The Great American Elephant
by C. L. Cook
Only hours on the job, new American president, Barack Hussein Obama followed his military's advice and okayed a missile attack against a remote village in Pakistan's unruly border region.

 

As presidents Bush and Clinton before him, Obama's official ascension to the seat of power was finalized by an anointing in the blood of innocents. In this case, 15, or 18, or 22 people were killed, depending on who you listen to; whatever the total, their number predictably included "regrettable" women and their "collateral" children.

With a nod of the head and scratching of a signature on a piece of paper, (a "God-damned" piece no doubt) Obama joined the long line of White House criminals to rule, through murder, torture, theft, and deceit the broad world for the benefit of elite American interests.

 

 

 

The agency of this particular mass murder was the increasingly popular aerial drone, replete with missiles. Piloted remotely from air bases, ships, or a Langley, Virginia basement, these predators circle high in the skies, their cameras ever watchful for Them. At an opportune moment, they are provided a target 15,000 feet below, and let fly their weapons.

The results of these missions is always disputed. Military sources declare: People on the ground killed and maimed, and those made suddenly homeless are "insurgents," plotting attacks against "our" troops, and threatening "our" interests; while the neighbouring occupants of the mud hovels, shacks, and caves near the ground zero insist: Victims of the Hellfire are peasants; merely farmers, goat herds, and their families, destroyed for no reason better than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, these simple people have little way of knowing the whole nature of their neighbour's destruction, nor do they likely possess the faintest idea of the real purpose behind the obliteration.

Associated Press reporters, Jason Straziuso and Rahim Faiez describe the confirmation dilemma the U.S. military, the Afghani government, and the press face in sorting out the truth.

"Afghan villagers have been known to exaggerate civilian death claims in order to receive more compensation from the U.S. military, and officials have said that insurgents sometimes force villagers to make false death claims. But the U.S. military has also been known to not fully acknowledge when it killed civilians. After a battle in August in the village of Azizabad, the U.S. military at first said no civilians were killed. A day later it said about five died, and eventually a more thorough U.S. investigation found 33 civilians were killed. The Afghan government and the U.N. said 90 civilians were killed."

 

If the folks in Afghanistan are having a difficult time figuring out the meaning of all this, those in the United States and the allied countries participating in the now seven-plus year violent occupation of the country possess an even more nebulous understanding. Osama bin Laden is probably dead, the Taliban routed from the capital, and the remnants of shadowy al Qaida scattered throughout the tribal areas of the Pakistan-Afghani frontier, and yet nothing seems to have changed.

 

In fact, things have gotten worse, by western reckoning. Billions of dollars spent, thousands of lives lost, and what can be held up to reassure the course taken against Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks was not and is not a terrible miscalculation?   

Though not a goal of the original invasion of the country, drugs production in Afghanistan has shot through the roof. The benefit of introduced western values for women and girls touted by erstwhile first-lady Laura Bush has not been realized. Credible sources like suspended Afghani parliament member, Malaila Joya, (sometimes called 'The Bravest Woman in Afghanistan' because of the assassination attempts she defies in her continued crusading attempts to expose the war lords and drugs dealers that make up the larger part of that august assembly) contradict American and "coalition" partner reports of progress being made in Afghanistan, instead calling for a complete withdrawal of all foreign fighters, even as the numbers of occupation forces killed and wounded continue to rise.

In fact, Obama promises to grow the war further in Afghanistan, moving U.S. troops out of Iraq, now a back burner issue, replicating the so-called "Surge" approach marshaled there by General David Petraeus last year. If this is the case, and if the effects of the surge in Iraq are to be replicated, this means many more dozens of "insurgents" and their concomitant women-folk and children will be filling mass graves not yet dug in Afghanistan's stony soil. It means too, the drugs trade there, now purportedly accounting for more than 80% of the illicit heroin on the streets of North American, European, and Asian cities will continue apace, and neighbouring Pakistan will become more unstable as drone after drone attack piles up the body count in the villages of the frontier, enraging the sovereign sensibilities of the greater populace.

These are easy predictions to make, because it has all been seen before. Obama is ready to mount his leg of the global war on the Other, charging into Afghanistan along a centuries-old line traveled by conquerors and liberators alike with nary a sideways glance or nod to the propriety of an exit strategy should things go awry.

 

So, why do the generals and military consultants not see the looming disaster? Is it hubris; disengagement from reality; or is there something else at play here?

While the American economy slides into another of its cyclical tsunami-like wipe-outs, war and rumours of war is what's needed to keep the blow-holes of its pampered elite above the surf. The elephant in the American living room is the simple fact: War is the only thing America makes anymore.

 

As the U.S. auto industry sputters, victims of, possibly terminal, short-term corporate profit-think, and the relentless offshore outsourcing of other non-military industries eradicates all but a few of the remaining decent-paying jobs, Americans in their thousands are discovering to their discomfiture what Globalism looks like, and what the economic restructuring of these last several decades means to what serial presidents have vowed never to sacrifice, the "American way of life."

If the economy, as presently configured is to prosper, America must have this war, and the next, and a perpetual state of war and war preparedness. So, welcome to the monkey house Mr. President Obama, and God save you others who struggle to survive beneath the drone's unblinking eye.