[QUOTE=Brian-E;429951]I admit to being led by emotion in some of what I write, and also to an unacceptable bias when it comes to attacks close to home. Ernst, I also appreciate your long-running and lucid analysis of the situation in this thread.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, Brian, and apologies if anything I said sounded like a personal attack -- I get so annoyed at the blatant one-sided Western propaganda on this stuff that I no longer even subscribe to the "let's first make a show of shared grief and solidarity" idea, because it's clear the leaders of the western neo-imperialists cynically use that as a way to quash the honest painful discussion that so urgently needs to happen. So I deliberately stayed out of this thread over the weekend, just used the time to collect some more links:

o [url=https://theintercept.com/2016/03/25/highlighting-western-victims-while-ignoring-victims-of-western-violence/]Highlighting Western Victims While Ignoring Victims of Western Violence[/url] | The Intercept

o [url=https://consortiumnews.com/2016/03/25/deadly-blowback-from-neo-imperial-wars/]Deadly Blowback from Neo-Imperial Wars[/url] | Consortium News
[i]Exclusive: The E.U.’s crisis – with the post-World War II project to unify Europe spinning apart amid economic stress, refugees and terrorism – can be traced back to E.U./U.S. neo-imperial wars in the Arab world, says Jonathan Marshall.[/i]
[quote]In what may be the most dramatic blowback yet from Western military intervention in the Middle East, terrorism and the mass influx of foreign migrants are now putting the very existence of the European Union at risk. Foreign wars fanned by European and American interventionists in the name of democracy and humanitarianism now [url=http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/17/europes-free-speech-apocalypse-is-already-here-france-germany-spain]threaten those same values[/url] in Europe as never before since the end of World War II.
...
Yet remarkably few voices are stating the obvious: The crisis isn’t simply caused by foreign extremists bent on destroying Western values. Like Br’er Rabbit, Europe punched the Middle Eastern tar baby repeatedly, only to become hopelessly stuck. Whether Europe will prove as wise as its folkloric counterpart and find a way to get free remains to be seen.
...
By mid-2015, the fighting in Syria supported by these Western governments had generated more than four million external refugees — a record from any single conflict in the past generation, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Including internal refugees, half of Syria’s population was uprooted by the violence.

Rather than concede any responsibility for this tragedy, however, liberal interventionists in Europe blamed the humanitarian crisis on the West’s alleged failure to intervene.[/quote]
Neocon warmongers and "liberal interventionists" in bed together ... lovely. And look! Another sighting of the "freedom and shared values and other good stuff" propaganda meme, almost word for word:
[quote]Back in March 2011, when France spearheaded NATO’s attacks in Libya, the pro-interventionist political scientist Dominique Moisi remarked that “the French, according to early polls, are proud again to be French.”

Moisi shared that pride: In Libya, he maintained, “the West is defending common values, such as freedom, respect for human life and the rule of law. . . France, together with Great Britain, and with the more distant support of the US, is undeniably risking much, for it is easier to start a war than it is to end one. But it is a worthwhile risk.”

Moisi was wrong on all counts. The French government chose to intervene not for noble ends but for [url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2011/03/29/france-u-k-have-differing-motives-for-intervening-in-libya/]crude economic and opportunistic political motives[/url], as Hillary Clinton [url=https://news.vice.com/article/libyan-oil-gold-and-qaddafi-the-strange-email-sidney-blumenthal-sent-hillary-clinton-in-2011]well understood[/url]. And the result, as everyone knows, was anarchy in Libya, the unleashing of jihadists and arms across northern Africa and the Middle East, and the start of Europe’s refugee crisis.

Western intervention in Syria was sold under equally fraudulent pretenses, with even more dire results. Now Europe must begin a serious debate — akin to America’s ongoing discussion of the Iraq debacle — over what price it is willing to pay for continuing to fuel wars and social upheaval in former colonial lands.[/quote]
And more on the Frenc connection:

o [url=http://www.voltairenet.org/article189006.html]Why does France want to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic?[/url] | VoltaireNet

o [url=http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/03/23/israel-lobby-orders-mcgraw-hill-to-burn-textbooks-and-the-publisher-complies/]Israel Lobby Orders McGraw-Hill To Burn Textbooks And The Publisher Complies[/url]

[QUOTE=Brian-E;429951]I admit to being led by emotion in some of what I write, and also to an unacceptable bias when it comes to attacks close to home. Ernst, I also appreciate your long-running and lucid analysis of the situation in this thread.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, Brian, and apologies if anything I said sounded like a personal attack -- I get so annoyed at the blatant one-sided Western propaganda on this stuff that I no longer even subscribe to the "let's first make a show of shared grief and solidarity" idea, because it's clear the leaders of the western neo-imperialists cynically use that as a way to quash the honest painful discussion that so urgently needs to happen. So I deliberately stayed out of this thread over the weekend, just used the time to collect some more links:

o [url=https://theintercept.com/2016/03/25/highlighting-western-victims-while-ignoring-victims-of-western-violence/]Highlighting Western Victims While Ignoring Victims of Western Violence[/url] | The Intercept

o [url=https://consortiumnews.com/2016/03/25/deadly-blowback-from-neo-imperial-wars/]Deadly Blowback from Neo-Imperial Wars[/url] | Consortium News
[i]Exclusive: The E.U.’s crisis – with the post-World War II project to unify Europe spinning apart amid economic stress, refugees and terrorism – can be traced back to E.U./U.S. neo-imperial wars in the Arab world, says Jonathan Marshall.[/i]
[quote]In what may be the most dramatic blowback yet from Western military intervention in the Middle East, terrorism and the mass influx of foreign migrants are now putting the very existence of the European Union at risk. Foreign wars fanned by European and American interventionists in the name of democracy and humanitarianism now [url=http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/17/europes-free-speech-apocalypse-is-already-here-france-germany-spain]threaten those same values[/url] in Europe as never before since the end of World War II.
...
Yet remarkably few voices are stating the obvious: The crisis isn’t simply caused by foreign extremists bent on destroying Western values. Like Br’er Rabbit, Europe punched the Middle Eastern tar baby repeatedly, only to become hopelessly stuck. Whether Europe will prove as wise as its folkloric counterpart and find a way to get free remains to be seen.
...
By mid-2015, the fighting in Syria supported by these Western governments had generated more than four million external refugees — a record from any single conflict in the past generation, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Including internal refugees, half of Syria’s population was uprooted by the violence.

Rather than concede any responsibility for this tragedy, however, liberal interventionists in Europe blamed the humanitarian crisis on the West’s alleged failure to intervene.[/quote]
Neocon warmongers and "liberal interventionists" in bed together ... lovely. And look! Another sighting of the "freedom and shared values and other good stuff" propaganda meme, almost word for word:
[quote]Back in March 2011, when France spearheaded NATO’s attacks in Libya, the pro-interventionist political scientist Dominique Moisi remarked that “the French, according to early polls, are proud again to be French.”

Moisi shared that pride: In Libya, he maintained, “the West is defending common values, such as freedom, respect for human life and the rule of law. . . France, together with Great Britain, and with the more distant support of the US, is undeniably risking much, for it is easier to start a war than it is to end one. But it is a worthwhile risk.”

Moisi was wrong on all counts. The French government chose to intervene not for noble ends but for [url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2011/03/29/france-u-k-have-differing-motives-for-intervening-in-libya/]crude economic and opportunistic political motives[/url], as Hillary Clinton [url=https://news.vice.com/article/libyan-oil-gold-and-qaddafi-the-strange-email-sidney-blumenthal-sent-hillary-clinton-in-2011]well understood[/url]. And the result, as everyone knows, was anarchy in Libya, the unleashing of jihadists and arms across northern Africa and the Middle East, and the start of Europe’s refugee crisis.

Western intervention in Syria was sold under equally fraudulent pretenses, with even more dire results. Now Europe must begin a serious debate — akin to America’s ongoing discussion of the Iraq debacle — over what price it is willing to pay for continuing to fuel wars and social upheaval in former colonial lands.[/quote]
And more on the Frenc connection:

o [url=http://www.voltairenet.org/article189006.html]Why does France want to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic?[/url] | VoltaireNet

And tangentially related:

o [url=http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/03/23/israel-lobby-orders-mcgraw-hill-to-burn-textbooks-and-the-publisher-complies/]Israel Lobby Orders McGraw-Hill To Burn Textbooks And The Publisher Complies[/url]
[quote]As Rania Khalek noted in an 11 March 2016 article on the incident in Electronic Intifada, these particular maps, showing the loss of Palestinian land over decades of Israeli expansion, “have the ability to cut through Israeli propaganda that portrays Palestinian anger and violence as rooted in religious intolerance and irrational hatred rather than a natural reaction to Israel’s colonial expansionism, land theft and ethnic cleansing, all of which continue today.” This gives insight into the strenuous efforts made by Zionists to keep the sequenced maps away from any mass market distribution. As it is, they seem to have overlooked this textbook source for some four years. However, once they spotted it, and began “flooding” McGraw-Hill with complaints from “multiple sources,” it took the publisher only about a week to suspend sales of the book.

The next obvious question is why didn’t McGraw-Hill move to change the maps or just remove them? Why destroy the entire inventory? The extreme nature of the publisher’s response remains unexplained but may stand as a testimony to the fact that the Zionist lobby has the same power within the corporate ranks of this textbook publisher as the anti-evolution fundamentalists have over most biology textbooks.[/quote]

The Case Against Bombing ISIS
 

[URL="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/isis-united-states-iraq-syria/"]The military campaign against ISIS is just the latest phase of US imperialism in the Middle East.[/URL]
by Greg Shupak

Takeaway: The US military is essentially the enforcement arm of international capital. (Well Duh!)

[QUOTE]When ISIS claimed responsibility for the horrendous attacks in Brussels last week, President Obama was unequivocal: the US and its allies, [URL="http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/22/politics/obama-belgium-terror-attacks-cuba/index.html"]he said[/URL], “can and will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world.” More bombing, it hardly needed to be said, was on the way. For their part, the presidential candidates only disagree on the scale of military action needed to stamp out ISIS — not on the appropriateness of yet more American warfare. The call for a muscular response, however, overlooks the casualties the US has already inflicted.

To date, US-led coalition airstrikes in the war on ISIS have likely killed at least [URL="http://airwars.org/"]1,044[/URL] civilians in Iraq and Syria. Even the brutal calculus of “collateral damage” cannot rationalize such deaths. They’re simply the latest victims in the latest phase of a decades-long, US-led campaign that has visited death and destruction on countries across the globe — particularly in the Middle East.
[/QUOTE]

o Pair of quite provocative Israel-related links:

[url=http://thinkprogress.org/world/2016/05/05/3775714/israel-shaked-anti-semitism/]Israeli Justice Minister: It’s Anti-Semitic To Ever Criticize Israel[/url] | ThinkProgress

[url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/saudi-king-salman-financed-netanyahus-campaign-panama-papers-leak/5524183]Saudi King Salman Financed Netanyahu’s Campaign. Panama Papers[/url] | Leak Global Research

o [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/opinion/yemeni-heritage-saudi-vandalism.html]Saudi government is destroying the cultural heritage of Yemen[/url] | NYTimes
[quote][The Dhamar Regional] museum has just been obliterated from the air. In a matter of minutes, the irreplaceable work of ancient artisans, craftsmen and scribes — not to mention the efforts of Yemeni and foreign researchers who have dedicated years of their lives to studying and preserving this legacy — were pulverized. The museum and its 12,500 artifacts were turned to rubble by Saudi bombs.
...
Since March, Saudi Arabia has conducted a large-scale campaign of air attacks on its neighbor with the stated purpose of driving back the Houthi rebels who have taken control of the capital Sana and large parts of the country. These aerial bombardments have not managed to reverse the gains of the rebels, but have succeeded in devastating Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world. Thousands of civilians have been killed or injured, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced, amid severe shortages of food, fuel and medical supplies.

Less reported is that these bombardments show a pattern of targeting cultural heritage sites in a country that has made extraordinary contributions to world civilization. Mohannad al-Sayani, director of Yemen’s General Organization of Antiquities and Museums, confirmed to me by email that 25 sites and monuments have been severely damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the conflict.

Thought by many to be the historic home of the Queen of Sheba, Yemen is one of the great jewels of human antiquity, with a legacy of magnificent temples, water-management projects and towering cities dating back thousands of years. This cultural wealth is not limited to ancient sites: Three of Yemen’s cities are on the Unesco World Heritage list for their breathtaking vernacular architecture.
...
Saudi Arabia is thus responsible not only for devastating a country of 25 million impoverished people, who are now suffering from famine, deteriorating sanitary conditions and a lack of medical supplies, but also for a strategy of demolishing significant world heritage sites. This Saudi cultural vandalism is hard to distinguish from the Islamic State’s.[/quote]
And guess which nations sold the Saudis the planes and bombs and have tacitly approved of the invasion? (Curiously, this aspect is not mentioned in the NYT op-ed.) Hint: their commonly-used 2-letter initialisms both start with 'U'.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;433577]And guess which nations sold the Saudis the planes and bombs and have tacitly approved of the invasion? (Curiously, this aspect is not mentioned in the NYT op-ed.) Hint: their commonly-used 2-letter initialisms both start with 'U'.[/QUOTE].uy is obviously one. Toss-up between .ug and .uz for the other.

By 'commonly used' I meant in spoken and written discourse, not net-handles. (But of course you knew that. :)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;433679]By 'commonly used' I meant in spoken and written discourse, not net-handles. (But of course you knew that. :)[/QUOTE]
In a defunct aggregator site I used to participate in, the common usage was "USUK." Wonder if there was a double meaning there. :confused2:

[url=http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176147/]Andrew Bacevich: The US in the Middle East - "There Is No Strategy"[/url] | TomDispatch
[quote]In their quest for a formula that might actually accomplish the mission, those charged with directing U.S. military efforts in the Greater Middle East have demonstrated notable flexibility. They have employed overwhelming force and “shock-and awe.” They have tried regime change (bumping off Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, for example) and “decapitation” (assassinating Mansour and a host of other militant leaders, including Osama Bin Laden). They have invaded and occupied countries, even giving military-style nation-building a whirl. They have experimented with counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention, retaliatory strikes and preventive war. They have operated overtly, covertly, and through proxies. They have equipped, trained, and advised — and when the beneficiaries of these exertions have folded in the face of the enemy, they have equipped, trained, and advised some more. They have converted American reservists into quasi-regulars, subject to repeated combat tours. In imitation of the corporate world, they have outsourced as well, handing over to profit-oriented “private security” firms functions traditionally performed by soldiers. In short, they have labored doggedly to translate American military power into desired political outcomes.

In this one respect at least, an endless parade of three- and four-star generals exercising command in various theaters over the past several decades have earned high marks. In terms of effort, they deserve an A.

As measured by outcomes, however, they fall well short of a passing grade. However commendable their willingness to cast about for some method that might actually work, they have ended up waging a war of attrition. Strip away the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel reassurances regularly heard at Pentagon press briefings or in testimony presented on Capitol Hill and America’s War for the Greater Middle East proceeds on this unspoken assumption: [u]if we kill enough people for a long enough period of time, the other side will eventually give in[/u].[/quote]
Because it worked so well in Vietnam! But already there the "permanent war is good for business" dynamic was firmly in place. When you drop any old-fashioned notion about such efforts being about "winning" in any traditional military/political sense, the actual logic underlying the Empire of Chaos M.O. becomes instantly clear.

Use of force against Afghan family is "justified."
 

Love the passive voice admission that "[I]tactical mistakes" [/I]were made. Tactical? Mistakes?
I can't really give a coherent intro to [URL="https://theintercept.com/2016/06/01/pentagon-special-ops-killing-of-pregnant-afghan-women-was-appropriate-use-of-force/"]this horror[/URL], and the plain whitewash of blatant wars crimes which has followed.
As they say on TV, "The following story contains graphic descriptions and imagery which [STRIKE]may[/STRIKE] should disturb [STRIKE]more sensitive[/STRIKE] readers of any description." Just saying, the following is really ugly.

[QUOTE]An internal Defense Department investigation into one of the most notorious night raids conducted by special operations forces in Afghanistan — in which seven civilians were killed, including two pregnant women — determined that all the U.S. soldiers involved had followed the rules of engagement. As a result, the soldiers faced no disciplinary measures, according to hundreds of pages of Defense Department [URL="https://theintercept.com/document/2016/06/01/gardez-foia/"]documents[/URL] obtained by [I]The Intercept[/I] through the Freedom of Information Act. In the aftermath of the raid, Adm. William McRaven, at the time the commander of the elite Joint Special Operations Command, took responsibility for the operation. The documents made no unredacted mention of JSOC.

Although two children were shot during the raid and multiple witnesses and Afghan investigators alleged that U.S. soldiers dug bullets out of the body of at least one of the dead pregnant women, Defense Department investigators concluded that “the amount of force utilized was necessary, proportional and applied at appropriate time.” The investigation did acknowledge that “tactical mistakes” were made.


The Defense Department’s conclusions bear a resemblance to U.S. Central Command’s findings in the aftermath of the horrifying attack on a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, last October in which 42 patients and medical workers were killed in a sustained barrage of strikes by an AC-130. The Pentagon has announced that no criminal charges will be brought against any members of the military for the Kunduz strike. CENTCOM’s Kunduz investigation concluded that “the incident resulted from a combination of unintentional human errors, process errors, and equipment failures.” CENTCOM denied the attack constituted a war crime, a claim challenged by international law experts and MSF.[/QUOTE]

Newspapers here have been reporting the US State Department's warning about tourists encountering terrorists. It's the first Europe-wide warning for 15 years.

[i]The Times[/i] notes that last year 7 Americans were killed by terrorists in Europe, while 50 Americans were shot by toddlers at home; therefore US Americans would be much safer if they left their toddlers at home when they went travelling.

[url=www.duffelblog.com/2016/06/obama-touts-legacy-renaming-wars-afghanistan-iraq-saying-will-close-gitmo/]Obama touts legacy of renaming wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying he would close Gitmo[/url] | DuffelBlog