MATTHEWGOODONLINE

I adore the term acceptable dictator. Every time I hear it, or the term friendly dictator, it’s as if the voice of Henry Kissinger is saying it in my head – who knows a thing or two about friendly dictators. Then again, the fact that that happens is somewhat creepy.

But I’m jumping the gun. First, a little back story…

Though little known, or reported, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai, after his falling out with the Taliban, spent much of his energies on the reinstatement of Zahir Shah while in self imposed exile in Pakistan. This, of course, is the very same man that was later singled out to become the legitimate face of ‘Afghan democracy’ – which should be rather telling regarding Karzai’s personal ambitions given the fact that he went from promoting the return of a Monarch to the West’s champion of democratic freedom almost overnight.

Since becoming the President of Afghanistan, Karzai has been labeled the Mayor of Kabul, primarily because the influence of his government extends little further than its outskirts without the existence of foreign occupational forces which, in truth, ensure the continued existence of Afghanistan’s fledgling shake-and-bake democracy.

But with Karzai has come the reality that the West could do better, that a far more pliable leader would be more advantageous to Western objectives – even if that leader were not a democratic one, an assertion recently made by Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador. From Elaine Sciolino in today’s New York Times…

“A coded French diplomatic cable leaked to a French newspaper quotes the British ambassador in Afghanistan as predicting that the NATO-led military campaign against the Taliban will fail. That was not all. The best solution for the country, the ambassador said, would be installing an “acceptable dictator,” according to the newspaper.

“The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust,” the British envoy, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted as saying by the author of the cable, François Fitou, the French deputy ambassador to Kabul.

The two-page cable — which was sent to the Élysée Palace and the French Foreign Ministry on Sept. 2, and was leaked to the investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, which printed excerpts in its Wednesday issue — said that the NATO-led military presence was making it harder to stabilize the country.

“The presence of the coalition, in particular its military presence, is part of the problem, not part of its solution,” Sir Sherard was quoted as saying. “Foreign forces are the lifeline of a regime that would rapidly collapse without them. As such, they slow down and complicate a possible emergence from the crisis.”

Within 5 to 10 years, the only “realistic” way to unite Afghanistan would be for it to be “governed by an acceptable dictator,” the cable said, adding, “We should think of preparing our public opinion” for such an outcome.”

There’s Kissinger’s voice in my head again.

I’m going to do my damndest to sleep in tomorrow morning, so I thought I would post a few articles of interest for those of you in other time zones that will be up well ahead of me.

First, an article by the Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi which includes an opening that could have been penned by Bruce Springsteen…

“When you are too big to fail, you are bailed out.

When you are too small to save, you are down and out on the street.”

The second article, entitled Why does the US think it can win in Afghanistan?, is by The Independent’s Robert Fisk. Fisk is easily one of the most educated journalists in the world when it comes to Middle Eastern affairs, having been The Independent’s foreign correspondent in that region (based in Lebanon) for more than 30 years. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend his masterpiece - The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Nighty-night.

Since the beginning of the Mr. Bush’s Surge in Iraq, 1,000 US soldiers have died, almost a quarter of all US fatalities. As has been revealed of late, there was considerable opposition to the Surge among prominent US military leaders. While the President has routinely claimed that he ‘listens to the commanders on the ground’, the Surge was anything but a military request. It was a White House driven directive that did not take into consideration the opinions of the Joint Chiefs, nor commanders in Iraq itself. It was a politically motivated move aimed at altering domestic perceptions of the war.

In the year that has followed, many in the media, and the White House, have claimed the Surge a success. Even the outgoing commander of all US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, testified before Congress that the Surge had achieved many of its goals. But while overall violence is down in Iraq, the Surge cannot realistically take credit for it.

Despite claims that support the Surge’s success, it is first important to remember that the Sunni insurgency against occupational forces was diminished not by US efforts, but by the growing strength and influence of Shia militias. Secondly, it is important to remember that Sunnis only constitute 20% of Iraq’s population that the Iraqi government, and a variety of its ministries, are predominantly controlled by Shi’ites and, in some cases, are highly influenced or have been infiltrated by Shia militias. This is the primary reason why the Sunni Awakening occurred and why its leaders allied themselves directly with the US rather than the Iraqi government. As an aside, the Awakening was also a move on the part of tribal leaders, former nationalists and Ba’athists, to diminish the influence that ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq’ had gained in some Sunni communities. In truth, the Sunni Awakening did little more than take advantage of US financial support so that the afore mentioned tribal leaders could consolidate power and work to regain the influence that they had lost.

Iraq remains the world’s most dangerous country. One in every six Iraqis is a refugee – that’s approximately 4.7 million people. Some have fled to other countries, some have fled to less dangerous parts of Iraq. Today, a suicide bomber blew herself up at a police gathering in Balad Ruz, killing 22 people and wounding 32 more. In Baghdad, two car bombs also exploded killing 12.

There are two fundamental lessons that the West has been gifted over the last 60 years, though has still failed to learn. The first is that ‘winning hearts and minds’ is nothing more than a catch phrase. The second is that throwing conventional force into an asymmetric fire does not produce results.

There once was a time when the gentlemen on the other side of the Potomac were the ones commonly muttering in secret and prodding government to act in variety of situations that they felt were in the nation’s interests, be it overtly or covertly. Then came the Bush Doctrine, the politicization of the CIA and the military, and a bizarre role reversal. Given the nefarious history of the US military and intelligence infrastructure, one would think that both would have reveled in the hard line foreign policy doctrine that was ushered in following September 11th. Ironically, it’s had the opposite affect. Where the suits at Langley and the sacred cows at the Pentagon once reigned, now the White House holds court, and they’re not particularly interested in the opinions of others. Unless, that is, they happen to be their opinions.

From Bob Woodward in today’s Washington Post…

“At the Joint Chiefs of Staff in late November 2006, Gen. Peter Pace was facing every chairman’s nightmare: a potential revolt of the other chiefs. Two months earlier, the JCS had convened a special team of colonels to recommend options for reversing the deteriorating situation in Iraq. Now, it appeared that the chiefs’ and colonels’ advice was being marginalized, if not ignored, by the White House.

During a JCS meeting with the colonels Nov. 20, Chairman Pace dropped a bomb: The White House was considering a “surge” of additional troops to quell the violence in Iraq. “Would it be a good idea?” Pace asked the group. “If so, what would you do with five more brigades?” That amounted to 20,000 to 30,000 more troops, depending on the number of support personnel.

Pace’s question caught the chiefs and colonels off guard. The JCS hadn’t recommended a surge, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Iraq commander, was opposed to one of that magnitude. Where had this come from? Was it a serious option? Was it already a done deal?

Pace said he had another White House meeting in two days. “I want to be able to give the president a recommendation on what’s doable,” he said.

A rift had been growing between the country’s military and civilian leadership, and in several JCS meetings that November, the chiefs’ frustrations burst into the open. They had all but dismissed the surge option, worried that the armed forces were already stretched to the breaking point. They favored a renewed effort to train and build up the Iraqi security forces so that U.S. troops could begin to leave.

“Why isn’t this getting any traction over there, Pete?” Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief, asked at one session inside the “tank,” the military’s secure conference room for candid and secret debates. Was the president being briefed?

“I can only get part of it before him,” Pace said, “and I’m not getting any feedback.”

Pace, Schoomaker and Casey found themselves badly out of sync with the White House in the fall of 2006, finally losing control of the war strategy altogether after the midterm elections. Schoomaker was outraged when he saw news coverage that retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff, had briefed the president Dec. 11 about a new Iraq strategy being proposed by the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank.

“When does AEI start trumping the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff?” Schoomaker asked at the next chiefs’ meeting.

Pace, normally given to concealing his opinions, let down the veil slightly and gave a little sigh. But he didn’t answer. Schoomaker thought Pace was too much of a gentleman to be effective in a business where forcefulness and a willingness to get in people’s faces were survival skills. “They weren’t listening to what Pete [Pace] was saying,” Schoomaker said later in private. “Or Pete wasn’t carrying the mail, or he was carrying it incompletely.”

In several tank meetings, Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, voiced concern that the politicians were going to find a way to place the blame for Iraq on the military. “They’re orchestrating this to dump in our laps,” Mullen said. He raised the point so many times that Schoomaker thought the Navy leader sounded “almost paranoid.”

Canada has suffered it’s 97th combat fatality in Afghanistan, as Sgt. Scott Shipway of Saskatchewan succumbed to wounds sustained from an IED attack today in Kandahar Province’s Panjwaii district. Seven others were also wounded.

Shipway, a father and veteran soldier who served in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Cyprus, was on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan and was due to return to Canada in a handful of days.

A poll conducted by Environics last week concluded that public support for the mission in Afghanistan has reached its lowest point.

As I have stated exhaustively in the past, the cost incurred by the Canadian Armed Forces in this conflict is disproportionately high given the size of Canada’s contingent. In fact, we have lost more soldiers by comparison than any other nation involved. That is a fact that seems to be lost on the leaders of this country. Then again, we are talking about a government that has used Canada’s military participation in the conflict to try and raise the nation’s international profile with the likes of NATO and the United States. In short, to make us a ‘player’, policy dictates that we remain and continue to endure such losses.

John McCain’s campaign can attack Barack Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience until they’re blue in the face and Sarah Palin’s lack of experience can be equally attacked until the sun implodes. The truth is that when President George W. Bush took office in January of 2001 he had absolutely no foreign policy experience – unless you count dealing with foreign Major League Baseball players. True, his running mate was Secretary of Defense under George Bush Senior, but that doesn’t alter the fact that Bush himself had none. When the shit hit the fan on the morning of September 11th the nation would be introduced to a cabal of foreign policy experts that had assumed positions within the Bush Administration, among them noted lunatics such as Paul Wolfowitz, whose Defense Planning Guidance penned during Cheney’s reign at the DOD would be transformed into one of the most reckless foreign policy doctrines in US history.

The truth is that President Bush had nothing to do with the foreign policy doctrine that now bears his name. It was promoted by a group of hardliners prior to his election, implemented after 9/11, and would, at an unprecedented rate, irrevocably harm America’s reputation abroad.

So what do I care that some conservative moose hunting fanatic from Alaska has no foreign policy experience? In truth, there hasn’t been a President since Dwight Eisenhower that has had substantial first hand foreign policy experience – and even he, in his finest hour, admonished the very real threat of US militarism as it pertained to the nation’s soul. If we’re to cut the shit, an actor turned politician is widely hailed in the United States for ending the Cold War. That alone should say something.

Yesterday during Palin’s speech she claimed that John McCain has first hand experience with regards to how “tough fights are won”. Sorry to disappoint, Sarah, but Mr. McCain was a prisoner of war in a conflict that was lost by the United States. John McCain did indeed survive, and his personal fortitude under the circumstances should be applauded. I’ll not deny his heroics with regards to the fire on the USS Forrestal in 1967, nor the fact that following that incident, and the injuries he sustained, he volunteered to serve on the USS Oriskany and continue to fly missions. I will also no deny that after being shot down he was attacked by locals, stabbed, beaten, and then initially refused medical treatment by the North Vietnamese, who beat and interrogated him for information until they learned that his father was an Admiral. In fact, McCain’s father and Grandfather were Admirals.

John McCain’s ordeal was indeed severe, and questioning his service isn’t the issue. What is the issue is the context in which it is used. Despite the fact that his internment by the North Vietnamese elevated him to the level of an American hero, the reality is that there is a rather large stone monument in Washington on which the names of those who did not return from that war stands as testament to its utter folly. Marines lost at Khe Sanh, boys too young to even legally drink a beer in their home towns disappeared in jungles never to be seen again. The dregs of US society largely fought that war, and the recognition of their sacrifice actually had to be fought for after the fact.

John McCain is a war hero. A hero of a war that was lost, that should have never been fought, and that took the lives of over 58,000 Americans and injured a further 304,000. In its aftermath, more Vietnam veterans would commit suicide than were lost in the war itself. In a study conducted in the late 1980’s it was revealed that, at the time, 29,000 Vietnam vets were serving time in federal prisons, a further 37,000 had been paroled, 250,000 were under probationary supervision, and 87,000 were awaiting trial for crimes committed. Those statistics come from information provided by the Veterans Outreach Center regarding the affects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In the end, the names of the boys on the wall in Washington perhaps represent the lucky ones.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not comparable to the world’s most devastating wars. There has been no Bastogne in Iraq, no Iwo Jima in Afghanistan. The conditions faced by those serving in those conflicts are unique to them, just as Vietnam was, and to not take that into consideration is folly.

That folly has dug graves over the last seven years while the oligarchs in Washington, their faces painted with concern and resolve for affect, have attempted time and again to ennoble wars that cannot be. They have overblown the significance of a ‘global enemy’ to the point that the war in Iraq was transformed into one against al-Qaeda, even though it didn’t exist in Iraq prior to the invasion of the country and only represented a mere 5% of the insurgency at its height. Meanwhile, kids from small towns in Texas and Indiana are returning home and suffering the affects of PTSD, some of them committing criminal acts, the notions of which they would have never even entertained prior to their deployments. For many of them, given the state of the US Armed Forces, they are made to go back.

Sarah Palin is the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. Her son is due to deploy to Iraq on September 11th (something that was, of course, mentioned in her recent speech).

The rich and influential very rarely pay for ground. They commonly just walk over it after it has been soaked with blood and, like Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, breathe in the fumes of the price paid for it. There are exceptions, of course, such as John McCain’s son.

In the end, the lot of them can go straight to hell as far as I’m concerned. Because this election isn’t about politics, pandering to patriotic fervor or special interest groups – it’s about wars and the futures of those that have been made to fight them under false pretenses. Politicians lie, no matter which side of the political fence they happen to be on. What they do not do is die as a result of their policies, and it’s about time that people woke up to that fact.

We have lost another three brave young men in Afghanistan because of a reckless foreign policy agenda bent more on placating our southern neighbours than ushering in any sort of realistic ‘new day’ in a country that has been at war for decades.

In a country where international relief supplies are easier to obtained on the Black Market than anywhere else, where promises made by foreign powers have rarely become a reality despite propaganda to the contrary, one has to seriously wonder why the people of this country have remained largely silent while 96 Canadians have returned home in coffins. To some that might not seem like a lot, but, in truth, we have lost more lives given the small size of our contingent in Afghanistan than any nation involved in combat operations.

As I have exhaustively pointed out in the past, there is a vast difference between supporting our fighting men and women and supporting the policies that place them in harms way. They are, by no means, one in the same. That said; I will not launch into a protracted entry about my views regarding the conflict itself, as I have written a myriad of entries that can be sourced using the search function.

The Looming Election

It’s no secret that Stephen Harper intends to ask the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and force a federal election, most likely on October 14th, breaking a legislative election pledge passed in the House that there would not be a federal election until October 19th of 2009. Given the disarray of the Federal Liberal Party, and its lack of what I consider a real leader, it makes sense. By breaking the legislative promise that Harper himself proposed and was successful in passing, the Conservatives have a chance at gaining a majority.

The truth is that Stéphane Dion is not, in my opinion, PM material. The NDP, of course, do not have the sort of national support required to win the PM’s office, with the Bloc’s potential remaining as limited as ever given their mandate. Thus, by the end of next month we could very well see a Conservative majority in the House and the dawning of a new age of unobstructed Conservative rule in Canada. The groundwork is already being laid…

» Tories pledge $80M to reopen Ford plant in Windsor, Ont.
» Tories unveil $60 million of pre-election goodies.

There is no side to be taken but that of the innocent, of those who pay with their lives for the corruptions of others. Hostilities between South Ossetian and Abkhazian separatists and the Georgian military didn’t suddenly begin earlier this month, they began more than a decade ago. During that time, as is always the case when fools employ guns to solve their problems, innocents have lost their lives.

I have removed every entry that I have made about the conflict, and my reason for doing so is quite simple. Because the only side that is worth taking is that of those that pay the price for the agendas of others that would rather have lived in peace.

I am tired of it. I am tired of the justifications of death. I am tired of sides, of the rhetoric spewed to criminalize the actions of some while defending the actions of others. I am tired of the altogether defensible actions of military giants and the condemnation of those that haven’t the historical mythology to excuse or glorify their behaviour. The deliverance of death is the deliverance of death, its method is of absolutely no concern to me. I could care less if it comes in the form of a suicide bomber than has been corrupted by some radicalized religious ideology or from 20,000 feet and delivered by someone that has been propagandized into believing that they are defending life by taking it.

I am tired of the deafening silence of the majority and the sensationalized wailings of the world’s minority voices that have always been able to produce the loudest of human misrepresentations. I am tired of politicians that don misleading new suits but care nothing for change and of so called activists that are so in love with ‘the struggle’ that the purpose of it no longer matters. Both are equally as revolting to me.

All of us, no matter what parts of this world we inhabit, get one kick at the can – religious promises to the contrary be damned. If we are to allow ourselves to be controlled, to be divided, to listen to those minority voices that misrepresent our true interests – of simply living our lives in peace – then we might as well commit global suicide. In truth, we are already in the throes of just that, even though confronting that reality is something that far too many people are uncomfortable admitting.

There is only one absolute in this life – death. As a species we have perfected more ways to deliver it than we have cures to combat it, which says something grotesquely significant about our inability to demand better. For the sake of our children, for the sake of our neighbour, for the sake of nature, for the sake of ourselves.

Fuck who you are, where you come from, the colour of your skin, and the God you worship. You have a greater responsibility - a responsibility to ensure that all of those things do not result in the promotion of division, willful ignorance, and suffering.

What ‘side’ am I on? I’m on a side that is considered by most an impossibility. And that is precisely why it remains one.

In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq. The Bush Administration employed blatant falsehoods regarding Iraq’s WMD program and links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the latter of which is still believed by a great many Americans (there is ample television footage of almost every senior member of the administration employing outright falsehoods during the run up to the war). In truth, the decision to invade Iraq was made shortly following 9/11, with only the when and why left to be engineered. In the end, and despite popular belief to the contrary, the US led invasion of the country was not sanctioned by the United Nations, and was, in truth, in direct contravention of international law. The administration’s proverbial sleeve ace was that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and that the American public had a far better and clearer recollection of US military action taken against his regime than US assistance to it. This would be why it was effortless for pro-war pundits to evoke the gassing of Halabja as justification for Hussein’s removal while completely ignoring the fact that President Reagan vetoed a Congressional resolution passed soon after the incident calling for all US aid to Iraq to be immediately suspended. Of course, time passed, the incident died down in the press, and US aid continued unabated.

The Bush Administration, having adopted the Wolfowitz Doctrine as its official foreign policy platform in the aftermath of 9/11, initiated with the invasion Iraq what no other US administration had ever attempted – the establishment of a permanent US military footprint in the region. Of course, Iraq doesn’t geographically border the United States, but being that the United States has been the world’s lone super power since the end of the Cold War the truth is that every nation on earth does border America’s sphere of influence. US national security interests span the globe, not merely the Western hemisphere, making the Middle East as relevant as Mexico. The Wolfowitz Doctrine was written as a guidance to unabashedly capitalize on a singular world power reality, and that is precisely what the Bush Administration has endeavored to do in the wake of 9/11.

For reasons of national security, the United States invaded a foreign country, affected regime change, and has militarily occupied it for five years. In that time there have been war crimes committed, over 2 million people have been displaced, and most likely well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed. That said, the US is still able to condemn the Russians for their recent actions without batting an eye. Even more, they’ve largely won the PR battle on Georgia’s behalf.

Russian history in the 20th Century is, in many ways, replete with absolutes. The horror of the purges, the seizure of Eastern Europe following the Second World War, and so forth. These things are absolutes because a dictatorially corrupted political ideology was in place that could be easily seen for what it was. The same cannot be said of Western plutocracies, who, while adorned with chevrons marking their unquestionable right, conducted business in private with the same cold, ruthless, and unforgiving resolve. That reality has produced publics that have ultimately only lived half of the modern story of their nations, and ones that have, for the most part, unquestionably adhered to the designs of their plutocratic infrastructures.

Abraham Lincoln wrote something rather telling in August of 1855 in a letter to Joshua Speed, something rather prophetic with regards to the slow diminishment of the democratic principle that would continue unabated after his death…

“As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy”

The perfect machine. Life lived during days of never ending summer with winter cloaked, knife in hand, doing business out of sight. This is who we are. Never mind our defense. We are never wrong. We are only sometimes mistaken.

French forces in Afghanistan have suffered one of the biggest single day losses in the conflict’s history, losing ten soldiers and suffering 21 additional casualties in a single engagement. The soldiers were ambushed by insurgents a mere 50 kilometers from Kabul, solidifying concerns that insurgents are closing in on the capital.

France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy, plans to travel to Afghanistan to reassure French forces, insisting that French participation in the mission will continue. Meanwhile, in France, two thirds of the population remains opposed to French involvement in Afghanistan.

From a Canadian perspective, given the size of Canada’s contingent as compared to those of other nations involved, Canada has suffered the highest mortality rate.