8 ms·

The CIA’s Afghan Death Squads

115 points by sudoaza 6y ago

082349872349872 6y ago
The death squad sort of thing is part of why I believe Smith is an unreliable narrator in 1984. Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length, as if they were boys[1] enforcing a boarding school hierarchy, instead they get rid of them shortly and cheaply, for instance by one-way helicopter rides. [1] although the very puerile "it's no fun ruling unless the ruled know you're doing it" is the only explicit answer the book gives to the question posed by where Goldstein's text is left hanging: of what does "...the original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought doublethink, the Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards..." really consist?
- est31 6y ago
  I think it's one of the tools that regimes use. Not neccessarily on everyone, but in certain settings and scenarios. China for example has "reeducation" camps that brainwash/torture people.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Maybe Orwell's point was that you don't need the death squads to manage tyranny.
  - idoubtit 6y ago
    Orwell is not subtle enough for this. In "1984" (spoiler), the tyranny wins because they manage to torture the main characters so much that their spirits were permanently broken. If memory serves right, that was the end of the story. For a classical tyranny were deaths squads are almost never necessary, because mass control is extremely efficient, "Brave New World" is better suited.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      Except "Brave New World" isn't a tyranny at all. The only person who comes to a poor end is the savage, precisely because he refused the offer (which Mond envies) of going to the islands. Mond also summarises why contemporary people are so willing to follow visions like ISIS or QAnon: "Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." (NB that BNW was written after WWI, 1984 after WWII, which may, beyond the temperaments of their authors, also explain how the visions got so much darker. Note also that Huxley wrote a much-less-famous utopia near the end of his life.)
- kstenerud 6y ago
  > Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length, as if they were boys[1] enforcing a boarding school hierarchy That's precisely how it's done in China and North Korea, as well as many other places, and almost every terror regime in history. It's also used in America whenever prosecutors / prison operators want to "send a message." There's great value in keeping a population cowed when a small percentage of them can recount the horrors they've suffered for disobedience to authority. Execution is only reserved for actual threats to the regime, and the odd show trial.
  - idoubtit 6y ago
    And that's nothing new. One of the most famous examples in History is Caesar's cruelty act when the Gaul was almost totally conquered. He wanted to discourage the few inhabitants that may rebel against Rome's authority, so he "resolved to deter others by inflicting an exemplary punishment on these. Accordingly he cut off the hands of those who had borne arms against him." Thousand of men were mutilated and scattered across Gaul to send this terrifying message. The main account about this is in the last chapter of Bellum Gallicum, probably written by one of his lieutenants. A translation to English: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Commentaries_on_the_Gallic_War/Book_8#44 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Commentaries_on_the_Gallic_Wa... from the Latin: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caesar/gall8.shtml#44 http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caesar/gall8.shtml#44
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Regimes that execute at all, judicially or extrajudicially, are outside the pale from where I sit.
- disown 6y ago
  What's with the ridiculous amount of "Smith is an unreliable narrator" narrative all of a sudden? Seems like every time 1984 is mentioned, you get a comment about "Smith and unreliable narrator"? > Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length "Mildly torture"? Did we read the same book? The torture in 1984 was as systematic and torturous as possible. Of course it's fiction, but nothing mild about it. Also, death squads are used by regimes that are unstable or fighting for power. Like in afghanistan. The totalitarian state described in 1984 was the opposite of afghanistan - completely secure. Also, Smith wasn't in the "real world" with a "real regime", it's fiction. I hope you realize that. He is narrating a fictional world. So it's rather absurd to claim that he is an unreliable narrator because he isn't narrating the real world. By that logic, every narration in fiction is unreliable and as a consequence makes the claim about unreliable narration absurd.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    Unreliable narrator [0] is literary device that any writer can chose to use, it has nothing to do whether the described events are facts or fiction: it can be used for both. I don't think at all that 1984 uses this technique, but if it did it could be interpreted that Smith was receiving mild torture but describing it as brutal. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
    - disown 6y ago
      I know what an unreliable narrator is. There are hints/clues within the story to show why the narrator may be unreliable. You can't say a narrator is unreliable because the fictional world does not align with the real world. That's my point. It would be like saying bilbo baggins is an unreliable narrator in lord of the rings because magical rings don't exist in the real world. Absurd. But you could say the narrator in fight club may be unreliable since its revealed he has mental issues and the stories don't line up within the movie/book.
      - enriquto 6y ago
Despegar 6y ago
Ah a classic of American foreign policy.
- 02020202 6y ago
  ^^^--- to the top, my friend!
blindm 6y ago
> Wait! Before you go on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadn’t done it? Gotta say this article goes above and beyond to document what happens in these pointless permawars used to justify (U.S) military spending.
- dionian 6y ago
  They just censored Greenwald so much he quit so .. funny that
  - xnyan 6y ago
    Let’s put the validity of what Greenwald wanted to publish aside for a second. The relationship between an editor and a writer is always one of mutual cooperation and agreement. Not that the editor always must agree with what the author writes, but that there is mutual agreement over the standards of what is being published. Greenwald and the intercept reached an irresolvable position regarding publishing standards, so they went their separate ways. Greenwald now publishes elsewhere. You seem to be implying a publication exercising their editorial privilege is proof that they lack integrity. Maybe the intercept is in fact a corrupt publication, but that depends entirely on your judgement of their decision not to publish what Greenwald wanted to publish.
cheezymoogle 6y ago
It's a shame that an escalation in civilian deaths is viewed as an evil, but that there are civilian deaths to escalate is viewed as a necessity of foreign policy.
- arcticfox 6y ago
  Or, you know, the Intercept article is primarily reporting on the current state of affairs (under Trump's watch), and specifically on a spike in civilian deaths in 2019. Not every article has to cover the entire war. > The period in which The Intercept documented the escalation of violence in Wardak falls neatly between the first round of formal U.S.-Taliban talks in late 2018 and the signing of the Doha agreement early this year. The rate of 01 night raids, and the number of civilians killed as a result, fell dramatically last winter and stopped almost entirely this spring.
- ajcp 6y ago
  The timeline of the article is December 2018 through September 2019, when Trump was Commander-in-Chief. Does it not make sense then that he would be more pertinent to the story? I think it provides the correct historical context when it makes sense in the reporting. And why would anyone need to draw their "own conclusions" when Greenwald has been very explicit as to why he left.
- AaronFriel 6y ago
  From the article, it appears these death squads and their attacks occurred primarily during the Trump administration, as a result of a shift in policy: "Pompeo, then-director of the CIA, indicated that the agency, too, would pursue a more hawkish posture. The CIA, he said, “must be aggressive, vicious, unforgiving, relentless." And: "The period in which The Intercept documented the escalation of violence in Wardak falls neatly between the first round of formal U.S.-Taliban talks in late 2018 and the signing of the Doha agreement early this year." I can hardly say I know enough to clear Bush or Biden of using death squads, but it does seem like the major escalation and change in tactics occurred between January 21, 2017 and today.
bostonsre 6y ago
It's a tough ugly war with no good options. I absolutely agree that this type of death squad summary execution crap is unacceptable. It's less reported now, but the taliban use the same type of tactics of fear to project control over the population. Leaving a power vacuum for the taliban will also lead to atrocities and medieval rules for the female population. I'm sure the military industrial complex has played some role in this war, but there really are lots of people in our military trying to be honorable and do the right thing.
- spamizbad 6y ago
  The US brought the practice of Bacha bazi[1] back into the mainstream with the tasset approval of the US military (basically US service members aren't permitted to interfere or discourage it). It was banned and severely punished under the Taliban. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
  - bostonsre 6y ago
    Again, not saying both sides are without fault, but everyone seems to ignore the fact that the taliban do horrible shit too. What do the taliban do to girls that go to school? The war is not black and white; good versus evil. Almost nothing in the world is that simple and straightforward. Do you honestly think it would become a great place to live if the US just withdrew? This is not a competition to count up who did more worse stuff. We as a country have been caught in a slippery slope with no easy completely morally correct way out. The fact is that we are in the war now and playing monday morning quarter back does nothing. I'm sure that our country didn't think their actions of having americans in saudi arabia would have pissed off Osama and the countless other hijackers bad enough that they attacked us on 9/11. But the fact is they did, then the Taliban provided safe haven for them and our only option to try to avoid similar attacks in the future was to go in and get rid of the safe haven. If we leave now, the taliban will take over and it will be a safe haven again. If we stay, our fellow americans continue to die in an ugly horrible war. Where was the easy right morally correct answer in any of that that was readily apparent at the time?
ahelwer 6y ago
The USA does not promote peace nor democracy. This is not the result of good intentions gone awry. This is exactly what is intended. We really have learned nothing from Vietnam. There, too, unrestricted murder of children was justified as removing future enemies.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  There's corruption in our bureaucracies and most Americans are blissfully unaware of it. Whose responsibility is it to inform Americans on this point and why have they failed to do so?
  - ahelwer 6y ago
    What corruption? This is all intentional. America benefits greatly from mass murder & destruction of countries who are insufficiently deferential to the hegemony. Countries can't keep natural resources to themselves; American corporations must be let in to siphon wealth back to the imperial core. Don't like it? Enjoy having your economy destroyed & government overthrown. With a few generations' worth of atrocities just for good measure.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      No it doesn't. An elite class of beltway insiders benefits to the detriment of the greatest portion of the American public. We've spent trillions on war and what return has the average American seen? Middle class is squeezed out. And no, our economy does not recoup as much as we spend on unproductive wars. Our economy was fine when we were non-interventionist.
      - drewcoo 6y ago
        > what return has the average American seen? A return to the polls to vote for more of the same! > when we were non-interventionist When exactly was that? Was it when the US was only indirectly involved via education, assistance, and spook-craft? When it was only involved in "police actions" and not wars? Are we strictly speaking about the US government or also US corporations? The US has always been involved in foreign conflicts from the start.
realjohng 6y ago
Actions like these damage American moral authority in the region, and frankly within the American populace as well. I often wonder where passionate distrust of the government has emerged from in recent years, and it is probably things like this which disillusion readers.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  American moral authority has been dead since the Vietnam war, if not the Korean war. The sheer quantity of war crimes committed was astonishing. Most people know about My Lai, but that was just an incident which managed to break through into American awareness - it wasn't unusual, it was more like the norm. Nobody ever faced consequences for any of it. I gotta be honest, the idea that things like this "damage American moral authority" is just such a purely America-centric view. Americans truly have no idea how they are perceived by the rest of the world. Across the globe, polls consistently show America is viewed as the greatest threat to world peace.
  - eplanit 6y ago
    And yet more than a million people migrate here every year. They must not be good students of history.
    - ahelwer 6y ago
      Which side of a gun do you want pointed at you?
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      That has nothing to do with it. Economic migration does not say anything about the moral authority of the USA, it mainly says that the USA is better off economically than many other places in the world (not in the least because of the mess the USA is creating in some of those countries).
- jacquesm 6y ago
  American moral authority is mostly an American thing. The rest of the world has not believed in that concept since the end of World War II, because that's when America was seen as having it, and after that they did what they could to get rid of it with a small 'up' during the Berlin airbridge period.
pstuart 6y ago
The basis for the US being in Afghanistan is allowing the 9/11 operatives to train there, and yet we haven't bombed Florida (where they also trained). And at no point since this madness started has there ever been a declaration of what "victory" looks like. But yeah, let's celebrate the troops! Hooray for our warriors who "keep America safe". Let's pour even more money into this madness and wave the flag, shall we?
cryptica 6y ago
It's scary how a government with such seemingly innocent goals as maintaining the prosperity its citizens can end up doing such horrible senseless things. It seems 100% counterproductive. It looks like checks and balances don't work that well after all. I'm starting to see the benefits of small government. The case for a decentralized, citizen-driven monetary system is also increasingly strong. Reduction of government and monetary reform must go together or else we risk corporations or some other large bureaucratic organisations replacing the government and end up doing the same kinds of senseless things. An economy should not support such massive and immoral waste of human lives and productive capacity.
imaginenore 6y ago
I don't see any proof / evidence in the article that it was the CIA.
1cvmask 6y ago
This happens in every American war. The perpetrators are often promoted and encouraged. And the media often is involved in the “coverup”. In Indonesia the CIA orchestrated rebels and then a coup that resulted in the killing of over 3 million locals. And mainstream American media were involved in the cover up. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia https://www.workers.org/indonesia/chap2.html https://www.workers.org/indonesia/chap2.html https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/the-indonesia-documents-and-the-us-agenda/543534/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/th... Other massacre examples that had coverups and denials: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre
- contingencies 6y ago
  FWIW the gist of the opening chapter of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, set in Indonesia, was confirmed for me by an Indonesian diplomat.

115 points by sudoaza 6y ago

The death squad sort of thing is part of why I believe Smith is an unreliable narrator in 1984. Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length, as if they were boys[1] enforcing a boarding school hierarchy, instead they get rid of them shortly and cheaply, for instance by one-way helicopter rides. [1] although the very puerile "it's no fun ruling unless the ruled know you're doing it" is the only explicit answer the book gives to the question posed by where Goldstein's text is left hanging: of what does "...the original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought doublethink, the Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards..." really consist?

est31 6y ago
I think it's one of the tools that regimes use. Not neccessarily on everyone, but in certain settings and scenarios. China for example has "reeducation" camps that brainwash/torture people.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Maybe Orwell's point was that you don't need the death squads to manage tyranny.
- idoubtit 6y ago
  Orwell is not subtle enough for this. In "1984" (spoiler), the tyranny wins because they manage to torture the main characters so much that their spirits were permanently broken. If memory serves right, that was the end of the story. For a classical tyranny were deaths squads are almost never necessary, because mass control is extremely efficient, "Brave New World" is better suited.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Except "Brave New World" isn't a tyranny at all. The only person who comes to a poor end is the savage, precisely because he refused the offer (which Mond envies) of going to the islands. Mond also summarises why contemporary people are so willing to follow visions like ISIS or QAnon: "Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." (NB that BNW was written after WWI, 1984 after WWII, which may, beyond the temperaments of their authors, also explain how the visions got so much darker. Note also that Huxley wrote a much-less-famous utopia near the end of his life.)
kstenerud 6y ago
> Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length, as if they were boys[1] enforcing a boarding school hierarchy That's precisely how it's done in China and North Korea, as well as many other places, and almost every terror regime in history. It's also used in America whenever prosecutors / prison operators want to "send a message." There's great value in keeping a population cowed when a small percentage of them can recount the horrors they've suffered for disobedience to authority. Execution is only reserved for actual threats to the regime, and the odd show trial.
- idoubtit 6y ago
  And that's nothing new. One of the most famous examples in History is Caesar's cruelty act when the Gaul was almost totally conquered. He wanted to discourage the few inhabitants that may rebel against Rome's authority, so he "resolved to deter others by inflicting an exemplary punishment on these. Accordingly he cut off the hands of those who had borne arms against him." Thousand of men were mutilated and scattered across Gaul to send this terrifying message. The main account about this is in the last chapter of Bellum Gallicum, probably written by one of his lieutenants. A translation to English: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Commentaries_on_the_Gallic_War/Book_8#44 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Commentaries_on_the_Gallic_Wa... from the Latin: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caesar/gall8.shtml#44 http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caesar/gall8.shtml#44
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Regimes that execute at all, judicially or extrajudicially, are outside the pale from where I sit.
disown 6y ago
What's with the ridiculous amount of "Smith is an unreliable narrator" narrative all of a sudden? Seems like every time 1984 is mentioned, you get a comment about "Smith and unreliable narrator"? > Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length "Mildly torture"? Did we read the same book? The torture in 1984 was as systematic and torturous as possible. Of course it's fiction, but nothing mild about it. Also, death squads are used by regimes that are unstable or fighting for power. Like in afghanistan. The totalitarian state described in 1984 was the opposite of afghanistan - completely secure. Also, Smith wasn't in the "real world" with a "real regime", it's fiction. I hope you realize that. He is narrating a fictional world. So it's rather absurd to claim that he is an unreliable narrator because he isn't narrating the real world. By that logic, every narration in fiction is unreliable and as a consequence makes the claim about unreliable narration absurd.
- enriquto 6y ago
  Unreliable narrator [0] is literary device that any writer can chose to use, it has nothing to do whether the described events are facts or fiction: it can be used for both. I don't think at all that 1984 uses this technique, but if it did it could be interpreted that Smith was receiving mild torture but describing it as brutal. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
  - disown 6y ago
    I know what an unreliable narrator is. There are hints/clues within the story to show why the narrator may be unreliable. You can't say a narrator is unreliable because the fictional world does not align with the real world. That's my point. It would be like saying bilbo baggins is an unreliable narrator in lord of the rings because magical rings don't exist in the real world. Absurd. But you could say the narrator in fight club may be unreliable since its revealed he has mental issues and the stories don't line up within the movie/book.
    - enriquto 6y ago

Despegar 6y ago

Ah a classic of American foreign policy.

02020202 6y ago
^^^--- to the top, my friend!

blindm 6y ago

> Wait! Before you go on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadn’t done it? Gotta say this article goes above and beyond to document what happens in these pointless permawars used to justify (U.S) military spending.

dionian 6y ago
They just censored Greenwald so much he quit so .. funny that
- xnyan 6y ago
  Let’s put the validity of what Greenwald wanted to publish aside for a second. The relationship between an editor and a writer is always one of mutual cooperation and agreement. Not that the editor always must agree with what the author writes, but that there is mutual agreement over the standards of what is being published. Greenwald and the intercept reached an irresolvable position regarding publishing standards, so they went their separate ways. Greenwald now publishes elsewhere. You seem to be implying a publication exercising their editorial privilege is proof that they lack integrity. Maybe the intercept is in fact a corrupt publication, but that depends entirely on your judgement of their decision not to publish what Greenwald wanted to publish.

cheezymoogle 6y ago

It's a shame that an escalation in civilian deaths is viewed as an evil, but that there are civilian deaths to escalate is viewed as a necessity of foreign policy.

arcticfox 6y ago
Or, you know, the Intercept article is primarily reporting on the current state of affairs (under Trump's watch), and specifically on a spike in civilian deaths in 2019. Not every article has to cover the entire war. > The period in which The Intercept documented the escalation of violence in Wardak falls neatly between the first round of formal U.S.-Taliban talks in late 2018 and the signing of the Doha agreement early this year. The rate of 01 night raids, and the number of civilians killed as a result, fell dramatically last winter and stopped almost entirely this spring.
ajcp 6y ago
The timeline of the article is December 2018 through September 2019, when Trump was Commander-in-Chief. Does it not make sense then that he would be more pertinent to the story? I think it provides the correct historical context when it makes sense in the reporting. And why would anyone need to draw their "own conclusions" when Greenwald has been very explicit as to why he left.
AaronFriel 6y ago
From the article, it appears these death squads and their attacks occurred primarily during the Trump administration, as a result of a shift in policy: "Pompeo, then-director of the CIA, indicated that the agency, too, would pursue a more hawkish posture. The CIA, he said, “must be aggressive, vicious, unforgiving, relentless." And: "The period in which The Intercept documented the escalation of violence in Wardak falls neatly between the first round of formal U.S.-Taliban talks in late 2018 and the signing of the Doha agreement early this year." I can hardly say I know enough to clear Bush or Biden of using death squads, but it does seem like the major escalation and change in tactics occurred between January 21, 2017 and today.

bostonsre 6y ago

It's a tough ugly war with no good options. I absolutely agree that this type of death squad summary execution crap is unacceptable. It's less reported now, but the taliban use the same type of tactics of fear to project control over the population. Leaving a power vacuum for the taliban will also lead to atrocities and medieval rules for the female population. I'm sure the military industrial complex has played some role in this war, but there really are lots of people in our military trying to be honorable and do the right thing.

spamizbad 6y ago
The US brought the practice of Bacha bazi[1] back into the mainstream with the tasset approval of the US military (basically US service members aren't permitted to interfere or discourage it). It was banned and severely punished under the Taliban. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
- bostonsre 6y ago
  Again, not saying both sides are without fault, but everyone seems to ignore the fact that the taliban do horrible shit too. What do the taliban do to girls that go to school? The war is not black and white; good versus evil. Almost nothing in the world is that simple and straightforward. Do you honestly think it would become a great place to live if the US just withdrew? This is not a competition to count up who did more worse stuff. We as a country have been caught in a slippery slope with no easy completely morally correct way out. The fact is that we are in the war now and playing monday morning quarter back does nothing. I'm sure that our country didn't think their actions of having americans in saudi arabia would have pissed off Osama and the countless other hijackers bad enough that they attacked us on 9/11. But the fact is they did, then the Taliban provided safe haven for them and our only option to try to avoid similar attacks in the future was to go in and get rid of the safe haven. If we leave now, the taliban will take over and it will be a safe haven again. If we stay, our fellow americans continue to die in an ugly horrible war. Where was the easy right morally correct answer in any of that that was readily apparent at the time?

ahelwer 6y ago

The USA does not promote peace nor democracy. This is not the result of good intentions gone awry. This is exactly what is intended. We really have learned nothing from Vietnam. There, too, unrestricted murder of children was justified as removing future enemies.

chrisco255 6y ago
There's corruption in our bureaucracies and most Americans are blissfully unaware of it. Whose responsibility is it to inform Americans on this point and why have they failed to do so?
- ahelwer 6y ago
  What corruption? This is all intentional. America benefits greatly from mass murder & destruction of countries who are insufficiently deferential to the hegemony. Countries can't keep natural resources to themselves; American corporations must be let in to siphon wealth back to the imperial core. Don't like it? Enjoy having your economy destroyed & government overthrown. With a few generations' worth of atrocities just for good measure.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    No it doesn't. An elite class of beltway insiders benefits to the detriment of the greatest portion of the American public. We've spent trillions on war and what return has the average American seen? Middle class is squeezed out. And no, our economy does not recoup as much as we spend on unproductive wars. Our economy was fine when we were non-interventionist.
    - drewcoo 6y ago
      > what return has the average American seen? A return to the polls to vote for more of the same! > when we were non-interventionist When exactly was that? Was it when the US was only indirectly involved via education, assistance, and spook-craft? When it was only involved in "police actions" and not wars? Are we strictly speaking about the US government or also US corporations? The US has always been involved in foreign conflicts from the start.

realjohng 6y ago

Actions like these damage American moral authority in the region, and frankly within the American populace as well. I often wonder where passionate distrust of the government has emerged from in recent years, and it is probably things like this which disillusion readers.

ahelwer 6y ago
American moral authority has been dead since the Vietnam war, if not the Korean war. The sheer quantity of war crimes committed was astonishing. Most people know about My Lai, but that was just an incident which managed to break through into American awareness - it wasn't unusual, it was more like the norm. Nobody ever faced consequences for any of it. I gotta be honest, the idea that things like this "damage American moral authority" is just such a purely America-centric view. Americans truly have no idea how they are perceived by the rest of the world. Across the globe, polls consistently show America is viewed as the greatest threat to world peace.
- eplanit 6y ago
  And yet more than a million people migrate here every year. They must not be good students of history.
  - ahelwer 6y ago
    Which side of a gun do you want pointed at you?
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    That has nothing to do with it. Economic migration does not say anything about the moral authority of the USA, it mainly says that the USA is better off economically than many other places in the world (not in the least because of the mess the USA is creating in some of those countries).
jacquesm 6y ago
American moral authority is mostly an American thing. The rest of the world has not believed in that concept since the end of World War II, because that's when America was seen as having it, and after that they did what they could to get rid of it with a small 'up' during the Berlin airbridge period.

pstuart 6y ago

The basis for the US being in Afghanistan is allowing the 9/11 operatives to train there, and yet we haven't bombed Florida (where they also trained). And at no point since this madness started has there ever been a declaration of what "victory" looks like. But yeah, let's celebrate the troops! Hooray for our warriors who "keep America safe". Let's pour even more money into this madness and wave the flag, shall we?

cryptica 6y ago

It's scary how a government with such seemingly innocent goals as maintaining the prosperity its citizens can end up doing such horrible senseless things. It seems 100% counterproductive. It looks like checks and balances don't work that well after all. I'm starting to see the benefits of small government. The case for a decentralized, citizen-driven monetary system is also increasingly strong. Reduction of government and monetary reform must go together or else we risk corporations or some other large bureaucratic organisations replacing the government and end up doing the same kinds of senseless things. An economy should not support such massive and immoral waste of human lives and productive capacity.

imaginenore 6y ago

I don't see any proof / evidence in the article that it was the CIA.

1cvmask 6y ago

This happens in every American war. The perpetrators are often promoted and encouraged. And the media often is involved in the “coverup”. In Indonesia the CIA orchestrated rebels and then a coup that resulted in the killing of over 3 million locals. And mainstream American media were involved in the cover up. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia https://www.workers.org/indonesia/chap2.html https://www.workers.org/indonesia/chap2.html https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/the-indonesia-documents-and-the-us-agenda/543534/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/th... Other massacre examples that had coverups and denials: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre

contingencies 6y ago
FWIW the gist of the opening chapter of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, set in Indonesia, was confirmed for me by an Indonesian diplomat.