Warfare continues to become more professional and dehumanized every day.

The purpose of Extraordinary Edition is being revisited for winter, headed into 2013. U.S. foreign policy, Central Asia and the Middle East remain key focal points. Economics and culture on your front doorstep are coming into focus here.

Monday, February 22, 2010

At Least 27 More Afghan Civilians Dead in Special Ops Airstrike

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, Feb. 22 that a U.S. Special Operations airstrike destroyed a group of minibuses, claiming the lives of at least 27 civilians near the Pakistani border between Uruzgan and Daykundi provinces.

Matthew Rosenberg's article appears here:
wsj.com


Business Week's Eltaf Najafizada and Mark Williams reported up to 33 were killed in the strike.
businessweek.com

The language used to describe dead civilians continues to be twisted into depictions of a situation in which ordinary people, not unlike the intended readers of the articles, parents and children unarmed and fending for their lives in their own land now being occupied, are being described as an inconvenience for the U.S. Military public relations effort in Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East.

In the WSJ article, Rosenberg writes, "The area is hundreds of miles from Marjah, where the largest allied offensive since 2001 is now in its second week. But the airstrike nonetheless illustrated one of the major problems for coalition forces as they try to win over civilians in Marjah and across Afghanistan: figuring out who is a civilian and who is an insurgent—and not killing the civilians."

Is the WSJ not defending U.S. Special Operations, implying that they are doing their best whoever and wherever they are regardless of how they are conducting top secret, classified actions that result in murder of noncombatants?

Rosenberg reports, "'Nobody has an idea what were they doing there because they don't share anything with the Afghans,' said an official at the presidential palace. He added that U.S. Special Operations Forces 'arrest people and they raid houses without keeping the Afghans in the loop.'"

And a gem from General Stanley McChrystal sheds light on just how modern modern warfare can be in the United States' broader conquest in the Middle East: "'I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission. We will re-double our efforts to regain that trust,' Gen. McChrystal was quoted as saying by the NATO statement."

Would it be any different to have said, "I have made it clear to our forces that killing the Afghan people is not the same as protecting them?" McChrystal's statements do nothing to raise the issue that U.S. Special Forces are accountable in the light of day to no one and that their clandestine actions do not produce results that in any way attempt to complete the logic of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, namely apprehension of the members of Al Qaeda in response to the 9/11 attacks.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Pakistan and U.S. Angering Populace in At Least One of Those Countries

Thank you Radioactivegavin (see link at right) for the heads up to GRITtv with Laura Flanders and a Monday, Feb. 8 piece,

Lifting the Veil on US Troops in Pakistan

Flanders alerts us to a Feb. 3 New York Times piece on the inadvertent exposure in U.S. media of operations inside Pakistan resulting from the loss of three U.S. soldiers in a late January suicide bombing in the region of Lower Dir.

Flanders writes, "Among the Pakistani public, surveys constantly show that Pakistanis consider the US a greater threat than the Taliban, despite 3,021 Pakistani deaths in terrorist attacks last year. If the drones are controversial, the presence of US soldiers on Pakistani soil is far more so. If the US war is quietly shifting, it’s not quiet inside Pakistan. People are kicking up a stink."

The NY Times article appears at the following: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/world/asia/04pstan.html

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

CIA Drones & Defense Secretary Robert Gates' Visit to Pakistan

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates flew to Pakistan in late January to discuss CIA drone attacks (mentioned here extensively in other entries) and furnishing unarmed drones to Pakistan's military for the purpose of additional surveillance.

http://pakistan.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2010/01/22/still-trying-to-reconcile-cia-drones/

A reiteration: what's going on, exactly? What is the change in language from "War on Terror" and "War in Afghanistan" to "AfPak" and "AfPak War" supposed to mean? A sudden glitch in CNN word choice that's not supposed to raise any suspicion or questions about a grossly overfinanced, murderous and poorly timed, poorly focused and seemingly unending act of aggression in Pakistan, a part of the world that is not part of the deal in the war launched in Afghanistan at the end of 2001 might potentially raise questions of at least legality.

Apparently in the age of globalization and asymmetrical warfare, "Wherever Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters may or may not be" is a metageographical location and the postmodern interpretation of international and U.S. law of the moment follows the actions of military operatives who were once under mandate of the state system before the borders became porous.

The article on the Foreign Policy Blog Network's Pakistan site is written by Zainab Jeewanjee, who comments in a chilling tone, "It’s been a polarizing issue from the onset because while it’s convenient to fly unmanned CIA predator aircraft over potential terrorist havens, they result in significant civilian casualties, and displaced persons. So it’s no surprise that over a year later, reconciling their use in Pakistan is still on the agenda." Try reading this passage again, replacing the word "convenient" to whatever you imagine and switch out "civilian casualties" for something similar but sounding more like "innocent Americans." Why are we talking about civilians like this in any country? Shouldn't we be talking about due process or even war crimes tribunals?

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

U.S. Secret Afghan Prisons and Accompanying JSOC Night Raids

From Democracynow.org Feb. 2, 2010

A new investigation by journalist Anand Gopal reveals harrowing details about US secret prisons in Afghanistan, under both the Bush and Obama administrations. Gopal interviewed Afghans who were detained and abused at several disclosed and undisclosed sites at US and Afghan military bases across the country. He also reveals the existence of another secret prison on Bagram Air Base that even the Red Cross does not have access to. It is dubbed the Black Jail and is reportedly run by US Special Forces.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/2/americas_secret_afghan_prisons_investigation_unearths

**Similar to night raids in Iraqi homes, Anand Gopal's descriptions of these U.S. military Joint Special Ops Command (JSOC) raids sound similar to terror tactics employed in Central America which appear in the transcripts of the Iran-Contra hearings. The psychological operations (psyops) techniques described in this report violate U.S. Military Counterinsurgency Manual descriptions of limitations and legal techniques.**

Forty Civilians to One Al Qaeda Target in Pakistan War

From Democracynow.org Feb. 2, 2010

Report: US Drone Attacks Killed 123 Civilians in January

In other news from Pakistan, the US is being accused of killing dozens of civilians in a record twelve drone attacks last month. The Pakistani newspaper The News is reporting the US botched ten of the attacks, killing 123 civilians and just three al-Qaeda leaders—a ratio of forty-one to one.

**How is this ongoing effort, run by the U.S. Military JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) and alleged to be staffed largely by civilians under the employ of private contractors such as the coroporation formerly known as Blackwater, Inc. helping the U.S. effort in Afghanistan? Presumably, the U.S. and NATO are fighting to bring democratic process to the people of Afghanistan. What is it about Pakistan that must be kept low profile in the American press according to efforts by the U.S. government to hide operations that are not subject to international laws the same as they would be if the armed drone flight operations were run by U.S. Military personnel? What do American citizens have to say about Pakistani children, women and non-combatant civilian males being killed by U.S. missles fired remotely from a forward operating base? Why would such activity not reflect upon public opinion toward the U.S. overseas? Why wouldn't a congressional committee convene over these civilian deaths?**