Afghanistan, "Operation Enduring Slaughter": Ten Bloody Years

Global Research
Felicity Arbuthnot

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth,

Out of the mirror they stare,

Imperialism's face And the international wrong. (W.H. Auden, 1907-1973.)

What a murderous, infanticidel, appalling, shameful, ignorant – and arguable, decade-long war crime.

“Operation Enduring Freedom”, turned “Operation Enduring Slaughter.”

Announcing the assault on Afghanistan on 7th October 2001, George W. Bush said, citing “Enduring Freedom”, that it defended: “... the freedom of people everywhere to live and raise their children free from fear.”

Further, that: “If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves, (a) lonely path ...”

Moreover: “ the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies. As we strike military targets, we’ll also drop food, medicine and supplies, to the starving and suffering men, women and children of Afghanistan.”

“We’re a peaceful nation”, the President assured the world.

In London, “ally”, the then Prime Minister Blair was reading from the same script: “We are peaceful people. But we know that sometimes to safeguard peace, we have to fight ... We only do it if the cause is just. This cause is just.”

In persuit of justness, between 7th October and 10th December 2001, 12,000 bombs were dropped in 4,710 sorties, on a population of just 28 million people (Globe and Mail, 19th January 2002) with 42% of the population aged 0-14; children being thus raised in unimaginable terror, rather then “free from fear.”

With the bombs, aid parcels were indeed dropped. They were the identical colouring to the accompanying cluster bombs.Resultantly, those who rushed to collect brightly coloured yellow packages, in anticipation - so often children - had limbs blown off at best, or life blown away. Exited anticipation turned terminal. The US belatedly issued warnings.(i)

Between October 2001 and early 2002, United States aircraft dropped 1,228 cluster bombs containing 248,056 bomblets, in 232 strikes on locations throughout the country., according to Cluster Munitions Monitor.(ii)

It is unclear whether they have been further used. Though Coalition forces have confirmed deploying cluster munitions for possible use.(iii)

Lest the indiscriminate carnage of the early days be obscured by that of the subsequent years mass graves and ongoing, frenetic destruction by :“The United States of America, a friend to the Afghan people, and of almost a billion worldwide who practice the Islamic faith”, as also declared by Bush in his 7th October address.

German General Says NATO Mission Has 'Failed'

Der Spiegel

A top German general who was instrumental in planning the Bundeswehr's
mission in Afghanistan has said that the intervention has failed and the
Taliban will regain power within months of withdrawal. Ten years
after the invasion, he is far from alone with his critique.

  It was 10 years ago that the United States, together with its NATO allies, marched into Afghanistan to put an end to Taliban rule and begin the hunt for al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. A decade later, the terrorist leader is dead. But, says Harald Kujat, former general inspector of the German military, the mission has been a failure.

"The mission fulfilled the political aim of showing solidarity with the United States," Kujat told the German daily Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. "But if you measure progress against the goal of stabilizing a country and a region, then the mission has failed."

Kujat said that it was ignored for too long that "the opponent was fighting a military battle and we needed to do the same." In reference to claims from German political leaders, among others, he said "the argument that it was a stabilization mission was maintained for too long." The result, he said, is that soldiers were not given what they needed in order to effectively fight the enemy.

Kujat is hardly the first to criticize the Afghanistan war. But his words carry weight in Germany. He was a leading planner of the German mission to Afghanistan and served as general inspector of the German military -- the Bundeswehr's highest-ranking soldier -- from 2000 to 2002. Part of his job included advising both the German government and the Defense Ministry on military matters.

Timeline for Withdrawal
 
The former Bundeswehr leader also took aim at Germany's plan to complete withdrawal of all of its 5,000 combat troops from Afghanistan by 2014, a timeline that was reiterated on Friday by Germany's special representative for Afghanistan, Michael Steiner.

"If we withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014," said Kujat, "then the Taliban will take over power again within just a few months."

Steiner declined to name a date for the beginning of Germany's withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has said it aims at beginning the pullout by the end of 2011, conditions permitting. Steiner said that a plan would be presented by the end of the year.

The withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan was a major topic at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday. NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark said that, even after 2014, the alliance would focus heavily on training the Afghan military.

Kujat isn't the only heavyweight critic of the Afghanistan mission to have spoken out in recent days. Speaking in Washington at an event organized by the think tank Council on Foreign Relations, Stanley McChrystal, who led the Afghanistan troop increase ordered by President Barack Obama in 2009, said that the US had a "frighteningly simplistic" view of Afghanistan when the war began. He also said that the US and NATO were only "50 percent of the way" toward achieving the goals they had set for themselves.

Pressuring Pakistan
 

"We didn't know enough and we still don't know enough," McChrystal said. "Most of us, me included, had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years."


Obama on Thursday, increased pressure on neighboring Pakistan, saying that the Islamabad regime's connections with "unsavory characters" had put the country's relationship with the US at risk. Washington has long been urging Pakistan to cease supporting Islamist militant attacks inside Afghanistan, an effort which has been redoubled in the wake of the US killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan this spring.

Pakistan fired back on Friday. Salim Saifullah, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Pakistan's Senate, told Reuters that "this is not helping either the US, Afghanistan or Pakistan. There will be pressure on the (Pakistani) government to get out of this war (on Islamist militancy)."

Pakistan diplomat rages on "how we have been treated"

CBS News
Pamela Falk



As Americans mark the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan conflict, relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the U.S. and Pakistan are increasingly strained because of the violent attacks that the Haqqani network, a fierce militant group tied to al Qaeda and based in Pakistan, have brought to the Afghan insurgency, particularly attacks on U.S. troops.

American officials have asserted that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) has ties to the Taliban and to the Haqqani network, although U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta this week said Pakistan has been asked to take action against the Haqqani network where, he said, they take safe haven.

Several reports with dueling statistics reflect the challenges facing the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and the difficulties with the tiered handover of security from the NATO-led coalition to the Afghan police and army. The U.N. Secretary-General's recent report, "The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security," says incidents involving armed clashes and improvised explosive devices were up 39 percent compared to the same time last year.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) cited a decrease of 2 percent, using different data, an estimated 25 percent fewer incidents than those recorded by the U.N. But both reports attributed around four-fifths of civilian casualties to insurgent attacks - by any accounts, a troubling trend.

U.S.-Pakistan relations are at an all-time low. Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Abdullah Hussein Haroon, speaking to CBS News about the allegations of Pakistani-ISI links to insurgents, said that Pakistan wants to end terrorism in his country and that Washington and Afghanistan are blaming Pakistan, making it the scapegoat for a conflict which victimizes Pakistan more than it hurts the U.S. or Afghanistan.

"For the past few months it's been the U.S. who keeps trying to put pressure by saying Pakistan this or Pakistan that," Haroon said. "That policy needs reappraisal. You need to talk as allies, don't talk down to us. This is not going to succeed. Politics should be transactional, not coercive. We want success. We don't want this mess on our doorstep for the next 100 years. It's not of our making, not of our choosing, not of our doing. We've paid the highest price for this war."

As the U.S. assesses the projected dates for the drawdown of U.S. troops and the recent spike in some types of violent incidents, a CBS News poll found that, although most Americans support the military, the American public thinks the United States should not be fighting in Afghanistan and the war has not been worth it.

Video: Afghan war takes 2 steps forward, 1 step back

Video: U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan

Special report: Afghanistan, Ten years later

Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador, who has been in his country's foreign service all his adult life, said bluntly that the U.S. had ignored the lessons of history in deciding to, and how to, invade Afghanistan.

"The Soviets lost Afghanistan by not learning the lessons of history... History is again repeating itself because the Americans have repeated the mistakes made by the Soviets and everyone else."
Haroon said U.S. leaders "overestimated their own capabilities and underestimated those of the Afghan guerillas."

The ambassador accuses the U.S. of underestimating the Taliban.

"I believe this needs to be reassessed because misappreciation of the enemy has always led to military setbacks."

Adding to his list of alleged U.S. failures, Haroon said American military commanders failed to assess the physical terrain on which they were planning to fight.

All the errors, he said, "contributed to the impasse which has resulted in Afghanistan."

As U.S.-Pakistan relations sour and anti-U.S. troop sentiment in Pakistan rises, Haroon offered some advice: "You cannot solve Afghanistan without Pakistan and Pakistan cannot be free of its own troubles without Afghanistan first being free of all its troubles. That is the conundrum."

GORDON DUFF: YEARS OF DECEIT: US OPENLY ACCEPTS BIN LADEN LONG DEAD

Veterans Today

BIN LADEN NEVER MENTIONED IN McCHRYSTAL REPORT OR OBAMA SPEECH
“HUNT FOR BIN LADEN” A NATIONAL SHAME

By Gordon Duff/STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Conservative commentator, former Marine Colonel Bob Pappas has been saying for years that bin Laden died at Tora Bora and that Senator Kerry’s claim that bin Laden escaped with Bush help was a lie.  Now we know that Pappas was correct.  The embarrassment of having Secretary of State Clinton talk about bin Laden in Pakistan was horrific.  He has been dead since December 13, 2001 and now, finally, everyone, Obama, McChrystal, Cheney, everyone who isn’t nuts is finally saying what they have known for years.

However, since we lost a couple of hundred of our top special operations forces hunting for bin Laden after we knew he was dead, is someone going to answer for this with some jail time?  Since we spent 200 million dollars on “special ops” looking for someone we knew was dead, who is going to jail for that?  Since Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney continually talked about a man they knew was dead, now known to be for reasons of POLITICAL nature, who is going to jail for that?  Why were tapes brought out, now known to be forged, as legitimate intelligence to sway the disputed 2004 election in the US?  This is a criminal act if there ever was one.

In 66 pages, General Stanley McChrystal never mentions Osama bin Laden.  Everything is “Mullah Omar”now.  In his talk at West Point, President Obama never mentioned Osama bin Laden.  Col. Pappas makes it clear, Vice President Cheney let it “out of the bag” long ago.  Bin Laden was killed by American troops many many years ago.

America knew Osama bin Laden died December 13, 2001.  After that, his use was hardly one to unite America but rather one to divide, scam and play games.  With bin Laden gone, we could have started legitimate nation building in Afghanistan instead of the eternal insurgency that we invented ourselves.
Without our ill informed policies, we could have had a brought diplomatic solution in 2002 in Afghanistan, the one we are ignoring now, and spent money rebuilding the country, 5 cents on the dollar compared to what we are spending fighting a war against an enemy we ourselves recruited thru ignorance.

The bin Laden scam is one of the most shameful acts ever perpetrated against the American people.  We don’t even know if he really was an enemy, certainly he was never the person that Bush and Cheney said.  In fact, the Bush and bin Laden families were always close friends and had been for many years.

What kind of man was Osama bin Laden?  This one time American ally against Russia, son of a wealthy Saudi family, went to Afghanistan to help them fight for their freedom.  America saw him as a great hero then.  Transcripts of the real bin Laden show him to be much more moderate than we claim, angry at Israel and the US government but showing no anger toward Americans and never making the kind of theats claimed.  All of this is public record for any with the will to learn.


How much of America’s tragedy is tied with these two children of the rich, children of families long joined thru money and friendship, the Bush and bin Laden clans.

One son died in remote mountains, another lives in a Dallas suburb hoping nobody is sent after him.  One is a combat veteran, one never took a strong stand unless done from safety and comfort.  Islam once saw bin Laden as a great leader.  Now he is mostly forgotten.

What has America decided about Bush?
We know this:  Bin Laden always denied any ties to 9/11 and, in fact, has never been charged in relation to 9/11.  He not only denied involvement, but had done so, while alive, 4 times and had vigorously condemned those who were involved in the attack.

This is on the public record, public in every free country except ours.  We, instead, showed films made by paid actors, made up to look somewhat similar to bin Laden, actors who contradicted bin Ladens very public statements, actors pretending to be bin Laden long after bin Laden’s death.

These were done to help justify spending, repressive laws, torture and simple thievery.
For years, we attacked the government of Pakistan for not hunting down someone everyone knew was dead.  Bin Laden’s death hit the newspapers in Pakistan on December 15, 2001.  How do you think our ally felt when they were continually berated for failing to hunt down and turn over someone who didn’t exist?
What do you think this did for American credibility in Pakistan and thru the Islamic world?  Were we seen as criminals, liars or simply fools?  Which one is best?
This is also treason.

How does the death of bin Laden and the defeat and dismemberment of Al Qaeda impact the intelligence assessments, partially based on, not only bin Laden but Al Qaeda activity in Iraq that,not only never happened but was now known to have been unable to happen?

How many “Pentagon Pundits,” the retired officers who sold their honor to send us to war for what is now known to be domestic political dirty tricks and not national security are culpable in these crimes?
I don’t always agree with Col. Pappas on things.  I believe his politics overrule his judgement at times.  However, we totally agree on bin Laden, simply disagree with what it means.  To me lying and sending men to their deaths based on lies is treason.

Falsifying military intelligence and spending billions on unnecessary military operations for political reasons is an abomination.  Consider this, giving billions in contracts to GOP friends who fill campaign coffers, and doing so based on falsified intelligence is insane.  This was done for years.

We spent 8 years chasing a dead man, spending billions, sending FBI agents, the CIA, Navy Seals, Marine Force Recon, Special Forces, many to their deaths, as part of a political campaign to justify running American into debt, enriching a pack of political cronies and war profiteers and to puff up a pack of Pentagon peacocks and their White house draft dodging bosses.

How many laws were pushed thru because of a dead man?

How many hundreds were tortured to find a dead man?

How many hundreds died looking for a dead man?

How many billions were spent looking for a dead man?

Every time Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld stood before troops and talked about hunting down the dead bin Laden, it was a dishonor.  Lying to men and women who put their lives on the line is not a joke.
Who is going to answer to the families of those who died for the politics and profit tied to the Hunt for Bin Laden?