Afghanistan

[neoplacebo]

I still remember the lone guy who voted against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. It was a guy from Oregon. I think his name was Wayne Morse.

[Vrede too]

I still remember the lone guy who voted against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. It was a guy from Oregon. I think his name was Wayne Morse.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: Congress votes

... At a crucial meeting of several Senators, Fulbright was able to persuade them to support the resolution. Several Senators such as Allen J. Ellender, Jacob Javits, John Sherman Cooper, Daniel Brewster, George McGovern and Gaylord Nelson were very reluctant to vote for a resolution that would be a "blank cheque" for a war in southeast Asia, and at the meeting Fulbright called to discuss the issue, he argued that passing a resolution would make fighting a war less likely, claiming the whole purpose of the resolution was only intimidation. Nelson wanted to add an amendment forbidding Johnson from sending troops to fight in Vietnam unless Congress gave its approval first, saying he did not like the open-ended nature of the resolution. Fulbright dissuaded him, saying he had the president's word that "the last thing we want to do is become involved in a land war in Asia". Fulbright argued to Nelson the resolution was "harmless" while saying that the real purpose of the resolution was "to pull the rug out from under Goldwater", going on to ask Nelson who did he prefer to win the election, Johnson or Goldwater? From the viewpoint of Nelson, a liberal Democrat known for his support of environmentalism, Johnson was a far more preferable president than Goldwater, the leader of the right-wing of the Republican Party.

The reluctant senators were correct and LBJ lied. Daniel Ellsberg would reveal many many more lies by many people.

After less than nine hours of committee consideration and floor debate, Congress voted, on August 10, 1964, on a joint resolution authorizing the president "to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom" (H.J. RES 1145 1964). The unanimous affirmative vote in the House of Representatives was 416–0. (However, Republican Congressman Eugene Siler of Kentucky, who was not present but opposed the measure, was "paired" with another member who favored the resolution—i.e., his opposition was not counted, but the vote in favor was one less than it would have been.) The Senate conferred its approval by a vote of 88–2. Some members expressed misgivings about the measure, but in the end, Democratic Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska cast the only nay votes. At the time, Senator Morse warned that "I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake." Morse also predicated that those who voted for the resolution "will live to regret it". Much to Johnson's satisfaction, Senator Goldwater voted for the resolution as appropriate, which allowed the president to present himself as just as "tough on Communism" as his opponent.

Siler, Morse and Gruening were heroes.

After the resolution was passed, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John W. McCormack called Johnson to congratulate him. The call was recorded and Johnson spent much time denouncing Morse as mentally unstable and untrustworthy while he called Gruening an ingrate, saying "He's just no good. I've spent millions on him up in Alaska"....

Irony, it turned out that LBJ was "mentally unstable and untrustworthy", and millions died as a result.

Wayne Morse: Final Senate term

... Ten other senators voted "present" or missed the vote.... In a speech before the Senate, Morse stated "I rise to speak in opposition to the joint resolution [S.J. Res. 189]. I do so with a sad heart. But I consider the resolution, as I considered the resolution of 1955, known as the Formosa resolution, and the subsequent resolution, known as the Middle East resolution, to be naught but a resolution which embodies a predated declaration of war."

In a speech on 18 February 1965, Morse in a speech “completely” repudiated Johnson's Vietnam policy, accusing the president of leading the United States into a war unconstitutionally. When Johnson announced the beginning of the strategic bombing offensive against North Vietnam code-named Operation Rolling Thunder, Morse stated the president "has not the slightest legal right under the Constitution of the United States to be bombing North Vietnam, short of a declaration of war." On 24 March 1965, the first campus protest against the Vietnam War took place with a "teach-in" at the University of Michigan. In a letter to John Donoughue, the organizer of the protest at the University of Michigan, Morse praised the "Teach-in Protest" and stated: "It is urgent that the American people insist that their country return to a respect for law before we create a holocaust in Asia." In April 1965, Morse took part in an anti-war protest for the first time when he spoke at a "teach-in" at the University of Oregon where he offered lavish praise for the student protesters, saying that as an old man it gladdened him to see so many young people willing to take a stand. On 8 June 1965, Morse was the lead speaker at an anti-war rally attended by 17, 000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York.

During the following years Morse remained one of the country's most outspoken critics of the war. It was later revealed that the FBI investigated Morse based on his opposition to the war, allegedly at the request of President Johnson in an attempt to find information that could be used politically against Morse. In June 1965, Morse joined Benjamin Spock, Coretta Scott King and others in leading a large anti-war march in New York City. After that, Morse "readily joined such protests when he could, and eagerly called upon others to participate."

In February 1966, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, J. William Fulbright, held televised hearings about the Vietnam war, which Morse took part in as a member of the committee. Johnson sent General Maxwell Taylor before the committee as a rebuttal witness. In response to Taylor's testimony, Morse said: "I happen to hold to the point of view that it isn't going to be long before the American people, as a people, will repudiate our war in Southeast Asia". In response, Taylor stated "That of course, is good news to Hanoi, Senator". An infuriated Morse snapped back: "I know that is the smear that you militarists give to those of us who have honest differences of opinion with you, but I don't intend to get down in the gutter with you and engage in that kind of debate, General!"

In the 1966 U.S. Senate election, he angered many in his own party for supporting Oregon's Republican Governor, Mark Hatfield, over the Democratic nominee, Congressman Robert Duncan, in that year's Senate election, due to Duncan's support of the Vietnam War. Hatfield won that race, and Duncan then challenged Morse in the 1968 Democratic senatorial primary. Morse won renomination, but only by a narrow margin. Morse lost his seat in the 1968 general election to State Representative Bob Packwood, who criticized Morse's opposition to continued funding of the war as being reckless, and as distracting him from other issues of importance to the state.Packwood won by a mere 3,500 votes, less than one half of one percent of the total votes cast.

Wayne Morse, presente!

One of my heroes:

Jeannette Rankin

First congressional term

... Shortly after her term began, Congress was called into an extraordinary April session in response to Germany's declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare on all Atlantic shipping. On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson, addressing a joint session, asked Congress to "make the world safe for democracy" by declaring war on Germany. After intense debate, the war resolution came to a vote in the House at 3:00 am on April 6; Rankin cast one of 50 votes in opposition. "I wish to stand for my country," she said, "but I cannot vote for war." Years later, she would add, "I felt the first time the first woman had a chance to say no to war, she should say it." Although 49 male Representatives and six Senators also voted against the declaration, Rankin was singled out for criticism. Some considered her vote a discredit to the suffragist movement and her authority in Congress, but others applauded it, including Alice Paul of the National Woman's Party and Representative Fiorello LaGuardia of New York....

During Rankin's term, Montana's state legislature voted to replace the state's two at-large Congressional seats with two single-member districts. With little chance of reelection in the overwhelmingly Democratic western district, Rankin chose instead to run for the Senate in 1918. After losing the Republican primary to Oscar M. Lanstrum, she accepted the nomination of the National Party and finished third in the general election behind Lanstrum and incumbent Democrat Thomas J. Walsh....

Second congressional term

... In the 1940 race, Rankin—now 60 years old—defeated incumbent Jacob Thorkelson, an outspoken antisemite, in the July primary, and former Representative Jerry J. O'Connell in the general election. She was appointed to the Committee on Public Lands and the Committee on Insular Affairs. While members of Congress and their constituents had been debating the question of U.S. intervention in World War II for months, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, galvanized the country and silenced virtually all opposition.

On December 8, Rankin was the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan. Hisses could be heard in the gallery as she cast her vote; several colleagues, including Rep. (later Senator) Everett Dirksen, asked her to change it to make the resolution unanimous—or at very least, to abstain—but she refused. "As a woman I can't go to war," she said, "and I refuse to send anyone else."

... While her action was widely ridiculed in the press, Progressive leader William Allen White, writing in the Kansas Emporia Gazette, acknowledged her courage in taking it:

Probably a hundred men in Congress would have liked to do what she did. Not one of them had the courage to do it. The Gazette entirely disagrees with the wisdom of her position. But Lord, it was a brave thing! And its bravery someway discounted its folly. When, in a hundred years from now, courage, sheer courage based upon moral indignation is celebrated in this country, the name of Jeannette Rankin, who stood firm in folly for her faith, will be written in monumental bronze, not for what she did, but for the way she did it.

Three days later, a similar war declaration against Germany and Italy came to a vote; Rankin abstained. Her political career effectively over, she did not run for reelection in 1942. Asked years later if she ever regretted her action, Rankin replied, "Never. If you're against war, you're against war regardless of what happens. It's a wrong method of trying to settle a dispute."

Later life

Over the next twenty years Rankin traveled the world, frequently visiting India, where she studied the pacifist teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. She maintained homes in both Georgia and Montana.

In the 1960s and 1970s a new generation of pacifists, feminists, and civil rights advocates found inspiration in Rankin, and embraced her efforts in ways that her own generation had not. She mobilized again in response to the Vietnam War. In January 1968, the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, a coalition of women's peace groups, organized an anti-war march in Washington, D.C.—the largest march by women since the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913. Rankin led 5,000 participants from Union Station to the steps of the Capitol Building, where they presented a peace petition to House Speaker John McCormack....

Death and legacy

... A statue of Rankin by Terry Mimnaugh, inscribed "I Cannot Vote For War", was placed in the United States Capitol's Statuary Hall in 1985. At its dedication, historian Joan Hoff-Wilson called Rankin "one of the most controversial and unique women in Montana and American political history". A replica stands in Montana's capitol building in Helena....

I supported this women-led effort.

[Vrede too]

Cowardly lying slime:

Trump officials back away from 2020 Taliban peace deal after withdrawal chaos

Trump
Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley
Former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller
Lisa Curtis, a former senior National Security Council official
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

[neoplacebo]

A very concise and honest critique of the US military presence in the Middle East for the past 20 years from a US Marine who knows of which he speaks. I think this article should be required reading for every member of Congress.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/served-afgha ... 00389.html

[billy.pilgrim]

A very concise and honest critique of the US military presence in the Middle East for the past 20 years from a US Marine who knows of which he speaks. I think this article should be required reading for every member of Congress.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/served-afgha ... 00389.html

I'm not a marine and I said that 20 years ago.

[neoplacebo]

A very concise and honest critique of the US military presence in the Middle East for the past 20 years from a US Marine who knows of which he speaks. I think this article should be required reading for every member of Congress.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/served-afgha ... 00389.html

I'm not a marine and I said that 20 years ago.

The issue is not whether we should have been there in the first place, but that the current situation there is BECAUSE the "training" of Iraqi and Afghan "forces" was nothing more than a jobs program paid for by you and me and that the longer we stayed the more intense the chaos would be when we left.

[Vrede too]

The issue is not whether we should have been there in the first place, but that the current situation there is BECAUSE the "training" of Iraqi and Afghan "forces" was nothing more than a jobs program paid for by you and me and that the longer we stayed the more intense the chaos would be when we left.

Mercenaries are not patriots.

A US drone strike killed 10 Afghan civilians in Kabul on Sunday. The US and its allies killed thousands of civilians since the war began.


Ajmal Ahmadi, weeps alone in a room after members of his family were killed on Sunday, in an American drone strike that targeted and hit a vehicle in their home in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021.

A US drone strike in Kabul on Sunday killed 10 civilians, including several children, according to what family members and witnesses told the New York Times....

Such incidents have typified the experience of Afghans during America's 20-year war in the country.

The US and its allies have killed numerous Afghan civilians with airstrikes and drone strikes, facing consistent criticism from human rights groups over a lack of transparency surrounding such deaths.

From US drone strikes in Afghanistan alone, it's estimated between 4,126 to 10,076 people have been killed since January 2004, including between 300 to 909 civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a UK-based organization that has tracked US drone strikes for years.

Under the Trump administration, in particular, there was a massive spike in civilian deaths in Afghanistan from airstrikes. This was linked to President Donald Trump relaxing the rules of engagement for airstrikes in 2017.

Airstrikes killed 700 civilians in Afghanistan in 2019 alone, per a December 2020 study from the Costs of War Project at Brown University.

"There were more weapons dropped from the air in 2018 and 2019 than at the height of US presence in Afghanistan in 2011," the report stated.

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan were hardly unique to the Trump era. From 2007 to 2016, for example, the US, its allies, and the Afghan government killed an average of 582 civilians per year. But the annual average of civilians killed increased by nearly 95% from 2017 through 2019 to 1,134....

Over the course of the war, it's estimated over 47,000 Afghan civilians were killed, according to the Costs of War project.

We suck.

[Vrede too]

viewtopic.php?p=143843#p143843

Right-wingers are sooo gullible, and those duping them will even exploit brave dead soldiers with their lies:

Fact check: Biden honored service members killed in Kabul, checked watch only after ceremony

More dishonest and dishonorable exploitation of the situation:

Ted Cruz (Rep. Dan Crenshaw R-TX, Donald Trump Jr), NY Post Falsely Pass Off Black Hawk Helicopter Video as a Taliban Hanging

Cruz and Donny Jr are chickenhawks. Crenshaw is a former SEAL and Afghanistan vet, which is even worse. Shame.

[Vrede too]

A very concise and honest critique of the US military presence in the Middle East for the past 20 years from a US Marine who knows of which he speaks. I think this article should be required reading for every member of Congress.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/served-afgha ... 00389.html

It was no accident.

How America Made Osama Bin Laden’s Dream Come True

After 20 years, who won the War on Terror?

In a 2004 speech sent to al-Jazeera, Osama bin Laden said that “all that we have to do is send two mujahideen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth that says al-Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note.”

If bin Laden were alive today—and not a decaying, bullet-riddled corpse somewhere in the North Arabian Sea—he might crack a smug smile upon witnessing the United States end its disastrous war in Afghanistan with a chaotic and humiliating withdrawal.

Although bin Laden thankfully failed to achieve most of his initial goals with the 9/11 terror attacks, he unfortunately succeeded in weakening the world’s most formidable superpower by baiting it into wounding itself....

America is so predictable, sigh.

[neoplacebo]

Putin and his troll army have achieved much more success than Osama. The Russian trolls have damn near completely hoodwinked the right wing nutjobs by making them, in effect, carry out the Russian agenda themselves. The beauty of it all is that the nutjobs don't even realize how they've been manipulated.

[billy.pilgrim]

Putin and his troll army have achieved much more success than Osama. The Russian trolls have damn near completely hoodwinked the right wing nutjobs by making them, in effect, carry out the Russian agenda themselves. The beauty of it all is that the nutjobs don't even realize how they've been manipulated.

Nikita Khrushchev said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within...."

[neoplacebo]

Putin and his troll army have achieved much more success than Osama. The Russian trolls have damn near completely hoodwinked the right wing nutjobs by making them, in effect, carry out the Russian agenda themselves. The beauty of it all is that the nutjobs don't even realize how they've been manipulated.

Nikita Khrushchev said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within...."

Yep, they've done a damn good job stoking division and angst bordering on hate. And they had an able assist from folks at Faux News and fool tools like Rush Limbaugh the pill head and the legion of other wingnuts who jump on this nonsense. It all makes me glad I'm as old as I am so that I won't have to see it or live it a lot longer. It's gonna be bad.

[Ulysses]

I thought Rush Limbaugh died a year or more ago.

Or was I dreaming?

[O Really]

I thought Rush Limbaugh died a year or more ago.

Or was I dreaming?

He improved the world greatly by leaving it in February of this year. But before that, he definitely helped to lead the charge to Hell in a handbasket.

[Ulysses]

Good.

I listened RL maybe a few times a decade or more ago, and quickly determined he was a waste of time and space.

[Vrede too]

A US drone strike killed 10 Afghan civilians in Kabul on Sunday. The US and its allies killed thousands of civilians since the war began.

We suck.

This was not even "collateral damage". The target was not a militant.

A US drone strike the military called 'righteous' mistakenly targeted an aid worker and killed 10 Afghan civilians, including 7 kids, a report says

We really suck.

[Vrede too]

The Pentagon FINALLY admitted that the drone strike was a "mistake" after lying for weeks about it, AFTER the NYT exposed the lie. Idk about apologies and reparations.

It’s long past time we ended pointless wars

Bruce Carruthers is a Vietnam veteran and retired Veterans Affairs employee. A member of Veterans for Peace Chapter 099, he lives in Waynesville. For more information, visit WNC4Peace’s Facebook page.

[Vrede too]

Strange planet.

Now in power, Taliban set sights on Afghan drug underworld

When they were in power before the Taliban nearly eradicated poppy production.
The US then facilitated poppies as a way of funding friendly warlords without direct payments, something we've done for drug producers around the world. For example, Contra cocaine helped create the crack epidemic. Afghan heroin exports soared.
The Taliban also funded their insurgency by taxing poppies.
Will heroin exports now plummet? We'll see, for now the Taliban have limited revenue options.

[billy.pilgrim]

Strange planet.

Now in power, Taliban set sights on Afghan drug underworld

When they were in power before the Taliban nearly eradicated poppy production.
The US then facilitated poppies as a way of funding friendly warlords without direct payments, something we've done for drug producers around the world. For example, Contra cocaine helped create the crack epidemic. Afghan heroin exports soared.
The Taliban also funded their insurgency by taxing poppies.
Will heroin exports now plummet? We'll see, for now the Taliban have limited revenue options.

Didn't they give up on fighting the drug war a couple of years before 9.11?

[Vrede too]

Didn't they give up on fighting the drug war a couple of years before 9.11?

Who, the Taliban or the US?