The Farcical War on Terror: Afghanistan

 

The Farcical War on Terror: Afghanistan

Peter Schultz

 

            Some passages from Anand Gopal’s book No Good Men Among the Living:

 

            “In December 2001, an American Special Operations Forces unit pulled into an old Soviet airbase on the outskirts of Kandahar city. They were accompanied by a team of Afghan militiamen and their commander, a gregarious, grizzly bear of a man named Gul Agra Sherzai, an anti-Taliban warlord…. In return for privileged access to American dollars, Sherzai delivered one thing US forces felt they needed most: intelligence. His men became the Americans’ eyes and ears in their drive to eradicate the Taliban and al-Qaeda from Kandahar. Yet here lay the contradiction. Following the Taliban’s collapse, al-Qaeda had fled the country, resettling in the tribal regions of Pakistan and in Iran. By April 2002, the group could be no longer be found in Kandahar – or anywhere else in Afghanistan. The Taliban, meanwhile, had ceased to exist, its members having retired to their homes and surrendered their weapons. Save for a few lone wolf attacks, the US forces in Kandahar in 2002 faced no resistant at all…yet US special forces were on Afghan soil with a clear political mandate: defeat terrorism.

 

            “How do you fight a war without an adversary? Enter Gul Agra Sherzai – and men like him around the country. They would create enemies where there were none, exploiting the perverse incentive mechanism that the Americans – without even realizing it – had put in place. Sherzai’s enemies became America’s enemies, his battles its battles. His personal feuds and jealousies were repackaged as ‘counterterrorism’….” [pp.107 & 109]

 

            This meant that Afghanis who were supporting America and the Karzai government were being targeted by American forces, killed, captured, tortured, and sent to Guantanamo. In late January 2002, American Green Beret forces attacked a schoolhouse that housed several supporters of the Karzai government. Neither the Americans nor the Afghan government officials realized who they were fighting but “Either way, every official was killed. In twenty minutes, the violence was over.” [122]  

 

            At least that violence was over, because down the road from the schoolhouse was the governor’s compound, which housed the locally appointed governor, Tawilder Yunis and his allies. The Americans rushed in, and the battle began with Yunis telling his allies that the Americans were “our friends.” Well, not so much. One sixteen-year-old boy was found later with a bullet in his head.

 

            “The survivors of both attacks were rounded up and loaded into helicopters…. In the governor’s compound, they found that the attackers had left behind a calling card. Emblazoned with the symbol of an American flag, it bore a handwritten message: ‘Have a nice day. From Damage, Inc.’”

 

            The death toll from the two attacks were twenty-one pro-American leaders, twenty-six taken prisoners, and some who couldn’t be accounted for. There were no members of either the Taliban or al-Qaeda among the dead or the survivors. “Instead, in a single thirty-minute stretch the US had managed to eradicate both of Khas Urozgan’s potential governments, the core of any future anti-Taliban leadership – stalwarts who had outlasted the Russian invasion, the civil war, and the Taliban years but would not survive their own allies.” [123-24]

Oozing Patriotism and Blood

 

The Age of Betrayal: Oozing Patriotism and Blood

Peter Schultz

 

             A quotation from Jack Beatty’s book, The Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900:

 

            “Besides God’s revelation to McKinley of the destiny of the American branch of the ‘Anglo-Saxon race’ to rule over ‘weaker races,’ industrial capitalism drove expansion….The home market could not soak up the overspill….Plundering Africa and Asia for customers and raw materials, the European powers showed brooding class Americans they had company in fearing confinement – and in seeing trade as a hedge against unemployment and discontent at home, imperialism as a solvent for radicalism…’We escape the menace and peril of socialism and agrarianism, as England escaped them, by a policy of colonization and conquest,’ Henry Watterson, the editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, told a New York reporter the month Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill. Oozing patriotism and blood, farm boys were safe from Populism.” [pp. 388-389]

How Many Americans?

 

How Many Americans?

Peter Schultz

 

 

 

How many Americans can entertain the thought that MLK, Jr. was correct when he said that the US was greatest purveyor of death and destruction in the world? How many Americans can entertain, even momentarily, that RFK, Jr. was correct when he asserted that his uncle, JFK, was assassinated by otherwise legitimate parts of the US government, like the CIA? Do you think that that number might be just about as many Germans in the 1930s could entertain the thought that Jews were being transported to extermination camps? Just wondering.

Random Thoughts on Politics and the Political Life

 

Random Thoughts on Politics and the Political Life

Peter Schultz

 

            What are the trajectories of the political life? Justice or injustice? War or peace? Democracy or polity? Oligarchy or aristocracy? Monarchy or tyranny? Greatness or goodness? What happens when push comes to shove, as it always does in human affairs?

 

            America politics: Is the American political drama toward an ever-emerging democracy or popular rule or composed of recurring efforts to disguise the harshness, the injustices of recurring oligarchies? I think the latter is more persuasive than the former.

 

            One trajectory of political life seems indisputable, that is, toward greatness, not goodness. The most developed, most admired political orders have been empires, Rome, the British empire, and the United States’ empire. The apex of political life is revealed as empire, as greatness, not goodness.

 

            This reflects that humans seek fame or immortality. That is, humans seek, through politics, the eternal, the everlasting, the divine, or in a word “being.” Humans seek to become, through politics, “human beings,” which may be why Aristotle called us “political animals.”

 

            A question: Can humans achieve “being-ness” via politics? Is politics the way that humans become “human beings?” It is very common to think so. Many respectable people speak favorably of “politics as soulcraft.” And many equate “respectability” with being a human being. But is this equation justified? That the respectable have proven themselves capable of great injustices, even of savagery makes this equation doubtful.

 

            So, if the answer to the question above is “No,” are there other ways for human to become human beings? For example, via poetry, music, philosophy, contemplation, religion, love? Just wondering.

JF, LBJ, and the American Empire

 

JFK, LBJ, and the American Empire

Peter Schultz

 

            Because he had established himself as an opponent of the American empire, JFK was assassinated. And his assassination was, in all likelihood, the result of action that was part of what the military called “Operation Northwoods,” whereby a spectacular event would be created that made it look like Castro had attacked the United States, when in fact the attack was a “false flag” operation. The assassination of JFK was such an event and was to be linked to Castro through Oswald, who was to be framed as a Castro-motivated assassin.

 

            LBJ knew that JFK’s assassination was the result of an Operation Northwoods action, as did J. Edgar Hoover. And both acted to short-circuit the intended invasion of Cuba that was to happen in the aftermath of the assassination. To do this, LBJ and Hoover declared, almost immediately, that Oswald was “a long gunman,” having no ties to Castro or Cuba. Both knew that such a claim was shaky and would not withstand scrutiny, so they also acted to create what became known as the Warren Commission which would undertake an “investigation” of the assassination that would point away from Castro as an assassin. Also, the controversy that such a commission finding would generate would prove useful in distracting attention from Castro and any possible invasion of Cuba. Oswald was, as he claimed before he was murdered, “a patsy,” but he may not have known that he was being made a patsy by LBJ and Hoover.

 

            Lying behind the Kennedy assassination were those who were committed to creating an American empire, to making the United States the world’s hegemonic superpower, even if that meant risking war with the Soviet Union via Cuba. JFK’s politics threatened these plans and so had to “neutralized” before he could be re-elected in 1964. LBJ and Hoover, while committed American patriots, were not part of those who sought American hegemony, both knowing from long experience that such a hegemony would require sacrificing traditional American values, e.g., civilian supremacy, as well as creating or fortifying an oligarchy in the United States. Although both LBJ and Hoover were anti-Communists, they did not embrace an anti-Communist crusade world-wide.

 

            Why then did LBJ to “whole hog” in Vietnam? Johnson always claimed that war was never a war he wanted to wage, so it was one he “gave” to the military, while keeping it “limited” and, therefore, a “quagmire.” Johnson is reputed to have said to the generals: “Get me elected in ’64 and then you can have your war.” And that war, because it was an Asian war, was intended to distract attention away from Castro and Cuba, which of course it did, in spades, as it were. Johnson miscalculated his ability to control the military in Vietnam and miscalculated the effects of the war on domestic politics, leading to his resignation before the 1968 presidential election. But he had achieved one purpose: To distract attention from Castro and his alleged ties to the Kennedy assassination. And Johnson even tried to deal with the USSR while the war in Vietnam went on.

 

            Moreover, it’s conceivable that LBJ’s “Great Society” was part of his attempt to sidetrack and stop the forces in the United States seeking US hegemony in the world, via what Eisenhower had called “the military-industrial complex.” The Great Society would focus attention on domestic politics and political programs within the United States, thereby encouraging the country to turn inward, toward building within the United States a reformed, even transformed political and social order. Of course, Johnson’s plans were undermined by the controversy created by the Vietnam War, unrest that was not unwelcome by those seeking US hegemony. What better way to reinvigorate the military-industrial complex short-circuited by Johnson’s Great Society than with “a stab in the back” explanation of the US military failure in Vietnam? And the civil unrest that characterized US society generally in the 60’s and 70’s also served to undermine the Great Society, much to the pleasure of even those liberals who jumped on the anti-war bandwagon.

 

            Both left and right attacked Johnson, attacks that allowed those seeking US hegemony in the world to regain power, leading eventually to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, when Reagan could reclaim the Vietnam War as “a noble effort,” an effort that should and would be repeated throughout the world. And these forces helped to take down Nixon because, like JFK ad LBJ, Nixon questioned whether it was desirable for America to become the world’s hegemonic superpower. And, like LBJ, Nixon’s attempts at seeking détente with the USSR and China were undermined by both liberals and conservatives.

 

            As an interesting aside, in the presidencies of Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon, there’s evidence of presidential resistance to the creation of an American empire, to making the United States the world’s hegemonic superpower. Was it because they saw that the death and destruction required to achieve such a goal would be overwhelming, would require what is now labeled “endless wars?” Perhaps. In any case, in opposition to these presidencies, the forces seeking such a hegemony became visible and, of course, are not only visible today but predominant. Today, no president or aspiring president may question America’s “exceptionalism,” its allegedly indispensability to what is claimed to be a progressive political and economic order. Whatever death and destruction occur now is justified as progressive, as making or keeping America “great,” the first empire in human history not driven by greed and managed by savagery. The flags wave, the jets fly and bomb, the drones incinerate, all for the good of the world and the glory of “America the Beautiful.” Even the assassination of JFK fades to black as our Christian soldiers go marching, killing, and dying to, allegedly, make men holy, to make men free. “My eyes have seen the coming of the Lord….” Or maybe not.

Political Life

 

Political Life

Peter Schultz

 

            Recently, I wondered why Americans (and others) are so eager to believe and support what their government and political elites tell them. Conversely, why are they so offended by criticism of their government and political elites – generally, that is – even to the point of significant anger, even to the point of thinking such criticism criminal or “treasonous.?” Why are they so invested in politics? Because, as Aristotle argued, we humans are “political animals.”

 

            Being political animals means our lives, even our beings, we think, are politically determined. For Aristotle, this was an observation about humans, as assertion of fact, a description, that is. It’s meaning needed to be figured out, as well as its value; i.e., whether being political served human beings well or not. For example, it could be that being political makes humans war-like or, as Plato allegedly said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” And because Aristotle was making an observation about human beings, his Politics is then his working out its meaning. Aristotle didn’t write his Politics to advance an agenda but rather to illuminate the meaning of “the political,” i.e., whether the political life is beneficial, is valuable, is healthy for humans. And because we humans are political, Aristotle’s “analytical” approach will seem, at the very least, controversial. By making our being political questionable, Aristotle adopted a trans-political stance toward human beings.

 

            Blaise Pascal argued that both Plato and Aristotle thought of political life as a madhouse, and therefore wrote about politics ironically. Political life is a drama, but its actors, those who are invested in it, don’t realize the unreality, the real character of what they are doing. For example, political actors are constantly talking about, acting on behalf of justice; but when queried they reveal that they have little idea about justice. In fact, Aristotle claimed that every conception of justice that humans espouse is partial or incomplete. There is, apparently, no complete conception of justice, although humans customarily talk and act as if there were, with democrats embracing democratic justice as complete or oligarchs embracing oligarchic justice as complete, etc., etc. Some conceptions of justice might be “better’ and some “worse,” but no conception of justice is complete, which is why all regimes, all political arrangements are unjust as well as just. And this is why Aristotle argued that a good man cannot be a good citizen without ceasing to be a good man; i.e., without ceasing to be a complete human being. To be “a good democrat” requires that one embrace, defend via punishment, violence, or even war an incomplete form of justice.

 

            In other words, a healthy democracy requires unhealthy or incomplete human beings, and so too for all other forms of political life. All forms of political life promote or require unhealthy or incomplete human beings.

 

            This may be referred to as “the limits of politics,” those limits being illustrated in Plato’s Republic and in Aristotle’s Politics, as both are critiques of what we like to call “political idealism.” Political idealism is both delusional and deadly, as should be obvious to humans by now. And so political life is both delusional and deadly, as reflected by the fact that the greatest political achievements, great empires, have been the most delusional and the deadliest. The pursuit of political greatness is then both delusional and deadly, as the history of the United States may easily be used to illustrate.

Built on Slavery, Maintained by War

 

Built on Slavery, Maintained by War

Peter Schultz

 

            It has taken some time, but I finally get “it.” That is, I finally get that the US proxy war in Ukraine is essential for maintaining the existing regime in the United States. Opposing that war, like the opposition the Vietnam War, even if successful will prove to be futile unless the existing regime is changed. And there is no reason to suspect that such a change is possible.

 

            I also finally get that the United States has been built on slavery and is maintained by war. If you are interested in the evidence consult two books, Slavery by Another Name and The CIA as Organized Crime.