lo yeeOn
2016-08-24 04:37:22 UTC
Listen to (and watch) Nick Paton Walsh bring to us what the new
Taliban fighters told him as the reasons why they're now joining the
Taliban while Obama insists that we have to send US men and women to
die to defeat such an enemy.
In the (obviously preposterous) name of knocking out al Qaeda from
Afghanistan, we saw George W Bush invade that country with great
fanfare.
We saw Bush's Attorney General obtain a conviction against an American
youth, better known as "Johnny Taliban" - who was in the midst of his
journey in search for some meaning for his life - and get him
sentenced to 20 years in prison for having been found among some
Afghans in their choatic retreat from our superbly armed invading
soldiers.
We saw hundreds of Muslims around the world brought to Guantanamo camp
to be tortured without so much as charges filed against them.
We saw Obama, his VP Joe Biden, his SoS Hillary Clinton, in addition
to a big group of advisors, watching in broad daylight the slaying of
Osama bin Laden (or somebody) on TV in real time. So, bin Laden is
absolutely and officially killed, even if he hadn't died long before.
And we also heard (as recently as this presidential campaign cycle
from George W Bush's wife Laura) that we have to keep fighting the
Taliban because we have invested so much in bringing (or bringing
back) women's education and girls' rights to the country that we
cannot afford to let the Taliban rule the country again. Here again,
Laura Bush's narrative is extraordinarily phony if we will remember
how women are still treated in the kingdoms of the Saudi peninsula -
nations we call our "allies" - and how much Afghan blood has been
spilled to save them! And then there are the soldiers from our side:
from the US and many of them are from the ghettos or impoverished
rural areas, as well as many from the UK, from Australia, ....
Historian Shamil Sultanov (who was interviewed by Inna Novikova
recently):
"Those who run an empire lubricate it with human blood."
And that's apparently what they mean when they christen the mom and
dad of a soldier killed in their cynical wars a gold-star family.
(Just ask Cindy Sheehan how she feels about being a gold-star mom who
lost her son but was ostracized by George Bush and all the politicians
who mouth "respect our gold star moms and pray for them" and the MSM.)
And that's what the Secretary of Defense or the Commander in Chief or
the Secretary of State means when they say their hearts are broken.
How many times will these big shots subject their hearts to being
broken when they run their empire on an engine that doesn't move
forward nor stop?
And they say "together, we should pray for his family" but never bring
up the pile of moral as well as logical contradictions in their call.
John Kasich [tweeted]:
There's only one way to talk about Gold Star parents: with honor
and respect. Capt. Khan is a hero. Together, we should pray for
his family. 7:19 PM - 30 Jul 2016
What are you doing when you call all to "pray" together when we are
Christians, Muslims, atheists, Buddhists, and Scientologists ... and
say what to the disparate gods of the myriad religious scenes?
In fact, Captain Khan's parents espouse the supremacy of Sharia.
But those who run the empire have been telling us that we are killing
Afghan people for a noble cause, namely, to save them from the rule of
Sharia.
And they're causing Americans to be killed in pursue of that noble
cause.
So, how should we pray for Captain Khan's gold star family?
The truth that those who are running the empire do not want you to
remember is the Taliban came to power in accord with the Afghan
people's free will. And that means that they prefer Sharia on their
own land or at least are ok with it. And they certainly did not
invite death to bring them freedom from Sharia. No sane minds would.
It's just fiction from those who run the empire to say we kill them to
free them from Sharia.
And to satisfy the pretense of those who run the empire, we - the
denizens - are called to come together, to pray for those who have
died in vain because our rulers have placed them in harm's way in the
first place, and to justify furthering their wars and their killing
sprees indefinitely?
How ridiculous and how disingenuous!
And what has the war against Afghanistan and the war against Iraq and
the war against Libyan war achieved but destruction?
What have any of these wars produced?
And if nothing is produced, a death is an unfortunate death but nobody
would call a death caused by drunken driving a sacrifice.
Washington's wars produce nothing except chaos, diseases, poverty, and
homelessness for millions and millions.
"Those who run an empire lubricate it with human blood."
And the same class of elites are insulting you with their call to
prayer in the public place.
They are worse than the Pharisees from the New Testament of the
Christian Bible.
They tell you that, they do not discriminate against Muslims and
pretend to prove their sincerity by praying also for a Muslim gold
star family; yet they are killing literally their flesh and blood
because they say that they have to expend your blood to defeat Sharia,
even as it is what many from the Muslim world choose over bombs and
bullets, missiles, and drones.
Those who run the empire are indeed monsters.
lo yeeOn
US service member killed in Afghanistan
By Barbara Starr and Naomi Lim, CNN
Updated 4:54 PM ET, Tue August 23, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-service-member-killed-in-afghanistan/
Listen to and watch this video, narrated by nick paton walsh:
Afghan government soldiers now fight with the Taliban 03:15
"afghan helmand on edge" [duration: 3'15"]
. . .
One other US service member and six Afghan soldiers were injured in
the blast.
Officials have not yet identified the service member who was killed,
pending next-of-kin notification.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said he was "deeply saddened" by the
service member's death, adding that his thoughts and prayers were also
with those injured in the incident.
"This tragic event in Helmand province reminds us that Afghanistan
remains a dangerous place," Carter said in a statement.
"We will continue to work closely with the government of Afghanistan
and our NATO partners to bolster the capabilities" of the Afghan
National Defense and Security Forces, he continued, "so they can
provide the people of Afghanistan the peace they deserve."
-----
U.S. soldier killed, 2nd wounded by roadside bomb in Afghanistan
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-afghanistan-soldier-killed-20160823-snap-story.html
A 2006 photograph of a U.S. helicopter flying over the opium poppy
fields near Lashkar Gah.
(John Moore/Getty Images)
http://www.trbimg.com/img-57bc929f/turbine/la-1471976175-snap-photo/750/750x422
August 23, 2016
An American service member was killed by a roadside bomb Tuesday in
southern Afghanistan in what military officials said was the first
casualty of stepped-up U.S. operations in embattled Helmand province.
Six Afghan soldiers and an American were also wounded when their
vehicle struck the roadside bomb while on patrol near the provincial
capital of Lashkar Gah. The injured American was in stable condition,
the U.S. military said.
The second U.S. combat death in Afghanistan this year came after the
Pentagon announced Monday that 100 U.S. service members had been
deployed to Lashkar Gah to help Afghan forces repel a Taliban advance
on the strategic city.
Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, said
neither the soldier who was killed, nor the American soldier who was
wounded, were part of the detachment that was moved into the city over
the weekend to advise and assist Afghan forces.
The Pentagon did not release the name of the U.S. soldier killed
because of its long-standing policy to first notify family members.
Helmand, site of some of the fiercest battles involving U.S.-led
coalition forces during the 15-year war, is the hub of Afghanistan's
poppy crop, a major source of Taliban revenue.
The insurgent group has launched a months-long offensive aimed at
capturing Lashkar Gah and is believed to control more than half the
province. Afghan military officials say some 4,000 Taliban militants
are fighting in Helmand.
For the last three weeks, Afghan special forces soldiers, backed by
dozens of airstrikes launched by U.S. helicopter gunships, have
managed to keep the Taliban out of Lashkar Gah. U.S. and Afghan
officials say the city of about 300,000 is no longer in danger of
falling to the insurgents.
"While the Taliban has had some temporary, local success, the [Afghan
forces are] moving back on the offense and beginning to clear some of
the contested areas," Cleveland said.
"As for Lashkar Gah, we believe that situation is calm within the
city. For Helmand overall, we think the situation has been stabilizing
over the last seven to 10 days."
Provincial governor Hayatullah Hayat said Tuesday that Afghan forces
had launched operations in four parts of Helmand over the last 24
hours, killing or wounding scores of insurgents. Afghan commandos have
been leading the battles, in some cases backed by strikes from Afghan
aircraft.
Following the Afghan counteroffensive, and with a near-full moon
potentially exposing their movements at night, the Taliban have slowed
their operations, Hayat said, though he added the militants were
likely to regroup.
"I think they'll relaunch assaults after a week or so, once the
moonlight is gone," Hayat said.
The NATO coalition has about 700 troops based in Helmand, largely
comprised of U.S. soldiers and led by a U.S. one-star general.
The 9,800 U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan are assigned to train
and advise Afghan forces, meaning they only occasionally participate
in direct combat anymore.
Yet nearly all the U.S. personnel in Helmand are members of elite
special forces units that sometimes deploy into battle alongside their
Afghan counterparts.
"The U.S. forces have been participating in some special ground
operations with the Afghan commando forces," said one Afghan official
in Helmand who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to
speak on the issue. In January, Army Special Forces Staff Sgt. Matthew
Q. McClintock was killed in a battle alongside Afghan commandos in
Helmand's Marjah district.
Special correspondent Faizy reported from Kabul and staff writer
Hennigan from Washington. Staff writer Shashank Bengali contributed to
this report from Mumbai, India.
-----
Why many veterans are sticking with Trump, even after he insulted a
Gold Star family
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Dan Lamothe August 22 at 1:49 PM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/22/trumpmilitary/
Evan McAllister was 23 years old when he fought in the Iraqi city of
Ramadi in 2006. He killed men and buried friends. Eight years later,
he watched the same city fall to the Islamic State.
To McAllister, a former Marine staff sergeant and scout sniper
instructor, the war he fought was a harebrained mission planned by
Republicans, rubber-stamped by Democrats and, in the end, lost to
al-Qaeda's brutal successor. The foreign policy establishment of both
parties got his friends killed for no reason, he said, so come
Election Day, he is voting for the man he believes answers to neither
Democrats nor Republicans: Donald Trump.
"Most veterans ... they see their country lost to the corrupt," he
said. "And Trump comes along all of a sudden and calls out the
corrupt on both sides of the aisle."
Trump can seem an unlikely candidate to be embraced by veterans. He
received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War. Last summer, he
attacked Sen. John McCain, saying the Arizona Republican was "not a
war hero" because he had been captured in Vietnam. More recently,
Trump attacked the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, a U.S. soldier and
Muslim who was killed in Iraq, after Khan's father spoke at the
Democratic National Convention with his wife standing by his side at
the lectern.
And he has drawn almost universal condemnation from national security
experts who have served under Republican and Democratic
administrations and who say Trump is unfit to be commander in chief of
U.S. armed forces.
Many veterans are fans of Donald Trump. What do you think?
But among many of the people who have actually fought in this
country's wars, particularly on the front lines of Iraq and
Afghanistan, Trump offers a refreshing alternative to 15 years of
seemingly endless conflict marked by uncertain goals, fleeting
victories and constant personal sacrifice, according to interviews
with dozens of veterans who remain unfazed by the Republican
candidate's recent behavior or falling poll numbers.
Last week, Trump vowed in a speech to end "our current strategy of
nation-building and regime change," a reference to policies pursued by
the Bush and Obama administrations in the Middle East.
"I think there's a pretty sour taste in a lot of guys' mouths about
Iraq and about what happened there," said Jim Webb Jr., a Marine
veteran, Trump supporter, son of former U.S. senator Jim Webb (D-Va.)
and one of McAllister's platoon mates. "You pour time and effort and
blood into something, and you see it pissed away, and you think, `How
did I spend my twenties?'"
"There's a mentality that they don't want to see more of that," he
said, adding that he worried that a Hillary Clinton presidency would
result in "continued adventurism", given her record supporting
interventions in Iraq and Libya.
Two recent national polls since the Democratic convention show Trump
leading Clinton among military veterans - by 14 points in a Fox News
poll and 11 points in a McClatchy-Marist poll. By comparison, Clinton
shows a 10-point to 15-point margin among all registered voters in
both surveys. The demographics of veterans align closely with Trump's
strongest sources of support: More than 9 in 10 are men, and about 8
in 10 are white.
His fans in the military community could prove critical in November in
swing states with large military populations, including Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Florida. In these three states, veterans represented
at least 8 percent of the population in 2014, according to data
collected by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
. . .
Taliban fighters told him as the reasons why they're now joining the
Taliban while Obama insists that we have to send US men and women to
die to defeat such an enemy.
In the (obviously preposterous) name of knocking out al Qaeda from
Afghanistan, we saw George W Bush invade that country with great
fanfare.
We saw Bush's Attorney General obtain a conviction against an American
youth, better known as "Johnny Taliban" - who was in the midst of his
journey in search for some meaning for his life - and get him
sentenced to 20 years in prison for having been found among some
Afghans in their choatic retreat from our superbly armed invading
soldiers.
We saw hundreds of Muslims around the world brought to Guantanamo camp
to be tortured without so much as charges filed against them.
We saw Obama, his VP Joe Biden, his SoS Hillary Clinton, in addition
to a big group of advisors, watching in broad daylight the slaying of
Osama bin Laden (or somebody) on TV in real time. So, bin Laden is
absolutely and officially killed, even if he hadn't died long before.
And we also heard (as recently as this presidential campaign cycle
from George W Bush's wife Laura) that we have to keep fighting the
Taliban because we have invested so much in bringing (or bringing
back) women's education and girls' rights to the country that we
cannot afford to let the Taliban rule the country again. Here again,
Laura Bush's narrative is extraordinarily phony if we will remember
how women are still treated in the kingdoms of the Saudi peninsula -
nations we call our "allies" - and how much Afghan blood has been
spilled to save them! And then there are the soldiers from our side:
from the US and many of them are from the ghettos or impoverished
rural areas, as well as many from the UK, from Australia, ....
Historian Shamil Sultanov (who was interviewed by Inna Novikova
recently):
"Those who run an empire lubricate it with human blood."
And that's apparently what they mean when they christen the mom and
dad of a soldier killed in their cynical wars a gold-star family.
(Just ask Cindy Sheehan how she feels about being a gold-star mom who
lost her son but was ostracized by George Bush and all the politicians
who mouth "respect our gold star moms and pray for them" and the MSM.)
And that's what the Secretary of Defense or the Commander in Chief or
the Secretary of State means when they say their hearts are broken.
How many times will these big shots subject their hearts to being
broken when they run their empire on an engine that doesn't move
forward nor stop?
And they say "together, we should pray for his family" but never bring
up the pile of moral as well as logical contradictions in their call.
John Kasich [tweeted]:
There's only one way to talk about Gold Star parents: with honor
and respect. Capt. Khan is a hero. Together, we should pray for
his family. 7:19 PM - 30 Jul 2016
What are you doing when you call all to "pray" together when we are
Christians, Muslims, atheists, Buddhists, and Scientologists ... and
say what to the disparate gods of the myriad religious scenes?
In fact, Captain Khan's parents espouse the supremacy of Sharia.
But those who run the empire have been telling us that we are killing
Afghan people for a noble cause, namely, to save them from the rule of
Sharia.
And they're causing Americans to be killed in pursue of that noble
cause.
So, how should we pray for Captain Khan's gold star family?
The truth that those who are running the empire do not want you to
remember is the Taliban came to power in accord with the Afghan
people's free will. And that means that they prefer Sharia on their
own land or at least are ok with it. And they certainly did not
invite death to bring them freedom from Sharia. No sane minds would.
It's just fiction from those who run the empire to say we kill them to
free them from Sharia.
And to satisfy the pretense of those who run the empire, we - the
denizens - are called to come together, to pray for those who have
died in vain because our rulers have placed them in harm's way in the
first place, and to justify furthering their wars and their killing
sprees indefinitely?
How ridiculous and how disingenuous!
And what has the war against Afghanistan and the war against Iraq and
the war against Libyan war achieved but destruction?
What have any of these wars produced?
And if nothing is produced, a death is an unfortunate death but nobody
would call a death caused by drunken driving a sacrifice.
Washington's wars produce nothing except chaos, diseases, poverty, and
homelessness for millions and millions.
"Those who run an empire lubricate it with human blood."
And the same class of elites are insulting you with their call to
prayer in the public place.
They are worse than the Pharisees from the New Testament of the
Christian Bible.
They tell you that, they do not discriminate against Muslims and
pretend to prove their sincerity by praying also for a Muslim gold
star family; yet they are killing literally their flesh and blood
because they say that they have to expend your blood to defeat Sharia,
even as it is what many from the Muslim world choose over bombs and
bullets, missiles, and drones.
Those who run the empire are indeed monsters.
lo yeeOn
US service member killed in Afghanistan
By Barbara Starr and Naomi Lim, CNN
Updated 4:54 PM ET, Tue August 23, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-service-member-killed-in-afghanistan/
Listen to and watch this video, narrated by nick paton walsh:
Afghan government soldiers now fight with the Taliban 03:15
"afghan helmand on edge" [duration: 3'15"]
. . .
One other US service member and six Afghan soldiers were injured in
the blast.
Officials have not yet identified the service member who was killed,
pending next-of-kin notification.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said he was "deeply saddened" by the
service member's death, adding that his thoughts and prayers were also
with those injured in the incident.
"This tragic event in Helmand province reminds us that Afghanistan
remains a dangerous place," Carter said in a statement.
"We will continue to work closely with the government of Afghanistan
and our NATO partners to bolster the capabilities" of the Afghan
National Defense and Security Forces, he continued, "so they can
provide the people of Afghanistan the peace they deserve."
-----
U.S. soldier killed, 2nd wounded by roadside bomb in Afghanistan
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-afghanistan-soldier-killed-20160823-snap-story.html
A 2006 photograph of a U.S. helicopter flying over the opium poppy
fields near Lashkar Gah.
(John Moore/Getty Images)
http://www.trbimg.com/img-57bc929f/turbine/la-1471976175-snap-photo/750/750x422
August 23, 2016
An American service member was killed by a roadside bomb Tuesday in
southern Afghanistan in what military officials said was the first
casualty of stepped-up U.S. operations in embattled Helmand province.
Six Afghan soldiers and an American were also wounded when their
vehicle struck the roadside bomb while on patrol near the provincial
capital of Lashkar Gah. The injured American was in stable condition,
the U.S. military said.
The second U.S. combat death in Afghanistan this year came after the
Pentagon announced Monday that 100 U.S. service members had been
deployed to Lashkar Gah to help Afghan forces repel a Taliban advance
on the strategic city.
Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, said
neither the soldier who was killed, nor the American soldier who was
wounded, were part of the detachment that was moved into the city over
the weekend to advise and assist Afghan forces.
The Pentagon did not release the name of the U.S. soldier killed
because of its long-standing policy to first notify family members.
Helmand, site of some of the fiercest battles involving U.S.-led
coalition forces during the 15-year war, is the hub of Afghanistan's
poppy crop, a major source of Taliban revenue.
The insurgent group has launched a months-long offensive aimed at
capturing Lashkar Gah and is believed to control more than half the
province. Afghan military officials say some 4,000 Taliban militants
are fighting in Helmand.
For the last three weeks, Afghan special forces soldiers, backed by
dozens of airstrikes launched by U.S. helicopter gunships, have
managed to keep the Taliban out of Lashkar Gah. U.S. and Afghan
officials say the city of about 300,000 is no longer in danger of
falling to the insurgents.
"While the Taliban has had some temporary, local success, the [Afghan
forces are] moving back on the offense and beginning to clear some of
the contested areas," Cleveland said.
"As for Lashkar Gah, we believe that situation is calm within the
city. For Helmand overall, we think the situation has been stabilizing
over the last seven to 10 days."
Provincial governor Hayatullah Hayat said Tuesday that Afghan forces
had launched operations in four parts of Helmand over the last 24
hours, killing or wounding scores of insurgents. Afghan commandos have
been leading the battles, in some cases backed by strikes from Afghan
aircraft.
Following the Afghan counteroffensive, and with a near-full moon
potentially exposing their movements at night, the Taliban have slowed
their operations, Hayat said, though he added the militants were
likely to regroup.
"I think they'll relaunch assaults after a week or so, once the
moonlight is gone," Hayat said.
The NATO coalition has about 700 troops based in Helmand, largely
comprised of U.S. soldiers and led by a U.S. one-star general.
The 9,800 U.S. troops remaining in Afghanistan are assigned to train
and advise Afghan forces, meaning they only occasionally participate
in direct combat anymore.
Yet nearly all the U.S. personnel in Helmand are members of elite
special forces units that sometimes deploy into battle alongside their
Afghan counterparts.
"The U.S. forces have been participating in some special ground
operations with the Afghan commando forces," said one Afghan official
in Helmand who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to
speak on the issue. In January, Army Special Forces Staff Sgt. Matthew
Q. McClintock was killed in a battle alongside Afghan commandos in
Helmand's Marjah district.
Special correspondent Faizy reported from Kabul and staff writer
Hennigan from Washington. Staff writer Shashank Bengali contributed to
this report from Mumbai, India.
-----
Why many veterans are sticking with Trump, even after he insulted a
Gold Star family
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Dan Lamothe August 22 at 1:49 PM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/22/trumpmilitary/
Evan McAllister was 23 years old when he fought in the Iraqi city of
Ramadi in 2006. He killed men and buried friends. Eight years later,
he watched the same city fall to the Islamic State.
To McAllister, a former Marine staff sergeant and scout sniper
instructor, the war he fought was a harebrained mission planned by
Republicans, rubber-stamped by Democrats and, in the end, lost to
al-Qaeda's brutal successor. The foreign policy establishment of both
parties got his friends killed for no reason, he said, so come
Election Day, he is voting for the man he believes answers to neither
Democrats nor Republicans: Donald Trump.
"Most veterans ... they see their country lost to the corrupt," he
said. "And Trump comes along all of a sudden and calls out the
corrupt on both sides of the aisle."
Trump can seem an unlikely candidate to be embraced by veterans. He
received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War. Last summer, he
attacked Sen. John McCain, saying the Arizona Republican was "not a
war hero" because he had been captured in Vietnam. More recently,
Trump attacked the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, a U.S. soldier and
Muslim who was killed in Iraq, after Khan's father spoke at the
Democratic National Convention with his wife standing by his side at
the lectern.
And he has drawn almost universal condemnation from national security
experts who have served under Republican and Democratic
administrations and who say Trump is unfit to be commander in chief of
U.S. armed forces.
Many veterans are fans of Donald Trump. What do you think?
But among many of the people who have actually fought in this
country's wars, particularly on the front lines of Iraq and
Afghanistan, Trump offers a refreshing alternative to 15 years of
seemingly endless conflict marked by uncertain goals, fleeting
victories and constant personal sacrifice, according to interviews
with dozens of veterans who remain unfazed by the Republican
candidate's recent behavior or falling poll numbers.
Last week, Trump vowed in a speech to end "our current strategy of
nation-building and regime change," a reference to policies pursued by
the Bush and Obama administrations in the Middle East.
"I think there's a pretty sour taste in a lot of guys' mouths about
Iraq and about what happened there," said Jim Webb Jr., a Marine
veteran, Trump supporter, son of former U.S. senator Jim Webb (D-Va.)
and one of McAllister's platoon mates. "You pour time and effort and
blood into something, and you see it pissed away, and you think, `How
did I spend my twenties?'"
"There's a mentality that they don't want to see more of that," he
said, adding that he worried that a Hillary Clinton presidency would
result in "continued adventurism", given her record supporting
interventions in Iraq and Libya.
Two recent national polls since the Democratic convention show Trump
leading Clinton among military veterans - by 14 points in a Fox News
poll and 11 points in a McClatchy-Marist poll. By comparison, Clinton
shows a 10-point to 15-point margin among all registered voters in
both surveys. The demographics of veterans align closely with Trump's
strongest sources of support: More than 9 in 10 are men, and about 8
in 10 are white.
His fans in the military community could prove critical in November in
swing states with large military populations, including Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Florida. In these three states, veterans represented
at least 8 percent of the population in 2014, according to data
collected by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
. . .