This is presumably not what you want your client president, recently installed at considerable expense, to say after a report that U.S. led troops dragged 10 civilians, eight of them schoolchildren aged 11 to 17, from their beds in the middle of the night last week, handcuffed some of them, and then executed them.
PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI: We are going to ask the international community to end nighttime raids on Afghan homes. We are going to ask them to stop arresting Afghans. We are going to ask them to reduce and eliminate civilian casualties. We are going to ask them not to have Afghan prisoners taken. Those are the most sensitive areas of sovereignty for any nation, and we want to have that sovereignty retained and taken back.
Imagine the reaction if Taliban fighters did something, or even were reported to have done something, similar in this country.
This story floated gently through the traditional media. The Globe, for example, ran an LA Times wire story on 29 December that changed the children to “civilians” in the lead paragraph. The NYT introduced them as “men.” The Globe followed up with an AP wire story on New Year’s eve and had nothing further to say on the subject: no coverage of street protests against the killings, or Karzai’s statement. Even pathetic little BMG, which costs $15 a month to run, managed to note that story in a post by JohnD.
The Internet, however, offers reality-based alternatives far more powerful than this site. You can watch Karzai himself make his statement on YouTube. This link will take you to an informative DemocracyNow! interview today with the Times of London reporter who broke the story. BBC, Voice of America, CommonDreams.org, and Rawa News stories from last week offer a useful map and striking pictures.
There has been an alternative press in the US for a long time, but never before has its distribution been the same as the traditional media or its scale comparable to, or even greater than, the news resources assembled by the largest information corporations.
In the instant case, the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan appears to have suffered a significant setback.
huh says
Even pathetic little BMG… managed to note that story?
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p>In fact, the BMG note is simply a quote from an MSNBC article. It’s MSNBC who said:
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p>
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p>If you’re going to diss the MSM and promote BMG, you might not want to do it using a reference to the MSM. It kinda hurts your point.
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bob-neer says
The new technology of the Internet has made it pitifully easy to note details like this. The Globe could have linked to that story just as easily (arguably, more easily since they have paid staff), but for whatever reason they didn’t. Thus, one is better informed by reading BMG than the Globe on this story, even though all John did was link to an MSNBC story. That’s no great kudos for BMG, in my opinion — we’re talking about a low base — but it is testimony to the power of this new media.
huh says
Yes, that makes sense. My apologies.
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p>The part that confuses is me is AFAIK all the major newspapers have political bloggers of some stripe. Why didn’t at least one of them catch this? I saw it on one of the weekly round-ups as well. It’s not like it was completely under the radar.
hubspoke says
To pile on to this cheery post, after eight years, 1572 coalition deaths, who knows how many Afghan deaths and untold billions of dollars, “We’re no more than fingernail deep in our understanding of the environment” in Afghanistan, according to this “damning indictment of the work of US spy agencies” from Major General Michael Flynn, America’s deputy chief of military intelligence in Afghanistan.
amberpaw says
On this one, based on the data available, Hamid Karzai is right. And after “K Street” and Blagoievich, taking the “holier than thou” approach as to “corruption” is pretty thin, too. Not to mention the impact of the lobbyist community on “health care reform” so called.
sabutai says
Declare victory and leave. That’s what Obama is planning to do, from what I can tell.
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p>Leave soon, or wait for more people to die and leave then. Japan is barely a democracy, and we’ve had troops there for over 60 years.
christopher says
Not sure why you say that. Freedom House appears to disagree. I usually cite Japan as evidence that we CAN nation-build and develop relationships with a nation that we previously were at war with and even bombed.
sabutai says
Japan certainly has a functioning system, but the astoundingly corrupt Liberal Democrats have ruled Japan during almost the entire postwar period. Granted, the opposition is running the government right now, but considering the recent resignation of the Finance Minister and a near crack-up over the US presence in Okinawa, I don’t expect the government to last through 2010. The LDP is a patronage-driven system that is leagues beyond the excesses of Massachusetts Democrats. And unlike former one-party states such as Mexico and Italy, an effective alternative was yet to mature.
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p>The revolving door between lobbying and government is worse than in our own country, and decisions made by unaccountable bureaucrats (particularly at MITI, the Japanese trade bureau) drive a lot of policy. Add in the questionable practices of a police system wherein over 95% of arrested suspects confess before the trial and detention without representation or visits is common, and I’d say that in many substantive ways Japan has not reached effective democracy.
hubspoke says
with substantial but not total withdrawal.
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p>(Can one embed a photo in a comment on BMG?)
hubspoke says
with substantial but not total withdrawal:
mplo says
n/t
kirth says
has been deleted”
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p>What was it?
hubspoke says
If you click the blue line in my post just above the my other post (“with substantial but not total withdrawal”), you should see a photo of a text block from the Washington Spectator about one idea for an Afghan strategy.
somervilletom says
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p>The embedded image you posted is a link to a missing flickr photo. Perhaps a copy/paste error? The syntax is fine.
hubspoke says
I’ve yet to master that skill – I tried to follow the multimedia formatting rules here, to no avail. I uploaded it to flickr and then to photobucket.
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p>In any case, here’s a brand new article – and a long one at 5760 words – on Obama’s Afghanistan Strategy by Rory Stewart in the New York Review of Books.
howland-lew-natick says
Strategically, the Taliban won.
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p>They only have to stay alive to win. We, on the other hand, squander billions of tax dollars on a country the size of Texas with a population twice that of Massachusetts for whatever reason we are there. (I’ve forgotten why we are there. Is it to punish the Taliban, do nation building, show ’em how to skateboard, end their nuke programs?) Were we to get all the profits from the opium fields – which we don’t – we can’t recoup the billions of wasted dollars. They just have to wait until our own military/industrial powers bankrupt our country.
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p>Now we have the surge. The military will be squeezed to get results. That always means bodycount. The higher costs of the war will have to be justified. Look for the pressure to be put on intelligence analysts to interpret groups of people as Taliban to boost the bodycount, even if they are women washing clothes at the river. How long will it take before one of these strikes makes it to international attention?
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p>When will the national shame start?
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p>“Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
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p>-WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE
words and music by Pete Seeger”