Robert Scheer: Thank God for the Whistle-Blowers

[marmar]

from Truthdig:




Thank God for the Whistle-Blowers

Posted on Jul 27, 2010
Lew and Mullen

By Robert Scheer


What WikiLeaks did was brilliant journalism, and the bleating critics from the president on down are revealing just how low a regard they have for the truth. As with Richard Nixon’s rage against the publication of the Pentagon Papers, our leaders are troubled not by the prospect of these revelations endangering troops but rather endangering their own political careers. It is our president who unnecessarily sacrifices the lives of our soldiers and not those in the press who let the public in on the folly of the mission itself.

What the documents exposed is the depth of chicanery that surrounds the Afghanistan occupation at every turn because we have stumbled into a regional quagmire of such dark and immense proportions that any attempt to connect this failed misadventure with a recognizable U.S. national security interest is doomed. What is revealed on page after page is that none of the local actors, be they labeled friend or foe, give a whit about our president’s agenda. They are focused on prizes, passions and causes that are obsessively homegrown.

Our fixation on al-Qaida has nothing to do with them. President Barack Obama’s top national security adviser admitted as much when he said last December that there were fewer than 100 of those foreign fighters left in Afghanistan. Those who do remain in the region are hunkered down in Pakistan, and as the leaked documents reveal, that nation is just toying with us by pretending to cooperate while its intelligence service continues to support our proclaimed enemies. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal made clear in his famous report, the battles in Afghanistan are tribal in nature and the agendas are local—be they about drugs, religion or the economic power of military blackmail. The documents contain a steady drumbeat of local hustles that are certainly deadly but rise to the level of a national security threat against the U.S. only when we insist on making their history our own.

It has ever been so with the Afghans, and our continued attempt to bend their passions to our purposes will always lead to horrid results. That is, in fact, just how their nation came to be the launching pad for the 9/11 attacks, which is the ostensible purpose of our occupation. We meddled in their history in a grand Cold War adventure to humble the Soviets by attacking the secular government in Kabul with which Moscow sided. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/thank_god_for_the_whistle-blowers_20100728/

[stray cat]

1. What did he learn that was not already evident?

[Peace Patriot]

2. "...stumbled into a regional quagmire..." ??

It is certainly a quaqmire, but I do not believe that the Bush Junta "stumbled" into it.

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"What the documents exposed is the depth of chicanery that surrounds the Afghanistan occupation at every turn because we have stumbled into a regional quagmire of such dark and immense proportions that any attempt to connect this failed misadventure with a recognizable U.S. national security interest is doomed. What is revealed on page after page is that none of the local actors, be they labeled friend or foe, give a whit about our president’s agenda. They are focused on prizes, passions and causes that are obsessively homegrown." --from the OP

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The Bush Junta had two main objectives as to the hijacking of the U.S. military to their purposes: 1) to END America's "Vietnam Syndrome" (the American peoples' aversion to unjust war), in order to, 2) use the U.S. military for corporate resource wars.

The war in Afghanistan is part of the first purpose. And there is an ancillary group that this first goal (end of the "Vietnam Syndrome") also serves: The war profiteers--all the private corps and private military 'contractors' who are vastly benefiting from the Forever War. This demonic alliance--the Bush Junta and its oil profiteers and other corporate interests, and the peddlers of war products--did not "stumble" into Afghanistan. They knew exactly what they were doing. Break the "will of the people" against unjust war, using 9/11 as the excuse; hijack the U.S. military to steal Iraq's oil, and, with that precedent set, continue to use the U.S. military to steal more oil (Iran? Venezuela?) and other resources, and also to enforce U.S. dominated "free trade for the rich."

And that is not to even mention the "pipeline" and the heroin trade.

[Stuart G]

3. "Regional Quagmire" ...doomed..........just ask the Russians and the British

they thought that they could control that region...well you can't .enuf.