The president made a speech tonight but I didn’t see it because I was watching a scintillating scoreless draw at PPL Park between the Philadelphia Union and Sporting Kansas City. When I got home, the first thing I did was open my email, find the transcript of the speech, and read it. It was a good speech on paper, and I agreed with all of it, including the parts that were kind of wishful thinking, like that we respect all our citizens’ rights (except the one we’re trying to kill in Yemen) and we adhere to the rule of law (except when it’s inconvenient and Congress refuses to appropriate funds for the purpose).
In any case, he said all the right things. I wish we would draw down sooner in Afghanistan but I can live with this money graf:
Yet tonight, we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding. Fewer of our sons and daughters are serving in harm’s way. We’ve ended our combat mission in Iraq, with 100,000 American troops already out of that country. And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance. These long wars will come to a responsible end.
That’s what I need to believe. I’m impatient, as I am sure you all are, but slow progress is better than no progress at all.
I’m tired of listening to bullshit. And even this fine speech had too much bullshit for my taste. But it appeared to be pretty solid overall.
Did you watch it? What did you think?
Obviously, as a citizen, I hated it. Riddled with pure bullshit. “We stand not for empire”; lol, who does he think he’s kidding? And he equated “justice” with extrajudicial killing.
Also, wtf is with this “centered course” bullshit. This isn’t South Park. This is war. When one side says more war and the other says less, the center isn’t ideal. Moreover, it’s a strawman argument: we don’t need to be isolationist to be anti-war.
Sorry, I can’t look at these things through any other lens. I’m sick of war. We’ve been in perpetual war — in so many ways — since WWII…but we’ve been in “actual” war for almost half of my life. And with the right’s endorsement of torture, I feel like a lot of citizens are now treating torture as if it’s a political issue (people tend to take ques from their leaders); I’ve seen kids my age saying how “disgraceful” it is that we’ve “abandoned” waterboarding.
In the end, once again: Fuck you, George Bush.
cues*
Yeah, but I want my president to go on the record as being for self-determination and not empire. And his actions have been fairly solid in that direction. Not perfect, but some of our key allies are far from perfect.
Maybe so, but many Arabs had very high hopes for this man based on his words, and he’s said that we aren’t an empire before (and has stated that we don’t stand for it before). They have not seen him follow through with his words from Cairo, and now distrust the US just as much as they always have. You should ask them if he’s been “fairly solid in that direction”. This could be rectified if we truly dropped our imperialist stances come September with regard to Israel and Palestine, but we both know that the energy sector and MIC won’t allow that (nope, I have never, and will never, subscribe to the belief that AIPAC scares our pols mad).
He told the Saudis to fuck themselves and threw Mubarak to the wolves. He’s involved us in Libya on the side of the opposition. He didn’t lift a finger to help our buddy in Tunisia. And he’s tossed our guy in Yemen overboard. What do you expect? As it is, he’s already made it clear that our “allies” in the region can expect to get hung before he sides with them against the people. The only exception has been Bahrain, and even there, he merely deferred to the facts on the ground and the Saudi’s clear muscle,
We remember the events differently, but I won’t delve into that. I remember them the way Angry Arab remembers them:
Then you remember them wrong.
Apparently, you don’t remember the peer-to-peer contacts between our military officers and their counterparts in Egypt, that helped convince them to disobey Mubarak’s orders to crush the uprisings with tanks.
Apparently, you don’t remember the weeks of calls for Mubarak to go from Obama and Clinton.
And you clearly don’t remember Bush’s handling of the similar protest movement in Pakistan back in 2007, since you don’t seem to be able to understand the rather remarkable actions Obama took towards allies that were faced by popular protests.
The Egyptian people would take exceptional issue with your interpretation of events.
It’s not really a mystery why the only people involved in the “Arab Spring” who’ve found an ensuing new found appreciation for the US or the West are Libyans.
And while an Obama Blvd. will run alongside Sarkozy Square in downtown Benghazi one day, I imagine even Libyans will renew their jaundiced view of us once the war is over and the harsh reality of reconstruction and democratic growing pains sets in.
Seabe, I’m curious about where your AIPAC assertion comes from.
Many on the left believe that US foreign policy towards Israel would be different without AIPAC — nay, they emphatically assert that our pols are hamstrung by AIPAC’s extreme influence.
To that I say bullshit. See Joseph Massad:
http://www.counterpunch.org/massad03252006.html
I believe that without AIPAC, our policy would be very similar to our policy towards China: a bunch of sternly worded letters while we largely ignore and do nothing to curb their colonialism of Tibet and gross human rights violations. The economic interests trump anything else.
It was good, the timeline is good as far as it goes…but the speech was a little light on the long term strategy. It was just a speech about the next 12 months. I’ve got a lot of questions about what comes after that.
Now, obviously, we can’t scheme out everything in the future, and what we do after August of 2012 will depend a lot on what happens between now and then – but still, what are we aiming for? And what, exactly, happens in 2014? Is it an exit date, like December 2011 in Iraq? Or is it more like July 2010, when the combat mission ended but there was a residual force scheduled to stay through the end of this year? If so, is there an exit planned for the Afghanistan residual force?
Good as far as it went, but lotsa questions.
The problem is what he does, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what he says.
That is simply untrue.
from a timid, small-thinking president.
I didn’t hear the speech, but I’ve lost faith in what Obama has to say in speeches. What has changed to make you feel more optimistic than you sounded a couple of posts ago in “Gluetrapped in Afghanistan”? Just wondering.
The way I see it, we’ve lost two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), but we just can’t or won’t admit it. FDR won World War II in less time against deadlier enemies – and he didn’t depend on sending people like my then late-50’s, Army Reserve, older brother on 3 tours of duty (two in Afghanistan and one in Iraq). (I figure my brother, his son, and his daughter-in-law have racked up 10 tours of duty between the 3 of them. Admittedly, my brother was gung-ho about it – jihad had replaced communism in his mind-set – and was angry that the Army kicked him out at age 60.)
We’ve lost two wars? It depends on what you consider losing.
We haven’t gained a “surrender on the USS Missouri” kind of moment, but that is not the typical way wars end.
Iraq at the moment is more stable than Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain and it has a pro-democracy movement too, which has been allowed to protest in the streets.
Daily life over most of the country is getting back to normal as the number of terrorist attacks decrease. How do I know they’ve decreased? We get a detailed report about each one of them and not a summary that there were X number of terrorist attacks today.
By being in Shi’ite control, Iraq is less subject to Wahabist domination. By having an active national Arab Shi’ite movement (after all, Kerbala rivals Qom as a Shi’a center of power), it is less likely to become and Iranian colony.
And the Iraqi government is politely standing up to the US and demanding back the $18 billion of oil-for-food money (which belonged to the Iraqi people) that Paul Bremer saw stolen.
In Afghanistan, Kabul is as safe as a lot of US cities, Helmand province has returned to daily life. The incidents in Kandahar have been reduced to occasional bombings of police station and army stations. The fighting is now isolated for the most part to the eastern provinces near the Pakistani border.
What we don’t have in Afghanistan yet is a political settlement among the varied political forces — not just the Taliban but also the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance needs to be involved in this. Karzai angered the Northern Alliance by stealing the election from Abdullah Abdullah. Or at least that’s the conventional story.
In both these cases, it is Obama’s policies that have turned these situations around.
The real proof of the pudding will come when Obama tells the US military that we will not be having permanent military bases in either country. Or not.
“Kabul is as safe as a lot of US cities…”
what planet are you living on?
we’re in Afghanistan for the TAPI pipeline, which will have a 20 year working life, minimum. The Long War just got LOT longer. 2030 here we come.
Ever been to Miami? Or Houston?
The idea that bombings occur daily in Kabul is no longer true. There have been two bombings in the last three months and Kabul is pretty close to a completely functioning city. Watch al Jazeera’s coverage.
Jalalabad, which is the current center of active operations against al Quaeda in Pakistan is where you don’t want to be. That’s where the most of the recent bombings have occurred.
The TAPI pipeline is a dead issue. All of the alternative pipelines through Iran have taken away a lot of the benefits. There is still “envisioned” a natural gas pipeline through southern Afghanistan, but it is unlikely that it will ever be built unless it is rerouted to serve Kandahar and Kabul. But the Long War itself killed TAPI.
The strategic motivation for the US now is solely having a permanent forwardly-deployed military base or bases in position to check Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and Iran in the Central Asian region. But the strategic logic of this is pretty suspect.
No, no, Kabul must be as dangerous as Tikrit in 2005, because my ideology tells me so!
Orientalism is the tendency to view a part of the world one doesn’t know very much about and see only confirmation of one’s pre-existing beliefs.
Miami and Houston are riven with sectarian violence?! I never see any of that on the Basketball Wives which is set in Miami and Beyonce never mentions hooded murderous gangs holding the downtown area hostage with car bombs in her valentines to Houston.
I’m about to bust a gut here. Go sit down, dude, and stop blowing Obama so hard. You’re sucking the skin clean off.
Yeah.
“…as safe as a lot of US cities…”
Top 25 Cities, Violent Crime Rate per 100,000 residents, 2010.
Safe as:
1 Flint, MI 2,208 per 100.000 residents.
2 Detroit, MI 1,887/100,000. And so on.
3 St Louis, MO 1,747
4 New Haven, CT 1,584
5 Memphis, TN 1,539
6 Oakland, CA 1,530
7 Little Rock,AR 1,522
8 Baltimore, MD 1,455
Etc.
Stats lie.
So do pols and generals and spooks and diplomats.
Bet on it.
Kabul?
Not on a bet.
KaBOOM!!!
Yup.
AG
“Violent crime” includes simple assaults, domestic violence and armed robberies. You’re putting your thumb on the scale so hard that’s it’s breaking. LOL. Let’s be fair. Let’s subtract all those relative niusances and add in the car bombs, drone attacks, mass murders, ransom kidnappings, and other things that are happening in Afghanistan. If we take out those simple crimes, those cities are walks in the proverbial park.
Stop playing games! I’m so sick and tired of you worshipping sycophants that I don’t know what to do.
Arthur a worshiping sycophant? Please. Gtfo.
Drone attacks?
Kabul?
I think you’re lost the thread a bit. We’re not talking about Afghanistan as a whole. We’re talking about Kabul.
Where do you live, Delonjo? I live…and work, mosty at night (I’m a musician.)…largely in the working class neighborhoods of the NYC area.
I have seen things…
When it jumps off…in Newark, in Paterson, in East New York and Brownsville and Poughkeepsie and Newburgh and that vaunted third world college town of New Haven (There’s Yale…white upper middle class entitlement personified… and then there’s Detroit Jr., 1967 surrounding it. Bet on it)…when it jumps off it is incredibly dangerous. And incredibly terrifying as well. There is no rhyme or reason about it. It just…BANG!!!…happens. The essence of ongoing “terror.”
Often there in no more warning than that of a drone or suicide bomber.
Two weeks ago on a beach near Coney Island in the middle of a hot holiday afternoon some fool took offense at some other fool and killed a young woman in the process. Five shot. One dead, 4 badly wounded.
Last week in Medford, Long Island a strung-out asshole in search of vicadin/hydrocodone killed 4 people in a pharmacy so that he could cop w/out being busted.
I was on a NYC subway this hot, rainy, nasty afternoon…aware as always, because that’s how it works…headed up through Harlem on the A train from midtown when a young rapper wannabe high on something started to act out in a very…jerky…manner. Grabbing his dick, making big gestures with his hands and feet, saying unintelligible sentences that had a lot of “Fuck!!!” in them, playing with something in his baggy-pants pocket. I was in an easily defensible position on the train…I always sit or stand someplace where I’ll have some warning if stuff starts to go down…and I had a piece of metal about the weight of a baseball bat and very maneuverable (an instrument stand) in my hand. But I…and a number of other aware people as well…felt fear.
Felt the presence of mortal danger.
This is terrorism at its worst. Like I said, no reason is involved. No way to predict what is going to happen. We just live wid it.
He got off at 148th St. and you could feel the sigh of relief pour through the car.
I have been in war zones. Vietnam during the war, as a traveling musician. Mexico and Colombia during ongoing drug wars, on borders between warring cultures in NYC. Italians vs. Blacks, Blacks vs. Hispanics, Mexicans vs. Blacks vs. Asians. There is no difference in the terror. You are either constantly on the lookout for mortal threats or you are not.
Where do you live, again?
You write something like :
I got yer “relative nuisances”, bro’.
Right here!!!
Wake the fuck up.
We are one food/heating oil/gas shortage away from our own “Arab Spring.” And it ain’t gonna be pretty.
AG
P.S. Why do I stay here? Because fools like you scare me worse.
So, you’re saying that “violent crime” doesn’t include those things? Give me the definition of “violent crime.”
Screaming sissies living in the suburbs decrying all the “violent crime” in places you have no connection to, other than what you’re told to regurgitate from the “progressive community,” scare me.
I live in the paradise of Philadelphia, PA. Actually, I’m from the Richard Allen projects, and I don’t see car bombs, AK-47s, mines, grenades or such on my treks thru the ghetto.
When I hear of car bombs going off and killing upwards of 50 people on Market Street (one of Philly’s main avenues), I’ll listen to your Chicken Little theatrics. Until then, it all sounds like bullshit. Maybe you’re mistaking it for Miami in 1981. Then, maybe you’d have a point. Otherwise, calm the fuck down! All “violent crime” isn’t the same.
If it doesn’t make sense, then it isn’t true. Sorry to not jump on your Bandwagon o’ Fear.
Fear is fear.
You live in the Richard Allen projects and you don’t feel fear? Whaddyou, Superman?
The Art Of Survival In The Richard Allen Homes
Who the fuck do you think you’re fooling?
50 people at once or just a couple…the mortal fear is the same.
One day Louis Armstrong had a visitor in a hotel where he was staying. For years his valet…I don’t recall his name, let’s say Frankie…had always answered the door on the road. This time Pops answered. The visitor asked “Where’s Frankie?” Pops said “Ain’t you heard? Frankie’s dead!”
Visitor: “Oh man…that’s too bad. That was wrong with him?”
Pops: “When you’re dead…everything’s wrong wit’ you!!”
Like dat.
Here, there or anywhere else.
You write:
I live in Da Bronx, podna. Been everywhere in NYC over the past 40+ years, and almost everywhere else in the world where people really listen to jazz and latin music. Mostly tough neighborhoods. The South Bronx, Loisaida, East New York, Spanish Harlem, reg’lar ol’ Harlem, Bogota y Medellin, Brownsville, Newark and so on.
Went to visit a friend in Philly a couple of years ago…the Fishtown area. Supposedly “gentrifying?” Nasty feel, my friend. I’d rather deal with the worst neighborhood in NYC. Whaddayou, deaf and blind? Or just so armored up that you no longer feel anything whatsoever?
Whatever…you can’t “out-ghetto” me. Been there since 1967.
Would I take a gig in Kabul for a month rather than in a bad neighborhood in Philly?
It’d be a tossup.
Bet on it.
Would I trust the U.S. Army before I would the Philadelphia cops? Bet on that as well.
You can smell the corruption in Philly.
Bet on that as well.
AG
Hey, I’m no expert on the Richard Allen Homes housing project but that’s basically two blocks from the old ACORN office I used to work out of. I used to take raw recruits over there to teach them how to knock doors. It’s not that bad. I’m actually more scared of the neighborhood to the west of Broad, near Girard College. There are some projects over there where I’m scared shitless knocking doors and time after about 3pm.
If I’m not mistaken, they’ve put new units in the Richard Allen Homes in the fairly recent past.
Just sayin’, Booman. Righteous fear is righteous fear whether you are playing Russian Roulette with one bullet chambered or five. The kids get warped early. Fear. I grew up in a working class/middle class L.I. suburb in the ’50s and ’60s. My worst fear was that I might get pushed around on the playground. That can be dealt with. My son…until we took him the fuck out of NYC at the age of 7 so’s he would not grow up in fear…was awakened by gunshots a number of times from the pocket project across the street from where we lived. This was right in the middle of the time intersection between heroin and crack, and the dealing was 24/7 in the little park in front of the project.
He came out with a straight head. Others of his generation who didn’t have the option of leaving? Not so lucky. I know some of them really well. Is Kabul worse than ghetto America? Not to the ghetto’s dead, wounded and emotionally destroyed it isn’t. This guy Delonjo is parsing terror. One of the walking wounded in an emotional sense, I think. Sorry, but Homey don’t play that game.
American terror simply lives on another level.
Fear is fear.
Bet on it.
AG
You sound like an idiot, Arthur. Richard Allen Projects aren’t that bad. I walk thru them each and every day and people say hello and sweep their stoops. You are so paralyzed with fear that you are Chicken Little. The sky is literally falling and you cannot help but run around screaming like a harpy until someone listens to you. But I’m not listening. The projects are my home. I don’t see car bombs. There’s a murder here and there, just like there’s one in Kansas, Connecticut, Missouri, etc. You really are an idiot and I feel sorry for you that you are so afraid to live your life without putting other people down and condescending from your well-heeled address.
My “well-heeled address?”
I live week to week and…in the good times…month to month.
In a decidedly non-“well-heeled” neighborhood.
On purpose.
Why?
How?
Because I do very little as a musician that does not satisfy my artistic (or at the very least my craftmanship) requirements.
In short, I don’t put up with bullshit.
And I’m not going to put up with yours, either.
You say “I walk thru [the Richard Allen Homes] each and every day and people say hello and sweep their stoops.” I’m sure that this is a true statement. The terror only comes out at night, most times. Come hang out a couple of blocks south of Dyckman Street on a hot Saturday night around 2AM. When all the drug deals are going down in the middle of the side streets and the cops don’t want any part of what’s happening there. Nobody sweeping their stoops then, hermano. Just the real deal. I use Dyckman Street because a great musician friend of mine lived there for over 20 years, and during the last 3 it got so bad that he had to leave. This is no shrinking violet…it’s a man who has seen it all from the bandstand on the hard streets of New York City. But suddenly he felt as if he couldn’t come home at night and be sure of getting safely into his building and through the halls into his apartment with his instrument on his back.
Dyckman Street exists up and down this country now, Delonjo. North to south and east to west. I haven’t seen it this crazy in the NYC area since the early ’70s, myself. And even then, it was usually a lone junkie or two trying to get enough money together to get off. Now? It’s 3, 8, 10, 15 guys just looking to act out in complete frustration with their assigned place in life.
You don’t see this rise of terror?
You ain’t looking right.
You pin it yourself.
That’s precisely what I am saying.
“There’s a murder here and there…”
Just like Kansas, Connecticut, Missouri, etc.
Just like fucking Peoria.
I guess that’s OK with you if it isn’t your own mortal ass being murdered, eh?
Projects America. It’s everywhere.
This is not the way it’s s’pose to be. But you…and a whole generation or two of Americans…have become so immured to what is going down, so hypnomediaed-out by the ongoing violence in the news, in movies, TV, music and video games that you accept it as “just the way things are.” Maybe you haven’t traveled widely enough to see that things can be different. All over Europe, all over the Pacific rim, and in many parts of South/Central/Caribbean America as well, this ongoing, omnipresent fear simply doesn’t exist. In fact, it doesn’t even exist in South Africa, long hyped as a hotbed of danger by the American media….not in Johannesburg, anyway.
I walked down dark post-midnight streets with some new musician friends in Johannesburg with nary a thought about about getting ripped off. And in say Copenhagen or Amsterdam or Dublin or Tokyo? Ditto. Squared. But around midnight in the heart of NYC’s theater district? I walk strong and I watch my back.
You don’t see this?
You’re numbed out.
You been dumbed down.
Bet on it.
AG
If you want real reporting, don’t look in the New York Times or on your teevee.
That list?
Google maps say that the 3 worst drug corners in that article are only 10 minute’s drive from the Richard Allen Homes. The 4th worst is only 5 minutes away.
You don’t really need to know much more if you know American cities. A rough neighborhood. For sure.
AG
Well, it’s all relative. I used to live very close to the fifth worst drug corner on that list (referred to as The Box because it’s not a single corner but a 2X3 block rectangle). Basically, I drove back and forth on 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th streets because 21st and up had flying bullets on a regular basis. Every week some bystander got shot in the ankle, or worse, and dead gangstas piled up by the dozen. I also kind of wondered why the violence never seemed to bleed over, but it rarely did. The worst was when a chinese food operator was gunned down after store hours when a girl (regular customer) betrayed him and got him to open the door for her gangster friends. They gunned him down in cold blood even though they didn’t have to. A teenage girl on my block was gunned down by stray bullets from a gang (Asian or Mexican, I honestly can’t remember right now) that strayed into my neighborhood to carry out a hit. My dog and I were attacked by a Italian drug-dealers stray pit-bull, and we both wound up in the hospital, and I got a nasty case of PTSD and a sleeping disorder out of the bargain.
But none of that is why I left the city. I liked living in the city. I didn’t feel unsafe there. Or, I didn’t mind feeling unsafe is more accurate. It was risk I was willing to accept and learned to manage without much worry. I was willing to work in some of the worst neighborhoods and get to know the (mostly) kind and decent people who live there.
You do get desensitized to violence and fear to some extent, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept it. Working for ACORN was one way of fighting back and joining the struggle for the people who are suffering in these neighborhoods, and in the nearby neighborhoods that deal with the fallout.
What goes on in our inner cities is appalling on every level. Yet, city life is not defined by the worst neighborhoods. And not everyone is living in terror and fear.
Dude, no doubt, Philly’s ghettoes are tough. And there are degrees of tough. The North scares me, although not the part where Delonjo lives. But the Notherners are scared of the South. The South doesn’t welcome foreigners (particularly black ones). And then there is the Bottom. I never met anyone from outside The Bottom who wanted to go there. We registered voters there and some of my guys were pretty hardened felons. And they didn’t want to be there at 12 noon. It’s like they transferred the bad parts of Beirut to the West Side and then opened up an open-market crackhouse amongst the ruins. It’s brutal. Not a house up to code for blocks.
And, no, this is not how things are supposed to be.
I don’t know how safe it is to be where you don’t belong in Amsterdam or Copenhagen. But I know they’re safer than The Bottom. Kabul? I don’t belong there. I’m not going.
Funny. It’s so bad that Wiki thinks it doesn’t exist anymore.
What they call the Bottom today must be slightly north of where it originally existed. Penn and Drexel gobbled up Black Bottom, displaced 5,000 residents, and lost any good will they might have had with the local community. Then those people were left for dead.
Ah, I figured it out. The Bottom and Black Bottom were always separate adjacent neighborhoods.
You sound like an IDIOT! OMFG! Pack your bags and go to Kabul if it’s so much better than the USA! You fearmongering asshole! You are so wrapped up in fear that you are really warped. Philly is as bad as Kabul?! You just jumped the shark, pal.
Do you really think that “a bad neighborhood in Philly” equals “the USA?”
You prove my point once again.
About you.
You are so used to being surrounded by terror that you not only no longer notice it, you think that it’s the same everywhere.
Enough. I’m through here.
Later…
AG
Why?
Because I think that it is important for U.S. citizens to realize that we are living in a terror-ridden state, that’s why.W e send our young working class people to foreign lands to fight and die in order to “combat terror” (and not at all coincidentally buttress the whole NATO/Japan/Australia economic imperialism scam) while many Americans are already living in terror.
Case in point?
Sure.
Peoria fucking Illinois. Peoria. The word itself is often used as shorthand for the great American middle.
“Peoria. Dumb as a stick of hicks.” Which also presupposes the notion that Peoria is as safe as a stick of hicks. Safe in the sticks.
But it ain’t.
Bet on it.
And the available comments:
Sorry…can’t find the expanded comments on he web.
(Posted too early. Before editing or finishing. Sorry.)
So what we have here…in Poughkeepsie, in Newburgh, in New City and Paterson and New Haven just for starters (all places in which I have been over the last few months) and all across this country, is a double or even triple fear state. A state held hostage by multiple terrors.
The terror of the so-called “War on Terror” and the massive police and security apparatus to which it has given rise.
The terror of working citizens who are being held hostage in their own homes and neighborhoods by gangs of people who have themselves literally been driven crazy in a sociopathic sense by the contradictions implicit in a capitalist system gone stone insane.
The terror of many of those same working people as they confront the ongoing collapse of the American economic dream into which they have been trance state-forced by the immensely powerful and almost inescapable hypnomedia.
Is it worse in Kabul?
I’ll tell you what…it’s simpler there at the very least.
Much simpler.
The past always is simpler, and that’s where almost all of the places in which the U.S. has stuck its armored nose are living.
In the simpler past.
The question that arises from all of these facts is this…is that “past” going to become our future? (Never a good thing. Bet on that as well. Anti-evolutionary on the most basic level. And on the evidence of the entire history of the planet earth, the universe doesn’t seem to like opposition to evolution. Bet on that as well.)
So…what are we going to do about it?
Well, first we have to realize the depth of our own terror…a depth that has been minimized by people like Delonjo.
I’ve had my say now. So it goes.
Later…
AG
.
Googled for this subject and read some articles and comments. Where have these folks been living the past decade? City and government employees are losing their jobs, for youth there are not enough job openings available [understatement]. The right wingers demand action by the city council to stash 10 persons in each prison cell, remove all evil and more police and arms on the street. Main problem seems to be an education and sufficient teachers in the schools. Sorry, but we had a financial meltdown so the street must suffer.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Why don’t you play a gig in Kabul and tell us what’s really going on. I’m sure there are some nonprofits that might help facilitate it. Just stay away from places like Jalalabad that consider any form of music non-Koranic. You’ve likely played in some dicier neighborhoods. No doubt there are some Afghan ex-pats around who can help you select a venue. And tell you how to negotiate the security issues.
I don’t think our music…NYC jazz and latin music…would have much in the way of an audience in Kabul. Maybe 5% of the soldiers at most. And probably a handful of happening/curious local musicians as well. (They are everywhere. bet on it. Everywhere.)
Would I go?
Sure.
Here’s the deal.
All the great bands I play with are about 18 people in number.
A one-nighter in Kabul?
3 or 4 days round trip.
Say $500 per musician per day. (Bargain rates. Bet on it. Wear and tear on the body? Lost work in NYC? Extra expenses of various kinds? A bargain.) $36 grand.
Round trip airfare? Another $20,000, probably.
A promoter’s cut plus hotels, food, a rental hall, etc?
Say another $15-30 grand.
Plus graft?
$80-90K easy. Maybe more.
Find me an Afghan promoter who’s trustworthy and willing to do this and we’ll be there in a NY minute.
Not likely to find one, though. Of course.
So it goes.
AG
P.S. Now if some of those trillions that have been “lost in transit” by our lovely Dept. of Offense, Department of Stasis or the various Spook Brigades ere to be “found” by our jazz-loving President,m hat would be a wole ‘nother thing.
But…that ain’t happening either.
Guess we’ll stay in NYC and play our gigs so’s we can continue to eat and pay the bills.
So it goes.
Just as it’s always been.
Bet on it.
I knew New Haven was bad, but not that bad. What the fuck is going on up there?
Oh man…y’gotta check it out.
Nasty downtown.
Nasty!
I know the vibe when I see it.
I walked through downtown a couple of weeks ago because I was early driving up for an appointment. I just wanted some coffee and maybe a doughnut. I haven’t had so many black faces look at me with hostility and/or suspicion in a ten minute walk…along the edge of a downtown park square, 3 minute’s drive from Yalie Heaven…since Detroit during the riot times.
Like “Whozzis!!!??? Not a Yale fool…too aware. Walks wrong. Not asleep and not afraid, either. Cop? No…too old to be in plain clothes. Off duty detective, maybe? Best let him be, just in case.”
Like dat.
At least 8 or 10 times in a 10 or 15 minute walk at 3 PM on a weekday.
Statistics?
Sure.
Dig it.
Confront the disenfranchised poor on a daly basis with the entitlement classe’s university of choice.
Whaddaya expect?
Nirvana?
AG
Victory in a war undertaken under false pretenses: 100’s of thousands of Iraqis killed and wounded (not to mention coalition force casualties), high unemployment, and millions displaced.
“According to the International Organization of Migration only about 78,180 of the estimated 5.1 million Iraqis uprooted from their home (less than 1% had returned by March 31. 2008) [sic].”
http://www.law.depaul.edu/centers_institutes/ihrli/pdf/hong.pdf
(I lay the blame solely at George Bush’s feet. Obama has perhaps done the best he can with a war he inherited, but I don’t think he can manage to turn a war that was already lost into a victory. And, true, wars don’t always end as cleanly as World War II, but it then gets hard to claim a long drawn-out quagmire with devastating damage as a victory.)
“Kabul is as safe as a lot of US cities”
really? there are suicide bombers and car bomb attacks, and coordinated attacks on civilians in US cities? Which ones?
sorry that last link is to NATO troops, who were attacked.
the point still stands. Kabul is not as safe as even the worst US city. I’d feel safer in Camden NJ than in Kabul.
Not talking about how you would feel but what the risks actually are.
Situations change, and the situation in Afghanistan has changed enough to permit withdrawal of 10,000 troops without the military and Congress going ballistic.
The lefty wish for failure of the US in Afghanistan works counter to the US actually leaving. Fortunately, that demonstrable failure has not yet occurred. The good news in that is that there will be no “stabbed in the back” accusations against Democrats like came out of Vietnam. (Kinda ironic since LBJ escalated that war.)
who’s wishing for failure? who said anything about “feelings”? not me. You put those words in my mouth.
You wrote “”Kabul is as safe as a lot of US cities”. All I asked was that you identify those cities: the non sequitor you responded with kind of indicates that you’re unable to do so.
Maybe we’re down to “only” “two bombings in the last three months” as you said to SirLurtksalot (you left out the attack on NATO troops at the airport, does that not count because it was “only” machine guns?), but THD, even our poorest cities here in the US are not riven by sectarian violence, suicide bombers, car bombs. You mentioned Miami and Houston. Are you saying these cities are more dangerous than Kabul? Really?
Kabul is not riven by sectarian violence. Or suicide bombers or car bombs, although suicide bombings occur in Kabul but not in any US city.
Kabul is about the size of Los Angeles (4 million). From January 1, 2010 to May 8, 2010, Los Angeles had 103 homicides. Meaning that there are around 300-400 homicides a year, even with dropping crime rates. I cannot find out the total deaths in Kabul during the past year; if you can please post them.
What is clear is that Kabul is not among the most dangerous cities in the world, which in 2009 (when Kabul was much more dangerous) were:
opentravel.com World’s Five Most Dangerous Cities
The place that is most targeted in Afghanistan is Jalalabad (pop. 200,000), which is where US attacks against the border areas are launched from. The mission to get Osama bin Laden was launched from Jalalabad. One single attack in Jalalabad in February killed 38.
But Kabul’s security is such that today Afghan security forces prevented a major suicide bombing meant to overshadow Obama’s speech.
I didn’t forget the attack on NATO troops at the Kabul airport; the eight troops killed there are included in that rough estimate of 50 deaths.
Kabul is probably as safe as Los Angeles and safer than Baltimore or New Orleans. But like most cities, it depends on where you are in the city.
Even Jalalabad was calming down a bit (except for attacks on NATO bases) until the Taliban decided that music was against the Koran and started terrorizing music stores.
Tell me that Murfreesboro, TN is not riven by sectarian violence.
The most dangerous cities in the US, in order, are:
St. Louis, MO
Detroit, MI
Memphis, TN
Oakland, CA
Baltimore, MD
Buffalo, NY
Cleveland, OH
Kansas City, MO
Washington, DC
Philadelphia, PA
OK, Miami and Houston are now probably safer.
I’m sorry you took my observations on folks’ ability to estimate risk personally. That was not a direct response to what you said. The dangers in Kabul are pretty localized in time and place but using a large amount of firepower compared to ordinary street crime. The fact that they are less widespread and less frequent than ordinary crime is what makes Kabul safer overall. And US cities are much more dangerous than we would like to admit, compared to other cities in developed countries.
We’re seeing the same sloppy thinking we’ve become used to.
Because people used to make the bogus assertion that Baghdad was safer than many American cities, then it must be true that your statement about Kabul is equally false.
Why? Well, if we take OBAMA IS JUST LIKE BUSH! as a given…
RUSH! Is that you?! Get out of here. This is a “progressive” community, you big, fat idiot.
Uh, that’s really not a debatable statement.
US cities have much higher crime rates than cities in other developed countries, whether we’re talking about Canada, Europe, China, Japan…
One in April killing a few people, one in May, one in June. That’s three in three months, and there are so few incidents that the media are covering every single one of them. So 50 dead in three months, max.
How many US cities have a murder rate like that? And still seem to function?
Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, Houston, Dallas come to mind immediately. And then there is El Paso.
So you’re saying that high murder rates in US cities are the exact same thing as an organized armed insurgency dedicated to toppling their government?
I call bullshit. Most murders in US cities are individual against individual (man kills wife, mugger kills man). there’s also some gang activity, but that’s carried out against rival gangs. Most of these murders are not committed as part of an organized movement: in fact none of them are.
Please. You’re making yourself look silly. No one in Camden, Compton, Detroit, or any of the other economically deprived cities in the US are facing anything like what’s in Kabul.
The organized, armed insurgency has succeeded in making some places in Afghanistan more dangerous than, say, New Orleans.
At this time, however, Kabul is not one of them.
Thank you for cutting to the chase.
OOOOOK, man. I kinda wionder what color the sky is in your world.
Here in 21st century America, the one where the sky is blue, the Union won the civil war, and Barack Obama won the presidency, the absence of carbombs, suicide bombers, private armies, landmines, and sectarian violence pretty much makes even the shittiest place in America less dangerous than Kabul or anywhere else in Afganistan.
I’m sure glad I don’t live in YOUR dimension though. Soundsw creepy.
If you aren’t even willing to admit that different parts of Afghanistan are in fact different, you’re just demonstrating your own determined ignorance.
And wrapping up that ignorance in self-congratulatory snark doesn’t make it any less obvious.
ahem:
ahem part two:
You can pretend all you want, but kabul is not anywhere near as safe as the most dangerous American city. And betcha by next week, there’s even more.
It was a speech that invoked all of the symbols of the American civil religion to bridge the gap between the political forces pulling on him. You could almost put it into a liturgical structure. Only the numbers of troops and the timeframe amounted to an announcement.
Don’t overthink this one.
What you need to know. He is, like in the mission against Osama bin Laden, doing something maybe more risky than his advisers would want. But he is putting the pressure on Karzai to get his act together, stop expecting Uncle Sugar’s money to be there forever, start functioning as an actual state, and cut out the corruption that could make Afghanistan’s military cost more than the GDP. That is the implications of going faster than the generals might want.
Politically, the Republicans don’t know how to handle it. A pundit from the Cato Institute talked it up one side and then down the other and the sole criticism seemed to be Obama made the decision. The Republican neo-cons (McCain et al) argued that he should have listened to his generals one week after they criticized Obama for listening to his generals too much and not acting like a commander-in-chief. Walter Jones though it was too slow. John Fortenberry thought it was exactly right. And former officials of the Bush administration who had served in Afghanistan gave it high marks.
The risks are:
The upsides:
Finally, don’t take Obama’s statements about al Quaeda being on the ropes at face value. Giving al Quaeda and the Taliban a sense of security right now could embolden their actions and expose their locations.
I hate to say it, but when I read the part about long wars coming to “a responsible end,” I hear “Peace with dignity.” I firmly believe that PBHO is doing the most that he perceives to be possible in this situation, but overall it comes across as a losing proposition.
There is one thing I would like to know that always seems to be lost in these kinds of events. In the general media there seems to be an assumption that “a troop is a troop”, that they are somehow all trained the same, have the same missions and are completely interchangeable. That strikes me as a really poor assumption, but I am no expert on military personnel and units.
I vaguely recall that the 30,000 “surge” troops of 2009 included 20,000 whose sole mission had to do with support types of functions to train Afghani’s, improve security infrastructure, etc. As near as I can tell the 30,000 to be withdrawn are all combat troops.
Is anyone else here picking up on this?
It will not necessarily be the same 33,000 troops coming out. I would guess that, since they’re transitioning from a counter-insurgency to a counter-terrorism/training mission, that it would be combat infantry troops coming out, while specialists and trainers and civil affairs remain.
LBJ saw light at the end of the tunnel, too !
LBJ never announced a withdrawal from Vietnam.
Being able to form a sentence that equates something to Vietnam doesn’t actually make the comparison valid.
Obama’s Speech? Shrink-wrapped Bullshit, Nothing More
Read it if you’re interested.
AG
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Excellent report on the situation in Afghanistan by numbers. It’s clear the 8 years under Bush-Cheney-(Rumsfeld) almost lost the war. Under Obama the funding for build-up of the ANA increased profoundly to a level that surpassed the funding in Iraq for security. The indemic corruption by government and local administration makes the Afghan citizens pessimistic about the future. The wrong perception most civilian deaths are caused by NATO forces doesn’t help the cause of he allied forces to win the hearts and minds. That’s very similar to the Vietnam War.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Booman, the “news that isn’t news” about Obama’s speech is that he outmaneuvered Petraeus and the generals in the Pentagon who wanted (basically) endless war.
Remember late 2009? I think it was Bob Woodward who reported this conversation:
“Inside the Oval Office, Obama asked Petraeus, “David, tell me now. I want you to be honest with me. You can do this in 18 months?”
“Sir, I’m confident we can train and hand over to the ANA [Afghan National Army] in that time frame,” Petraeus replied.
“Good. No problem,” the president said. “If you can’t do the things you say you can in 18 months, then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?”
“Yes, sir, in agreement,” Petraeus said.”
That’s the trap Obama laid for McChrystal, Petraeus and the war hawks. Before approving the “surge” they wanted, he first got them to agree to 1) accelerate the pace of the surge, and 2) set a deadline for the end of the surge.
It’s a negotiating tactic taught in Organizing 101 (or at least at the national trainings run by networks like Gamaliel, and the IAF): It’s not whether your target will agree to do X, it’s by when he will agree to do X.
It’s the same negotiation whether it’s getting the sidewalks repaired on your block (by when, Mr. Mayor?, by when?), or ending a war.
I’ll believe that when the leaks stop about the US trying to pressure Iraq and Afghanistan for permanent base agreements.
The policy battle is ongoing.
I’m not sure that I would characterize what Obama did as “laying a trap”. What he did was ask for options. What he first got were cute Powerpoints that said nothing. He sent them back to do their homework. The second go was only slightly better. So, exercising his power as commander-in-chief Obama said this is what you are going to do. What do you need to do this in this much time? They outlined a surge and he gave them the surge in exchange for commitment to performance. And then Obama made a couple of key points in the timeline pubic to put pressure on the Afghan government.
McChrystal didn’t like it and tried to use Congress and the media to go around the President. McChrystal got cashiered, and Petraeus got demoted and told to do the job the brass had promised to do. My suspicion is that Petraeus has been trying to say that intelligence is a failing that prevented him from delivering. Gates obviously used this moment to duck out from implementing DADT repeal. So Panetta goes to DoD to implement DADT repeal and clean up the financial mess there. Petraeus goes to CIA, and Gates gets to retire with the plaudits of a grateful country. Putting someone in a box to demand performance is not the same thing as laying a trap. The war hawks had been using non-performance to continue their command in a war zone indefinitely so all the upcoming brass could cycle through and get their “combat” ticket punched. There is a built-in bias in militaries to going to war instead of doing a good job of deterrence a preserving the peace.
Yeah, “laying a trap” is not the best way to put it.
Obama did, as you say and to his credit, put the Pentagon war hawks “in a box” by getting them to agree in December 2009 to an 18 month deadline on the surge. Given the wildly disproportionate influence the Pentagon has in our government and with the SLM (so-called liberal media), I give him credit for doing what he said he would do—just as he’s done in Iraq.
Did I hear what I wanted to hear in the speech? No, but then, I never expected to. Given the constraints, I thought it was pretty good.