dagblog - Comments for "Chalmers Johnson: 1931-2010"

LOL! thanks, Tom Joad. That

we are stardust — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:39:09 +0000

In reply to Don't give up yet, stardust.

LOL! thanks, Tom Joad. That headline almost compelled me to start a blog on headlines that wrote their own jokes; I swear.

But the New Report on Afghanistan doesn't make things sound like they are going all that swimmingly...though that's either ca case for staying, or leaving, depending who you are... ;o)

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/11/24/pentagon-report-bleak-on-afghanistan/

Don't give up yet, stardust.

SleepinJeezus — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:23:17 +0000

In reply to I think he was speaking, as I

Don't give up yet, stardust. I understand that we are negotiating with some guy named "Borat" who is Supreme Emperor of the "Taliban Command and Christmas Savings Club." It's taking some deft negotiating (and a whole lotta' money, too!) but these talks are promising. Looks like we can win a negotiated settlement here, and all will be well.

Friedman says we should give it six months, and then we can see where to go from there.

"‎"It's not him, and we gave him a lot of money."

After nine years, this is where we are at. You just can't make this shit up.

I think he was speaking, as I

we are stardust — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 03:53:04 +0000

In reply to ntellectual arguments on

I think he was speaking, as I was, of reasons to stay in Afghanistan longer, when it was becoming clear that we were losing.

Were you a fan of Sarha Chayes then? She made the case twice on Bill Moyers that we needed to stay and escalate the war for 'her Afghan women'. Matronizing (to perhaps coin a word) attitude, I thought.

ntellectual arguments on

artappraiser — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 01:33:55 +0000

In reply to Well, I was thinking more of

ntellectual arguments on humanitarian grounds, like this one, came later.

I disagree. I recall a lot of awareness of the "humanitarian" issues regarding the Taliban and Afghan women, before 9/11, and yes, including in pop culture.

For one example:

Mavis Leno
...She has been the chair of the Feminist Majority Foundation's Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan since 1997.[2] In 1999, she and her husband, Jay Leno, donated $100,000 to the organization, to further the cause of educating the public about the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban.[6]....

The Buddha Statues were blown up in March, 2001.

Time Magazine did a cover story on Afghan women a month after 9/11 but had been covering the topic in the World Section for quite some time, including Mavis Leno's campaign in April, 1999, as did the New York Times, in depth.

In 1997, Christiane Amanpour won several awards for her CNN special "Battle for Afghanistan," including a George Polk, it covered the plight of women there quite a bit, and CNN reran it often. It was the same year that Peter Bergen got his interview with Osama bin Laden in a cave near Tora Bora which was also done working for CNN (the only cable news channel most cable subscribers had at the time.)

Not that anyone was calling for us to invade, but there was a strong movement ala "do something about this, dammit."' I myself donated to RAWA in 1997.

Just because you might not have been paying attention doesn't mean many of us weren't. The first WTC bombing was in 1993; if you were a New Yorker, chances are good you followed stories about Islamic terrorism thereafter. And the story followed Osama from Sudan to Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, whereafter we all heard tell of the troglodytes welcoming him.

Our two African embassies were bombed Aug. 7, 1998:

Before August 1998 was over,

About 75 cruise missiles were fired by the US into the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan at four Afghan training camps, Al Farouq training camp, Muawai camp run by the Pakistani Harkat-ul-Mujahideen to train militants to fight Indian troops in Kashmir, not Americans.[9][10] and another in the Jarawah area near Khost, as well as Zhawar Kili al-Badr which was directed by bin Laden, and known to be a meeting place for leaders.[11][12]

The attack was made partly in an attempt to assassinate bin Laden and other leaders. [13]

Wikipedia has a good list of world reaction to those strikes on that page, mostly supportive.

I really wouldn't call 75 cruise missiles nothing much. If I recall correctly, at the time the Republicans in Congress were bitching about Clinton using up our stockpile...Taliban, Saddam, Milosevic, etc.

Empires die. But first: the

we are stardust — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 01:00:39 +0000

In reply to You're right. It makes

Empires die. But first: the citizens of the Empires crash and burn. We are burning. Wake up America!

To quote one of my favorite bloggers: 'The world is watching [you] in love and concern.' I fear we will disappoint him; and ourselves. We are now out of time. My regret is monumental.

You're right. It makes

Orion — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:47:09 +0000

In reply to Susie Linfield got it right,

You're right. It makes absolutely no sense. That's why Linfield finds herself with no solution on the matter.

A couple years ago, my sister used to say that the United States was going the way of the Soviet Union. I dismissed it at the time. With our power retracting and the abandonment of Afghanistan looming ahead of us, that argument seems too strong.

Susie Linfield got it right,

we are stardust — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:18:16 +0000

In reply to Well, I was thinking more of

Susie Linfield got it right, IMO. Iraq: many people polled say conditions were better under Saddam. Things are terrible there now, though it's hard to find any news other than the coaltions building, then falling apart, with al Malaki, al Allawi, Al Sadr, et.al. I fear it was another war of choice in which we were pretty clueless as to the unintended consequences, especially concerning Iran.

Our foreign policy is incoherent. Taking tanks to Afghanistan while allegdly trying to 'win hearts and minds' and get some (loosely defined) 'Taliban' to negotiate a peace. We are a strange nation of war-loving idiots who seem to always find buyers for the debts we incur to fund the wars that make us less safe. Incomprehensible to me.

Well, I was thinking more of

Orion — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:59:02 +0000

In reply to I would argue that we are not

Well, I was thinking more of Iraq when I was writing about Hitchens. He had written an extensive piece on the Kurds for National Geographic long before George W. Bush was president.

You're right about Afghanistan. There was always some misgivings about what was going on under the Taliban - the destruction of the Buddhist statues, using UN paid stadiums for executions, etc. but it was not the justification for a foreign occupation. Intellectual arguments on humanitarian grounds, like this one, came later.

I would argue that we are not

we are stardust — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:40:39 +0000

In reply to I read a substantial amount

I would argue that we are not in Afghanistan to 'save them from the wolves', though. That notion came later, 'the women and their daughters'.

I hadn't read his grand theories of state-sponsored economics. It sounds as though he was indomitable in defense of them against great odds in the academic world. What a human being.

I read a substantial amount

Orion — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:33:49 +0000

In reply to Chalmers Johnson: 1931-2010

I read a substantial amount of Sorrows of Empire (I wasn't as quick a reader then as I am now) and liked alot of it. As it says in the bio of him, Johnson's expertise was East Asia, so his observations about military overstretch and the rise of the economies of Asia - China and India especially - remain prescient. Once unleashed, I'm not sure that there is any way that those two juggernauts can be competed with by anyone in the world.

Alot of very smart writers who knew the area - like Christopher Hitchens - supported interventions in the Middle East based alot on the fact that the Middle East needs to be shaken up (something that I still maintain hope will happen through people who want better in life). As much as I love him, Hitchens made his mistake in coming from his own personal approach of an expatriated Briton with significant Mediterranean ties and not understanding the capacities of the United States or looking into what protracted involvement in the Middle East does to countries. (Just look at the Soviet Union in Afghanistan!)

Reading the works of Khaled Hosseini will pang anyone's heart who doesn't want to see Afghanistan left to the wolves once again. However, such works must be balanced with those of people like Chalmers Johnson, who realize that the United States cannot sustainably be the imperial hegemon of the world.