Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence

[CHIMO]

Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence


AMY GOODMAN: Jim Ingalls, this week the NATO forces took over in Afghanistan. What exactly does that mean?

JAMES INGALLS: Yeah, well, what that means, essentially, is that there are -- we have more troops in Afghanistan from more countries, operating under the same U.S. generals that have always been running the show. The U.S. continues to run the combat operations in Afghanistan. Nominally the NATO operation is under a British general right now, but the so-called security operations of NATO are being run by Major General Benjamin Freakley, who is a U.S. general. He's what they're calling a dual-hatted general, who has one hat, he works for NATO, and the other hat, he works for Operation Enduring Freedom. So the combat operations are still being run with a U.S.-style approach under a U.S. general. In fact, the overall NATO operation is going to be taken over by another U.S. general in February. So it's all a continuous flow from what's been going on since 2001. The only change is now there are more troops from more countries.

SONALI KOLHATKAR: Sure. Now, it's very interesting to see the kind of debate that goes on in the United States over this issue. You know, Amy, we were just in Canada, where there is a very big debate going on among Canadians about the presence of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. There’s only 2,300 Canadian troops there. And there's actually a party, the New Democratic Party in Canada, which has based its platform on a pullout of Canadian troops from Afghanistan.

Coming here to the United States again, it was really interesting to see the kind of debate that exists. On the one hand, Democrats are saying, look -- particularly Senator Kerry and Bill Clinton are saying -- “The real fight is in Afghanistan. The just war, the war that we're supposed to be fighting against terrorism, is actually in Afghanistan. We need to put more troops there, because things aren't going so well.” And the Republicans are saying, “Things are going very well in Afghanistan. It was the first stop in the war on terror. It's been our success story. We need to put more troops there. But it's going very, very well.” And that's the extent of the debate we're seeing between Republicans and Democrats. Both of them agree that more troops have to go into Afghanistan, and they sort of disagree on whether it's going well or not.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/06/1350253

[daleo]

1. General Freakley

Getting his war freak on.