Tag Archives: Afghanistan

Double-double-double talk

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An AP story on the NYT web site opens with this: Four suspected U.S. missiles slammed into a house in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, killing six people in an area near the Afghan border teeming with local and foreign militants, intelligence officials said. That sentence is a mess for several reasons.

The following sentence:

The strike, which was carried out by at least one unmanned aircraft, was part of the Obama administration’s rising campaign to use drones to target militants who regularly stage cross-border attacks against foreign troops in Afghanistan.

If that is so certain — and I believe it — why does the author feel compelled to says “suspected U.S. missiles” in the previous statement?

The rhetoric of escalation and Orwell

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Obama’s own hypocrisy undercuts the alleged nobility of his Nobel acceptance speech, the purposeful blindness of some of those who are dismayed by it undercuts their dismay, and the constant creep of collective amnesia that allows for others support the escalation of war and the “logic” offered by Obama is Oslo undercuts our safety.

Long out of practice in even attempting to write, I am reading a selection of Orwell’s essays (both the polemic and the trite review and in between) rather than expanding on my own declaration of opinion. Maybe I will learn something. The two volumes are what I might’ve once called provocatively titled: All Art Is Propaganda and Facing Unpleasant Facts. But now they’re just remedial guides for dealing with the world.

In the meantime, I share these selections from contemporary polemicists who I think did a good and more timely job: challenging both the silly dismay of some Democrats in what they seem to perceive as Obama’s betrayal (it isn’t one, he campaigned on escalating the Afghan war) and the others who find Obama’s justification of escalation as a proper way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, consistent with what he cited himself in the course of his speech.

Head-Roc at the "Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally" outside of the White House

Staking out This Week this morning: TWS talks to Feingold

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My friend Sam Husseini’s project, The Washington Stakeout, was at the studios of ABC’s This Week this morning. The guests were Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Senator Russ Feingold.

I collaborate with Husseini, providing technical support, and I also watch the shows. This morning I noticed that Clinton repeated a myth about the start of the Afghan war that the Institute for Public Accuracy, where Sam is the communications director, called-out in a press release earlier this week.

The appearance of both Clinton and Gates was pre-taped earlier in the week, otherwise I’m sure Sam would have tried to question her on it if she stopped for the press gaggle.

Sam did have some interaction with Senator Feingold which is now posted at The Washington Stakeout.

Husseini asked Feingold about the legitimacy of the Afghanistan war, Israel’s nuclear weapons (of which official acknowledgment might catalyze a different calculus in the US’s non-proliferation actions with regards to Iran, India, as well as, of course, Israel), and, in essence, how much due diligence was actually done in exploring the feasibility of Single Payer health care.