The War Falls Apart 44


General Stanley McChrystal has tendered his resignation (not necessarily accepted) as the rows about his crazy surge and plans to make Jalalabad a second Fallujah spill out into the public domain.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100044536/breaking-general-stanley-mcchrystal-tenders-his-resignation/

UK Special Envoy Sherard Cowper-Coles – who is less keen on killing people but believes we should occupy Afghanistan for at least a generation – has been sent away on extended leave to lie down for a few weeks in a darkened room.

Meanwhile the activists of the Democrats are finally getting their arses into gear in a serious way. This is just one of scores of examples:

http://www.democrats.com/oppose-33-billion-war-supplemental-for-2010?cid=ZGVtczU3MjU1OGRlbXM%3D

The Danes, Poles and Canadians are planning to leave, and it was curiously the US reaction to the Israeli attack on Turkish vessels that lifted the taboo at NATO HQ on questioning the wisdom of following the US approach in Afghanistan.

Meantime a gentleman name Shahzad, unrepentant Times Square attempted bomber, demolished the entire rationale for the Afghan War. No matter how the tabloids portray it –

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/06/23/times-square-bomber-s-rant-i-am-a-muslim-soldier-i-m-guilty-100-times-over-115875-22352961/

the import of Shahzad’s words is plain:

Replying to judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum’s questions over whether he feared killing children, Shahzad said: “I consider myself… a Muslim soldier. It’s a war. I am part of the answer to the US terrorising the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. On behalf of that, I’m revenging the attack.

“Living in the United States, Americans only care about their people but they don’t care about people elsewhere in the world when they die.” Shahzad told the court he armed his vehicle with three separate devices – a fertiliser-fuelled bomb packed in a gun cabinet, a set of propane tanks and gas canisters rigged with fireworks.

He added if America did not get out of Iraq and Afghanistan “we will be attacking the US”.

The notion that occupying Afghanistan prevents terrorism at home is plainly, in the words of Richard Barrett, formr head of counter-terrorism at MI6, “Absolute rubbish”.

Mr Barrett, who formerly headed counter-terrorism for the Secret Intelligence Service, dismissed the argument advanced by British ministers that the presence of 9,500 British troops in Afghanistan would reduce the threat to the UK.

“That’s complete rubbish. I’ve never heard such nonsense,” he said, warning that the presence of foreign troops risked inflaming anti-western sentiment among British Muslim communities.

“I’m quite sure if there were no foreign toops in Afghanistan, there’d be less agitation in Leeds, or wherever, about Pakistanis extremely upset and suspicious about what Western intentions are in Afghanistan and Pakistan”

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/06/losing_afghanis.html#comments

Interestingly enough precisely the same points – that they had intended to attack as part of the war in Afghanistan – were made in court in the UK by Blackburn’s Ishaq Kanmi and Krenar Lusha when they were convicted recently of terrorist offences, but nowhere does this seem to be reported in the UK media.

I am now hopeful that we are approaching the end of the occupation of Afghanistan as the facts on the ground make the propaganda of the hawks irrelevant. If NATO does not wish to admit defeat, then it has only weeks to kick start serious work on a negotiated settlement with the Pashtun which it can claim as a reason to withdraw.


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44 thoughts on “The War Falls Apart

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  • Suhayl Saadi

    What is it with the phrase, ‘silly gooses’? It seems to appear recurrently on various blog-sites. Angrysoba, you use it occasionally, I note. And Larry uses it as well. And what about the prolonged vowel strings?

    Could this be a conspiracy of the ornithological kind? Everyone knows that birds are descended from dinosaurs.

  • Larry from St Loopy

    Gog and Magog and Bogey Gog are cummin to get ya.

    Don’t say you weren’t warned!

    To prevent you and your kids being scared further, please send a $100 donation to Weapons for Weirdos Inc, care of raving Reverend Loopy Larry of St Louis.

    And just remember folks. Every dollar you send is enough to wipe out one whole muzzie family. Just think what we can do with a hundred bucks.

    And don’t forget, you can always assist the brave fighters of the Israeli Attack Forces by sending them slices of pizza and soft drinks online.

    http://pizzaidf.org/

    Aw shucks.

    Just love those guys.

  • somebody

    Silly goooses…..

    I have found it annoying also. It is a deliberate putdown – we are stupid, silly, etc

    Some memory of Yiddish in their lexicon?

    Subject: “Only in MY family…”

    I will respond to [Dovid Braun’s] challenge. In my family a child who

    fooled around, acted silly, etc., could be called “a silly gazinkas…”

    After Yiddish speakers assured me there was no such word in Yiddish (and

    it certainly isnt in English), I decided it was a family word made up in

    the following way: On the pattern of English “silly goose”, the Yiddish

    word gants (well known in the family in the expression ‘gants gut, kachke

    besser’– we tried to be funny in Yiddish even with minimal language

    skills) was given the *Lithuanian* suffix -inkas, actually an agent

    suffix like English -er in pisher (:-)). My zeyde certainly knew

    Lithuanian, and even moderate contact with the language would familiarize

    one with this very common suffix. (The Lith word for goose is ‘zha:sis,

    so the whole word ‘gazinkas’ isnt Lith.) The combining of a Yiddish

    word with a Lith suffix would contribute to the humorous effect in the

    whole context. My mother’s generation, with much less linguistic

    sophistication than my zeyde, dropped the first ‘n’, and *ganzinkas

    became gazinkas. Anyway, I’d really be surprised and delighted if this

    turned out to NOT be a family word!

    http://mendele.commons.yale.edu/updated/vol04/vol04.157.txt

  • somebody

    Is there a Union of Ex UK Ambassadors?

    It would be interesting to know what Cowper-Coles got up to during his stint in Israhell. We probably will never know.

  • somebody

    I suppose ‘vehicle accident’ is MODspeak for ‘blown up’. Lt Col Carr Smith is at risk of repeating his platitudes this week.

    Four soldiers dead in Afghanistan

    Page last updated at 09:50 GMT, Thursday, 24 June 2010 10:50 UK

    Four British soldiers have been killed in a vehicle accident in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.

    The soldiers, part of a police advisory team, were killed near Gereshk, Helmand province, on Wednesday evening.

    They were part of a team that was travelling to help in an incident at a nearby check point when they died.

    Lt Col James Carr-Smith, said: “They will be sorely missed and their actions will not be forgotten.” Their next of kin have been informed of their deaths.

    Three soldiers were from 1st Battalion The Mercian Regiment and one soldier was from 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, who was attached to 1st Battalion The Mercian Regiment, died in Nahr-e Saraj.

    Their deaths mean the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001 stands at 307.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Interesting, ‘somebody’. On the other hand:

    “Geese are commonly described as silly, as in the proverb that “it is a silly goose that comes to the fox’s sermon”.[1] The phrase “silly goose” is of some antiquity, as the Old English word seely was commonly applied to animals such as sheep and geese, indicating their careless innocence and hapless but blessed nature…” (from Wikipedia)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goose

    Does this share an etymological origin with the Anglo-Saxon word, ‘saelig’ (‘holy’) which led to the phrase, ‘Silly Sussex’ (‘The Holy Land of the South Saxons’)?

    Yet it is the use of ‘gooses’ instead of ‘geese’ which fascinates one. There is the suggestion of incoordination, of even greater stupidity, in the word, ‘gooses’, it suggests dyspraxia, and of course, there’s the alliterative effect of the multiple ‘s’.

    Nonetheless, it has an affectionate ring. One wonders if it may be the sort of thing an old grandmother would say to a fond grandchild.

    But does this have an NYC ring to it? Perhaps that links-in somehow with your analysis of the phrase. Maybe we should get Noam Chomsky onto it!

  • Richard Robinson

    gooses ? I read it as a deliberate wrongness intended to convey contempt, “you’re not even worth speaking sensibly to”.

  • Larry from St. Louis

    Note that Craig Murray has referred to 911 truthers as “conspiraloons.”

  • Suhayl Saadi

    The war falls apart. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq – havoc created by NATO et al. That is what is important. That is what this thread is about. War economics. Imperialism. Blood. Death. In our names, with our tax dollars/ pounds/ Euros. By our (elected) leaders.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    The war is killing civilians at an alarming rate. Truth. The war makes big profits for rich people and their corporations. Truth. It is in the interests of these people and their corporation to obscure these basic facts. Truth. They will employ all manner of disinformative tactics in order to permit them to continue to prosecute the wars on which their wealth is dependent. Truth. Most people now see this. Truth. It is about being steeped in the blood of millions. Truth.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    The war is killing civilians at an alarming rate. Truth. The war makes big profits for rich people and their corporations. Truth. It is in the interests of these people and their corporation to obscure these basic facts. Truth. They will employ all manner of disinformative tactics in order to permit them to continue to prosecute the wars on which their wealth is dependent. Truth. Most people now see this. Truth. It is about being steeped in the blood of millions. Truth.

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