Sidan är en av flera i folder 5619 | Diana Johnstone
URL:
http://ejnar.se/5619/albino.html
Tänkte placera 'passé' hemsidor - dvs såna om t ex Afghanistan som inte längre är så aktuella. Election spring 2014 will give, of course, Democracy to all afghan people ...
- Från 6:/5619/ocr.htm
“THIS IS WHAT Westmoreland was doing in Vietnam,” - says a top Special Forces commander, referring to the firepower-heavy tactics favored by the military’s senior commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland, who lost sight of America’s essential mission in that lost war: winning the hearts and minds of the people.
One center of private concerns with America’s
Iraq strategy is the Defense Policy Board, a collection
of outside experts—mostly heavyweight
conservatives—who regularly consult with
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Disquiet in this
quarter is particularly significant, since the DPB
pushed from the outset for the invasion of Iraq. Last
week one of the more colorful and outspoken members of
the group, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, went
public with his worries and ideas in an interview with
NEWSWEEK. He was careful to say that he does not speak
about the board’s deliberations “on or off
the record,” but he proceeded to hold forth in
his insightful, if mildly bombastic, way about the
shortcomings of administration policy in Iraq.
Sitting in his office in downtown Washington, Gingrich
searched on his computer for the Web site of the
Coalition Provisional Authority, set up in Baghdad to
oversee the reconstruction and democratization of Iraq.
“I’m told over there that CPA stands for
‘Can’t Produce Anything’,”
says Gingrich. “Home page of the New Iraq,”
he quotes. Then: “The opening quote is, of
course, by [CPA chief Paul] Bremer. Next quote is by
Bush. Next quote is by U.S. Ambassador Steve
Mann.” He scrolls down. “Now this is a big
breakthrough. They do have the new Iraqi ambassador to
the U.S. On the front page. That is a
breakthrough,” he repeats, adding, sotto voce,
“I have been beating the crap out of them for two
weeks on this.” His basic point: where are the
Iraqi faces in the New Iraq? “Americans
can’t win in Iraq,” he says. “Only
Iraqis can win in Iraq.”
Gingrich argues that the administration has been
putting far too much emphasis on a military solution
and slighting the political element. “The real
key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key
is how many allies do I grow,” he says.
“And that is a very important metric that they
just don’t get.” He contends that the
civilian-run CPA is fairly isolated and powerless,
hunkered down inside its bunker in Baghdad. The
military has the money and the daily contact with the
locals. But it’s using the same tactics in a
guerrilla struggle that led to defeat in Vietnam.
“The Army’s reaction to Vietnam was not to
think about it,” he says. Rather than absorb the
lessons of counterinsurgency, Gingrich says, the Army
adopted “a deliberate strategy of amnesia because
people didn’t want to ever do it again.”
The Army rebuilt a superb fighting force for waging a
conventional war. “I am very proud of what
[Operation Iraqi Freedom commander Gen.] Tommy Franks
did—up to the moment of deciding how to transfer
power to the Iraqis. Then,” said Gingrich,
“we go off a cliff.”
In essence, the Americans never did transfer power.
They disbanded the Iraqi Army and the government,
realized that was a mistake, and quickly tried to
cobble together an Iraqi police force and military. But
the Iraqis in uniform today are seen by too many Iraqi
citizens as American collaborators. Gingrich faults the
Americans for not quickly establishing some sort of
Iraqi government, however imperfect. “The idea
that we are going to have a corruption-free, pristine,
League of Women Voters government in Iraq on Tuesday is
beyond naivete,” he scoffs. “It is a
self-destructive fantasy.” (The White House
insists that it is paying close attention to local
politics and has speeded up the timetable to turn over
power to the Iraqis.)
The rumor mill in the Pentagon suggests that
Bush’s “exit strategy” is to get
American troops coming home in waves by next
November’s election. Obliquely, Gingrich
indicates that would be a huge mistake. The guerrillas
cannot be allowed to believe that they only have to
outlast the Americans to win. “The only exit
strategy is victory,” Gingrich says. But not by
brute American force. “We are not the enforcers.
We are the reinforcers,” says Gingrich.
“The distinction between these two words is
central to the next year in Iraq.”
Gingrich’s voice rang with his customary
certainty. Hard to know if Rumsfeld and Bush are
listening.
källa: 15 dec. 2003 Newsweek
- Från 6:/5619/pilatus.html
President Bill Clinton was impeached by a Republican-controlled Congress for lying about sex. President George W. Bush and aides lied the United States into a stupid, unnecessary colonial war that has so far killed more than 305 Americans and seriously wounded more than 1,400. It has also cost many thousands of Iraqi dead, and $1 billion US weekly. Lying about sex is an impeachable offence; lying the nation into war apparently is not. I was no Clinton fan, but give me his iffy morals any day over Bush's Mussolini-like strutting. Sen. Edward Kennedy is absolutely correct when he calls Bush's Iraq war a "fraud" concocted to win the next elections.
A fraud and an epic blunder.
Last week, Bush received a glacial and scornful reception at the United Nations that symbolized the world's contempt and disgust for his administration. Not since Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the speaker's rostrum has a major leader so embarrassed himself and his nation before the world body. In his UN speech, Bush again claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and "ties" to terrorism. Days later, U.S. intelligence teams that scoured Iraq for four months reported no traces of weapons or terrorism links - the pretext used by Bush and his neo-conservative handlers for unprovoked war against Saddam Hussein.
The White House was left choking on its own grotesque lies.
Källa: Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun 28 sept 2003
- Om Ukraina; från BERLIN April 2014:
Der Dramatiker Rolf Hochhuth lebt in Berlin:
Übrigens sind diese ganzen zum Konflikt aufgebauschten Stänkereien nichts als das Ergebnis von immer glück-verdummender Problemlosigkeit, die ziemlich oft schon zu Kriegen geführt hat, nach der Erfahrung von Shakespeare, der in seinem Drama über den Trojanischen Krieg schreibt: „Allzu langer Friede führet zum Streit.“
Denn in beiden Weltkriegen empfanden Russen und Ukrainer sich als das, was sie seit 1000 Jahren sind, als Brudervölker, die ihr gemeinsames Vaterland gegen Deutsche, Österreicher und Türken verteidigten.
Helmut Schmidt, noch mit 94 der klügste BRD-Politiker, hat durchschaut, was in Wahrheit gespielt wird: Nicht um die Krim geht es momentan, diese Insel ist nur der sichtbarste Ausdruck dessen, was seit Jahrzehnten von der westeuropäischen Vormundschaftsbehörde Pentagon angezielt wird: „Die Idee, die Ukraine und Georgien in die Nato aufzunehmen, stammt aus den USA. Nach den Reden einiger amerikanischer Zeitungen sind dafür menschenrechtliche Gesichtspunkte ausschlaggebend, (...) aber es sind imperiale Motive, die dahinterstehen. Wir Deutschen haben angesichts unserer Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert gute Gründe, mit eigener Beteiligung an militärischen Interventionen zurückhaltend zu sein.
Bisweilen hört man, wir müssten uns aus Solidarität im Nato-Bündnis an militärischen Interventionen beteiligen. Das Argument passt besser in die Nibelungensage als in die heutige Wirklichkeit.
Denn das nordatlantische Bündnis war und ist ein Verteidigungsbündnis, nicht etwa ein Bündnis zur Umgestaltung der Welt.“
Bismarck würde sich im Grabe umdrehen, wenn er wüsste, was Europäer sich hier von den Amerikanern aufbürden lassen.
Quelle: Berliner Zeitung | 2014-04-14
Ukraina april 2014
- Om Ukraina - av Diana Johnstone
-
Diana Johnstone
All Is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front
German media, who, like other NATO satellites, have been largely following the anti-Putin Russophobe line laid down by Washington, are being besieged by complaints from readers and television spectators. The German public seems to know where Ukraine is located and what is happening.
Just as John Kerry was reminding the world of US moral leadership in the 21st century, three hundred German intellectuals addressed a respectful and supportive letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Directly answering Putin’s request for understanding from the German people, the letter recalled that “the Soviet Union had made the decisive contribution to freeing Europe from National Socialism, at an incomparable loss of life,” and was ready in 1990 “to support German reunification, to dissolve the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and to accept united Germany’s membership in NATO”. But the West had failed to honor its agreement, and had rewarded Gorbachev’s generosity by aggressively expanding NATO right up to Russia’s doorstep.
It is fully documented, the letter notes, that “the United States has taken advantage of the justified protests of the Ukrainian population for its own aims”, along the model of other countries such as Serbia, Libya, etc.
Under these circumstances, with some thousand US military bases worldwide and US control of straits and the resulting danger to the Russian Black Sea fleet, the German signatories see the secession of Crimea as “a defensive measure with a clear message: up to here and no farther! The decisive difference with the declaration of independence of Kosovo is that for the latter the precondition was an illegal bombing campaign by NATO – unfortunately with German participation.”
(Diana Johnstone)
Pamuk om Pinter
Låt oss därför fråga oss hur förnuftigt det är att svartmåla kulturer och religioner, att obarmhärtigt bomba sönder länder i demokratins eller yttrandefrihetens namn. [. . . ] Detta våldsamma, grymma krig är Amerikas och västs stora skam. — Författare som Harold Pinter och Arthur Miller, är den västliga världens stolthet.
DN 15 okt 2006 (Nobelpristagaren Orhan Pamuk)
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