Today's Stories

October 24 / 26, 2008

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

October 16, 2008

Mike Whitney
The End of Friedmanite Economics: an Interview with Robert Pollin

Jonathan Cook
The Acre Riots

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Is Obama Playing to the Gallery? Or Has He Lost the Plot in South Asia?

Alan Maass
A Supreme Injustice: the Death Penalty Case of Troy Davis

Chuck O'Connell
Our Needs Do Not Fit on Their Ballots

Mary Lynn Cramer
Krugman's Prize: Iconoclast, Apologist or Propagandist?

P. Sainath
The Race May be Over, But Race Isn't

Andy Worthington
The Shrinking Case Against Binyam Mohamed: Justice Department Drops "Dirty Bomb Plot" Allegation

Peter Gelderloos
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?

Stephen Martin
The Nourishment of Idleness: Where Has All the Money Gone?

Douglas Valentine
Why I'm Voting for Obama

Website of the Day
The Mormon Worker

October 15, 2008

Steve Conn
The Real Story of Troopergate

William P. O'Connor
The Legend of John McCain

Robert Weissman
The Partial Nationalization of US Banks: Public Ownership, But No Public Control

Jonathan M. Feldman
Before the Second Wave of Crisis: an Alternative to the Triple Failure

Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Race in America: Is a Vote For Obama a Vote Against Racism?

Conn Hallinan
Targeting Unions in Colombia

Justin Podur
The Financial Economy and Real Economy

Karl Grossman
The New Nuclear Navy

Dave Lindorff
Is the Government Really Turning Socialist?

Eric Walberg
The Quiet Russian

Martha Rosenberg
Of Blood and Eggs

Uri Avnery
A Fairy Tale

Monica Benderman
No More

Website of the Day
Contractor Misconduct Database

Weekend Edition
October 24 / 26, 2008

The Word from America's Allies

Afghanistan the Un-Winnable

By BINOY KAMPMARK

The US presidential candidates are warbling about what strategies will best suit Afghanistan in a post-Bush world.  Both Barack Obama and John McCain promise that the interminable conflict will be of “top priority” come 2009.  Neither has provided clear guidelines, largely because such guidelines are essentially useless.  The Coalition forces in Afghanistan continue to lose the ground to Taliban.  Planners are scratching their heads in desperation.

Obama has at stages advocated the deployment of two more army brigades.  McCain has also called for a surge in troop levels.  The military solution, that only solution doomed to failure, continues to attract followers.  Empires with supposedly  power, notably ones teetering on collapse, often revert to force when all else has failed. 

In recent times, two allies of the US – the UK and Australia – have expressed reservations  as to how such a conflict can be ever won on the ground.  The warnings have been simmering for some time.  The war, most of these parties concede, might yield tactical victories, short-term gains in skirmishes.  But it can do nothing else. The Taliban, it would seem, are either winning the war, or at least fighting the coalition forces to a bloody stalemate.  They have finances, time, and soldiers, to kill.

All this points to a depressing scenario for the NATO forces, and their allies, only a portion of which are actually engaged in combat. It goes to the British to put a dampener on undue optimism (not that there was much to begin with) in the conflict.  For British Brigadier General Mark Carleton-Smith, commander of the 16 Air Assault Brigade in Afghanistan, the best one could hope for was “reducing [the conflict] to a manageable level of insurgency.”  An adequate number of troops were needed to “contain the insurgency to a level where it is not a strategic threat to the longevity of the elected Government” (October 7).

Nothing new there: Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, when chief of the defense staff, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that Britain risked having its “hand caught in the mangle of Afghanistan.”  The key now is merely to redress the level of mangling.  Some have advocated firm measures at the local level.  Britain’s ambassador to Kabul Sherard Cowper-Coles has ventured that an “acceptable dictator” might be the best solution.  The current strategy was “doomed to failure.”

The Australians, whose forces are stationed in the Oruzgan province, were quick to add to the pessimistic Brits, taking a similar line through defense minister Joel Fitzgibbon.  The only difference was one of degree – the Aussies had somehow negated the negative sting.  “The progress of the global partners in Afghanistan is at best very, very slow.  It will remain slow while ever we lack properly coordinated and resourced political, civil and military plans” (October 21).

Of course, Fitzgibbon still insists that the soldiers from Australia still continue to do “meaningful” work for the local populace.  Australian troops have been “embedded” with an Afghan National Army Battalion as part of the mentoring program.  Towards that end, the Reconstruction Task Force has received a new appellation: the Mentoring Reconstruction Task Force (MRTF).  Seeing as there was little reconstruction in the first place, the mentoring side may be doomed to failure as well.  The mantra for success on the ground remains coordination between authorities and resources.  

Such jittery opinion should not be dismissed lightly.  The British views are particularly important.  Having already shed the blood of its soldiers in the Afghan wars of the 19th century, the reluctance to persevere on the current course is understandable.  Instead, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has huffed, indignantly claiming that there was “no reason to be defeatist or to underestimate the opportunities to be successful in the long run.”  Then, drawing the longest of bows, Gates could say with confidence that what applied in Iraq also applied in Afghanistan.  Conflating wars and strategic dilemmas continues to be a bad habit at the Pentagon. 

In the meantime, the Taliban, beset as they are by rifts, will continue being resilient under pressure.  They await the new American president with sanguinary anticipation.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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