Scheer: Keeping Afghanistan Safe from Democracy, Kucinich: Last Chance for Single Payer

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091103_keeping_afghanistan_safe_from_democracy/

Keeping Afghanistan Safe from Democracy

 

"What law? A runoff was avoided only when Karzai refused to accede to his
opponent's demand for changes in the election commission that had stuffed
the ballot boxes."

 

By Robert Scheer
Trughdig: November 3, 2009

The most idiotic thing being said about America's involvement in Afghanistan
is that the best way to protect the 68,000 U.S. troops there now is by
putting an additional 40,000 in harm's way.

People who argue for that plan clearly have not read Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal's report pushing for escalation. The general is as honest as he
is wrong in laying out the purpose of this would-be expanded mission, which
is to remold Afghanistan in a Western image by making U.S. troops far more
vulnerable, rather than less so.

He is honest in arguing that American troops would have to be deployed
throughout the rugged and otherwise inhospitable terrain of rural
Afghanistan, entering intimately into the ways of local life so as to win
the hearts and minds of a people who clearly wish we would not extend the
favor. He is wrong in indicating, without providing any evidence to support
the proposition, that this very costly and highly improbable quest to be the
first foreign power to successfully model life in Afghanistan would be
connected with defeating the al-Qaida terrorists.

As the president's top national security adviser has stated, there are fewer
than 100 al-Qaida members left in Afghanistan and they have no capacity to
launch attacks. These remnants of a foreign Arab force assembled by the U.S.
to thwart the Soviets in their hapless effort to conquer Afghanistan are now
alienated from the locally based insurgency.

As Matthew Hoh, the former Marine captain and foreign service officer in
charge of the most contested area, said recently in his letter of
resignation, we have stumbled into a 35-year-long civil war between rural
people "who want to be left alone" and a corrupt urban government that the
U.S. insists on backing. Hoh, who quit after a decade of service in Iraq and
Afghanistan, wrote that he was resigning not because of the hardships of his
assignment but rather because he no longer believed in its stated purpose:

" . [I]n the course of my five months of service in Afghanistan . I have
lost understanding and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United
States' presence in Afghanistan. . To put simply: I fail to see the value or
the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in
support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil
war. . Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state,
while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and wanted by
its people. . I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for
the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign
soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul."

Just how unrepresentative was amply demonstrated in a very low-turnout
election which the U.S.-backed candidate, Hamid Karzai, won after stealing
one-third of the ballots he claimed for his victory, according to U.N.
observers. In a message of congratulation to Karzai, President Barack Obama
made reference to the need for reform and an end to the corruption that is
endemic in the Karzai regime but then stated, "Although the process was
messy, I am pleased to say that the final outcome was determined in
accordance with Afghan law, which I think is very important."

What law? A runoff was avoided only when Karzai refused to accede to his
opponent's demand for changes in the election commission that had stuffed
the ballot boxes.

When Bob Schieffer of CBS said of the election "the thing was a fraud,"
White House senior adviser David Axelrod had the arrogance to defend the
rigged process as having "proceeded in the constitutional way." Just what is
it we are telling the world about our belief in the integrity of elections?
It is no different from our having extolled those garbage elections that
occurred with great regularity in Vietnam during the war there, a point made
to great effect by Hoh:

"Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of
the insurgency's true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with
South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense
of our Nation's own internal peace, against an insurgency whose nationalism
we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War
ideology."

Obama must know the truth of those words and should heed them before he
marches down the disastrous path pursued by another Democratic president,
Lyndon Johnson-who, we now know from his White House telephone tapes,
sacrificed the youth of this country in a war that he always knew never made
sense.

 

***

 

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Dennis Kucinich <reply@kucinich.us>
To: saidychess@sbcglobal.net
Sent: Wed, November 4, 2009 11:16:20 AM
Subject: Our Last Chance on State Single Payer Option

Our Last Chance on State Single Payer Option While the political process in Washington suffers through its grotesque pantomime on health care, let us prepare our neighborhoods, our communities, our states for the eventual triumph of single payer health care. Download, print and circulate the petition among friends and neighbors. Dear Friends, Thank you for all of your efforts on behalf of the Kucinich Amendment for a state single payer option which would protect the right of states to pursue a single payer health care system. Unfortunately, the House Leadership has rejected the many appeals on behalf of the amendment and will not reverse their decision which removed the amendment from the bill. Therefore, the Kucinich Amendment for a state single payer option will not be included in the Manager's Amendment and is not in the bill which will come before the House soon. The Kucinich amendment represents the most powerful challenge to the insurance companies' control of our health care system. Even the possibility of a state single payer system will make the insurance companies think twice before they raise premiums. The higher the insurance premiums, the more vulnerable companies are to citizens' efforts to create alternatives such as a single payer system. We should never be locked into higher and higher premiums! I do not accept the decision to remove the amendment from the bill. Nor should you. Join the fight for single payer, please contribute. We will have one more opportunity to offer the American people a true choice regarding health care. Once the health care bill passes the House, and the Senate passes its version, the two bills will go to a Conference Committee. It is at this point that we will have one more chance. We need to insist that the Kucinich Amendment be included in the Conference Committee report, since that is what will ultimately become law. Why would we be successful in conference when Leadership refused our appeals in the Manager's Amendment? Very simple. They may need the votes to achieve final passage! We should not quit. We have come a great distance already. You helped get the Kucinich Amendment through the Education and Labor Committee. Let's make one more try to get it into the Conference report. Your calls, letters, emails and visits make a difference. Please contribute to continue the movement for single payer. Thank you.   Facebook Twitter MySpace Digg Sign the petition Contribute

PO Box 110475 | Cleveland | OH | 44111 | 216-252-9000

Forward email This email was sent to saidychess@sbcglobal.net by reply@kucinich.us. Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy. Re-Elect Congressman Kucinich Committee | PO Box 110475 | Cleveland | OH | 44111