PoliticalAction.com Blog

By Phil Giraldi

In a press conference this afternoon President Obama told visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the US will “finish the job” in Afghanistan and wipe out every last known terrorist. “Finish the job” is an expression that politicians use a lot when they don’t really have anything substantive to say. It is generally believed that Obama will approve a 34,000 soldier increase for the Afghan conflict when he addresses the nation next week. US soldiers cost the taxpayer $1 million each per year in Afghanistan, which means that the new troop level will cost $170 billion per year. If the insurgents disrupt the Khyber Pass supply line, which they have been successfully doing, it will cost more, possibly much more. It might be cheaper to give the insurgents good jobs working for the Afghan post office or something similar to wean them from their criminal ways. How much more surging can we afford at this price, particularly as it doesn’t seem to be working?

I am all for finding and killing ACTUAL terrorists (as opposed to farmers or wedding party guests) who threaten the United States but I have to wonder who Obama has been listening to lately. There is no coherency to the policies that he appears to embrace, which are little more than mission creep seeking to reconstruct central Asia. There is little or no al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan while the presence in Pakistan appears to be fairly small and largely preoccupied with scurrying from one bolt hole to another. If the US successfully eliminates al-Qaeda it will just move somewhere else and continue doing what it is doing, which does not appear to be very much or very effective. Is it really worth 100,000 troops on the ground at enormous cost? Not to mention lots of dead American soldiers and Afghan civilians.

There is no US national interest in fighting the Taliban – which do not threaten the United States in any way, shape, or form – while shoring up fraudulently elected President Hamid Karzai and his merry band of cutthroat thieves. Is Obama also hinting to the Indians that he will next turn on the Muslims seeking to liberate Kashmir, who also do not threaten the US? Do we keep endlessly going after terrorist groups after that and where does it all end? If Obama seriously wants to “finish” it in Afghanistan he would gather all of its neighbors in a latter-day Congress of Vienna to work out a security formula that is acceptable to most of them and then pull out. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to tell the troops by Christmas that they are coming home by? – Phil Giraldi, American Conservative Defense Alliance

In a videotape released around September of 2007, Osama bin Laden said, “If you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer.”

Michael F. Scheuer is the former Chief of the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorist Center with the CIA. He had a 22 year career with the CIA and served in this position in the latter half of the nineties. In the wake of the WTC bombing he reenlisted his expertise with the bin Laden unit as a Special Advisor to the Chief. He held this position from September 2001 to November 2004. In 2004, Scheuer resigned his position with the CIA and released his New York Times bestselling book Imperial Hubris. It criticizes the western worlds tunnel visioned assumptions about the motivating factors for Islamic terrorism. According to Scheuer, “the greatest danger for Americans confronting the Islamist threat is to believe-at the urging of U.S. leaders-that Muslims attack us for what we are and what we think rather than for what we do.”

As far as conventional warfare is concerned, we have won every battle of our war with “terror.” We have the training, equipment, and production capacity to fight a multi-front war against the toughest of enemies. We have a volunteer force of both fulltime and reserve service personnel. The idea that we are losing this war is very peculiar to many of us, especially those that are part of the establishment. But how can we use military might to defeat an idea? The truth is that we are not fighting a sovereign body in this conflict. Although there are plenty of sovereign nations in this world that are just as jilted by our world affairs as the extremist that attack us, there has been no formal declarations against us by any of them. We are not being attacked by Islam, any particular ethnicity, because of our acceptance of different belief structures, or because of our varied ethnicities. We are being attacked because of our federal government’s aggressive foreign policy.

All that has been asked of us by our enemy is to stop meddling in their affairs. It is as simple as that.

In October of 2001 in an interview with Tayseer Allouni, a Kabul correspondent of Al-Jazeera, Tayseer asked bin Laden about the killing of innocent civilians. He responded by saying,

“Killing innocent civilians like Americans and other educated people say, is something very weird to be said. I mean, who is the one that said that our children and our civilians are not innocents, and that their blood is permissible [mubaah] ? In the case we kill their civilians, the whole world yells at us from east to west, and America would start pushing its allies and puppets. Who is the one that said that our blood isn’t blood and their blood is blood? Who is the one that declared this? What about the people that have been killed in our lands for decades? More than 1,000,000 children died in Iraq and are still dying, so why don’t we hear people that cry or protest or anyone who reassures or anyone who gives condolences??!?”

In March of 1997 in an interview with Peter Arnett, a 1966 Pulitzer Prize winning Reporter, bin Laden was asked about what it would require to end his jihad against us.

ARNETT: Mr. Bin Ladin, will the end of the United States’ presence in Saudi Arabia, their withdrawal, will that end your call for jihad against the United States and against the US?

BIN LADIN: The cause of the reaction must be sought and the act that has triggered this reaction must be eliminated. The reaction came as a result of the US aggressive policy towards the entire Muslim world and not just towards the Arabian Peninsula. So if the cause that has called for this act comes to an end, this act, in turn, will come to an end. So, the driving-away jihad against the US does not stop with its withdrawal from the Arabian Peninsula, but rather it must desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world.

There is nothing that can be said to justify the terrorist attacks being committed by these extremist groups. They are murdering innocent civilians all across the globe and will be brought to justice. However, despite the fact that they are wrong to commit such acts, that doesn’t change the fact that we have been committing atrocities against them for decades. We should not change our aggressive foreign policy out of fear; we should change our foreign policy because it is the right thing to do. When we fund the aggressions of one nation against another we are essentially acting as the aggressor. When we impose naval blockades on trade we are committing acts of war. We have bombed, starved, and politicized the people of the Middle East for too long. Our government may not want to admit it because of pride, but I will proudly say that it is time to see some real change from the establishment!

It is time to return to our roots and start respecting the constitution.

By Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-Tenn.)

There is nothing conservative about the war in Afghanistan. The Center for Defense Information said a few months ago that we had spent over $400 billion on the war and war-related costs there. Now, the Pentagon says it will cost about $1 billion for each 1,000 additional troops we send to Afghanistan. One Republican Member from California told me recently that we could buy off every warlord in Afghanistan for $1 billion.

Fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by all this spending. Conservatives who oppose big government and huge deficit spending at home should not support it in foreign countries just because it is being done by our biggest bureaucracy, the Defense Department.

We have now spent $1.5 trillion that we did not have–that we had to borrow–in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eight years is long enough. In fact, it is too long. Let’s bring our troops home and start putting Americans first once again.

Texas Straight Talk – A Weekly Column
Rep. Ron Paul (R) – TX 14

This past week there has been a lot of discussion and debate on the continuing war in Afghanistan. Lasting twice as long as World War II and with no end in sight, the war in Afghanistan has been one of the longest conflicts in which our country has ever been involved. The situation has only gotten worse with recent escalations.

The current debate is focused entirely on the question of troop levels. How many more troops should be sent over in order to pursue the war? The administration has already approved an additional 21,000 American service men and women to be deployed by November, which will increase our troop levels to 68,000. Will another 40,000 do the job? Or should we eventually build up the levels to 100,000 in addition to that? Why not 500,000 – just to be “safe”? And how will public support be brought back around to supporting this war again when 58 percent are now against it?

I get quite annoyed at this very narrow line of questioning. I have other questions. We overthrew the Taliban government in 2001 with less than 10,000 American troops. Why does it now seem that the more troops we send, the worse things get? If the Soviets bankrupted themselves in Afghanistan with troop levels of 100,000 and were eventually forced to leave in humiliating defeat, why are we determined to follow their example? Most importantly, what is there to be gained from all this? We’ve invested billions of dollars and thousands of precious lives – for what?

The truth is it is no coincidence that the more troops we send the worse things get. Things are getting worse precisely because we are sending more troops and escalating the violence. We are hoping that good leadership wins out in Afghanistan, but the pool of potential honest leaders from which to draw have been fleeing the violence, leaving a tremendous power vacuum behind. War does not quell bad leaders. It creates them. And the more war we visit on this country, the more bad leaders we will inadvertently create.

Another thing that war does is create anger with its indiscriminate violence and injustice. How many innocent civilians have been harmed from clumsy bombings and mistakes that end up costing lives? People die from simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time in a war zone, but the killers never face consequences. Imagine the resentment and anger survivors must feel when a family member is killed and nothing is done about it. When there are no other jobs available because all the businesses have fled, what else is there to do, but join ranks with the resistance where there is a paycheck and also an opportunity for revenge? This is no justification for our enemies over there, but we have to accept that when we push people, they will push back.

The real question is why are we there at all? What do our efforts now have to do with the original authorization of the use of force? We are no longer dealing with anything or anyone involved in the attacks of 9/11. At this point we are only strengthening the resolve and the ranks of our enemies. We have nothing left to win. We are only there to save face, and in the end we will not even be able to do that.

Dear UFPJ Supporter,

In the next 24 hours, Congress is set to authorize
$550 billion in FY 2010 defense spending — and with it,
an additional $130 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This, on top of the $75 billion Congress approved for
continuing the wars and occupations last week. Not to
mention the fact that 6 million jobs have been lost and
our communities continue to face stiffening budget cuts.
To put it plainly, our nation’s priorities are out of whack.

The sole bright spot in this is the McGovern amendment.
House Representatives Jim McGovern (MA), Walter Jones (NC),
and Chellie Pingree (ME) have introduced an amendment to
the 2010 military authorization bill, requiring the Pentagon
to provide an ‘exit strategy’ to Congress by the end of this
year.

That’s why we need you to call your Representatives TODAY
and TOMORROW and urge them to vote for the McGovern
amendment. You can call the Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Supporting the McGovern amendment and forcing the
Defense Secretary to submit an ‘exit strategy’ will allow
us to insert our voices into the debate and push for a
complete and immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Before we can do that with success, though, we need
to ensure that the debate happens at all – and this
amendment is a step towards doing that.

So make sure to call your Member of Congress and urge
them to support the McGovern amendment. Call the
Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121. Tell them
we need to end the wars and occupations and redirect
spending to our urgent domestic needs!

Thanks,

United For Peace and Justice

National Call-In Day Today! Demand an Exit Plan from Afghanistan!

This week, the House passed the war-funding Supplemental bill, providing $79.9 billion to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With this vote, the House has effectively ratified the escalation of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It has done this — without any indication of an ‘exit plan’ from the Obama administration.

Tackling this problem is Congressman Jim McGovern’s bill HR 2404, which would require the Secretary of Defense to submit a report to Congress outlining an ‘exit plan’ for U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan no later than December 31, 2009. Congressman McGovern’s bill is gaining support and now has 87 co-sponsors. And we’re urging your support now, too.

Today is National Call-In Day to Congress on the McGovern bill – and UFPJ urges you to contact your members of Congress to sign-on as a co-sponsor, if they have not already done so.

The Congressional Switchboard number is 202-224-3121. Be sure to pass this Action Alert on to others in your group, your friends, and your family. (And if you make your calls, please click on the UFPJ logo in this email.)

Click here for the text of the McGovern bill and a list of co-sponsors.

Building support for an ‘exit strategy’ is a first step for us in mounting an even stronger opposition to the Obama administration’s next war-funding request — $130 billion for the wars in FY2010. We are disappointed that Congress has once again rubber-stamped a president’s request to fund the wars. But we – thousands of peace activists across the country – made it extremely difficult for them to do so. The White House expected a slam dunk on the Supplemental bill, but was forced to resort to threats to pass it. And still we were able to maintain 32 antiwar Congressional representatives on our side.

Click here for Roll-Call on the Supplemental vote.

Will you call your Members of Congress and tell them to support HR 2404? Demanding an ‘exit strategy’ of the Obama administration is the responsible thing for every Representative to do!

Ron Paul, before the US House of Representatives, June 15, 2009:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this conference report on the War Supplemental Appropriations. I wonder what happened to all of my colleagues who said they were opposed to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder what happened to my colleagues who voted with me as I opposed every war supplemental request under the previous administration. It seems, with very few exceptions, they have changed their position on the war now that the White House has changed hands. I find this troubling. As I have said while opposing previous war funding requests, a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war. Congress exercises its constitutional prerogatives through the power of the purse.

This conference report, being a Washington-style compromise, reflects one thing Congress agrees on: spending money we do not have. So this “compromise” bill spends 15 percent more than the president requested, which is $9 billion more than in the original House bill and $14.6 billion more than the original Senate version. Included in this final version — in addition to the $106 billion to continue the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — is a $108 billion loan guarantee to the International Monetary Fund, allowing that destructive organization to continue spending taxpayer money to prop up corrupt elites and promote harmful economic policies overseas.

As Americans struggle through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, this emergency supplemental appropriations bill sends billions of dollars overseas as foreign aid. Included in this appropriation is $660 million for Gaza, $555 million for Israel, $310 million for Egypt, $300 million for Jordan, and $420 million for Mexico. Some $889 million will be sent to the United Nations for “peacekeeping” missions. Almost one billion dollars will be sent overseas to address the global financial crisis outside our borders and nearly $8 billion will be spent to address a “potential pandemic flu.”

Mr. Speaker, I continue to believe that the best way to support our troops is to bring them home from Iraq and Afghanistan. If one looks at the original authorization for the use of force in Afghanistan, it is clear that the ongoing and expanding nation-building mission there has nothing to do with our goal of capturing and bringing to justice those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan does not make us safer at home, but in fact it undermines our national security. I urge my colleagues to defeat this reckless conference report.