James Cogan
WSWS

Kevin Rudd, the current Minister for Foreign Affairs and Julia Gillard, who
ousted him and now is Prime Minister of Australia. [- If looks could kill...]

The Australian Labor government has joined with the Obama administration in its attempt to manufacture criminal charges against Julian Assange, an Australian citizen and the editor of WikiLeaks.

"The treatment being meted out to Assange demonstrates the contempt for democratic rights and international law within the Australian ruling elite and its political parties. Not one figure in the Labor government, the conservative opposition or the Greens has even expressed concern, let alone condemnation, of the implied death threats against Assange."

On Monday, Attorney General Robert McClelland told a doorstop press conference that Australia “will support any law enforcement action that may be taken. The United States will be the lead government in that respect, but certainly Australian agencies will assist”. The Australian Federal Police, he stated, would “look at the issue as to whether any Australian laws have been breached as a specific issue as well”.

A taskforce, made of up personnel from various intelligence and police agencies, has been formed to scour through the leaked material to determine if Assange can be charged with releasing “national security-classified documents”.

McClelland indicated that the Australian government had not received a specific request from Washington to cancel Assange’s passport. This is likely because both the US and Australian governments hope he will emerge from hiding and attempt to travel, whereupon he can be detained on either the trumped-up rape charges brought by the Swedish government or whatever equally politically-motivated charges are ultimately laid in the US.

McClelland left no doubt that if Assange returned to Australia—where he is a citizen and supposedly protected from political persecution by other states—the Labor government would provide “every assistance” to his deportation and prosecution in the US.

In a separate statement, McClelland also made clear that the Australian government would demand that any country providing Assange refuge, before charges are laid in the US, hands him over to Swedish authorities. The prosecution in Sweden, he declared on Tuesday, “places an obligation on those countries that are part of the Interpol arrangements to actually detain him when he arrives”.

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James Cogan
WSWS

[An Afghan homeless boy sleeps in a waste disposal site near Kabul, under American Occupation. What happend to his father and mother, brothers and sisters, what happened to his home? It makes my heart cry tears of blood and you? Where is much touted Western Civilisation, drawing cartoons of Mohammed, burning Qurans and bombing poor, innocent, unarmed people around the world because they can’t fight back? Western civilisation is a nice idea; though quite unachieved in practice. ~ Lal Qila]

The NATO summit held in Lisbon from November 19 to 20 endorsed the Obama’s administration’s demand that troops from the US and allied countries occupy Afghanistan indefinitely. The summit declaration stated that any changes in troop numbers would be “conditions-based, not calendar-driven”.

While the end of 2014 was put forward as the date when the US and NATO hope that Afghan government troops and police will be able to carry out all frontline combat against the anti-occupation insurgency, NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: “We will stay after transition in a supporting role… NATO is in this for the long-term. If the Taliban or anyone else aims to wait us out, they can forget it.”

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James Cogan
WSWS

Armoured personnel carriers of the German ISAF Quick Reaction Force
regional command north (QRF) are driven during a drill in the Marmal
mountains near the German ISAF headquarters in Masar-i-Sharif, north
of Kabul, July 1, 2008. (Credit: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch)

"The governments of every country represented at the Lisbon summit, whether in North America, Europe or the Pacific, are presiding over social devastation on behalf of the same capitalist oligarchy in whose interests the war is being waged. At the same time, they are using claims of “terrorist threats” to strip away democratic rights and prepare the framework for police-states."

The NATO summit that began yesterday in Lisbon, Portugal has one primary objective in regards to the US-led war in Afghanistan: to shelve all talk of President Barack Obama’s July 2011 deadline for beginning the withdrawal of troops.

In recent weeks, the Obama administration has banished the word “withdrawal” from its statements on Afghanistan. July 2011 has become simply the beginning of a “transition.”

The end of 2014 is now being invoked by the US and its allies as the key date in the war. By that time, the Army and National Police of the puppet Afghan regime of President Hamid Karzai will purportedly be sufficiently large and trained to undertake the main combat operations against the Taliban and other anti-occupation insurgent organisations.

US special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters this week in Pakistan:

“From Lisbon on, we will be on a transition strategy with a target date of the end of 2014 for Afghanistan to take over responsibility for leading the security.” American forces would still remain after that date, however. “We have a transition strategy. We do not have an exit strategy,” Holbrooke stressed.

The New York Times, having been briefed by administration officials, on November 14 summed up Obama’s perspective:

“By the end of 2014, American and NATO combat forces could be withdrawn if conditions warrant, although tens of thousands very likely will remain for training, mentoring and other assistance, just as 50,000 American troops are still in Iraq.”

In other words, Washington plans an indefinite presence of US occupation forces in Afghanistan. Even if “conditions warrant” that foreign troops are not required for direct combat by 2014—a prospect dismissed by virtually all analysts—the Pentagon will assert that an enduring presence is required to provide “training, mentoring and assistance.”

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James Cogan
WSWS

In this photo provided by the U.S. Dept. of Defense, U.S. Marines
return from patrolling nearby villages during Operation Backstop
in Helmand province south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec. 10, 2008.

General Petraeus calls for 2,000 more troops to Afghanistan

"Obama’s troop surge has not curbed Afghan resistance. Opposition to the foreign occupation and its corrupt puppet government headed by President Hamid Karzai has instead seen the Taliban-led insurgency grow in size and extend its operations well into areas north of the capital Kabul."

General David Petraeus, the US/NATO commander in Afghanistan, has called for 2,000 more troops to be deployed. He made the request just days after the last of the 30,000 additional American troops in the Obama administration’s surge arrived, pushing the total US and NATO occupation force to over 150,000.

Officials leaked Petraeus’s request ahead of a meeting in Washington yesterday between Obama and NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and a planned NATO summit in Lisbon on November 19-20. An anonymous NATO official indicated that at least 750 of the troops would be requested for training Afghani government army and police personnel. He gave no indication as to the role of the other 1,250. The general’s request has reportedly been “relayed” already to the 28 member states of the NATO alliance.

The call for more troops is calculated to increase political pressure on various European governments and non-NATO US allies, such as Australia, to boost their contributions to the occupation. Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told Reuters yesterday that the Obama administration would “look for NATO to first fill that requirement”.

Petraeus’s request is a further reflection of the fact that the war has become a quagmire. After nine years, the conflict has no end in sight. In every country that has deployed troops, there is rising popular opposition and calls for withdrawal. The dispatch of even more troops, however, is the inevitable logic of the failing neo-colonial attempt to transform Afghanistan into a client state that the US can use as a base to dominate the resources of Central Asia, against key regional rivals such as China and Russia.

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James Cogan

An Afghan boy killed by the US/NATO forces in Afghanistan. A family
wiped out in its sleep. (Photo: AFP/Massoud Hossaini, The WE!)

"The real motive for New York Times article is to introduce the audience of the Times and broader public opinion to the reality of the dirty war that the Obama administration is presiding over in Afghanistan. Assassination, or alternatively, detention without trial under the harshest conditions, is the preferred method of the US military to suppress resistance to the neo-colonial agenda of US imperialism."

The New York Times reported Sunday that American special forces units are operating in and around the Afghan city of Kandahar, assassinating or capturing alleged leaders and militants of the Taliban resistance ahead of the major US-NATO offensive scheduled for June.

Suggestive of the sinister and murderous character of such operations, the Times noted that the “opening salvos of the offensive are being carried out in the shadows”. It reported that “elite” units had been “picking up or picking off insurgent leaders” for the past several weeks.

A “senior American military officer” boasted that “large numbers of [the] insurgent leadership based in and around Kandahar have been captured or killed”, but that it was “still a contested battle space.”

The Times reported that “more than a dozen military and civilian officials directly involved in the Kandahar offensive” had agreed to speak about the special forces’ activities because it would help “scare off insurgents” before the bulk of American troops move into Taliban-held areas of the city. This claim is either patent nonsense or deliberate deception. The Taliban do not require an article in the American media to inform them that “large numbers” of their fighters are being killed or captured.

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Marc W. Herold

A child killed in recent airstrikes, western Afghanistan

“The American public is conditionally tolerant of [military] casualties and consistently indifferent to collateral damage.” ~Dr. Karl P. Mueller, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base

"General McChrystal’s data provided an opportunity to reveal Pentagon lying (or incompetence) to all, but only the libertarians rose to the occasion. The mainstream U.S media, Obama cultists, and much of the U.S antiwar movement persist in blithely quoting UNAMA and consuming Pentagon and embedded “patriotic” U.S reporters’ characterizations of America’s War in Afghanistan."

The Politics of Counting Dead Afghan Civilians: Responses by the Libertarian Right and Obama Liberals to McChrystal’s Numbers.

The ever-so-faithful stenographer of Pentagon truths, USA Today, printed numbers put forth by General McChrystal on Afghan civilians who perished at the hands of NATO.[1] The article headlined “NATO Strikes Killing More Afghan Civilians,” noted that such deaths rose from 29 during the first three months of 2009, to 72 during 2010.

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James Cogan

The third parliamentary election held in Iraq since the US invasion of the country in March 2003 took place yesterday, with some 6,529 candidates, 86 political parties and 20 electoral coalitions competing to win 325 seats in the legislature. A preliminary result is expected to be announced on Tuesday and a final result by the end of the month. Initial indications suggest that none of the main coalitions will win an outright majority.

The voting was disrupted by some 100 small explosions in areas of Baghdad and other cities that killed as many as 38 people. Overall, however, a massive security operation involving hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops and police, supported by US aircraft and helicopter gunships, prevented anti-occupation opponents from carrying out threatened attacks on polling stations.

The reportedly high turnout among voters elicited a predictable response from the American political establishment and in the media. President Barack Obama declared it was proof that “the future of Iraq belongs to the people of Iraq”. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it “was a good day for the Iraqis”. The New York Times’s report hailed Sunday’s voting as “arguably the most open, most competitive election in the nation’s long history of colonial rule, dictatorship and war”. Concealed by such empty statements is the real state of Iraq.

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James Cogan

Having drowned the Iraqi people in blood, the American financial and corporate oligarchy now believes that day has finally arrived. While US corporations are not the sole beneficiaries of the contracts, there is no question who has the final say over Iraq’s oil.

The awarding of development rights over the huge West Qurna oilfield in southern Iraq to Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell last Thursday once again underscores the criminal character of the continuing US-led occupation. As the direct result of the Iraq war, major American and other transnational energy conglomerates are now gaining control over some the largest oilfields in the world.

West Qurna has proven reserves of 8.7 billion barrels of oil. Iraq’s total reserves are currently put at 115 billion barrels, though dozens of potential fields have not been explored adequately. Before the US invasion in 2003, rights over West Qurna had been awarded by the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein to the Russian oil firm, Lukoil. The pro-US puppet regime in Baghdad has torn up all pre-war contracts.

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