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Today's
Stories
February 20 / 22, 2004
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
February 14/15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
February 20 / 22, 2004
Operation Enduring
Misery
The
Afghanistan Debacle
By MIKE WHITNEY
If we want to understand the Bush Foreign policy
in Iraq, we only have to look at Afghanistan. The basic principles
are identical.
There are approximately 11,000 American
servicemen currently in Afghanistan, most of whom are stationed
at military facilities, and most of whom contribute nothing to
the overall stability or reconstruction of the country. Some
are involved in the ongoing campaign against the resurgent Taliban
in the south, although this has been mainly limited to bombing
missions and special-ops (paramilitary raids). There has been
no expanded effort to normalize life outside of Kabul, and the
warlords and drug traffickers are basically left alone to carry
on as they please.
An 11,000 man army is minuscule when
it comes to meeting the obligations of restoring security to
a country the size of Afghanistan. The Bush Administration knows
it cannot be done with a force this size, and so should we. The
notion of democratizing Afghanistan is a carefully nurtured illusion
whose only reality is in the speeches of George Bush. There are
no plans for rebuilding or unifying Afghanistan, the limited
presence of the military proves that point.
The trifling commitment of resources
also shows that the US will make no real effort to honor its
commitments in Afghanistan. Prior to the war, Mr. Bush promised
a "Marshall Plan" for the beleaguered country. Nothing
even remotely resembling reconstruction has taken place. The
current budget appropriation for Afghanistan is $3 billion, $2.3
billion of which goes directly to military and security requirements.
That leaves a paltry $700,000 million for random "pet projects"
that will look good for Mr. Bush during an election year. Perhaps,
the contractors at KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root; Halliburton
subsidiary) will slap together a girl's school or women's shelter
to illustrate the peerless magnanimity of the occupier, but nothing
of any consequence will really transpire; nothing that will improve
the lives of the average Afghani.
These two factors, the insignificant
size of the troop deployment and the insufficient funding for
reconstruction, should prove beyond a doubt that the administration
is not working to establish a democratic Afghanistan. Mr. Bush
has kept his campaign promise of eschewing "nation building."
Instead, Afghanistan has become another client state that will
never experience normal security as long as the present occupation
persists. The security vacuum spawned by the war and fostered
by the callous disregard to the needs of the people insures that
Afghanistan will continue to follow a downward trajectory into
mayhem.
The Bush Administration has devoted considerable
time to the formation of the Karzai Government, even though the
government has no democratic legitimacy. Representatives of the
Bush Administration interrupted the original Loya Jirga (Grand
Council) to make sure that their man, Hamid Karzai, was selected,
and that's exactly what happened. The former king, Zahir Shah,
who was the popular choice of the people (He actually received
800 of a possible 1500 delegate votes in the first balloting)
was sent packing after back-room dealings by the US produced
the desired result. Since then, Shah has returned to his retreat
in Italy.
Karzai may be a puppet, but he's an affable
puppet, and one who has shown an uncanny ability to survive the
numerous attempts on his life. He is sarcastically referred to
as the "Mayor of Kabul", since his authority doesn't
extend much further than the city limits. His cabinet is mainly
comprised of American educated ministers, some who used to work
at the World Bank. We can be certain that they passed the "free
trade" litmus test required of all Bush appointees, and
share the view that directives from Washington must be scrupulously
followed. When the time comes for them to sign away Afghanistan's
resources to America's rapacious energy giants, we can expect
they will comply without any embarrassing displays of patriotic
loyalty to the fatherland.
Outside Kabul, the central government
really has no power. The countryside is a checkerboard of warlords,
bandits and drug traders. The Taliban have been mounting resistance
in the south, but their firepower is simply not equal to that
of the US Military. The best they can hope for is to be a disruptive
element, and try to win over the disenchanted peasantry. The
American Military will maintain its preeminence over the disparate
groups regardless of their attractiveness to the greater population
and in spite of their ability to initiate hit and miss acts of
terrorism.
Things are no better for the people living
outside of Kabul than they were under the Taliban. The warlords
and narco-traffickers are no less brutal then their predecessors
and justice is as arbitrary as it was before. Although, both
the UN and NATO have indicated that they will accept some role
in bringing law and order to the countryside, nothing yet has
materialized. As Mullah Omar was recently quoted, "How successful
have the American's been in bringing democracy to Afghanistan?"
Not very successful at all.
Operation Enduring Freedom has been a
great marketing tool for promoting aggression, but it has failed
miserably in establishing democracy or providing even the minimum
level of security for the Afghan people.
This same pattern of neglect is now appearing
in Iraq. The military, which has been woefully understaffed from
the onset, is now withdrawing to eight bases outside of Baghdad.
This will preclude their further involvement in the arduous work
of maintaining security. From their new location, they will conduct
their paramilitary raids, fly-overs and routine maneuvers, but
as far as being engaged in bringing peace to the beleaguered
Capital, (and risking American lives in the process) that period
is about over.
The oil fields have been secured; the
pipeline routes will be protected, and business should be brisk.
Everything else is incidental.
Just like Afghanistan, most of the money
provided by Congress is being spent on military necessities and
contractual obligations (Halliburton, Bechtel etc)
Only a small portion of the funds are
being allocated for reconstruction, ($20 billion) and it has
not had a measurable affect on the lives of Iraqis. The Bush
Administration's promise of "liberation" and "democracy"
looks like just more empty rhetoric, devoid of any real substance.
The proof of America's commitment to
Iraq should come in the form of increased security and a positive
move towards free elections. The US has made neither of these
available. Instead, the administration is trying to control the
outcome of the electoral process, while at the same time, pulling
its troops out of Baghdad.
This can only result in disaster.
Iraq is a tinderbox, and whether the
Bush Administration is able to manipulate the elections or not,
will make no difference if they withdraw before order is established.
Baghdad will simply descend into anarchy.
The administration has made a calculated
judgment that they have to stop the daily hemorrhaging of American
lives to get re-elected, so they have decided to pull back and
let the Iraqis fend for themselves.
We have already seen the results of this
strategy by the dramatic increase in the death toll among the
Iraqi police force. This pattern won't reverse itself without
American intervention.
The Bush Administration is playing a
dangerous game in both Afghanistan and Iraq. As the situation
tilts more steeply towards catastrophe in both countries, the
policy failures are more sharply defined. Even with a media that
papers-over calamity, and an administration that can regurgitate
lies on demand, the Bush plan for these countries is becoming
more evident. It's a plan that provides only minimal troop deployments
to control entire populations and their resources. This suggests
that no importance is attached to the inevitable collapse of
the existing social order or the violence that derives from that
situation. It implies that whole states will break down along
ethnic and tribal lines and devolve into a continual state of
infighting and reprisal.
This is what we are seeing in Afghanistan
two years after the war; a fragmented, failed state with no central
government (of any consequence) and no effort by the occupying
power to establish one. The drug trafficking, factional fighting
and security vacuum are the logical corollaries of this new reality.
This model of societal disintegration
is now being passed on to Iraq. The Bush apologists in the media
will try to convince us that that this predictable chaos is actually
the genesis of democracy, but the facts prove otherwise. If anything,
Afghanistan is further away from democracy or even a coherent
form of government than it was before the invasion.
Never the less, Afghanistan looks to
be the paradigm that the Bush Administration is holding up as
a symbol of success. It shouldn't surprise us then that they
are trying to duplicate this model in Iraq or that the results
are turning out to be equally tragic. The carnage appearing daily
on the streets of Baghdad seems to have no affect on our pious
President. We remain doubtful that any display of human misery
will deter these men from executing their grand scheme.
Mike Whitney
can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com
Weekend
Edition Features for February 14 / 15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
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