Afghanistan

Scheer Intelligence: Jimmy Carter’s Foreign Policy Record Reveals Hope And Cynicism

January 22, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Afghanistan, China, Jimmy Carter, US Foreign Policy

When the Carter presidency comes up, so does a dark moment in American history: the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1981. This was, however, not the only significant moment in Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy record; the Democrat had a lasting impact on a number of other countries both during and after his presidency and in some cases, as in the US baiting the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, his policies revealed the deep cynicism that runs through American meddling abroad. In the second part of a two-part interview for “Scheer Intelligence,” Jonathan Alter and host Robert Scheer examine how the 39th president’s decisions regarding Afghanistan, Haiti, North Korea, China, and Israel, among other nations, hold up today.

Empire Update: Afghanistan/Somalia Withdrawal Scam; Trump Weighs WWIII

November 25, 2020 AbMartin, The Empire Files. Resistance Report Afghanistan, AFRICOM, Iran, Iraq

The Empire Update for Nov. 23 covering the Grand Finale of Trump's promise to end the Afghanistan War; what's really behind the Somalia troop withdrawal; US-backed monarchy sparks new potential war in Africa; State Department takes new action for Israel against BDS movement; and potential for Trump to start war with Iran on his way out.

Afghanistan Diary

October 27, 2020 Sarah Ball, Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Educate! Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Violence, Wars and Militarism

Afghanistan returns to me through Nagiba’s room. She is on the roof of the kitchen across the courtyard; I can see her through the window. She is gathering sticks to light the samovar for boiling that day’s water. She will pour it into thermoses and hour by hour they will populate the rooms of the house – Nagiba’s, her sister’s, and the kitchen. The potato cellar, the common garden – with three chickens threading through it – and the rooms of two other families fill out the space. A communal washline drapes across the lot, and if you walk up the roof of the cellar all Bamiyan spreads before you.

The CIA’s Addiction To The Afghanistan War

September 2, 2020 Finian Cunningham, Strategic Culture. Educate! Afghanistan, Heroin, US Empire, Wars and Militarism

US involvement in Afghanistan is the archetypal quagmire. Hundreds of thousands killed or maimed, trillions of dollars wasted, a failed state – despite American pretensions of nation-building, and a militant insurgency stronger than ever. Washington’s declared strategic objectives in Afghanistan have never been coherent or convincing even among Pentagon top brass. The initial justification of “avenging terrorism of 9/11” sounds threadbare. The irony is that Washington first got involved in Afghanistan back in the late 1970s to inflict a “Vietnam scenario” on Soviet troops who were defending an allied government in Kabul. The Mujahideen fighters sponsored by the US and their Taliban outgrowth have gone on to make the country an even worse Vietnam scenario for Washington than it intended for Moscow. Afghanistan is known as the “Graveyard of Empires” where the British suffered a blow to their imperial prowess, like the Soviets and now the United States.

Saying Iran Is Paying Bounties To Kill Americans Is Pure Parody

August 20, 2020 Scott Ritter, RT. Educate! Afghanistan, Iran, Media, Pentagon

It was Russia in June, now it’s Tehran. Don’t US analysts understand that Taliban fighters really don’t need any more motivation to target American troops? This is simply politicized (un)intelligence that isn’t fooling anyone. According to CNN, the Iranian government has paid “bounties” to the Haqqani network, a terrorist group with close links to the Taliban, for six attacks on US and coalition forces in Afghanistan in 2019, including one on December 11 which targeted Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, which wounded four US personnel.

Killing Democracy In The United States

July 28, 2020 By William J. Astore, Tom Dispatch. Educate! Afghanistan, COVID-19, Democracy, Wars and Militarism

I fear that it either can’t or won’t end because, as Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out in 1967 during the Vietnam War, the United States remains the world’s greatest purveyor of violence -- and nothing in this century, the one he didn’t live to see, has faintly proved him wrong. Considered another way, Washington should be classified as the planet’s most committed arsonist, regularly setting or fanning the flames of fires globally from Libya to Iraq, Somalia to Afghanistan, Syria to -- dare I say it -- in some quite imaginable future Iran, even as our leaders invariably boast of having the world’s greatest firefighters (also known as the U.S. military). Scenarios of perpetual war haunt my thoughts. For a healthy democracy, there should be few things more unthinkable than never-ending conflict, that steady drip-drip of death and destruction that drives militarism, reinforces authoritarianism, and facilitates disaster capitalism.

Mutiny On The Bounties

July 15, 2020 Ray McGovern, Consortium News. Educate! Afghanistan, Intelligence, Russia, Russian Bounty

Corporate media are binging on leaked Kool Aid not unlike the WMD concoction they offered 18 years ago to “justify” the U.S.-UK war of aggression on Iraq. Now Michael McFaul, ambassador to Russia under President Obama, has been enlisted by The Washington Post’s editorial page honcho, Fred Hiatt, to draw on his expertise (read, incurable Russophobia) to help stick President Donald Trump back into “Putin’s pocket.” (This has become increasingly urgent as the canard of “Russiagate” — including the linchpin claim that Russia hacked the DNC — lies gasping for air.) In an oped on Thursday McFaul presented a long list of Vladimir Putin’s alleged crimes, offering a more ostensibly sophisticated version of amateur Russian specialist, Rep. Jason Crow’s (D-CO) claim that: “Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure out how to destroy American democracy.”

How The Pentagon Failed To Sell Afghan Government’s Bunk ‘Bountygate’ Story

July 13, 2020 Gareth Porter, The Grayzone. Educate! Afghanistan, Intelligence, New York Times (NYT), RussiaGate

The New York Times dropped another Russiagate bombshell on June 26 with a sensational front-page story headlined, “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says.” A predictable media and political frenzy followed, reviving the anti-Russian hysteria that has excited the Beltway establishment for the past four years. But a closer look at the reporting by the Times and other mainstream outlets vying to confirm its coverage reveals another scandal, not unlike Russiagate itself: the core elements of the story appear to have been fabricated by Afghan government intelligence to derail a potential US troop withdrawal from the country. And they were leaked to the Times and other outlets by US national security state officials who shared an agenda with their Afghan allies.

The Latest ‘Russiagate’ Bombshell Took One Week To Be Exposed As Dud

July 9, 2020 Moon of Alabama. Educate! Afghanistan, Congress, RussiaGate, Russian Bounty

Within just one week the recent attempt to revive 'Russiagate' has failed. It was an embarrassing failure for the media who pushed it. Their 'journalists' fell for obvious nonsense. They let their sources abuse them for political purposes. On June 27 the New York Times and the Washington Post published stories which claimed that Trump was informed about alleged Russian bounty payments to the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers and did nothing about it: A Russian military spy unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. and British troops, in a striking escalation of the Kremlin’s hostility toward the United States, American intelligence has found. The Russian operation, first reported by the New York Times, has generated an intense debate within the Trump administration about how best to respond to a troubling new tactic by a nation that most U.S. officials regard as a potential foe but that President Trump has frequently embraced as a friend, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence matter.

Bountygate: Scapegoating Systemic Military Failure In Afghanistan

July 6, 2020 Scott Ritter, Consortium News. Educate! Afghanistan, Intelligence, Russia, Wars and Militarism

It took little more than a year for the president to come to grips with a reality that would be reflected in the findings of Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko, that there had been “explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public…to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.” In November 2018, Trump turned on “Mad Dog”, telling the former Marine General “I gave you what you asked for. Unlimited authority, no holds barred. You’re losing. You’re getting your ass kicked. You failed.” It was probably the most honest assessment of the War in Afghanistan any American president delivered to his serving secretary of defense. By December 2018 Mattis was out, having resigned in the face of Trump’s decision to cut American losses not only in Afghanistan but also in Syria and Iraq.

Russia, Afghanistan And The Big Lie

July 6, 2020 By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Afghanistan, Imperialism, Russia, Wars and Militarism

There is no end to the Russiagate fraud. All major charges have been disproved. No one was convicted of the dreaded “collusion” that was reported endlessly for the last four years. Damning information is now declassified and casts doubt on the veracity of the whole story. CrowdStrike, the Democratic National Committee cybersecurity firm, admitted under oath they had no proof of hacking by Russia or anyone else. Robert Mueller ended his two-year-long, multi-million-dollar investigation with nothing except convictions for process crimes. Why then did the New York Times print a story with an unnamed intelligence agency source claiming that the Russian government paid the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan? The charge is ludicrous on its face but the story is quite useful to people who want to hide their own criminality while simultaneously keeping Trump hamstrung in an election year.

The Truth About Russian-Taliban Ties

July 5, 2020 Andrew Korybko, One World. Educate! Afghanistan, Media, Russia, Taliban

The New York Times' latest fake news provocation alleging that Russia's military-intelligence agency GRU solicited the Taliban (officially designated as "terrorists" by Moscow) to assassinate American soldiers in Afghanistan has brought a lot of attention to Moscow's ties with the militant group. The truth, however, is just as intriguing than the fake news about them. On the surface, it's surprising enough that Russia has diplomatic contacts with the Taliban considering that the latter grew out of the 1980s Mujahiddin that defeated the USSR. Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking that Russia still holds a grudge against the group, but astute followers of the country's foreign policy have no such excuse. Russia's 21st-century grand strategy is to become the supreme "balancing" force in Eurasia, to which end it's sought to prioritize relations with non-traditional partners.

New York Times Deploys Heavy Gun to Back ‘Intel’ on Russian Bounties

July 4, 2020 Ray McGovern, Consortium News. Educate! Afghanistan, Intelligence, Russia, RussiaGate

Intelligence analysts must pay close attention, of course, to provenance. What is this or that source’s record for accuracy, for reliability? What kind of trough might this or that source be feeding from; and what agenda might she or he have? Discriminating readers of the corporate media — and especially the Times — should do the same with respect to journalists. When they see the byline of David Sanger they need to examine his record. Those who look back to before the U.S./UK attack on Iraq will discover that Sanger was heavily promoting the existence of WMD in Iraq as a certainty. In a July 29, 2002 article co-written with Thom Shanker, for example, Iraq’s (non-existent) “weapons of mass destruction” appear no fewer than seven times as flat fact. This Sanger/Shanker article, apparently fed by intelligence sources, came just nine days after the head of British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove, was briefed by CIA chief Tenet at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. Three days later, on July 23, Dearlove told then Prime Minister Tony Blair that the coming attack on Iraq was a done deal.

To Keep Russiagate Alive ‘Officials’ Make New Claims Without Evidence

July 2, 2020 Moon of Alabama. Educate! Afghanistan, Media, RussiaGate, US military

There were allegations about emails that someone exfiltrated from the DNC and provided to Wikileaks. Russia must have done it. The FBI and other intelligence services were all over it. In the end no evidence was provided to support the claims. There were allegations that Trump did not really win the elections. Russia must have done it. The various U.S. intelligence service, together with their British friends, provided all kinds of sinister leaks about the alleged case. In the end no evidence was provided to support the claims. A British double agent, Sergej Skirpal, was allegedly injured in a Russian attack on him. The intelligence services told all kind of contradicting nonsense about the case. In the end no evidence was provided to support the claims.

Serving The Bottomless Kool-Aid: ‘Blame Russia’ Rides Again!

July 1, 2020 Dany Sjursen, Antiwar.com. Educate! Afghanistan, Media, Russia, RussiaGate

Two decades of military stalemate teetering towards outright defeat; a highly corrupt and perceptibly illegitimate imposed "partner" Kabul-cabal that still lacks sufficient GDP to pay its own soldier-cops; an indelible adversary that won’t quit; plus 2,219 dead American troops and who knows how many – well, at least 147,000 – vanquished Afghans? Yep, apparently Putin was behind all – or, forgive me, much – of it. Forget Arendt-ian "banality” – that’s the beauty of "evil," especially the utility gift of eternal Russian evil: exceptional America is thereby never culpable, need never self-assess, nor reform its systems. Because, because…Russia. It seems there’s no limit to the almighty power of that nuclear petrostate with its Italy-sized economy.

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