Tag Archives: war

Obama sheds phony tears over Fort Hood murder-suicide

Obama says he’s “heartbroken” over the shooting deaths of three soldiers & the suicide of the shooter at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. That would be a step in the right direction–if it were at all believable. The US War-Monger in Chief didn’t express any sorrow when they reported in 2012 that suicides in the military eclipsed the number of combat-related deaths. Suicides among soldiers & veterans is now about one-a-day & increasing.

Of course, the Pentagon cooks the books when it comes to accurate reporting of combat deaths so none of those figures are reliable. On the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, there are about 58,000 names of soldiers killed in that war. Names continue to be added. But more importantly, for that memorial the Pentagon only released the names of soldiers who were injured & died in Vietnam. If they were injured in Vietnam but died on a ship en route to a hospital in Japan, if they died from Agent Orange poisoning in a US hospice, or died from complications of combat injuries after release from the military, or if they were injured in the US invasion of Cambodia, the Pentagon does not include their names among Vietnam War casualties. It should also be added, they’re not counted if they just drank or doped themselves to death over grief & guilt at what they had done in war.

Obama has yet to shed any tears over the monumental numbers of civilian deaths caused by US wars–they number in the millions, not even including those who suffer from injuries like dismemberment, disfigurement, & birth disabilities.

Last year, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study funded by the Pentagon that claimed the real reason behind the catastrophic number of military suicides was not combat experiences or extended deployments but in fact underlying mental health issues in the population. It’s inarguable a society built & sustained by racist policies & wars will have more than its fair share of insanity. US politicians give glaring testimony to that–only rivaled by the parliament of England. But to find scientists willing to sing for their supper who dare claim soldiers who kill, massacre, rape, participate in torturing prisoners, are coming home sane is an abomination of science & politics.

So hold your tears, Obama! You’ll need them when you meet the devil as he leads you to that special hellhole set aside for war criminals. You’ll be spending your eternity with the smelly likes of Hitler, Kissinger, Bush, Reagan, Nixon, & Dick Cheney. You earned that shame, buster!

(Photo of US soldier in Afghanistan putting children in harm’s way from antiwar.com; photographer not identified)

Afghan president Karzai refuses to buckle to US Pentagon

Media & diplomats are calling Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) to maintain US military occupation in Afghanistan “The last stand of Hamid Karzai;” they liken it to a poker game, deplore he is “thumbing his nose” at the US & demonizing US troops & diplomats, accuse Karzai of mental health problems & ask if he is off his meds–all because he demands a minimal semblance of Afghan sovereignty, including accountability in Afghan courts for US soldiers who commit crimes & cessation of barbaric attacks on civilians.

Karzai is no prize package politically; he is a long-time collaborator with the US-NATO occupation & came to prominence only as a result of his corruption & collusion with the US. He will be leaving office after the April elections so his new independence may reflect some opposition within the Afghan elite to continued US occupation. It takes a certain amount of courage for Karzai to defy the US because if they thought they could get away with it the Pentagon would not hesitate to take him out.

By far, the most pernicious attacks on Karzai came from the Washington Post under the headline ”Karzai suspects US is behind insurgent-style attacks.” Citing unidentified officials in the Karzai regime & describing them as “palace officials,” the Post claims Karzai suspects many “shadowy insurgent-style attacks” in Afghanistan involved operatives of the US government. On hearing the claims, US officials swooned like actors in a Victorian melodrama; according to the Post, they “reacted with incredulity & anger to the idea that they are trying to debilitate Afghanistan’s government, which they have supported with hundreds of billions of dollars.”

The appropriately named US ambassador Cunningham (since he is both sneaky & a ham actor) said “It flies in the face of logic & morality to think that we would aid the enemy we’re trying to defeat,” & he accused Karzai of “deeply conspiratorial” thinking. Not really ambassador CunningHam. Karzai doesn’t have to go all libertarian; he only has to look at Iraq & Pakistan to see the future of Afghanistan.

As for those “hundreds of billions of dollars,” they were either bucks for bribery or for war & not reconstruction. There are some new showpiece high-rises in Kabul but the rest of the country is a shambles from bombing raids & house demolitions. Several agencies of the UN have issued reports on poverty, homelessness, & the increase in civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The UN reports blame it all on the corrupt Karzai regime, on the Taliban, on bad karma & not the US-NATO war because they support the war. One UN official in Afghanistan told reporters, “Poverty actually kills more Afghans than those who die as a direct result of the armed conflict.”

Poverty statistics in Afghanistan are quite staggering: according to one of the endless UN reports, nine million Afghans or 36% of the population live in “absolute poverty” while another 37% live barely above the poverty line. The streets are lined with homeless widows & their children begging. The poverty line established as $1.25 a day by the World Bank wouldn’t feed a mouse, let alone a child, so the distinction between absolute poverty & those barely above the poverty line is only one a sociopathic bureaucrat would make. But most importantly, can the UN tell us how those women were made widows & their children homeless? Has the bubonic plague hit Afghanistan & carted off all the men? Or might the US-NATO war be implicated in the massive poverty?

All out for the spring protests demanding “US out of Afghanistan!” “US out of Iraq!”

{Photo of Afghanistan from Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)}