Becoming What We Seek to Destroy, by Chris Hedges

[Echo In Light]

Becoming What We Seek to Destroy
by Chris Hedges

(*emphasis mine)

The bodies of dozens, perhaps well over a hundred, women, children and men, their corpses blown into bits of human flesh by iron fragmentation bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes in a village in the western province of Farah, illustrates the futility of the Afghan war. We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat.

We are morally no different from the psychopaths within the Taliban, who Afghans remember we empowered, funded and armed during the 10-year war with the Soviet Union. Acid thrown a girl’s face or beheadings? Death delivered from the air or fields of shiny cluster bombs? This is the language of war. It is what we speak. It is what those we fight speak.

Afghan survivors carted some two dozen corpses from their villages to the provincial capital in trucks this week to publicly denounce the carnage. Some 2,000 angry Afghans in the streets of the capital chanted “Death to America!” But the grief, fear and finally rage of the bereaved do not touch those who use high-minded virtues to justify slaughter. The death of innocents, they assure us, is the tragic cost of war. It is regrettable, but it happens. It is the price that must be paid. And so, guided by a president who once again has no experience of war and defers to the bull-necked generals and militarists whose careers, power and profits depend on expanded war, we are transformed into monsters.

There will soon be 21,000 additional U.S. soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan in time for the expected surge in summer fighting. There will be more clashes, more airstrikes, more deaths and more despair and anger from those forced to bury their parents, sisters, brothers and children. The grim report of the killings in the airstrike, issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which stated that bombs hit civilian houses and noted that an ICRC counterpart in the Red Crescent was among the dead, will become familiar reading in the weeks and months ahead.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090511_becoming_what_we_seek_to_destroy/

[Echo In Light]

1. The silence is deafening

[kentuck]

3. Because we cannot imagine Obama giving that order.

And maybe he didn't? Most likely, he is following the Bush policy of letting the military run the war? So it would be Petraeus and Gates making the decisions, not Barack Obama. But he is the Commander in Chief, doesn't he have to sign off on it? Good question.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

21. "The Buck stops here." Harry Truman

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. More killing to cover the asses of the politicians and military in a lost war.

Followed, of course, by the usual apologies, lies, explanations, and threats.

[Beam Me Up]

5. It isn't a "lost" war -- it was a phony, fictitious "war" right from the beginning.

Given your avatar, I'd assume you know this already but, then, why couch it as "lost"?

The very phrase "war on terror" is the epitome of an oxymoron. War IS terror justified and sanctioned by the state.

In this instance the whole thing from day one is predicated on the assumption that ONCE in the whole, long despicable history of the most lying, deceptive, criminal and secretive administration in US history, they told us the truth about who was responsible for 9/11. They told us they couldn't have imagined such a thing and that they had no warning. They told us within hours they knew who was responsible. They told us providing even LESS evidence than they did to show SH/Iraq had WMD. After LONG delay they finally set up an underfunded, time limited, highly controlled and "minded" Commission which began from the assumption that the most salient facts were known and needed no investigation and backed up that assumption with "confessions" derived from tortured captives.

This whole thing is so fucked up I can barely stand it.



typos

[NeedleCast]

4. I've never seen a "progressive" as intent on judging and lecturing other progressives

as Chris Hedges.

(Let the wailing of those who's sacred cow I've gored begin...)

[Beam Me Up]

6. When all else fails, kill the messenger.

Is that it? Is that your whole argument? Who gives a fuck about Chris Hedges? I don't. Never met the man and never will. This isn't about some "sacred cow" that you set up as a scape-goat straw-man. It is about the message and that message is clear: US Imperialism has NO moral integrity or legitimacy. None. Zero. Zip. The Bush administration justified the slaughter of innocents based on lies and the Obama administration inherited that imperialist agenda and apparently, according to you, criticism of that agenda is anti-progressive. Go figure.

[NeedleCast]

7. Part of it is because Hedges is playing the same card a lot of politicians did

Namely "I was for the war before I was against it." I have an issue being lectured by someone like that. Hedges, like many politicians, changed "sides" when the war became increasingly less popular.

As far as the war in Afghanistan is concerned, I've alwasy been torn about it. I think that without a better strategy it's doomed to fail but as someone who's seen first hand what Taliban rule does, I have little issue with the Taliban and their extremist friends getting a bad case of the deads.

[Echo In Light]

8. Did Hedges "switch sides" on this?

[gratuitous]

9. I'm not familiar with that part of Hedges' record

Perhaps you could post some links or point out where Hedges was in favor of the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq? Because my reading of him in the last 10 years or so has shown a pretty consistent bias against war as a means of implementing foreign policy; but that's only the last 10 years, I admit.

I'm also unclear on whether you think the Taliban and their extremist friends can all be killed. Who would you kill? Who would you spare? Would you kill innocents along with the guilty? Or would you risk a resurgence of Talibanesque activity by sparing some of the borderline cases? Would others step up to replace those you killed, or would you institute an iron rule to forbid any hope of resurgence? Is there any other way besides killing that would blunt the Taliban's potency?

[NeedleCast]

11. I may be mistaken

I looked and can't seem to find any link to Hedges' early stance on Afghanistan, although I could have sworn that he initially supported the war in Afghanistan (although he was an early and frequent critic of the war in Iraq). If I'm mistaken on that, I retract the statement.

Still, Hedges' seems to have spent the bulk of his most recent articles attacking Democrats. I'm not saying that he shouldn't, but he seems to have no intrest in pointing out who got us into this mess.

Regarding your second paragraph....yes, I think they can be killed. I'm not sure that war against them is effective but I have to admit that I have little sympathy for dead Taliban-n-friends. You ask if there is any way besides killing that would blunt the Taliban's potency. I don't know, but if there is, it hasn't been identified yet. That's the problem with religious fundamnetalism of all types. It brooks neither opposition or argument. It's simply iron-fisted tyrrany wrapped in a religious text.

When I was stationed in Afghanistan one of the tribel elders in said a very poignant thing to me. He had been questioned about whether or not his village supported the Taliban and he replied "We support whichever side is currently pointing a gun at us." Seeing first hand the plight of most women in Afghanistan was enough to make me weep. I'm not sure if there's a solution to that problem that doesn't involve violence. If there is, I have no idea what it is.

[gratuitous]

15. I think you've conflated Chris Hedges with someone else

I do it all the time myself, so that's that.

But as for a solution? Yeah, anything's going to take a long time, just like the current situation with the Taliban didn't develop overnight. It's the current product of nearly a quarter century of U.S. meddling in Afghanistan's affairs. We started off, as we usually do, with the noblest of intentions. Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union, which was hoping to pummel the country into submission. We started training and arming the mujahedeen (sp?), a pretty good countermaneuver to the Soviet's conventional warfare tactics.

When the Soviets withdrew and their nation collapsed, the unintended (but not unexpected) consequence came about, that the people who had fought off the Soviet aggressors now thought they should run Afghanistan, instead of retiring from the field of battle and going back to their pre-invasion peasant existence. Not surprising in the least.

Right now we’ve posted thousands of military personnel in Afghanistan as the “enemy” morphs from Al Qaeda to the Taliban and back again, depending on the propaganda needs of the moment. Instead of buying loyalty at the point of a gun, perhaps we should buy it with peace and security. Our earliest efforts in that direction are going to be rather futile. Schools that we help build will be destroyed, crops that we help plant will be stolen or poisoned. I think it’s a mistake to try to impose western-style values in the country, but we can help the Afghan people build their own society in the way they see fit.

This will draw opposition from the Taliban, of course, and we should fully expect that. A military presence will probably be necessary for some time to come. But instead of carrying the fight militarily to the Taliban, it will be easier and cheaper to defend what’s built, and the Afghan people will defend it themselves when they benefit from the wells that are dug and the roads that are safe to travel. Public support for the Taliban will be slowly peeled away if we make the Taliban appear to be the enemy of a peaceful Afghan society instead of the enemy of the occupying Great Power (whether that power is the Soviet Union in the 1980s or the United States in the first decades of the new millennium).

These efforts will also draw opposition from domestic enemies of peace, and any program will have to take that into account as well. It will be important to rally domestic support behind a program that’s not going to yield immediate results. While war doesn’t have immediate results either, it does make for exciting pictures with bombs exploding and thrilling shots of military action. Any administration that abjures the use of violence in the country whose national religion is the High Church of Redemptive Violence is going to have to steel itself for the inevitable griping about spending money we don’t have on a bunch of ungrateful foreigners. It will have to keep going, and explain as it goes, how increasing the stability of Afghanistan’s society will inure to the benefit of our own security.

The accusations will fly that we’re merely bribing the Afghans into being our friends, and it will have to be pointed out that shooting them hasn’t worked too well. We will hear complaints that it will take too long, and it will have to be pointed out that a situation 25 years in the making isn’t going to be unraveled in 25 days or 25 months. Patience may be a virtue, but it isn’t an American virtue. Right wingers will howl about the building of madrassahs, and it will have to be pointed out that brawling with a billion Moslems isn’t a very good strategy; maybe learning to live together in peace will be better? And it’s not just Moslems who need to learn the ways of peace.

It will take time, money, patience and political will. Right now we’re just wasting time, money and lives. Of the two paths, one seems preferable, and even the guessed-at results seem preferable to the undisputed results we’re getting now from the first path.

[Beam Me Up]

17. Your criticism makes no sense.

First of all, as others have pointed out, I'm not aware that Hedges has changed his position as you insist. I willing to be educated on that subject if you can provide sources.

But, again, this isn't about Hedges (except for you).

So far as the popularity of the oxymoronic "war on terror," yeah, immediately after 9/11 when people were in a state of shock and were being told by a lying media and a criminal government that they knew who was responsible and how they carried it out under the nose of the most sophisticated (and expensive) military and intelligence gathering apparatus in world history, yeah, just about everybody was for it. They weren't all for it because they were all for it. They were all for it because they were shocked, angry, vengeful and being led by the nose via a PNAC/NEOCON cabal that, at the very least, benefitted enormously from the "attack." VERY few people were asking relevant questions (and even now most who are are ridiculed for doing so). Everybody in the administration said Osama did it and that was dutifully parroted by the media in the absence of any significant evidence. Note "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bush-rejects-taliban-offer-to-surrender-bin-laden-631436.html">Bush rejects Talaban offer to surrender bin Laden," because the real aim was -- and remains -- to secure that strategic geopolitical area for US oil hegemony. It had nothing to do with the Taliban -- which the US government was for before they were against it. Any more than the reason we invaded Iraq was to prevent its "immanent threat" to the US -- which had been FOR Saddam Hussein until they were against him.

The whole "war on terror" is an excuse, a lie. Period. Oh, yes, no doubt there are real terrorists -- probably more now than ever -- but national security (in the sense of protecting American citizens from the terrorist threat) has NEVER been the interest of the NEOCON junta. If anything, their agenda would benefit from an increased terrorist threat. Their only concern is in "rebuilding America's defences," after "a catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."

Yeah, popular opinion about this war has changed. And it has changed because more and more people have woken up to the reality that it is a hoax. And I think there is every reason to suspect it was a set-up from the very beginning. 9/11 wasn't an "intelligence failure," it was an intelligence success -- and the Obama administration has inherited the whole boondoggle. One of many left in Bush's wake.

[Echo In Light]

18. "Bush rejects Taliban offer to surrender bin Laden." That went down the memory hole, to be sure

Thanks for bringing attention to that often overlooked part of the equation. Aside from not really 'wanting' him per the ulterior motives, the US wasn't able to to provide any credible evidence that connected OBL w/9/11

[grasswire]

10. maybe Hedges has experienced a closeness other progressives haven't

As a former war correspondent/divinity student, he surely has more moral authority to talk about war than those of us who have never seen war; never studied the nature of good and evil in academic rigor.

[NeedleCast]

12. I've seen war...

[TheWatcher]

16. Then you should know better.

[Baby Snooks]

13. Becoming?

We have been. And have been for some time. Such good Germans we are.

[Beam Me Up]

20. Good point. Hedges fails because he accepts the rationalization of the "war".

For you and I and the majority of American citizens and the majority of the enlisted men and women in our armed forces "national security" means protecting American citizens. For the REST -- that is those who own and run the MIC and the intelligence and counter-intelligence networks, "national security" means the protection, security and extension of US imperial hegemony at any cost -- including the safety and welfare of US citizens. There is an overlap of course -- being the hydrocarbon sucking global vampires that "our way of life" (thanks to their disinterest in developing alternative and sustainable energy sources) has become. But the "terrorist threat"?? Give me a break. Yes it is a horror that 3,000 people were killed on 9/11. A true horror -- one the Bush administration wasn't the least bit interested in preventing before it happened or investigating afer it did. They already had their targets long before 9/11. SO, with this "justification" under its belt it invades, first, Afghanistan and then Iraq killing untold hundreds of thousands of people, the vast majority innocent citizens. Even the concept of "disaster capitalism" fails. What we have is PREDATORY capitalism under the rubric of "national security." HORSE SHIT!

[anonymous171]

14. We should leave and let the Taliban take over.

Then establish diplomatic relations with them. That would be the easiest way to do it.

[Beam Me Up]

22. I can't agree with that.

First thing we need to do is STOP this pretense of fighting a "war on terror." It is bullshit from start to finish. What we're after, what we've always been after is the security of the region in favor of our US interests. We need to propose a cease fire and look for international support to implement it.

Second, we need to expose the war crimes of the Bush administration and hold everyone involved accountable -- and this goes FAR deeper than what has been exposed so far. The NECON taliban should be rounded up, tried and convicted for their treasons and their crimes against humanity.

Third, we need to seriously reconsider the role of the US in relation to the global community. Right now our biggest export and the one thing that is propping up our sinking economy is our ability to wage war. We've become a predatory empire. We need to re-establish DEFENSE (not aggression) as our national priority and under that umbrella we need to begin to champion the reconstruction of a new, global, economic and social model. One based more in alignment with our STATED national ideals (not the elitist 'divine right' of a predatory oligarchy using those ideals as a cover for domestic and international criminality).

I know, dream on. But that is it.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. Or, perhaps, Al Queda and the Taliban are becoming like us. Just less effecient killers.

Of course, all the killers are doing it for a good cause.

"America is the first country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervening period of civilization." -  Oscar Wilde

[Echo In Light]

23. Bump