Ditch the Buck! Dollar demise ‘a matter of months’
Jul 4, 2010 Videos, World News
A report by the United Nations says the American dollar should be ditched as the main global reserve currency. It said that the global financial meltdown has exposed systematic weaknesses, one of which is the reliance on the greenback. It also found that developing countries have been hit by the dollar’s loss of value in recent years. A number of states, including Russia and China, have repeatedly called for a new reserve currency system. The UN has now suggested using a basket of currencies for this purpose. London-based markets strategist Nick Parsons believes it’s only a matter of months before the dollar will start to go down.
Drone Attack on Schools
Jul 4, 2010 Pakistan, pakistan politics
Tags: afghanistan, cia, Drone Attack, Drones, ISI, Pakistan, USA, war on terror
Three Is the Loneliest Number
Jun 3, 2010 Uncategorized
FP
BY BRUCE RIEDEL | JUNE 2, 2010
What does the killing of al Qaeda’s No. 3, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, mean for Osama bin Laden?
The death of Mustafa Ahmed Mohammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid, also known as Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, al Qaeda’s operational commander in Afghanistan, in a drone attack in Pakistan last month is a significant but not fatal setback for the group — and another sign that the Obama administration’s stepped-up pressure is having a real impact and disrupting the group’s activities. Al Qaeda announced his death in a message released on May 31 — and though the terrorist group is hurting, it is likely far from being on the ropes.
A bit of background: Yazid was an Egyptian close to Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s “No. 2.” He was involved, like Zawahiri, in the plot to assassinate Anwar Sadat in 1981 and, following their release from prison in the mid-1980s, the two created the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. That group merged with al Qaeda in 1998, and since then Yazid has worked as a fundraiser and has appeared often as a spokesman and commentator. He was actively involved in planning the September 11, 2001, attacks.
According to some reports, he was also al Qaeda’s third-highest ranking officer. If so, then he is (by my count) the seventh individual identified by U.S. intelligence as al Qaeda’s “No. 3″ since 2001 who has been killed or captured. Being No. 3 is clearly a dangerous job. For its part, al Qaeda itself has never identified anyone as the third man in its chain of command, and most likely there is more than one individual, at any one time, who reports to Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden directly.
Whether or not he was No. 3, Yazid was a key al Qaeda operative. Yazid was likely involved in al Qaeda’s plot last year to attack the New York City metro system with three suicide bombers at rush hour on the Monday after the 9/11 anniversary. Two Afghan-Americans have pleaded guilty to that plot and have said they were being directed by al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.
And, in his role as chief of operations in Afghanistan, Yazid would have been directly involved in the planning of the Dec. 30 suicide-bomber attack on the CIA’s forward operating base in Khost, which killed six officers and a senior Jordanian intelligence officer. In terms of loss of life, it was the second-worst day in CIA history, but as far as operational readiness was affected, it clearly did not interrupt drone strikes significantly.
But drones, like the one that killed Yazid, are only one part of Barack Obama’s strategy to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” al Qaeda — and the U.S. president is far from achieving that goal. At best, the new pressure is impacting the terrorists’ operational tempo, but has not stopped them from planning and staging attacks on U.S. targets.
One example is Zawahiri himself. Since December, he has appeared only once in al Qaeda’s propaganda output, a brief message last month eulogizing the death of two senior al Qaeda commanders in Iraq. Before this year, Zawahiri was a frequent commentator on al Qaeda audio and video messages, often appearing every other week. His absence is probably related to the Khost attack: He was the bait that al Qaeda dangled before the CIA operatives — a prize so tempting that routine procedures were overlooked, allowing a suicide bomber fatal access to the base. Zawahiri’s absence from the airwaves has been noted in the jihadi underworld, but his ability to direct attacks on U.S. and Western targets has likely been diminished only slightly.
As for bin Laden, the most wanted man in history and the target of the largest manhunt ever conducted, CIA drones have not yet been able to get close to him, either. The last time U.S. intelligence had eyes on al Qaeda’s No. 1 was in 2001. For almost nine years since then, he has been off the radar — avoiding telephones, using trusted couriers to send messages, and receiving protection from powerful interests. But he has appeared in four audio messages so far this year, so reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Thus, though Yazid’s death is a significant scalp, both bin Laden and Zawahiri are still very much active. The drones will not defeat al Qaeda by themselves. Nor are they intended to; Obama’s strategy uses them as one tool in a broader diplomatic and military offensive. But this campaign, which is showing signs of progress, has a long way to go yet.
Tags: afghanistan, al Qaeda's, AlQaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden, cia, FBI, Mustafa Ahmed Mohammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid, Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, USA, war, war on terror
Top Construction Firm: WTC Destroyed By Controlled Demolition
May 27, 2010 World News
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Respected Middle East expert and former BBC presenter Alan Hart has broken his silence on 9/11, by revealing that the world’s most prominent civil engineering company told him directly that the collapse of the twin towers was a controlled demolition.
Speaking on the Kevin Barrett show yesterday, Hart said he thought the 9/11 attack probably started as a Muslim operation headed up by Osama Bin Laden but that the plot was subsequently hijacked and carried out by Mossad agents in collusion with elements of the CIA, adding that since its formation, Israel has penetrated every Arab government and terrorist organization.
“My guess is that at an early point they said to the bad guys in the CIA – hey this operation’s running what do we do, and the zionists and the neo-cons said let’s use it,” said Hart, making reference to how top neo-cons like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their fellow Project For a New American Century authors had called for a “catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor,” the year before 9/11.
“The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes,” said Hart, adding that this view was based on his close friendship with consultants who work with the world’s leading civil engineering and construction firm.
Hart asked the company to study the collapse of the twin towers, after which they told him directly, “There’s absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion.”
Hart then explained how the five dancing Israelis seen celebrating the attack on the World Trade Center in New Jersey as it unfolded, who turned out to be Mossad agents, proves at at a minimum Israel knew the attack was going to happen. Hart went further in speculating that the planes had been fitted with transponders and that the Israelis were guiding them in to the towers.
Host Barrett pointed out that to carry out the successful controlled demolition of three of the biggest buildings in history, the conspirators would have to ensure that they were hit, making the use of remote controlled airliners a distinct possibility. In addition, Barrett mentioned the fact that he had interviewed numerous pilots who dismissed the chances of accurately guiding a huge commercial airliner into a building while flying at sea level at around 600 miles per hour, especially considering the alleged 9/11 hijackers struggled to even fly basic Cessna light aircraft.
“Sounding a chilling note, Hart added that the U.S. is in grave danger of an Israeli-instigated false-flag nuclear attack, perhaps using an American nuclear weapon stolen from Minot Air Force Base during the “loose nukes” rogue operation of August, 2007. The motive would be to trigger a U.S. war with Iran, and perhaps to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under cover of war–which Hart is convinced the Zionists are planning to do as soon as the opportunity presents itself,” writes host Barratt.
Given his biography and standing, Hart’s comments are not to be taken lightly. Hart is a former Middle East Chief Correspondent for ITN News and has also presented for BBC Panorama specializing in the Middle East. He was also a war reporter in Vietnam and the first journalist to reach Suez Canal with the Israeli army in 1967. Over the decades, Hart has developed close relationships with numerous high profile political figures, including the Shah of Iran, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres.
Hart has been a successful author for years and has no reason to fabricate the fact that a top construction firm told him point blank that the towers were brought down in a controlled demolition.
In forwarding this information, Hart joins legions of other credible experts who to some extent or other have all publicly challenged the official 9/11 story, with many outright stating that the attacks were an inside job, people like 20-year decorated CIA veteran Robert Baer, who told a radio host that “the evidence points at” 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job.
In addition, no less than 1198 architectural and engineering specialists have signed a petition demanding Congress re-open an official investigation into the 9/11 attack and the collapse of the twin towers.
VIDEO: “Nuclear Terrorism”: Al Qaeda is an Upcoming Nuclear Power according to president Obama
Apr 28, 2010 World News, war on terror
Obama is masking the real issues over nuclear weapons by presenting the idea that nuclear terrorism is a major threat, shared Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Canadian Centre for Research on Globalization.
“What is disturbing about this summit in Washington is the fact that the real threat to global security is nuclear war between countries. It is not Al-Qaeda which in any event is an intelligence asset of the CIA, which is the threat, ”Chossudovsky acknowledged. “It is an elusive network of organizations. The real threat is the threat of nuclear war and particularly the threat of a nuclear attack by the United States and Israel directed against Iran.”
In addition, the summit was useful for the US to establish dialogue with China and Russia regarding the nuclear program of Iran, thinks Chossudovsky. Both China and Russia are strictly against military actions against Iran and do not support economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic, while Obama recently issued a new military nuclear doctrine that admits using nuclear weapons against “rogue states” – implying Iran to be one of them.
“All the NATO countries, headed by the US and including Israel, they have nuclear weapons targeted at Iran,”noted Chossudovsky.
He stated that “The nuclear summit is in fact a smokescreen, a camouflage of the real dangers of nuclear war.”
America’s demand to transfer nuclear materials to some safe place in the US is an absurd operation, believes Chossudovsky.
Michel Chossudovsky told RT that: “As far as it goes, in the present context, the US is the most dangerous threat to global security and what this conference aims at achieving is to diffuse this understanding. It’s a PR campaign which seeks to present the nuclear threat in some distorted way, so that people who listen to the media report will believe that Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden and global terrorism is the issue, rather than the strategic objectives of the US which include now the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.”
“At this stage the US administration is not interested in negotiating, it is interested in creating an environment which will justify a possible nuclear attack on Iran,” concluded Chossudovsky.
Tags: afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, iran, Iraq, nukes, obama, USA, war, war on terror
Iran calls US ‘the world’s only atomic criminal’
Apr 19, 2010 World News
By Damien McElroy in Tehran
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used an international conference in Tehran to condemn the US as the “world’s only atomic criminal”.
“Only the US government has committed an atomic crime. The world’s only atomic criminal lies and presents itself as being against nuclear weapons proliferation, while it has not taken any serious measures in this regard,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a message read to the summit.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the establishment of a new international weapons regime that would stand independent of Western political interference.
The Iranian government staged the meeting in response to President Barack Obama’s summit on nuclear security in Washington at the start of the week.
Iran condemned the 47-nation disarmament summit in Washington on the grounds that the United States holds one of the world’s largest arsenals of nuclear weapons.
Officials boasted that 55 nations had agreed to travel to Iran – more than the number that assembled in Washington – but conceded that the ash cloud over Europe had prevent many delegates from reaching its capital.
In a rambling speech that contained a threat to quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Mr Ahmadinejad said a new “independent international group” should be set up to supervise nuclear disarmament.
“An independent international group which plans and oversees nuclear disarmament and prevents proliferation should be set up,” he said.
“The right to veto, which is undemocratic, inhumane and unfair, should either be annulled, or if some insist on having this right, then some countries from Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe should also have the right to veto in order to reduce its negative outcomes.”
As a prelude to the move, President Ahmadinejad said America and one other country – thought to be France – that had threatened to use nuclear weapons should be suspended from the existing nuclear inspections authority, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Mr Ahmadinejad alleged that America had used “bombs made from nuclear waste” during the Iraq war and that people were still suffering as a result.
Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s chief nuclear official, made clear that the principal target of the gathering was America.
He said: “Iran is always determined to change confrontation to dialogue but the message from Tehran is that international community cannot tolerate the status quo and that the American threat must be condemned.” America and other nations have accused Iran of working to acquire nuclear weapons by producing highly enriched uranium. The UN has levied three rounds of sanctions on Iran in an attempt to force the country to change course.
Iran has rejected the claim and said it is working on civilian nuclear power projects. The Persian Gulf nation has rejected UN demands to limit its nuclear programme.
President Obama used the Washington summit to push for support for further sanctions on Iran from China and Russia as permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Tags: atomic criminal, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, iran, Khamenei, nukes, USA
Pakistan to America: What have you done for us lately?
Mar 22, 2010 Pakistan, pakistan politics
Next week, senior U.S. and Pakistani officials will meet in Washington for the first ever strategic dialogue between the two countries. The Pakistani delegation will be led by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, but make no mistake: at least when it comes to the Pakistani side, this will be the Gen. Ashfaq Kayani show.
If there was any ambiguity remaining as to who’s the principal architect of Pakistan’s national security policy, then it should have dissipated on Tuesday, when Kayani chaired a meeting of federal secretaries — the first time an army chief has done so under a civilian government. They met at the army’s general headquarters, instead of the originally designated venue, the ministry of foreign affairs. Kayani sought to coordinate the government’s agenda for the upcoming talks with the United States, which includes security issues as well as non-military topics, such as agriculture and energy.
When Kayani and company roll into Washington, their objective will be to maximally capitalize upon Pakistan’s peaking strategic value as it pertains to U.S. interests in Afghanistan. Pakistan has a closing window of opportunity to successfully press for its interests more assertively. The Pakistanis, with good reason, believe the United States has one foot out of Afghanistan — even as it surges its presence there — and is dependent on Pakistan to secure a favorable and efficient endgame. At the same time, they fear that an end to the Afghan war and a drop in Pakistan’s utility for the United States will result in a colder, tougher approach by Washington toward Islamabad, combined with a warmer American embrace of arch-rival India. So, for the Pakistani establishment (its military, allied bureaucracy, and political fellow travelers), the challenge is to leverage its short-term utility for the United States to extract benefits that will stretch over a longer-term and insure against potential future losses.
Broadly, the Pakistani establishment seeks to secure Pakistan’s influence in a post-American Afghanistan, deny India a strategic pivot there, and maintain a reasonable degree of strategic parity with rising India. More specifically, Pakistan seeks “tangible deliverances” [sic] — the most ambitious, and perhaps improbable, of them being a civil nuclear deal with the United States akin to the one with India.
Despite statements to the contrary, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship remains transactional and wanting of a long-term vision. American officials frequently state that Pakistan must “do more” to combat militants in its border region with Afghanistan — the phrase has been said so much that it’s become a part of the local political lexicon — and now Pakistani officials are returning the favor. Cementing a U.S.-Pakistan partnership will require forging a shared regional vision. And that will be difficult to develop as long as India remains intransigent on the issue of Kashmir, Pakistan continues to support anti-India insurgents and terrorists (some of whom, such as Lashkar-e Taiba, might have extra-regional ambitions), and both the United States and Pakistan deepen alliances with each other’s rivals (respectively, China and India).
But progress could perhaps be made if Washington delicately reduces New Delhi’s expectations for influence in Kabul, facilitates Pakistan’s partial movement in favor of “good” actors in Afghanistan and push against the Afghan Taliban, and prods both India and Pakistan further along the negotiation table. There is no perfect formula for stability in South Asia, but it will require both India and Pakistan to learn how to share space and for the bigamous United States to carefully manage its relationship with its two warring wives.
Arif Rafiq is president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, which provides strategic guidance on Middle East and South Asian political and security issues. He writes at the Pakistan Policy Blog (www.pakistanpolicy.com).
Tags: AFpak, Kayani, Obama administration, Pakistan, USA, war on terror
Mumbai carnage, Lashkar e Taiba and new Afpak policy
Mar 22, 2010 Pakistan, pakistan politics
Dr Shabir Choudhry
22 March 2010
When Mumbai carnage took place many people pointed fingers to Pakistan and especially Lashkar e Taiba. Pakistan first claimed that its territory was not used for this terrorism, but in view of mounting evidence, reluctantly agreed that ‘non state actors’ could have be involved in it.
With time the evidence was becoming more and more strong, clearly showing involvement of Pakistani personnel; and use of the Pakistani territory. Despite that Pakistani media, government officials and public at large was refuting this and trying to prove that it was local Indians who carried out this terrorism.
Some even came with a novel idea that the Indian intelligence agencies have done this to implicate Pakistan and attack Pakistan. I personally had many discussions with people who strongly believed that it was Indians who did this. I, of course, strongly believed that it was one of the Jihadi groups trained and equipped by Pakistani agencies. They either did it alone or with some help and support of extremist individuals within the ranks of Pakistani agencies.
Of course I was given hard time for advocating this kind of thinking; and those who blamed India for this carnage were hailed as true Kashmiris and friends of Pakistan. And I, as always, was accused of being ‘anti Pakistan’. My conviction was based on my thorough study of terrorist or jihadi groups which operate from Pakistan and how Pakistan authorities from time to time deny things and then eat words when overwhelmed with evidence.
Mumbai Carnage and evidence associated with that is an old story. In Pakistan not many people will deny some involvement of Lashkar now, but still there is no will to take its leadership and other God Fathers of terrorism to task. Pakistan says there are no solid evidence to implicate Jamaat e Dawa and its Chief Molana Hafeez Saeed. However Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaran, on this point said:
“Investigations around the world are carried out in a certain way. If Pakistan does not know how to interrogate Saeed, then they should allow my agents to go in there and do the job. I am willing to get this done”.
Of course Pakistan will never agree to that. Pakistanis can allow America to do certain things, even allow them to kill Pakistani citizens by drone attacks and their sovereignty is not compromised with that; but there is no way on earth they can allow Indians to behave like Americans or even to suggest something on those lines.
That aside, admission of guilt related to Mumbai Carnage by David Headly does not leave much space for Pakistan and Molana Hafeez Saeed. But who is David Headly and what was his role in this matter.
Who is David Headly
He is an American of Pakistani origin. His real name is Dauood Gilani, a son of famous former Director General of Radio Pakistan, Syed Saleem Gilani. His step brother is Daniaal Gilani who is Public Relations Officer of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. Although he is not a related to the Prime Minister, but relationship of both families is such that the Prime Minister went to his house to express his condolences when his father died.
Dauood Gilani was born in Washington in 1960. His father married an American woman when he worked in America for Voice of America. The marriage ended up in divorce and Dauood after studying in Cadet College in Hassan Abdal went back to his mother. In 2005 he changed his name to David Coleman Headley and in 2006 shifted to Chicago.
He claims to have changed his name to David Headly on advice of his bosses in Lashkar e Taiba, who thought it would be easy for him to carry out some missions for them with a non Muslim name. He became part of LeT in 2002 and gained training from them inside Pakistan.
Dauood Gilani or David Headly pleaded guilty to providing information related to the targets hit in Mumbai by terrorists. He went their on mission of the LeT and visited India and Denmark on several occasions. He accepted that he passed on all the information, videos, photos, sketches etc to LeT. He also confessed that he was planning to attack the office of Danish cartoonist who insulted Prophet Mohammed Pbuh.
He accepted all twelve charges after getting this assurance that he would not be hanged or extradited to India, Pakistan or Denmark. According to the American officials David Headly has not only pleaded guilty but has provided very useful information related to secret activities of terrorist groups.
The Americans are still in search of two more of his associates, namely Syed Abdul Rehman Hashim, a retired Major of Pakistan army and Ilyas Kashmiri, a Commander of Operations of Al-Qaeeda.
India can interrogate David Headly
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake has confirmed that Indian investigators will be allowed to interrogate David Headley, but made it clear that David Headly will not be extradited to India or any other country.
However there is indication that he might be extradited if there were additional charges brought against David Headly. Robert Blake said: “But that does not mean that at some future date, some additional charges could not be brought. I do not want to speculate much on the future charges, but at least on these charges he cannot be extradited.”
More is expected of Pakistan
In view of the above it is expected that there will be more pressure on Pakistan to do more on terrorism and come clean on this. Despite what Pakistan has already done in the war against terrorism, it is believed in some quarters that some sections of the Pakistani establishment are still playing double game; and whenever they are cornered they hand – in some more terrorists or Taliban leaders.
That policy is not acceptable to the Americans and other NATO allies. Enough is enough, they say. This Tom and Jerry fight cannot continue anymore. Pakistan has to take some tough decisions; and go to the USA on 24 March with clear mind and clear set of priorities.
Pakistan and America are to hold first Strategic Dialogue at the Ministerial level. Topics of the talks include, economic development, water and energy, education, communication and security, but importance of the meeting could be seen that from the Pakistani side ISI Chief Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha and Commander in Chief General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani will also be involved in talks. The Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Bashir Noman will also take part in the talks, not to mention Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and other senior people.
The meetings in the USA will determine new US Pakistan relationship and a new strategy on war in Afghanistan. Moreover it will surely determine future course of the Pakistani politics. It will decide who will do what. It will also decide who will get promoted and who will be made to retire or hold a new post or play a new role.
Pakistani government had some high level talks to formulate their policies before proceeding to Washington. Interestingly these meetings were held in the GHQ, and not in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as planned. This is very high level Pakistani entourage to visit Washington at this crucial time.
USA is not happy with the war in Afghanistan and wants some tangible results before the mid term elections in November 2010. America is also not happy with what goes on in Pakistan, as political and economic instability in the country affects the war on terrorism.
High on the list of this delegation would be to get a civil nuclear deal, just like what India got; and also to get more funds to stabilise Pakistan’s fragile economy and to make up for the losses incurred during the war on terrorism. Obviously Pakistan is not going to have any luck with the nuclear deal, but they will get more money for other projects with ‘what to do list’ of demands. Pakistani delegation will be even happy with that as they will get more money, which they could divert to other uses, just like their predecessors did in the past.
However, the Americans would like to ensure that their interests are fully protected and for that some new arrangements are being considered. The new arrangements will also provide a safety net to the government and its various institutions which are at loggers head at present. For this purpose it is possible that some kind of ‘super institution’ could be formulated and one of the existing Generals could be elevated to take charge of that for the continuation of existing policies and to keep check and balance.
Writer is Director Diplomatic Committee of Kashmir National Party, political analyst and author of many books and booklets. Also he is Director Institute of Kashmir Affairs.Email:drshabirchoudhry@gmail.com
To view other articles see my blog: www.drshabirchoudhry.blogspot.com
Tags: India, Mumbai Attacks, Nato Forces, Pakistan, USA, war on terror
Operation Breakfast redux: Destabilizing of Pakistan
Feb 18, 2010 News & Events, Pakistan
By Pratap Chatterjee
Sitting in air-conditioned comfort, cans of Coke and 7-Up within reach as they watched their screens, the ground controllers gave the order to strike under the cover of darkness. There had been no declaration of war. No advance warning, nothing, in fact, that would have alerted the “enemy” to the sudden, unprecedented bombing raids.
The computer-guided strikes were authorized by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, just weeks after a new American president entered the Oval Office. They represented an effort to wipe out the enemy’s central headquarters, whose location intelligence experts claimed to have pinpointed just across the border from the war-torn land where tens of thousands of American troops were fighting.
Far from the battlefields where Americans were dying, and no reporters dared to go, who knew whether the bombs that rained from the night sky over remote villages had killed high-level insurgents or innocent civilians? For 14 months the raids continued and, after each one was completed, the commander of the bombing crews was instructed to relay a one-sentence message: “The ball game is over.”
The campaign was called “Operation Breakfast”, and while it may sound like the Central Intelligence Agency’s present air campaign over Pakistan, it wasn’t. You need to turn the clock back to another American war, four decades earlier, to March 18, 1969, to be exact. The target was an area of Cambodia known as the Fish Hook that jutted into South Vietnam, and Operation Breakfast would be but the first of dozens of top secret bombing raids. Later ones were named “Lunch”, “Snack” and “Supper” and they went under the collective label “Menu”. They were authorized by president Richard Nixon and were meant to destroy a (non-existent) “Bamboo Pentagon”, a central headquarters in the Cambodian borderlands where North Vietnamese communists were supposedly orchestrating raids deep into South Vietnam.
Like President Barack Obama today, Nixon had come to power promising stability in an age of unrest and with a vague plan to bringing peace to a nation at war. On the day he was sworn in, he read from the Biblical book of Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” He also spoke of transforming Washington’s bitter partisan politics into a new age of unity. “We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices,” Nixon said.
Return to the Killing Fields
In recent years, many commentators and pundits have resorted to “the Vietnam analogy”, comparing first the American war in Iraq and now in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War. Despite a number of similarities, the analogy disintegrates quickly enough if you consider that US military campaigns in post-invasion Afghanistan and Iraq against small forces of lightly-armed insurgents bear little resemblance to the large-scale war that Lyndon B Johnson and Nixon waged against both southern revolutionary guerrillas and the military of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, who commanded a real army, with the backing of, and supplies from, the Soviet Union and China.
A more provocative – and perhaps more ominous – analogy today might be between the CIA’s escalating drone war in the contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Nixon’s secret bombing campaign against the Cambodian equivalent. To briefly recapitulate that ancient history: In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a “neutralist” king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found “sanctuaries”.
Sihanouk, helpless to do anything, looked the other way. In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group of communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.) They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk – until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began. As the raids intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a US-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.
The grim end of that old story is well known.
Forty years, almost to the day, after Operation Breakfast began, I traveled to the town of Snoul, close to where the American bombs once fell. It is a quiet town, no longer remote, as modern roads and Chinese-led timber companies have systematically cut down the jungle that once sheltered anti-government rebels. I went in search of anyone who remembered the bombing raids, only to discover that few there were old enough to have been alive at the time, largely because the Khmer Rouge executed as much as a quarter of the total Cambodian population after seizing power in 1975.
Eventually, a 15-minute ride out of town, I found an old soldier living alone in a simple one-room house adorned with pictures of the old king, Sihanouk. His name was Kong Kan and he had first moved to the nearby town of Memot in 1960. A little further away, I ran into three more old men, Choenung Klou, Keo Long, and Hoe Huy, who had gathered at a newly built temple to chat.
All of them remembered the massive 1969 B-52 raids vividly and the arrival of US troops the following year. “We thought the Americans had come to help us,” said Choenung Klou. “But then they left and the [South] Vietnamese soldiers who came with them destroyed the villages and raped the women.”
He had no love for the North Vietnamese communists either. “They would stay at people’s houses, take our hammocks and food,” he said. “We didn’t like them and we were afraid of them.”
Caught between two Vietnamese armies and with American planes carpet-bombing the countryside, increasing numbers of Cambodians soon came to believe that the Khmer Rouge, who were their countrymen, might help them. Like the Taliban of today, many of the Khmer Rouge were, in fact, teenaged villagers who had responded, under the pressure of war and disruption, to the distant call of an inspirational ideology and joined the resistance in the jungles.
“If you ask me why I joined the Khmer Rouge, the main reason is because of the American invasion,” Hun Sen, the current prime minister of Cambodia, has said. “If there was no invasion, by now, I would be a pilot or a professor.”
Six years after the bombings of Cambodia began, shortly after the last helicopter lifted off the US Embassy in Saigon and the flow of military aid to the crumbling government of Cambodia stopped, a reign of terror took hold in the capital, Phnom Penh.
The Khmer Rouge left the jungles and entered the capital where they began a systemic genocide against city dwellers and anyone who was educated. They vowed to restart history at Year Zero, a new era in which much of the past became irrelevant. Some two million people are believed to have died from executions, starvation, and forced labor in the camps established by the Angkar leadership of the Khmer Rouge commanded by Pol Pot.
Unraveling Pakistan
Could the same thing happen in Pakistan today? A new American president was ordering escalating drone attacks, in a country where no war has been declared, at the moment when I flew from Cambodia across South Asia to Afghanistan, so this question loomed large. Both there and just across the border, Operation Breakfast seems to be repeating itself.
In the Afghan capital Kabul, I met earnest aid workers who drank late into the night in places like L’Atmosphere, a foreigner-only bar that could easily have doubled as a movie set for Saigon in the 1960s. Like modern-day equivalents of Graham Greene’s quiet American, these “consultants” described a Third Way that is neither Western nor fundamentalist Islam.
At the very same time, CIA analysts in distant Virginia are using pilotless drones and satellite technology to order strikes against supposed terrorist headquarters across the border in Pakistan. They are not so unlike the military men who watched radar screens in South Vietnam in the 1960s as the Cambodian air raids went on.
In 2009, on the orders of Obama, the US unloaded more missiles and bombs on Pakistan than president George W Bush did in the years of his secret drone war, and the strikes have been accelerating in intensity. By this January, there was a drone attack almost every other day. Even if this time around no one is using the code phrase “the ball game is over”, Washington continually hails success after success, terrorist leader after terrorist leader killed, implying that something approaching victory could be just over the horizon.
Tags: afghanistan, cia, Destabilizing of Pakistan, drone attacks, moosad, Operation Breakfast, Pakistan, Raw, US, USA, war on terror
The Dollar Bubble
Jan 26, 2010 Videos
The Dollar Bubble starring Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Jim Rogers, and others. Prepare now for the U.S. dollar collapse.
Tags: $, Dollar, dollar bubble, US economy, USA
