Month: April 2010
Another Revolution in Kyrgystan
April 27, 2010:
In Kyrgystan this month, a U.S.-backed dictator fell to popular opposition forces supported by Russia. Here is some back story:
The predominantly Muslim former Soviet state gained independence in the early ’90s under the relatively democratic leadership of Askar Akayev, who nevertheless eventually slid into authoritarianism and cronyism amid economic challenges and political divisions between Kyrgystan’s Russified north and its more Islamic south.
After 9/11, the Akayev government agreed to host Bush Jr.’s coalition forces at Manas Air Force Base – a place from which they could more conveniently bomb people in Afghanistan. (See for example here, here and here.)
(The base, by the way, has since been euphemistically renamed “Transit Center at Manas“, although it still functions as a launching point of operations in the U.S.-led terror war.)
In 2005, after years of popular protests, Akayev was ousted as a result of the Tulip Revolution, which put Kurmanbek Bakiyev in power. Bakiyev then followed in the tradition of his predecessor and descended into gangsterism, resulting in a sharp rise in murders of political opponents and journalists, but was nevertheless supported by the U.S. in the face of popular opposition due to the empire’s interest in maintaining its Air Base Transit Center at Manas.
Meanwhile, the cozy relations between U.S. and the Bakiyev drove a wedge between Bakiyev and Russia, who supported opposition forces which culminated in this month’s revolution.
A more detailed history can be found in this excellent piece by Eugine Huskey, who concludes:
The full story of Russian involvement in the April Revolution in Kyrgyzstan is still to be told, but it appears that while the Kremlin backed the forces of change in Kyrgyzstan, Washington stood behind the forces of repression. In the wake of the revolution, Putin congratulated the new leadership; Obama remained silent.
Allowing basing rights to marginalize all other dimensions of American foreign policy in former Soviet Central Asia has seriously undermined the moral authority and political influence of the United States in the region. The triumph of wartime tactics over a broad and consistent strategy of engagement with governments and societies in Central Asia has disillusioned a generation of local reformers and left the United States ill-positioned to compete with the region’s rising hegemons, Russia and China.
Whether through design or neglect, the Obama administration has continued the cynical and short-sighted policies of the Bush years in Central Asia. The next time I meet Rahm Emanuel, I’ll ask him to remind his boss that in the long run, Faustian bargains carry a heavy price.
Killing an “Amazing Number” of People
April 13, 2010:
ISAF commander Stanley McChrystal, who was promoted to his current lofty post by the Peace Prize President after running Cheney’s death squads in Iraq, made a surprisingly candid admission a few weeks ago. Speaking about NATO troops firing from passing convoys and checkpoints, which has resulted in 30 dead and 80 wounded, he said:
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”
This admission came on the eve of several other revelations of indiscriminate civilian slaughterings on the part of “the finest military in the history of the world“. Here is a brief and partial catalog of recent revelations:
Night Raid on Family Celebration, Gardez, Afghanistan, Feb 12, 2010
5 dead, including pregnant women.
Bibi Saleha, Gulalai, Bibi Shirin and Haji Sharabuddin’s two sons, Dawood and Saranwal Zahir were all killed in the Special Forces attack.
Shirin and Saleha were both pregnant, according to their mother, and Gulalai was 18 years old.
ISAF and NATO spokespeople at first lied about what happened, while special forces operatives were digging bullets out of walls and possibly even the bodies of the dead women in order to cover their bloody tracks, and then smeared the journalist Jerome Starkey who broke the story. NATO spokespeople tried to pin the murders of the women on their also-murdered male relatives. More here.
According to interviews with relatives and family friends, according to the NYT:
…a large number of people had gathered for a party in honor of the birth of a grandson of the owner of the house, Hajji Sharaf Udin. After most had gone to sleep, the police commander, Mr. Udin’s son, Mohammed Daoud, went out to investigate the arrival of armed men and was shot fatally.
When a second son, Mohammed Zahir, went out to talk to the Americans because he spoke some English, he too was shot and killed. The three women — Mr. Udin’s 19-year-old granddaughter, Gulalai; his 37-year-old daughter, Saleha, the mother of 10 children; and his daughter-in-law, Shirin, the mother of six — were all gunned down when they tried to help the victims, these witnesses claimed.
Helicopter Attack, Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan, February 21, 2010
27 civilians dead, 12 wounded.
A Special Forces helicopter air strike killed as many at 27 civilians, according to the NYT:
Military video appeared to show the victims were civilians, and no weapons were recovered from them. “What I saw on that video would not have led me to pull the trigger,” one NATO official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with his department’s rules. “It was one of the worst things I’ve seen in a while.”
Press release from the Afghan President here, which claims that the dead included 4 women and a child, and that twelve additional people were wounded.
Bus Shooting, Kandahar, Afghanistan, April 5 2010
5 dead, 18 wounded.
From the NYT: “American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near Kandahar…, killing as many as five civilians and wounding 18…”
From DN: “According to witnesses, US forces opened fire on a passenger bus just as the bus began pulling over to the side of the road to allow another military convoy to pass. Another eighteen civilians were wounded.”
You can find more news updates on Afghanistan here.
…and while I’m at it, here is a nice roundup of quotes showing how many troops take great pride in the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, and that it is nothing new to the 9-year running U.S. War of Terror.
Meanwhile, the ACLU has obtained documents through a Freedom of Information request showing 800 formal complaints by the families of civilians killed by the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Collateral Murder
April 5, 2010:
“Ha Ha!” “Good Shooting!” “It is their own fault for bringing children into a battle.”
This is what “spreading democracy” looks like – slaughtering journalists and children from apache helicopters, and then slaughtering the people who come to help the wounded. And laughing about it!
All while following standard operating procedure.
More info here, or on wikileaks. MSM discussion here. Greenwald writes about the Pentagon’s opposition to wikileaks here and about this particular video here and here. Amy Goodman interviews the wikileaks co-founder here.
Yes We Can Drill Baby Drill
April 3, 2010:
On the heels of his pushes for so-called “clean coal” technology and guaranteed loans for nuclear power plants, President Obama this week decided to reverse a longstanding ban on offshore drilling and “announced an expansive new policy that could put new oil and natural gas platforms in waters along the southern Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and part of Alaska.”
This move by Obama-the-President is to be expected by now insofar as it completely reverses the position of Obama-the-Senator and Obama-the-campaigner. (See for example here, although he did begins to capitulate as the campaign wore on.)
This is the latest latest expression of Obama’s deep seated bipartisanism fetish, which absurdly seeks to curry favor with those “conservatives” who do will not cooperate with him on principle by selling out those progressives who can be taken for granted because they have no principle. But regardless of the political value of the decision, the Economist argues it is bad environmental / engergy policy:
The problem runs deeper than David Roberts’s point (“The impact on oil prices will be ‘insignificant,’ says the Energy Information Administration, and it won’t make America any less dependent on foreign oil, either”). It runs deeper than Frances Beinecke’s point (“Better running cars and more efficient use of existing oil fields can help us make the transition into the 21st century without harming marine life or marine jobs.”) It runs deeper than John Broder and Clifford Krause’s point (“Risk Is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t“). The fundamental problem is this: there is a finite amount of fossil fuel. The more of it we find and burn, the more carbon we put into the atmosphere, and the more severe the greenhouse effect becomes. Once the carbon is in the atmosphere, it stays there. If we want to limit climate change, what we have to do, one way or another, is to leave fuels in the ground wherever possible, not find and burn them.
Environmental groups are angry, of course, and kool-aid drinkers are finally waking up:
“Its like a kick in the face” says Jonathan Ruiz of Florida International University. Jonathan campaigned for Obama for fourteen months, and now he’s livid about today’s announcement by the administration to open half the east coast to offshore drilling.
(By the way, thanks to Stephen Colbert for the title of this post.)
