Month: October 2009

Appropriately, Congress passed the Kerry-Lugar “Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009” and the International Olympic Committee made its much anticipated decision just as the baseball season drew to a close.

Yep, the Windy City’s National League franchise remained America’s team (it keeps on bombing) and the IOC chimed in (slightly twisting the Cubs’ theme song), “Hey America, what do you say, Chicago’s going to lose today.”

An AP article in my local paper was headlined “Chicago faced anti-U.S. votes,” bringing Pakistan into the picture:

“Some people just don’t like the way Americans do things.

“One IOC member, Syed Shahid Ali of Pakistan, told Obama that foreigners ‘can go through a rather harrowing experience’ getting into the United States and asked how he intended to deal with that when thousands of people come for the 2016 games.

“Obama replied that ‘America, at its best, is open to the world,’ and the presentation ended with no further questions.

“‘This is an easy way for countries to express resentment toward us, as a superpower, without suffering any consequences, like having their foreign aid cut off or their weapons programs cut off,’ said Doug Logan, CEO of USA Track and Field. ‘It’s an easy way for them to express a great amount of displeasure.'”

As a Pakistani-American was attesting to in a blog picked up by the Yahoo Pakistan page, IOC member Ali didn’t go far enough, it’s not only “foreigners” who “can go through a harrowing experience getting into the United States.”

But that’s just an aside, the real business here is to indulge in some conspiracy theory. Had CEO Logan been reading the Pakistani press in the wake of the Kerry-Lugar bill’s passage last week, the idea may have occurred to him that Ali, as a patriot, spoke out in the hope, however vain, that Pakistan indeed would be made “to suffer” the “consequence” of “having its foreign aid cut off.”

What follows are Kerry-Lugar-related excerpts mostly from Dawn, The News International and The Nation. The articles, mostly op-ed, raise three Pakistani concerns with the aid package.

Continue reading “Chicago and Pakistan”

From the Students for a Democratic Society Antiwar Working Group:

Demonstrations mark 8th anniversary of Afghan War–demand immediate U.S./NATO withdrawal

Students on 25 campuses across the United States will protest eight long years of war against and occupation of the people of Afghanistan, on Wednesday October 7. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a nation-wide student organization committed to activism for peace, justice and equality, are organizing the protest.

“We are outraged by the daily loss of life and devastation caused by the U.S. military in Afghanistan,” Daniel Ginsberg-Jaeckle, a member of SDS in Milwaukee, WI. “For eight years this occupation has brought nothing but misery, poverty and suffering to the Afghan people. The U.S. and NATO need to get out now.”

The protests come on the heels of the largest loss of life for U.S. occupation forces in a year. On Sunday October 4, anti-occupation fighters in Afghanistan killed nine U.S. soldiers in a series of attacks. So far, 869 U.S. troops are dead in Afghanistan since the occupation began in 2001 – with over a quarter of those killed in the past ten months alone. There are over 4,000 U.S. wounded.

U.S. and NATO occupation forces do not keep track of civilian casualties, but many estimate that U.S. air strikes and gunfire have killed tens of thousands of Afghanis. Just last month, U.S. air strikes killed over 90 Afghan civilians in the northern Afghan village of Omar Kheil. A similar strike in Farah province on May 4 this year killed 147 civilians.

“The U.S. occupation is a disaster for Afghanistan, just like it is for Iraq. The Afghan people will never have stability and peace until the U.S. leaves”, said Stephanie Taylor, a member of SDS at the University of Minnesota.

The organizers of the October 7th protests note that the war and occupation of Afghanistan is linked to U.S. interests in controlling strategic energy resources and markets in central Asia. Jenae Stainer, an SDS organizer in Tuscaloosa, Alabama explains, “Our government wants to keep us ignorant about the real reasons and true costs of war both at home and in Afghanistan. That is why organizing to stop the war is so important.”

Organizers of the October 7th actions say they will continue to initiate demonstrations to protest the occupation of Afghanistan until all U.S. and NATO forces leave the country. “We will keep speaking out and organizing to support the people of Afghanistan in their struggle for independence from U.S. occupation,” said Ginsberg-Jaeckle. “We will continue to demand that the U.S. government stop spending money on war and occupation, and fund people’s needs here at home, including education, housing, jobs, and healthcare.”

U.S. Out of Afghanistan Now!

Fund Education, Not Occupation!

The SDS Anti-War Working Group exists to help coordinate national SDS anti-war activity. For more information, please contact Daniel Ginsberg-Jaeckle at 608-658-5480. More information, reports, and organizing materials are available on the SDS Antiwar Working Group’s homepage.

The Washington Post article on this weekend’s attack on a remote US military base in Afghanistan notes:

It is really hard to interdict the enemy,” said the base’s company commander in an interview with The Washington Post in late September. “There are literally thousands of trails around here. We just don’t have the numbers of troops we need to be effective.”
Although the village of Kamdesh is only about a mile from the base, U.S. and Afghan troops never visited it because it was too dangerous, the company commander said.

The Post noted that, since last year, the Pentagon has been meaning to get around to withdrawing the troops who were killed this weekend, but … well, the Pentagon has been so busy with its victory proclamations and its saber-rattling to send more troops to Afghanistan.

And the chances of any Pentagon official being held responsible for these deaths?

Tell it to Pat Tillman.

In a vote of 258-163, the House of Representatives passed a broad package of measures entitled H.R. 2892 “Making appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.”

The “other purposes” really ran the gamut, including one bizarre tack-on section allowing butane lighters on board airplanes and another allowing the importation of drugs from Canada for personal use. The interesting stuff (from our perspective at least) is among other things, the “Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009,” aimed at giving the Obama Administration legal cover in its battle to keep pictures of detainee abuse from becoming public. The bill also included a non-binding recommendation seeking to keep Guantanamo detainees from coming to the US to face trial.

The vote was spun as a defeat for the Obama Administration’s ostensible plan to close Guantanamo Bay, but really underscored the hawkish voting block that the administration will likely have to rely on to push through future escalations in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Though only supported by 35% of voting Democrats, the bill passed easily, relying on a coalition of centrist Democrats and Republicans. Only one Republican, Congressman Ron Paul, voted against the measure.