, which treats wounded troops
from combat zones.
Witness' account
The shooting had begun at about 1330 (1930 GMT) on Thursday at a
personnel and medical centre at Fort Hood, where soldiers who are
preparing to deploy go for last-minute medical check-ups, Lt Gen Cone
said.
He said the gunman had two weapons, one semi-automatic, which "might
explain the rate of fire".
Asked whether the shootings were a terrorist act, Lt Gen Cone said: "I
couldn't rule that out but I'm telling you that right now, the
evidence does not suggest that."
Two more suspects were apprehended in an adjacent facility, he said,
but eyewitness accounts suggesting there might have been more than one
gunman were later discounted.
A serviceman stationed at Fort Hood who asked to remain anonymous told
the BBC: "I heard the emergency announcement over the speakers outside
and saw people rushing to get indoors."
Local congressman John Carter, speaking to NBC News, said gunfire had
erupted half an hour before a graduation ceremony was due to begin.
'Like a city'
Fort Hood, near the town of Killeen, is the largest US base in the
world.
Home to about 40,000 US troops, the base lies between Austin and Waco,
about 60 miles (100 km) from each city.
The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says units at Fort Hood are among
those deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some will have returned
from there.
The base has a centre that deals with combat stress, our correspondent
adds.
Hilary Shine, of the Killeen Fire Department told the BBC's News
Channel Fort Hood was like a small city.
"It has schools, a hospital, a convenience store even. And it has a
large daytime population - including civilians working on the base -
with as many as 80,000 in this area during the daytime."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
About the futility of the Afghan war (from a high-level State
Department appointee in the occupation of Afghanistan):
>That is nothing but Marxist rhetoric and nonsense.
If so, I wonder how you would characterize Matthew Hoh's high-profile
protest resignation from his Afghan assignment. The truth is that
both Hoh and I share much of our assessment about the deceit behind
our military occupation and fighting in Afghanistan. But that truth
is apparently too hard for you to take and so you label it Marxist
without citing evidence, as if the smearing would change the truth.
>The truth is simple. As you sow so shall you reap.
Ah yes, are you talking about our bleeding in Afghanistan and Iraq as
a consequence of the violence and destruction we've committed there
against their peoples?
>Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be
>maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as
>his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle. -
>Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
This sounds like George W Bush's wars on terror in Afghanistan and
Iraq, doesn't it?
Yesterday, within 12 hours of my writing the follow-up to this
article, it was all over the news that a high level diplomat in
Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh, had resigned from his job in protestation
against the war in Afghanistan.
His carefully drafted letter of resignation was said to have sent
shock waves around the world, particularly in political circles here
in the US and in Europe where the war hawks have been busy selling the
idea of substantially boosting NATO troop level in Afghanistan.
All the politicians in Western Europe have been saying how important
it is to sacrifice more young men for the security of the member
nations of NATO. Mr. Hoh begged to differ. In other words, the
politicians who have been selling the war have been lying.
According to the UK Independent:
Mr Hoh wrote,
The US involvement was simply fuelling the insurgency, and was
causing American servicemen to die "in what is essentially a
far-off civil war", or more accurately a number of small local
wars in which the sides are united only in their resentment of a
foreign intruder.
[Hoh's] problem was not _how_ Washington was pursuing the war - the
issue Mr Obama is grappling with in round after round of
consultations with his top national security and military advisers -
"but _why_ and _to what end_" his country was fighting it in the
first place.
(The emphases on "how", "why", and "to what end" are mine.)
So, it is clear to me that Hoh was letting the air out of the balloon,
so to speak, about the Bush-Cheney war in Afghanistan as a war to
fight terrorism or to protect the domestic security of the U.S.
This revelation simply reinforces the suspicion of many that the war
on terror is not what our rulers have been telling us to be. They are
fighting the Taliban just so as to keep Afghanistan under our control,
but for what at this huge cost? Since every time Dick Cheney or some
important US senators visited Afghanistan in the past 8 years, they
went to Bagram more than they cared to visit Kabul.
And since Bagram has been idle in the fighting of the Taliban, leaving
the US and other NATO member nations to send foot soldiers to defend
the supply routes into Afghanistan, at the cost of many fatalities and
failure of delivery of supplies, one cannot but suspect that Bagram is
really the thing US and NATO soldiers are dying for.
For Obama to adopt George Bush's and Dick Cheney's orphan and be seen
as his own baby is foolhardy because as Hoh pointed out, the Afghans
have been fighting a civil war with all kinds of foreigners for some
35 years now.
"I fail to see the value or worth in continued US casualties... in
support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old
civil war
"Like the Soviets we continue to bolster a failing state, while
encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted
by its people
"If the history of Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United
States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously,
in a tragedy that... has violently and savagely pitted the urban,
secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural,
religious, illiterate and traditional.
So, it is our government and its allies which have been telling a
massive lie about why we're fighting these open-ended wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. (The world already knew George Bush's public reason for
going to war against Iraq was a massive lie. And now it emerges also
that the war in Afghanistan is equally a lie.)
The USSR's 10 years of military involvment in Afghanistan failed. And
then Bush and Cheney spent nearly their two full terms doing the same
and failed. Why should Mr. Obama think that he could do better,
particularly when Bagram is not even doing the fighting? Why does
Mr. Obama want to adopt the Bush-Cheney orphan and be seen as his own
failure, his own albatross, when he could help America solve its more
urgent domestic problems and the global problem of climate change, by
first breaking clean from our wayward past and bringing America home?
lo yeeOn
========
--------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: 5 UK soldiers shot dead by a "rogue" Afghan policeman
BBC report (excerpt)
lo yeeOn
========
>--
>Harry Merrick.
>
lo yeeOn
veritably bogged-down wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan)
without stating them and wrote only:
>Bullshit! What the hell does a mere Colonel know about politics that
>he can be taken seriously. The reasons DO exist and are plain for all
>to see!
His raging remark was in response to my paragraph:
>> the latest being the high profile protest resignation from Colonel
>> Matthew Hoh, a military "grunt" who has served in Iraq and a
>> high-level State Department diplomat in assignment in Afghanistan
>> recently. He not only questions the official line for the
>> occupation war in Afghanistan but also explains why it doesn't
>> make any sense. In other words, your unstated "any number of
>> reasons" do not exist.
Very telling, very telling of a neocon war hawk who just rages on like
Rush Limbaugh or Dick Cheney or George Bush or Senator Lieberman, none
of whom have seen combat yet unapologetically urge other Americans to
sacrifice their sons and daughters to satisfy their bloodlust with an
rabid intensity.
If you had served in either of these two wars or any war, would you
have so quickly dismissed a combat marine, especially a veteran who
was cited for his "uncommon bravery" on the war front and berated him
with this disparaging remark? (The bravery apparently refers to his
valiant effort to rescue his comrades from drowning in Iraq. I say
this in light of the latest news about two American soldiers who
drowned and died in Afghanistan trying to save some airdrop packages
which had fallen into a river. Deaths like that would have been
unnecessary if President Obama would have stopped this idiotic war
that Bush and Cheney started for reasons other than America's own
safety.)
>What the hell does a mere Colonel know about politics that he can be
>taken seriously. The reasons DO exist and are plain for all to see!
Maybe the word "politics" is the central matter, isn't it? Maybe it
takes an honest marine who has fought the wars and suffered the scars
of deaths and destruction surrounding him to tell the truth of rogue
wars instead of relying on knee-jerking politicians hiding thousands
of miles away from the battlefield to do so.
Note that he was bribed and bribed by the administration to stay and
thereefore keep quiet about his feelings about the futility of these
wars and then decided that he really had no choice but to do it this
way in order to let the American people know how expensive and how
futile these wars are which our politicians keep urging us to
sacrifice our sons and daughters for.
And note that he was trained at Tufts as a diplomat, a school reputed
to produce a steady stream of diplomats for our government for more
than a century. So, Colonel Hoh is not a "mere colonel: as you've so
dismissively called him, but someone who has the theory and the _gut_
level practice to have done his job, served his country well, and
knows what he is talking about.
Matthew Hoh was impressive enough that he was appointed the State
Department's lead civilian contact with the Zabul province governor.
And his service has been so impeccable and his demeanor so thoughtful
that no person in the government has dared to lynch him yet for his
becoming
"the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan
war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency."
About Matthew Hoh, the Washington Post wrote (excerpt):
'Uncommon bravery'
Hoh's journey -- from Marine, reconstruction expert and diplomat to
war protester -- was not an easy one. Over the weeks he spent
thinking about and drafting his resignation letter, he said, "I felt
physically nauseous at times."
His first ambition in life was to become a firefighter, like his
father. Instead, after graduation from Tufts University and a desk
job at a publishing firm, he joined the Marines in 1998. After five
years in Japan and at the Pentagon -- and at a point early in the
Iraq war when it appeared to many in the military that the conflict
was all but over -- he left the Marines to join the private sector,
only to be recruited as a Defense Department civilian in Iraq. A
trained combat engineer, he was sent to manage reconstruction efforts
in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
"At one point," Hoh said, "I employed up to 5,000 Iraqis" handing out
tens of millions of dollars in cash to construct roads and
mosques. His program was one of the few later praised as a success by
the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
In 2005, Hoh took a job with BearingPoint, a major technology and
management contractor at the State Department, and was sent to the
Iraq desk in Foggy Bottom. When the U.S. effort in Iraq began to turn
south in early 2006, he was recalled to active duty from the
reserves. He assumed command of a company in Anbar province, where
Marines were dying by the dozens.
Hoh came home in the spring of 2007 with citations for what one
Marine evaluator called "uncommon bravery," a recommendation for
promotion, and what he later recognized was post-traumatic stress
disorder. Of all the deaths he witnessed, the one that weighed most
heavily on him happened in a helicopter crash in Anbar in December
2006. He and a friend, Maj. Joseph T. McCloud, were aboard when the
aircraft fell into the rushing waters below Haditha dam. Hoh swam to
shore, dropped his 90 pounds of gear and dived back in to try to save
McCloud and three others he could hear calling for help.
He was a strong swimmer, he said, but by the time he reached them,
"they were gone."
'You can't sleep'
It wasn't until his third month home, in an apartment in Arlington,
that it hit him like a wave. "All the things you hear about how it
comes over you, it really did. . . . You have dreams, you can't
sleep. You're just, 'Why did I fail? Why didn't I save that man? Why
are his kids growing up without a father?' "
Like many Marines in similar situations, he didn't seek help. "The
only thing I did," Hoh said, "was drink myself blind."
What finally began to bring him back, he said, was a television show
-- "Rescue Me" on the FX cable network -- about a fictional New York
firefighter who descended into "survivor guilt" and alcoholism after
losing his best friend in the World Trade Center attacks.
He began talking to friends and researching the subject online. He
visited McCloud's family and "apologized to his wife . . . because I
didn't do enough to save them," even though his rational side knew he
had done everything he could.
Hoh represented the service at the funeral of a Marine from his
company who committed suicide after returning from Iraq. "My God, I
was so afraid they were going to be angry," he said of the man's
family. "But they weren't. All they did was tell me how much he loved
the Marine Corps."
"It's something I'll carry for the rest of my life," he said of his
Iraq experiences. "But it's something I've settled, I've reconciled
with."
Late last year, a friend told Hoh that the State Department was
offering year-long renewable hires for Foreign Service officers in
Afghanistan. It was a chance, he thought, to use the development
skills he had learned in Tikrit under a fresh administration that
promised a new strategy.
'Valley-ism'
In photographs he brought home from Afghanistan, Hoh appears as a
tall young man in civilian clothes, with a neatly trimmed beard and a
pristine flak jacket. He stands with Eikenberry, the ambassador, on
visits to northern Kunar province and Zabul, in the south. He walks
with Zabul Gov. Mohammed Ashraf Naseri, confers with U.S. military
officers and sits at food-laden meeting tables with Afghan tribal
leaders. In one picture, taken on a desolate stretch of desert on the
Pakistani border, he poses next to a hand-painted sign in Pashto
marking the frontier.
The border picture was taken in early summer, after he arrived in
Zabul following two months in a civilian staff job at the military
brigade headquarters in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan. It was in
Jalalabad that his doubts started to form.
Hoh was assigned to research the response to a question asked by
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during an
April visit. Mullen wanted to know why the U.S. military had been
operating for years in the Korengal Valley, an isolated spot near
Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan where a number of
Americans had been killed. Hoh concluded that there was no good
reason. The people of Korengal didn't want them; the insurgency
appeared to have arrived in strength only after the Americans did,
and the battle between the two forces had achieved only a bloody
stalemate.
Korengal and other areas, he said, taught him "how localized the
insurgency was. I didn't realize that a group in this valley here has
no connection with an insurgent group two kilometers away." Hundreds,
maybe thousands, of groups across Afghanistan, he decided, had few
ideological ties to the Taliban but took its money to fight the
foreign intruders and maintain their own local power bases. "That's
really what kind of shook me," he said. "I thought it was more
nationalistic. But it's localism. I would call it valley-ism."
'Continued . . . assault'
Zabul is "one of the five or six provinces always vying for the most
difficult and neglected," a State Department official said. Kandahar,
the Taliban homeland, is to the southwest and Pakistan to the
south. Highway 1, the main link between Kandahar and Kabul and the
only paved road in Zabul, bisects the province. Over the past year,
the official said, security has become increasingly difficult.
By the time Hoh arrived at the U.S. military-run provincial
reconstruction team (PRT) in the Zabul capital of Qalat, he said, "I
already had a lot of frustration. But I knew at that point, the new
administration was . . . going to do things differently. So I thought
I'd give it another chance." He read all the books he could get his
hands on, from ancient Afghan history, to the Soviet occupation in
the 1980s, through Taliban rule in the 1990s and the eight years of
U.S. military involvement.
Frank Ruggiero, the Kandahar-based regional head of the U.S. PRTs in
the south, considered Hoh "very capable" and appointed him the senior
official among the three U.S. civilians in the province. "I always
thought very highly of Matt," he said in a telephone interview.
In accordance with administration policy of decentralizing power in
Afghanistan, Hoh worked to increase the political capabilities and
clout of Naseri, the provincial governor, and other local
officials. "Materially, I don't think we accomplished much," he said
in retrospect, but "I think I did represent our government well."
Naseri told him that at least 190 local insurgent groups were
fighting in the largely rural province, Hoh said. "It was probably
exaggerated," he said, "but the truth is that the majority" are
residents with "loyalties to their families, villages, valleys and to
their financial supporters."
Hoh's doubts increased with Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential
election, marked by low turnout and widespread fraud. He concluded,
he said in his resignation letter, that the war "has violently and
savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern of
Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and
traditional. It is this latter group that composes and supports the
Pashtun insurgency."
With "multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups," he wrote, the
insurgency "is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a
continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun
land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external
enemies. The U.S. and Nato presence in Pashtun valleys and villages,
as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of
non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against
which the insurgency is justified."
American families, he said at the end of the letter, "must be
reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures
lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost
confidence such assurances can be made any more."
For more please check out the Washington Post story.
Your raging remarks about how if we don't stop the Taliban, the latter
would then capture Pakistan and steal its nuclear warheads.
I don't know if you realize what you're saying. First, it sounds like
all warmongers who want their wars so bad that they tell the public
that their targets are always the worst, the most rabid enemy we've
ever faced. "Wow, imagine what would happen next if xyz would get his
hand on the nuke . . ." So, it's a tried-and-true technique for them
using the inherent fear people have about their own survival and the
ignorance most have about the assertion and its plausibility. And
second, the kind of scenario that you stitched together in a broad
sweep is a fairy tale because you made large and non sequitur leaps in
your reasoning to accomplish it.
Pakistan is a large country full of smart people (and that's why it
has nukes, like India and China and Israel and the various European
countries and America). Pakistan might have a small area which has
Taliban influence (which is as Matthew Hoh indicated fueled by our
occupation war raging over there); but it has resources that is not
going to be taken over by a country which is resource-poor and
composed of poorly educated though simple people, namely Afghanistan.
Third, again as Hoh pointed out, Taliban is but one of many groups in
the current Afghan insurgency we so mindless sacrifice our boys and
girls fighting against, and the political appeal of these myriad
groups is fueled by our missiles and bombs, our killing of their
people and the devastation of their land.
And just as Hoh pointed out, as the Russians during the USSR era
failed against the resistance of these indigenous groups, we will too.
(Afghanistan is known as the "graveyard of empires".)
The Taliban was able to rule after the groups defeated the Russians
because it was the most educated and most disciplined among the groups.
The Taliban did not finance nor plan any international terrorism. To
connect bin Laden's camp in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Taliban's role
in international terrorism is delusional. Afghanistan is and has been
by all accounts one of the poorest countries in the world. It might
have needed the rent money bin Laden offered. But the right way to
handle that was to destroy the camp and that was done. And that
should have been all of it and we should have wrapped up and came
home.
The real reason for our war in Afghanistan is really about occupation
of its land and to make sure that we get to hold on to Bagram like a
crown jewel that we're sacrificing our boys and girls to keep. It's
insane.
If the Taliban again re-emerges as the winner among the myriad groups
of insurgency and rule Afghanistan, it is their business. If it again
offers training camps to bin Laden or his associates, which I highly
doubt would happen again given the pain we've given the Afghanis, we
could quickly destroy them again just as in December 2001.
But to think that the impoverished, resource-poor Afghanistan under
the Taliban can capture Pakistan and steal its nuclear warhards is
delusional. How can they even transport them and travel hundreds of
miles to bring them back to Afghanistan or detonate them right there,
if they don't even have an air force while Pakistan has one which even
India fears?
The logical leaps you made in drawing your doomsday conclusion are
unsupportable, baseless fantasies and the conclusion, implausible.
And finally, you keep throwing about insults: "ignorance, cowardice,
pro-taliban, and traitor, which is it?"
Just consider this: Colonel Matthew Hoh tells of our war fueling the
Afghan insurgency. So, who is pro-taliban? Those who cause it to be
stronger by ragingly support a war which fuel the Afghan insurgency or
those who counsel the cessation of war which would give the Afghanis
no compelling reason to support it? And who is a traitor? One who
fans a costly war which bleeds America to death or one who counsels
peace so that America can devote its precious resources to rebuilding
herself after a decade of decline and economic losses due to the twin
wars? And who is a coward, one who argues with courage like Matthew
Hoh or like you who still wouldn't care to give a single reason for
these wars? And who is ignorant? One who carefully argues his case
or you who makes fantastic and delusional doomsday prediction without
any support?
Grow up, and try to be half-way worthy of the country which you live
in and the forefathers like Benjamin Franklin who tried to steer it
towards peace and freedom. ("There is no such thing as a bad peace
nor a good war", according to Franklin.)
lo yeeOn
========
See also the Washington Post Interview with Matthew Hoh:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/10/27/DI2009102703143.html
Former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is
fighting
Matthew Hoh Former Foreign Service officer
Wednesday, October 28, 2009; 1:00 PM
Matthew Hoh, a former Foreign Service officer and former Marine Corps
captain who last month became the first U.S. official known to resign
in protest over the Afghan war, was online Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 1
p.m. ET to discuss the reasons why he thought the war "wasn't worth
the fight."
---
And The Wasington Post: By Karen DeYoung
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
In part as follows:
Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest
over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the
insurgency.
"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic
purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote
Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of
personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy
and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how
we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."
The reaction to Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials,
concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps
gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay.
U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered
him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he
was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke,
the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer,"
Holbrooke said in an interview. "We all thought that given how
serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior
track record, we should pay close attention to him."
While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the
fight," Holbrooke said, "I agreed with much of his analysis." He
asked Hoh to join his team in Washington, saying that "if he really
wanted to affect policy and help reduce the cost of the war on lives
and treasure," why not be "inside the building, rather than outside,
where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same
political impact?"
Hoh accepted the argument and the job, but changed his mind a week
later. "I recognize the career implications, but it wasn't the right
thing to do," he said in an interview Friday, two days after his
resignation became final.
"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be
in love," Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the
"second-best job I've ever had," his dominant experience is from the
Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve.
"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of
al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq
team whacked a bunch of guys."
But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting
the United States largely because its troops are there -- a growing
military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including
other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed
national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign
presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he
said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan
for what is essentially a far-off civil war.
As the White House deliberates over whether to deploy more troops,
Hoh said he decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in
Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their
congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.' "
---
[3] The tragedies (at Fort Hood and for the mentoring/training UK soldiersin
+ Afghanistan, occurring just a day apart) could have been avoided Re: 5 UK
+ soldiers shot dead by a "rogue" Afghan policeman
Date: Fri Nov 06 03:15:02 EST 2009
Lines: 525
From the UK Independent:
. . .
lo yeeOn
========
lo yeeOn wrote:
lo yeeOn
========
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8345713.stm
'Racial harassment'
Witness' account
'Like a city'
---------------------------------------------------------------------
lo yeeOn
========
--------------------------------------------------------------
BBC report (excerpt)
lo yeeOn
========
>--
>Harry Merrick.
>
In article <7lj36sF...@mid.individual.net>,
>Yeah, if the Taliban disguised as a policemen had behaved himself in a
>civilised manner, perhaps! The soldiers were mates of his and were unarmed!
>Typical raghead behaviour.
>
>>
>>> Rogue policemen disguised as allies have to be few and far
>>> between.
>>
>> For the loved ones of those who were killed, every life is precious.
>> So, if it could be avoided, then it should be avoided.
>
>Your joking, of course! What planet are you on? The Taliban pretending to
>be a policeman could have avoided it, certainly, since it was all his doing.
>
>>
>>> However, the presence in Afghanistan by NATO troops, which include
>>> the UK, is vital for any number of reasons.
>>
>> You haven't offer any. If you're talking about those presented by
>> Dick Cheney, George Bush, Tony Blair, and the neocons who advocate
>> fighting decades-long wars far away from America, then they have been
>> discredited a long time ago and continues to be discredited,
>
>Nonsense. If the Taliban were to win in Afghanistan, they would then take
>Pakistan, get their hands on atomic weapons and destroy the East! India
>would have to invade to ensure her safety. Oil, of course would be a prime
>subject of attention also. Taliban would attack all Western cities with
>suicide bombers and try to impose Sharia law on us all? - Flood the West
>with drugs? - Oh, I don't think so!
>
>>the
>> latest being the high profile protest resignation from Colonel Matthew
>> Hoh, a military "grunt" who has served in Iraq and a high-level State
>> Department diplomat in assignment in Afghanistan recently. He not
>> only questions the official line for the occupation war in Afghanistan
>> but also explains why it doesn't make any sense. In other words, your
>> unstated "any number of reasons" do not exist.
>>
>
>Bullshit! What the hell does a mere Colonel know about politics that he can
>be taken seriously. The reasons DO exist and are plain for all to see!
>
>> From the UK Independent:
>>
>........"SNIP" of rubbish...........
>> . . .
>>
>>> To say different is either cowardice, ignorance, or you support the
>>> Taliban, or you are a traitor. Which is it?
>>
>> So, are you ready to lob these insults at Colonel Hoh? Or, is it your
>> way to intimidate a voice who speaks of the futility and lie of the
>> wars? Whichever it is, it is bad for freedom and bad for democracy!
>>
>You refuse to answer my question.
>
>..............."SNIP" of contrived nonsense and bullshit..............
>
>
>--
>Harry Merrick.
>