Eleven years later, we are still at war. Bullets, mortars
and drones are still extracting payment. Thousands, tens of thousands, millions
have paid in full. Children and even those yet to be born will continue to pay for
decades to come.
On a single day in Iraq last week there were 29 bombing
attacks in 19 cities, killing 111 civilians and wounding another 235. On Sept 9th, reports indicate 88
people were killed and another 270 injured in 30 attacks all across the country.
Iraq continues in a seemingly endless death spiral into chaos. In his
acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President, Obama claimed he
ended the war in Iraq, well… not quite.
The city of Fallujah remains under
siege. Not from U.S. troops, but from a deluge of birth defects that have
plagued families since the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus by U.S.
forces in 2004. No government studies have provided a direct link to the use of
these weapons because no government studies have been undertaken, and none are
contemplated.
Dr. Samira Alani, a pediatric
specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, told Al Jazeera,
"We have all kinds of defects now,
ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in
numbers you cannot imagine. There are not even medical terms to describe some
of these conditions because we've never seen them until now." The
photographs are available on line if you can bear to look at what we have
wrought. George W. Bush will loudly proclaim his “Pro-life” bona fides, and he’ll
tell you he believes “that every child, born and unborn, ought to be protected
in law and welcomed into life.” Apparently, “every child” doesn’t apply to the
children of Fallujah, and the “law” doesn’t apply to George W. Bush.
Our soldiers, some physically damaged by IED’s, some mentally
destroyed by PTSD, will pay for these wars for the rest of their days. Drug and
alcohol abuse is out of control. Suicide among the troops is an epidemic. 2,916
Americans were lost in the towers on that fateful day, many, many more have
perished in the intervening years.
Today we will be asked to honor the men and woman of our
armed forces, but what does honoring the veterans entail? In
its most recent report, The Veterans Administration estimates about 107,000
veterans are homeless on any given night. Mental illness plagues 45% of
homeless vets and 70% suffer from some kind of substance abuse. So how do you honor our veterans? Are “Support Our
Troops” ribbons still in vogue? How does our government honor our veterans
other than use them as political pawns in stump speeches and cannon fodder for
their wars?
84,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan. While the
occupation is rarely mentioned in the U.S. mainstream media, that doesn’t mean
the killing has stopped. On average, one U.S. soldier dies everyday. Not an enormous sum, unless it is your mother,
father, son or daughter that has perished. Few Americans notice. Afghan loses
are not reported. They have loved ones who grieve as well.
The American public has turned their attention to feeding
their families, keeping their homes, and finding employment. But what of the $2
billion dollars per week we are spending on war in
Afghanistan? What would $2 billion per week look like in our devastated
communities, in our schools, in creating jobs or in caring for our elders? Politicians
in both parties claim our first priority is to reduce the debt. If they were
really serious, if they were honest, they would end this occupation and stop calling
for cuts to Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Social Security.
And what is the price extracted from the Afghan people? Security
is still a dream, even in Kabul. As I write this 6 people have perished in a
suicide bombing outside NATO headquarters, in the heart of Kabul. Several of
them were impoverished street kids, peddling packs of gum to the westerners who
frequent the area.
Hilary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Jan Schakowsky, and other
prominent American women claim American forces are necessary in Afghanistan to
protect the gains made in woman’s rights. On Sept 6th, Emma
Graham-Harrison reported in the Guardian that 3 women in Kabul were attacked by
a group of men because of their work as television actresses. One of the women
was murdered. After seeking treatment at the hospital, the two survivors were
taken to prison, where they face intrusive virginity tests and possible charges
of prostitution or collusion in the attack. They face long prison sentences.
This is not the Taliban; this is woman’s rights in Afghanistan today, rights
that Hilary Clinton fears will be rolled back!
On the streets of Kabul it is not
unusual to see burka clad women clutching starving children begging for spare
change. Poverty and hunger is even worse in Kandahar and Helmand, areas that
have seen some of the most intense fighting of the war. In southern Afghanistan
29.5% of the children are suffering from severe malnutrition. This compares to
famine stricken areas of Africa, yet, officially, there is no famine in
Afghanistan and hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid has flowed
into the country.
In America, 35 million people are
hungry or do not know where their next meal is coming from and 13 million of
them are children. Who benefits from the
“War on Terror”?
On Sept 2nd, Hamid Karzai
announced his choice for the new intelligence chief, Asadullah Khalid. Khalid is
currently the country's minister of tribal and border affairs who oversees its
southern security forces. In 2009 Richard Colvin, Canada's former deputy
ambassador to Afghanistan, testified before Canada's parliament that his team
had uncovered "very credible" evidence of torture, which allegedly
included Khalid's direct involvement. “He was known to have had a dungeon in
Ghazni, his previous province, where he used to detain people for money, and
some of them disappeared," Colvin said in his testimony. "He was
known to be running a narcotics operation. He had a criminal gang. He had
people killed who got in his way." Khalid and Karzai dismiss the
allegations as unfounded.
In Kabul, children freeze to death in the winter, and they
starve to death all year round. Meanwhile
on the edge of Kabul a “New City” is being built. Hamid Karzai’s brother, Qayum
Karzai, the owner of a construction company, benefits as his company “wins”
government contracts without the hassles of competitive bidding. Karzai’s
relatives are also benefiting from lucrative contracts in the oil and mineral
sectors. In late 2011, Watan Oil and
Gas, a company controlled by President Karzai’s cousins Rateb and Rashid Popal
gained a contract with China’s National Petroleum Corporation. In 1989 Rateb was
convicted for smuggling drugs in the U.S. and spent more than eight years in
prison. The Popal family’s company
Watan Risk Management also worked as a contractor for the US forces. In
2010, they were accused of paying off Taliban insurgents with a cut from NATO
contracts. According to the NY Times, another brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai was
involved in the heroin trade and was also on the CIA’s payroll for several years
before his assassination in 2011. The Karzai family now brings in billions of
dollars a year. 42% of Afghans live on less than a dollar a day. So we are bent
on ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban while the government is full of warlords,
gangsters, and drug dealers.
Since America’s intervention in
Afghanistan, the heroin trade has exploded, doubling opium production.
Afghanistan is now the source of 90% of the world’s heroin. This dovetail’s
nicely with America’s “War on Drugs.”
The growth in the heroin trade coupled with the despair of
daily living has contributed to an eruption of drug addiction. Addicts can be
found huddled under bridges throughout Kabul. As these men succumb to
addiction, their families are left to fend for themselves. Heroin floods the
streets of Europe and Russia. Which banks benefit from the enormous cash flows
generated by the heroin trade? Who in the Afghan government benefits?
The corruption is mind-boggling. We support terrorist
elements, most recently in Syria and Libya, but before that in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo,
and Afghanistan, and then find ourselves fighting them down the road. In a reversal of our usual
modus operandi, it has come to light that during the Bush years the CIA
tortured numerous members of the Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group (LIFG), an armed Islamist Group that had worked to overthrow
Gaddafi for 20 years, before
transferring them to Gaddafi’s regime for further torture. Some of these same
fighters rendered and tortured by America and Libya now hold key leadership
posts in the “liberated” Libya.
Private interests in Saudi Arabia continue to fund Sunni
extremists around the world. Wikileaks released a Dec. 2009 cable from the
State Department that complained
that Saudi donors remain the primary financiers of militant groups like
Al-Qaeda. In May 2010, the Sunday Times of London revealed that the Afghan
Financial Intelligence Unit, FinTRACA, reported that since 2006 at least 1.5
billion dollars from Saudi Arabia was funneled to the Taliban in Afghanistan,
with Al-Qaeda withholding a cut for their delivery services. Why is there no outcry from the U.S.?
In 2011 overseas weapons sales by the United States totaled
$66.3 billion, or more than three-quarters of the global arms market. Russia was
second, with $4.8 billion in deals. Who benefits from the War on Terror and who
benefits when America threatens war?
Over half of the sales, or $33.4 billion, consisted of arms sales
to Saudi Arabia. These sales included F-15 fighter jets,
dozens of Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, as well as an array of missiles,
bombs and delivery systems, as well as accessories such as night-vision goggles
and radar warning systems. These sales offset the flow of US dollars to
pay for Saudi oil, and this explains why there is no outrage directed toward
the Saudi regime.
The War on Terror exploits the tragedy of September 11 for
the benefit of a very few. Poor people continue to pay an enormous price, while
the elites, including our own government and the corporations it answers to,
ignores everything but the influx of cash into their coffers. The war business
is profitable if you refuse to count the cost of human lives.
In his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for
President, Obama said, "Our destinies are bound together. A freedom which
only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a
freedom without love or charity, is unworthy of our founding ideals." In
closing, he said, "We travel together. We leave no one behind. We pull
each other up.” Why is it our Presidents fail to include those they bomb in
their lofty sentiments? The simple truth is our destinies are bound together with
those who lie beyond the borders of our country as well.
A young, educated Afghan man, an advisor to Parliament, sees
the corruption of his government and despairs. He asks me, “What is my share in
this world?” He continues, “Absolutely
nothing. And for my child, the same.” His voice trails off. We sit drinking tea
as night comes on.
