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Public Inquiry
Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005

offsite link RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail supporter? Anthony

offsite link Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony

offsite link Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony

offsite link RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony

offsite link Waiting for SIPO Anthony

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Human Rights in Ireland
A Blog About Human Rights

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offsite link Right to Water Mon Aug 03, 2020 19:13 | Human Rights

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Human Rights in Ireland >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

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It's not only large corporations with hyperactive HR departments that are succumbing to efficiency-sapping wokery, says C.J. Strachan. Small and medium-sized enterprises are being swallowed up by DEI as well.
The post DEI Wokery is Swallowing Small Businesses Too appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Are We Being Gaslit Over the Cause of the Princess of Wales?s Cancer? Fri Mar 29, 2024 07:00 | Melissa Kite
First Charles and then Kate ? it's hard to ignore the soaring cancer rate when two members of the Royal Family are diagnosed within weeks. But are we being gaslit about what's behind the surge, asks Melissa Kite.
The post Are We Being Gaslit Over the Cause of the Princess of Wales’s Cancer? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link News Round-Up Fri Mar 29, 2024 00:04 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the virus and the vaccines, the ?climate emergency? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Women?s Team with Five Male Players Wins Football Competition After One Male Player ?Broke Opponent?... Thu Mar 28, 2024 19:30 | Will Jones
A women?s football competition has been branded misogynist after it was won by a team featuring five transgender players, amid accusations one had broken an opponent?s leg in two places.
The post Women’s Team with Five Male Players Wins Football Competition After One Male Player “Broke Opponent’s Leg” ? But Teams Who Refuse to Play Against Them Are Branded “Discriminatory” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Further Evidence Gaza Casualty Numbers Are Fake Thu Mar 28, 2024 17:36 | Will Jones
The evidence that the Gaza casualty numbers from the Hamas-run Health Ministry (now over 32,000) are wildly inflated continues to mount. Mark Zlochin looks at what the proportions of male and female UNRWA workers tell us.
The post Further Evidence Gaza Casualty Numbers Are Fake appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Moscow attack reminds us of the links between Islamists and Kiev's fundamentalis... Tue Mar 26, 2024 06:57 | en

offsite link Failure to assist a people in danger of genocide, by Hassan Hamadé Tue Mar 26, 2024 06:32 | en

offsite link Yugoslavia March 24, 1999 The Founding War of the New Nato, by Manlio Dinucci Sun Mar 24, 2024 05:15 | en

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offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N°79 Fri Mar 22, 2024 11:40 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Afghanistan: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace?

category international | anti-war / imperialism | feature author Wednesday December 02, 2009 23:02author by Gerard Horgan - Freelance writer Report this post to the editors

Obama's War

featured image
Bush First, Obama Second

After more than three months' deliberation, President Barack Obama has finally decided to commit more than 30,000 US troops to the Afghan war. The ‘Afghan surge’ is to be fast tracked over the next six months with a large bulk of the troops arriving before Christmas. The deployment will cost approximately $1 million dollars per soldier, per year, some $30 billion overall. This price tag is on top of the considerable costs (running into the hundreds of billions of dollars) of keeping over 100,000 US soldiers ‘in-country’, while maintaining other US global military operations as well as the on-going fiasco in Iraq. The combined deployment of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is close to 250,000 service personnel, which is augmented by the greatest number of private military contractors/mercenaries ever seen (some 100,000 in Iraq alone).

President Obama’s efforts to keep everyone on-side (with one eye on re-election in 2013) has had the effect of achieving the complete opposite. The US General in charge, Stanley McChrystal, will not get the 45,000 troops he requested but just enough troops to guarantee failure (it is doubtful that 300,000 additional US troops would make the slightest difference to the quagmire in Afghanistan). Republicans have accused Obama of dithering over the decision-making process and undermining the US military by indicating that US (and presumably NATO) forces will withdraw by 2011. Those on the left and in the peace movements will point to the troop escalation and ‘Obama’s War’ as an indication that he has failed those who believed in ‘change’. Meanwhile a recent poll indicates that 63% of Americans are against a further deployment, 51% say the war is "not worth fighting" and that ending the foreign occupation will "reduce terrorism".

Reports indicate that the Obama administration seems to think that it can recruit, train and deploy hundreds of thousands of Afghan soldiers and police who will eventually step-in as NATO forces ‘step down’. There is pressure on the bankrupt Karzai government (a president who can barely leave his Kabul compound for fear of losing his life), to achieve ‘mission impossible’. The Afghan government forces are regarded as ill-disciplined, corrupt and infiltrated by the Taleban. According to the Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill the “Afghan army has a loss rate of about 25% of its members, the bulk of whom just walk away”.

Obama is banking on his surge producing results, however, according to Robert Fisk, the Independent’s award winning Middle Eastern correspondent, instead of sending gun wielding soldiers he should have sent “doctors, teachers and engineers”. The Afghans have seen very little improvement in their day-to-day lives over the last eight years of perpetual war. NATO drone attacks, like the one that vaporised approximately 90 innocent civilians at a fuel tanker, are alienating the population. These are not isolated incidents. In September, The Guardian reported that an RAF C-130 Hercules dropped leaflets over an Afghan village; one box failed to disperse in mid-air and instead struck a young girl. An RAF spokesperson stated: “"It is a matter of deep regret that one of the boxes failed to fully open and on landing caused serious injuries to an Afghan child." The young girl later died in hospital. Johann Hari in the Independent reported that “Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, who was a counter-insurgency advisor in Iraq, commented that that US aerial attacks on the Afghan-Pakistan border have killed 14 al-Qa'ida leaders, at the expense of more than 700 civilian lives. He went onto to say: "That's a hit rate of 2 per cent on 98 per cent collateral. It's not moral."

The exact figure for the numbers of Afghan dead is not known (the US doesn’t do body-counts apparently) but it is sure to run to the many thousands. One US professor commented that prior to the outbreak of hostilities in the winter of 2001; millions of Afghans were in danger of starvation if the bombing interfered (as it did) with aid convoys from Pakistan. The killing of innocent civilians rubbishes the campaign to win the Orwellian phrased ‘battle for hearts of minds’ and instead drives hostile Afghans into the arms of the resistance, fuelling a war without end.

The wider instability the war is creating is of equal concern. Pakistan has seen a dramatic surge in violence, with suicide bombers penetrating to the heart of the government and military establishment. The immediate fear is for the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons sites. The country runs the real risk of descending into the kind of all out ‘Somali-style’ anarchy, associated with a failed state. The impact of Pakistan ceasing to function as a viable state on India, Iran and Kashmir is too enormous to contemplate.

As Obama travels to Oslo to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize, the long slow march to human destruction has been set firmly in train. Afghanistan, a mountainous and largely unforgiving land, is regarded as ‘the graveyard of empires’. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British Empire (which is currently engaged in its fourth Afghan War) and the Soviet Union all suffered dramatic losses and were forced into humiliating retreats. It is unlikely that it will be any different this time round.

 #   Title   Author   Date 
   Lessons Learnt in Ireland, Applied in Afghanistan     irish lessons    Thu Dec 03, 2009 09:32 
   Not so Black and White     Michael Gallagher    Fri Dec 04, 2009 00:26 
   Irish involvment     Jim M    Tue Dec 08, 2009 17:27 
   Vid (1,28)-Iraq Veterans Against the War take it to the streets in Seattle     Iraq Vets    Wed Dec 09, 2009 09:30 
   Malalai Joya Among Warlords     An Afghan woman's voice....    Wed Dec 16, 2009 05:21 


 
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