Tag: Military Occupation

Framing Afghanistan: What Happened to the 300,000 Man Army the US Has Been Training for the Past 20 Years?

As Afghanistan’s regional capitols continue to fall before advancing Taliban forces, president Biden has decided to send 3,000 US troops back into the country to safeguard the diplomatic corps evacuating the US embassy in Kabul.

Naturally, the corporate media frames each Taliban victory as a direct result

Taliban fighters pose with an abandoned Humvee

of president Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan. The headlines are predictably repetitive: As US Forces Withdraw, the Taliban Gains More Ground. Or something to that effect.

The clearly intended implication is that complete responsibility for Afghanistan’s current, military crisis belongs entirely to Joe Biden.

Thus, the withdrawal of US forces becomes the sole, solitary, efficient cause for the Taliban’s successive victories and Afghanistan’s mounting chaos.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

This steady stream of corporate headlines offer a good example of the way framing works to sell a news story  from one direction rather than another. In other words, we are seeing how framing becomes a tool for propaganda.

Let’s sit back and ask ourselves a few questions, the first of which should be this: what happened to the Afghan military in all this mess?

I have yet to see a single US news headline ask, what to my mind, ought to be the more important question: Why is an ineffective and feeble Afghan army allowing the Taliban to roll victoriously through the country uncontested?

This is the scandalous mystery — or is it such a mystery? — that international media outlets ought to be investigating. Yet, it is being ignored. Why?

For the past 20 years, our esteemed leaders in the Pentagon have sworn time and time again with their right hands placed on a tall stack of very large Bibles, before Congress and the American public, that “we were making excellent progress” in training and equipping the Afghan military.

For decades, US generals have sworn that the Afghan government and all of its people would be protected by an Afghan army of 300,000 men. Each and every one of them fully prepared by the best training and equipment that the Pentagon could provide.

Now, after 20 years of very expensive and utterly empty promises, we have finally seen what American training has accomplished!

Yes, it only took 20 years, but we have successfully trained an Afghan army that is run over by the Taliban like a stray dog on a busy highway.

Yet, I doubt if we will ever see a news headline introducing an honest investigation into this bizarre story, though there are certainly many people ready and able to tell the truth about this colossally misguided boondoggle. (I have my theories, but that must be left for another time.)

So, don’t be misled by the misdirection of our corporate, militaristic propaganda.

The tragic mess now on display in Afghanistan is the clearest evidence yet that president Biden made the right decision. Our presence in Afghanistan has almost certainly left the country in worse condition than when we first invaded.

And even then, American policy toward Afghanistan had already made a mess of the nation’s internal affairs.

Let’s not forget that as far back as 1979 both President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski were more than happy to sacrifice the people of Afghanistan on the altar of America’s anti-Soviet foreign policy.

In effect, we created the Taliban to fight the Soviets. We prompted the civil war that has torn the country into pieces over these past 40 years! It is only right and fitting that they are now ready to haunt our backsides until we are finally gone.

Don’t be misled. It is long past time for the US to focus on helping people, not with bombs, drones, or invading armies, but with old fashioned diplomacy, financial aid, humanitarian assistance, and humility.

Check Out My Recent Interview on the DetermineTruth Podcast

Dr. Rob Dalrymple and Vinnie Angelo both host the DetermineTruth podcast available at Patheos, an evangelical platform for a variety of religious blogs and websites.

Rob and Vinnie recently contacted me in order to interview me about my forthcoming book, Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionist Collaboration in the Suffering of the Palestinian People.

Dr. Rob Dalrymple

My interview is about 1 hour long. You can watch the video version of my discussion with Rob and Vinnie about Christian Zionism and my forthcoming book on YouTube here or you can listen to the audio-only version at the DetermineTruth website  here.

Pastor Vinnie Angelo

Rob and Vinnie also discuss their own eye-opening awakenings to the problems of Christian Zionism and the oppression of the Palestinian people in an introductory discussion here.

For Israel, the Murder of Innocent Palestinians Never Ends

US media regularly repeats Israeli talking points about “terrorist attacks” (the common description of unarmed civilians protesting in the streets) against Israel. Yet, these same outlets remain mute about Israel’s daily terrorist attacks against Palestinians.

It’s as if US corporate media is joined at the hip to the Israeli government propaganda department.

Israel may not be carpet-bombing Gaza at the moment — though bombing

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

has continued fairly consistently throughout the summer — but killing Palestinians in the West Bank continues apace without interruption.

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy aptly labels the Israeli shooters as “death squads.”

Mr. Levy’s latest article in Haaretz newspaper describing the recent murders of 4 innocent, young men — stories you will never see covered by US corporate media — is entitled “The Media Yawns at the Israeli Army’s Death Squads.”

Israeli terror is at it again. The Israel Defense Forces’ death squads chalked up another successful week: four bodies of innocent Palestinians piled up between the two Fridays. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between the four incidents in which four sons were killed, but the link cannot be broken.

In all these cases, soldiers chose shooting to kill as the preferred option. In all four cases another way could have been chosen: Arrest them, aim for the legs, don’t do anything or simply don’t be there at all. But the soldiers chose to kill. It’s probably easier for them that way.

They come from different branches of the army with different backgrounds, but they share the incredible ease with which they kill, whether they have to or not.

They kill because they can. They kill because they’re convinced that this is how they’re expected to act. They kill because they know that nothing is cheaper than the life of a Palestinian. They kill because they know that the Israeli media will yawn and not report a thing. They kill because they know that no harm will come to them, so why not? Why not kill a Palestinian when possible?

They killed a 12-year-old boy and a 41-year-old plumber. They killed a 17-year-old youth and a 20-year-old young man attending a funeral, all in one week. An Israeli slogan during the 1948 war went “To arms, every good man,”

Israeli soldiers at the funeral of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Alami in the West Bank town of Beit Ummar Thursday. Credit Emil Salman

leading later to the concept of the IDF’s “purity of arms.” Four in one week, for no reason, with no hesitation, with no terrorist facing them. Four executions of young men with dreams, families, plans and loves.

None of the four endangered the soldiers, certainly not in a way that justified lethal fire. Thirteen bullets at a car driving by innocently, carrying a father and his three small children. Shooting a plumber holding a wrench and claiming that he was “moving rapidly toward the soldiers.” Three bullets at the stomach of a 17-year-old who was on his way to take his brother home.

All this can be called terror; there is no other definition. All this can be called the actions of death squads; there is no other description. It sounds horrible, but it really is horrific.

It could be less horrific if the Israeli media bothered to report on it, possibly shocking Israelis. It could be much less horrific if IDF commanders took the necessary steps given their army’s murderous recklessness. But most of the media believed that the killing of a child interests no one or is unimportant, or both, so this shocking incident wasn’t reported on.

If the soldiers had shot a dog – also a shocking act, of course – it would have attracted more attention. But a dead Palestinian child? What happened? Why should it interest anyone, why is it important?

“Are you working for the Arabs?” journalist Yinon Magal maliciously tweeted, addressing Haaretz’s Hagar Shezaf, virtually the only journalist who covered the boy’s funeral. This is the new journalistic ethos: Reporting the truth is tantamount to working for the Arabs.

Let’s leave aside the media of trivia and nonsense that was busy to the hilt with the modeling agent suspected of sexual misconduct and with lists of pedophiles – what does the media have to do with the killing of children? The question is: Where are the military commanders and the political leaders?

Their disgraceful silence leads to only one conclusion: They believe that this killing is acceptable. It’s exactly what they expect of soldiers: the killing of innocents. There is no other way to explain everyone’s silence without even a semblance of condemnation.

If the killers of the boy Mohammed al-Alami are still not in custody, then the IDF under Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi – a person known to speak in lofty terms about values – is saying that the soldiers acted correctly. If the paratroopers who killed Mohammed Tamimi by firing three bullets into his body from their armored jeep are still walking around freely in the West Bank, this means the army salutes them.

And if the IDF salutes them, we really are talking about death squads, just like in the most dreadful regimes.

The Seldom Reported Legacy of the US Military Occupation of Afghanistan

Not since the days immediately following the Twin Towers attacks on 9/11 has the war in Afghanistan received as much media attention as it is getting today. Now, everyone is for its continuation, or so it seems.

Corporate media war-mongering knows no bounds.

President Biden’s plans to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan has suddenly turned every broadcast journalist into a distressed, hand-wringing, honorary member of Human Rights Watch, fretting and fussing over the future state of an Afghanistan free of American military forces.

Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that US forces will continue to dominate the Afghan landscape (and neighboring Pakistan) with armed drones dropping bombs and missiles into peoples’ homes, a legion of civilian contractors pursuing American business interests, and intelligence operations manipulating the government and assassinating anyone who gets in their way.

Not since music producer Phil Spector’s famous “wall of sound” have I heard such a fully orchestrated, monotonous, uniform wall of repetitious lament from corporate news broadcasters universally expressing, whether explicitly or by implication, their desire to keep US troops in a war overseas.

Never mind that this war – which has always included US attacks in neighboring Pakistan – has dragged on for over 20 years; never mind that the original mission of capturing Osama bin Laden was accomplished long ago; never mind that the recent release of the Afghanistan Papers demonstrates what many have long suspected – that no one in the Pentagon, State, or Defense Departments ever had any hope for the situation’s improvement, much less a military solution to our “why can’t we fix Afghanistan?” query.

Nevertheless, everyone from Fox News to MSNBC is now lamenting president Biden’s “irrational,” even “cowardly” decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Suddenly, it appears that American elites actually care about the fate of poor

Army troops returning in December from a deployment to Afghanistan. Credit…John Moore Getty Images

Muslims overseas. Thoughts of a barbaric Taliban regime imposing their version of Sharia law over women and girls is more than suburban coffee table conversations can tolerate.

But the fact of the matter is that the only reason CNN and CBS news anchors now want us all to believe that Afghanistan’s future (sans US group troops) looks so devastatingly bleak, is because these same people have thoroughly and irresponsibly ignored the lives of the Afghan people for nearly 20 years.

Propaganda is not only a matter of spreading misinformation. It also requires withholding inconvenient truths.

Think about it.

How often has the American public been updated, on a regular basis, about the details of what the US presence in Afghanistan has meant for the country’s civilian population?

The answer is, rarely if ever.

How often have we been told about the tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed in the frequent US drone strikes?

What about the regular CIA assassinations; murders that can wipe out entire families, including young children?

(Below. Watch “Living Under Drones,” approx. 7 minutes)

 

No. Only the ignorant or the propagandists will believe that the future suddenly looks bleak for the Afghan people after America “leaves.” The truth is that sharing their country with America’s occupation army has always been a nightmare for the Afghan and Pakistani people.

Just ask the little children who instinctively run in fear every time they imagine a noise overhead because they are terrified of another drone attack.

In the early days of planning in the Oval Office, there was a nanosecond given over to the suggestion that al Qaeda should be treated as an international criminal organization, and that the Twin Towers attack should be viewed as a horrible crime rather than an act of war.

Two possible paths were laid out before president George W. Bush. The first option, with important historical precedent, is explained in a 2006 report, 9/11: Five Years Later. The Forward to this government report explains that: “Before 9/11, combating terrorism was treated largely as a law enforcement problem.”

Not anymore.

 President Bush forever changed the US attitude towards “terrorism” – which still remains horribly (and conveniently) ill-defined.

Eager to declare himself “a war president,” George W. Bush acquiesced to the military bureaucracy’s (which naturally includes the weapons manufacturers who have made billions since this war began) insistence that 9/11 be viewed as an act of war requiring a military (rather than an international law-enforcement) response.

The people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Yemen, AND the United States have all suffered the devastating, inhumane consequences of that egotistical, presidential decision ever since.

Only those who have not been paying attention will now believe that US forces have been protecting Afghan women and children, civilians who will suddenly come under threat by our withdrawal.

Israel’s Two Day Old Government Breaks Cease Fire, Bombs Gaza, Again

The neighbor kids threw some firecrackers over the fence yesterday into my backyard. My dog was freaked out.

I had to teach them a lesson.

So, I fired up my oversized Hummer, with the extra-wide, off road, knobby

Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett

tires. I put it into overdrive and crashed through the side of their house at high speed. In the process I ran over their cat, clipped the mother making coffee, and popped out the sliding glass doors into their backyard.

That’ll learn ’em.

——————

It only took Israel’s new government two days to rain more terror down on the people of Gaza.

Jake Johnson has an article at CommonDreams updating us on Israel’s latest aggression against the people of Gaza. His piece in entitled, “After Far-Right Marchers Chant ‘Death to Arabs,’ New Israeli Government Bombs Gaza“:

“The problem is bigger than Netanyahu—it’s apartheid.”

Just hours after far-right marchers chanted “Death to Arabs!” during a demonstration in the streets of Jerusalem, Israeli war planes bombarded the occupied Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning in the first series of airstrikes launched by the new government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former IDF officer who once boasted that he has “killed a lot of Arabs.”

While initial reports indicated that no Palestinians were killed in the new

The Israeli military said it launched airstrikes against Hamas forces in Gaza early Wednesday. Credit…Mahmud Hams Agence France-Presse. Getty Images

bombing campaign, the air raid intensified fears of a fresh wave of violence by the Israeli government just weeks after a tenuous cease-fire agreement paused Israel’s deadly 11-day assault on Gaza last month, which killed more than 240 people.

The Israeli military characterized the latest airstrikes as retaliation for “incendiary balloons” released into Israel from the Gaza Strip. The balloons reportedly caused at least ten fires in Israel.

“Homemade fire balloons versus U.S. bombs. Is there a better example of the disproportionate use of force?” asked Ariel Gold, national co-director of the anti-war organization CodePink.

Abu Malek, whom the Associated Press identified as “one of the young men launching the balloons,” said the incendiary objects were released into Israel in response to a far-right, government-sanctioned march through Jerusalem, where demonstrators rallied alongside several members of the Israeli Knesset and chanted “Death to Arabs!”

Israeli police fired rubber bullets at Palestinians who tried to disrupt the march, which reached the main entrance to the Old City’s Muslim quarter.

“This is a genocidal chant. Let’s call it what it is,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.). “I represent many within the Jewish community who disavow and condemn this hateful language. So why does only a small portion of our Congress?”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the first Palestinian-American woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, said that “after racist and violent ‘death to Arabs’ marches earlier today in Jerusalem, children in Gaza are being woken by bombs in the middle of the night.”

“Israel’s government doesn’t value Palestinian lives,” Tlaib added. “It has managed a decades-long ethnic cleansing project, funded by the U.S.”

The Israeli airstrikes came just over 48 hours after the country’s parliament narrowly voted to replace former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Bennett, a change that defenders of Palestinian rights did not applaud given the latter’s record and policy stances, which include support for annexing the occupied West Bank in violation of international law.

“While being hailed by many as the opportunity for a fresh start, Naftali Bennett is at best a continuation of Netanyahu’s policies and at worst an ideologue whose positions are to the right of Netanyahu’s,” Gold of CodePink wrote for Common Dreams on Monday.

 

The Title of My Forthcoming Book on Christian Zionism

Often times, authors are not allowed to pick the title for their books. The publisher typically makes that decision.

I recently learned, however, that Wipf and Stock Publishers has decided to use the title I proposed for my next book. I am letting you know about this so you can keep your eyes open for it once it becomes available (perhaps in the fall).

The title will be Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.

For those unfamiliar with the term, “Christian Zionism” (CZ) refers to a large segment of the Christian church who believe that the modern state of Israel is God’s chosen nation, now preparing the way for Christ’s second coming.

May of these folks will talk about reading “the signs of the times” anticipating various beasts, the antichrist, and the final battle of Armageddon, all occurring in the land of Israel.

My argument with Christian Zionism takes a three-pronged approach.

First, I dissect the basic problems with CZ Bible-reading, showing why and how their approach to scripture is wrong. Bad methods can only produce bad results. CZ has no Biblical foundation.

Second, I trace the history of political Zionism — the branch of Zionism that gave birth to the Jewish nation-state — and its abusive treatment of the indigenous Palestinians.

Israel’s establishment was the last venture of western, settler colonialism. The goal was to create a Jewish supremacist state (yes, go ahead and make the

Illegal Jewish-only settlements & related programs funded by Christian donations from the US

implied comparison to white supremacy in this country), where Jews alone claimed all the rights and privileges of citizenship. The natives were displaced, replaced, and excluded by European, Jewish settlers who built a society only for themselves.

Third, I tell a number of eyewitness accounts detailing the unrelenting brutality of Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank. Captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel continues to violate international law by annexing large portions of this territory and building Jewish-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

The United States is Israel’s largest source of foreign aid, to the tune of nearly $4 billion each year.

Christian Zionists are the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in this country.

The logic is self-evident.

Israel will not change its behavior until the USA stops financing their military. The US government will not cut Israel’s foreign aid budget without consistent, long-term pressure to this end from American citizens.

Here is the logic  that led me to write Like Birds in a Cage.

My prayers and my hopes are focused on educating American evangelicals, convincing them that not only does Israel not deserve the church’s support, but that Israel is a rogue state built on ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

No Christian, no congregation, no denomination, no non-profit organization, no country can ever support a nation like Israel with a clear conscience.

I hope you will look for my book and buy copies for you and your friends when it comes out. My Palestinian friends need your help.

“Our Lives Don’t Matter to the World”

Today I have been in contact with one of my Palestinian friends in the West Bank (what Israel calls Samaria and Judea).

A demonstration in Bethlehem

Street demonstrations have been organized in several cities to show the people’s outrage over the Israeli attacks against worshipers praying in the al-Aqsa mosque.

They are also protesting Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Gaza now killing men, women, and children.

The fact that Israel claims that Hamas has launched over 1,100 missiles into Israel demonstrates how amateurish and ineffective the Hamas rockets

Israeli soldiers in Bethlehem streets

really are. They lack targeting abilities and the vast majority explode in unpopulated areas.

I asked my friend if he thought these tragic events were the beginning of another Intifada (Arabic for “uprising.” Since the 1980s, there have been two intifadas in Israel-Palestine.)

He said, “Yes. I think it’s already begun.”

Israeli soldiers are attacking and arresting many unarmed, peaceful demonstrators. But this is standard fare in the Occupied Territories.

Palestinians have no civil rights whatsoever.

My friend asked me why the US president won’t tell Israel to stop the Gaza bombings.

You can read his words for yourself:

People here are fed up. I hope this will be over soon. Lives are lost. This seems like the only route for us to get attention. (Israel’s) persecutions and more grabbing of lands and rights are unbeatable now.  They (Israelis) keep pushing and killing and we are asked to keep quiet and peaceful. They push and kill but our lives don’t matter to the world, and this so-called civilized country (the US) is calling us the terrorists and poor Israel has the right to defend itself. The US administration calls the security of Israel a matter of American national security. Isn’t there a courageous journalist to ask the speaker of the house,  “Why is that so?”

I wish I could tell him that Palestinian lives DID matter to the United States.

But, then, I would by lying.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib Gives Powerful Speech About Palestine on the Floor of Congress

 

 

 

Reframing: It’s Not a “Conflict.” It’s Colonialism

Israel was the last successful colonial project taken on by the British Empire — THE western, colonial power par excellence. We cannot accurately understand what is happening in Israel/Palestine today until we grasp that point.

As in every project of settler colonialism throughout history, the native people must be replaced, eliminated, expelled, made to disappear.

When the natives resist, the colonizers justify their rampant land theft and brutalization of the indigenous people by labeling them as sub-human savages, blood thirsty brutes, terrorists who live only for violence.

This dehumanization of the native people frames the settlers’ ongoing attacks against the stubborn natives as justifiable acts of “self-defense.” Even ethnic cleansing is excusable as the noble act of brave pioneers paving the way for civilization.

Colonialism always creates conflict. But colonial conflicts are always asymmetrical. That is, one side is the conquering aggressor who comes with superior weapons and technology.

For my money, the colonial aggressor is always in the wrong.

The other side, the native side, is always the victim forced to act defensively, whose resistance against colonial aggression is turned against them as justification for another wave of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Remember Geronimo.

What is happening right now is Israel/Palestine is NOT another round in a long-standing “conflict” between Jews and Arabs.

That is the dominant framing chosen by Israel’s Jewish colonizers. It is the framing that gets all the air-time and publicity because Israel is the overpowering aggressor who holds all the power in a very, very asymmetrical relationship with the suppressed and occupied Palestinians.

The only accurate, historical framing for the violence occurring today in Jerusalem is to see that Israeli colonialism continues by force of arms.

Israel is still colonizing the West Bank; still working to eradicate “the natives.” Oh, how troublesome those pesky natives can be.

Palestinians, for their part, are still resisting their colonizers; still standing up against the most powerful military in the Middle East.

No, this is not a conflict. It is a bloody, grotesque anachronism.

An outpost of western colonialism in the Middle East, originally underwritten by a now defunct imperial empire, is still trying to use 19th century tactics in a 21st century world.

So far, the world has turned a blind eye to Israel’s colonial, ethnic cleansing industry. I hope and pray that that time is coming to an end.

Below is a good clip from Al Jazeera News giving a fairly balanced perspective on the recent attacks against Palestinian worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque.

At the 6:47 mark, an interview begins with Ines Abdel Razek, the Advocacy Director for the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD). She does an excellent job of explaining what is happening today in Jerusalem and placing it in its proper context.

Israeli Soldiers Arrest 230 Palestinian Children in the West Bank During the First Three Months of 2021

Imagine that one of these children is your son or daughter.

Imagine that you live under military law.

You have no civil rights; no freedom of speech; no freedom of movement or right to assemble; no right to protest or object to your mistreatment.

Imagine that you can be arrested without charge for anything at any time, based solely on the whim of the soldier who grabs you and throws you into the back of his truck.

Imagine that your child will be forcefully “interrogated” as he/she sits alone in a concrete cell surrounded by hostile, aggressive soldiers.

Imagine that these soldiers will hit, kick, slap, punch, ridicule, and humiliate your child with impunity. And you alone will be left to treat his/her injuries.

Imagine that you have no recourse for complaint. No one listens to your demands for an explanation. They may not even tell you where your child was taken.

Imagine that your complaints can only be heard by a military judge in a military court where Palestinians effectively never win a case.

This is Palestinian life under Israeli occupation.