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madfloridian

(88,117 posts)
Thu Jun 5, 2014, 04:34 PM Jun 2014

Special Forces: "this is a dirty war. You don't know what is happening"

Last edited Sat Jun 7, 2014, 09:51 PM - Edit history (2)

We wrote so often here about events in Afghanistan, we expressed our outrage. Now we don't very much. I can imagine a sensitive guy sent there into some of this atmosphere would have serious issues with it.

This article is from Fisk in 2002. The link is dead but I quoted the pertinent parts.

From my post:

Robert Fisk speaks of Afghanistan in 2002 and 2008.

The garden was overgrown, the roses scrawny after a day of Kandahar heat, the dust in our eyes, noses, mouth, fingernails. But the message was straightforward. "This is a secret war," the Special Forces man told me. "And this is a dirty war. You don't know what is happening." And of course, we are not supposed to know. In a "war against terror", journalists are supposed to keep silent and rely on the good guys to sort out the bad guys without worrying too much about human rights.

..."How many human rights did the mass killers of 11 September allow their victims? You are either with us or against us. Whose side are you on? But the man in the garden was worried. He was not an American. He was one of the "coalition allies", as the Americans like to call the patsies who have trotted after them into the Afghan midden. "The Americans don't know what to do here now," he went on. "Their morale in Afghanistan is going downhill – though there's no problem with the generals running things in Tampa. They're still gung-ho. But here the soldiers know things haven't gone right, that things aren't working. Even their interrogations went wrong". Brutally so, it seems.

In the early weeks of this year, the Americans raided two Afghan villages, killed 10 policemen belonging to the US-supported government of Hamid Karzai and started mistreating the survivors. American reporters – in a rare show of mouse-like courage amid the self-censorship of their usual reporting – quoted the prisoners as saying they had been beaten by US troops. According to Western officials in Kandahar, the US troops "gave the prisoners a thrashing".

Things have since changed. The American forces in Afghanistan, it seems, now leave the beatings to their Afghan allies, especially members of the so-called Afghan Special Forces, a Washington-supported group of thugs who are based in the former Khad secret police torture centre in Kabul. "It's the Afghan Special Forces who beat the Pashtun prisoners for information now – not the Americans," the Western military man told me. "But the CIA are there during the beatings, so the Americans are culpable, they let it happen." This is just how the Americans began in Vietnam. They went in squeaky clean with advisers, there were some incidents of "termination with extreme prejudice", after which it was the Vietnamese intelligence boys who did the torture.


From Robert Fisk, 2008. He wonders why in the world we think we can win in Afghanistan.

Original link from Independent UK:

Why does the US think it can win in Afghanistan?

We, of course, have been peddling this crackpot nonsense for years in south-west Asia. First of all, back in 2001, we won the war in Afghanistan by overthrowing the Taliban. Then we marched off to win the war in Iraq. Now – with at least one suicide bombing a day and the nation carved up into mutually antagonistic sectarian enclaves – we have won the war in Iraq and are heading back to re-win the war in Afghanistan where the Taliban, so thoroughly trounced by our chaps seven years ago, have proved their moral and political bankruptcy by recapturing half the country.

It seems an age since Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld declared,"A government has been put in place (in Afghanistan), and the Islamists are no more the law in Kabul. Of course, from time to time a hand grenade, a mortar explodes – but in New York and in San Francisco, victims also fall. As for me, I'm full of hope." Oddly, back in the Eighties, I heard exactly the same from a Soviet general at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan – yes, the very same Bagram airbase where the CIA lads tortured to death a few of the Afghans who escaped the earlier Russian massacres. Only "terrorist remnants" remained in the Afghan mountains, the jolly Russian general assured us. Afghan troops, along with the limited Soviet "intervention" forces, were restoring peace to democratic Afghanistan.


He's right. It did not work out very well for the Russians either. We never learn.

Fisk sounds almost angry in these two paragraphs. I don't blame him.

And Obama and McCain really think they're going to win in Afghanistan – before, I suppose, rushing their soldiers back to Iraq when the Baghdad government collapses. What the British couldn't do in the 19th century and what the Russians couldn't do at the end of the 20th century, we're going to achieve at the start of the 21 century, taking our terrible war into nuclear-armed Pakistan just for good measure. Fantasy again.

Joseph Conrad, who understood the powerlessness of powerful nations, would surely have made something of this. Yes, we have lost after we won in Afghanistan and now we will lose as we try to win again. Stuff happens.


That would be Conrad's Heart of Darkness I assume. Used to be required reading. Not sure now.





13 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Special Forces: "this is a dirty war. You don't know what is happening" (Original Post) madfloridian Jun 2014 OP
"But we came here to help you" - Robert Fisk on exiting Afghanistan. 2012 Video madfloridian Jun 2014 #1
More tough words from Fisk.."Madness is not the reason for this massacre" madfloridian Jun 2014 #13
like Iraq, I can't imagine what victory would look like ThomThom Jun 2014 #2
Agreed. madfloridian Jun 2014 #6
Just look at any of the history revisionism we saw when the bush Presidential Library was opened Victor_c3 Jun 2014 #12
K&R FloriTexan Jun 2014 #3
"You don't know" gratuitous Jun 2014 #4
When all is said and done....... Enthusiast Jun 2014 #5
K&R woo me with science Jun 2014 #7
should've been gone from there 2009 KG Jun 2014 #8
should have never gone there. n/t PowerToThePeople Jun 2014 #11
CORRUPTION. woo me with science Jun 2014 #9
kick woo me with science Jun 2014 #10

ThomThom

(1,486 posts)
2. like Iraq, I can't imagine what victory would look like
Thu Jun 5, 2014, 05:52 PM
Jun 2014

time to stop playing these war games
nothing good can ever come of them

Victor_c3

(3,557 posts)
12. Just look at any of the history revisionism we saw when the bush Presidential Library was opened
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 09:23 AM
Jun 2014

According to bush, the people of Iraq are a grateful and free democracy. We won that war, right?

gratuitous

(82,849 posts)
4. "You don't know"
Thu Jun 5, 2014, 07:04 PM
Jun 2014

But please to pay for it, don't get too nosy about the particulars, and if some horrible day a little blowback is visited on your corner of the world, we'll tell you that it's because you just had too much gosh-darned freedom. And once again, our wonderful men and women in uniform will take care of that little problem for us.

Enthusiast

(50,983 posts)
5. When all is said and done.......
Fri Jun 6, 2014, 03:50 PM
Jun 2014
nothing of value will have been achieved by either war. Absolutely nothing.
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