We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, July 4, 2014

The Dogs are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan

Click here to access article by Helen Redmond from CounterFire (Britain).

The dramatic title of the article refers to an actual book title by a former journalist at The Globe and Mail, a major Canadian newspaper.
A slew of new books by an international crew of journalists are being churned out to explain the complete failure of America’s thirteen-year long, $753 billion dollar war and occupation of Afghanistan.
The vast majority of these books share a similar template and selective amnesia. These journalists believe Afghanistan was ‘the good war’, the Taliban had to be overthrown, al-Qaeda evicted, that Pakistan and poppy are intractable problems, the war was to bring democracy and President Karzai is crazy. Then, after cheerleading and providing cover for the war, occupation and troop surges, they admit that it all went horribly wrong. But after a decade of ‘missteps’ and ‘folly’, these ‘objective’ journalists declare that Nato troops must stay in Afghanistan to ‘repair and mitigate the damage’.