What the CIA looks like to the rest of the world.
There is no doubt that the families of CIA operatives killed in Afghanistan have personal tragedies to attend to. However, is it a public tragedy? For it is no less the case that those hundreds and thousands of civilians–indeed even combatants–killed by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and now all over the world, also have families who mourn and continue to mourn for them.
For that reason I have to be honest about how the media has reacted to this attack. American media reveals its nationalist bent when it covers the attack on CIA operatives in Afghanistan marshaling nothing but glowing praise and absolutely no critical reflection. The CIA has been involved in enough shameful activities — from torture to anti-democracy coups — to disqualify it from any noble characterization. It has been involved in anti-democracy coups all over the world. It’s American capital’s “invisible hand,” crushing competition and alternative organizations of the market the world over, not to mention deposing popular leaders no matter the continent. It’s involved in shady activities the American people don’t know about and may never know about. Some might even say its activities are akin to state-sponsored terrorism.
In light of all that, the media’s “search for answers” after this attack seems a little over the top. It’s very easy to solve this security hole: Get out of other people’s countries!
It seems that we have come to a time when simple patriotic praise of the CIA and the military do harm to this country, its citizens, and to a democratic form of discourse. Regarding the attack, CIA director Leon Panetta described the CIA operatives as people “doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism.” Obviously there is no consensus that, in fact, the occupation of Afghanistan “must be done” or that it “protects our country from terrorism.” These are both vigorously debated, yet Panetta exploits the opportunity to forward his ideological agenda, while cloaking himself in patriotic garb, thereby intimidating reasonable disagreements as “anti-American” or “unpatriotic.”
Even President Barack Obama issued an equally troubling statement, describing the CIA operatives as people who have made “great sacrifices” for “fellow citizens” and “our way of life.” My “way of life” certainly does not involve bombing civilians with drones or undermining democratic forms of government in order to protect profits. Yet the President says that the CIA is necessary for “freedom and security.” Whether that’s true (I say it’s not) is separate from the question of what the CIA has done to harm freedom in America and around the world; and what it has done to disturb the security of people in America and around the world. Surely it’s not so simple or obvious as the President and others make it out to be. Is torture an exception to CIA practice? How can we know? It’s a clandestine organization after all, and clandestine government organizations are antithetical to democracy.
It’s time to start rejecting these seemingly innocuous and obligatory expressions of praise in times of attack. Civilians have an equal claim to being American, and an equal if not greater right to speak as do personnel involved in various government intelligence and security agencies. Obeisance to the CIA and hackneyed expressions of gratitude overlook the role that the CIA and American military play in imperialism, from torture scandals, to subversion of democracy, to the wholesale destruction and occupation of countries that belong to other people. Especially when Americans do not know most of what the CIA is up to, it seems especially dangerous to place our faith in these secret organizations and activities — especially when evidence so frequently pops up indicating that when the government acts secretly, it wantonly violates these norms and values that ordinary Americans believe in. The CIA and military cannot escape fair political and moral criticism. No one should be above that.
Related posts:
- Afghanistan
- American Irrationality in Afghanistan
- Afghanistan Needs a Karl Rove: The Plan to Bushize Karzai
- The Battle for Mogadishu – Afghanistan Redux?
- Pig of Afghanistan and Other Sad Tales
This attack on the CIA was just a minor accomplishment of the "resistance"…yesterday, a Shahid armed with a half-ton of high explosives took down 100 people at a volleyball match in NW Pakistan. Should all of those Pakistanis who dislike hardline fundamentalism have to leave too, along with the CIA? Its clear that the Taliban hates Pakistanis even more than it hates American CIA agents.
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/Death-Toll-N…
Posted by C.H. | January 2, 2010, 9:23 pmI am not sure how it makes sense to judge an attack on a volley ball match in the same way as an attack on a headquarters belonging to a foreign occupying force. But to be honest I don't know enough about either attack to even know if it was the same people or organization responsible. And I wouldn't really care either way. I was not making a moral claim about the people attacking. I was making a claim about the people attacked — they shouldn't even have been there in the first place.
Posted by yaman | January 2, 2010, 10:00 pmThe Kabobers would probably condemn the bombing of a volleyball game if Americans did the bombing.
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 2, 2010, 9:53 pmWe do not play the role of God, judging every action by every person in the world. I cannot speak for others on KABOBfest but I am an American citizen and I am responsible for this government's actions. I have an imperative to speak out in a society where there is room for me to speak and organize in a way that challenges its internal and external violence and injustice. But this right is not reserved exclusively for Americans. The American government adopts policies and practices that have enormous consequences for enormous populations world-wide. It makes sense for those people who are affected by American policies and practice to speak against them.
That said I have no qualms saying it's wrong to attack civilians at a volleyball game. But it's not an event that I would feel naturally inclined to write an editorial about.
Posted by yaman | January 2, 2010, 10:04 pmAre you an Arab? Muslim? You are concerned because you feel that you are responsible for the US government's actions? That is noble, and it's good to criticize unjust US policy. But if you are an Arab, a Muslim, then you should also be concerned about the extremists, many of them Arab and Muslim, who have waged a war on innocents for many years now. The Kabobers do not seem that concerned about Salafi terrorism, often funded by khaleeji slime, and carried out by Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians, and of course khaleeji 3arab jarab. The Kabobers' focus has been on "occupation" as if Iraq and Afghanistan are just like Palestine.
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 2, 2010, 10:17 pmI'll leave your assumptions aside, but unlike Americans, Arabs and Muslims do not have a single political system that they create or that represents and governs them. Americans don't have a responsibility to respond to their government's actions based on some shared identity or religion with their government, but because in practical terms there is a real, material connection between them and the government's actions. Furthermore there are mechanisms that can be pursued to change the government's policies. We condemn the government because we have or should have a say in how it works, not because we share the same national identity.
If my relationship to people attacking volleyball games was similar to my relationship with the American government, your comment might make sense. But so long as it doesn't, you haven't made a sound argument — unless, of course, it's the American government attacking volleyball games.
Posted by yaman | January 2, 2010, 10:26 pmLOL. My argument is simply that Kabobers complain much more about US occupation than about Arab and Muslim terrorism, which has killed many more Arabs and Muslims than US occupation has. Come to think of it, I have never read a post by a Kabober strongly condemning the murderous actions of the "mujahideen" who claim to fight on behalf of Islam and Arab nationalism.
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 2, 2010, 10:51 pmNo doubt that if the attack had been a misfired rocket from a CIA Drone, Muslim/Arab Americans, leftists, and the Ron Paul crowd would be hammering away at the US in outrage over the carnage.
Posted by C.H. | January 2, 2010, 10:13 pmYou don't understand. When we say we oppose US occupation, we are literally saying: all rockets and guns fired at people in those lands are misfired. An occupier's weapon can never be fired correctly.
Posted by yaman | January 2, 2010, 10:27 pmThe rocket that took out the stone-aged, woman-hating, anti-modernization fanatic Baitullah Mehsud was fired correctly…so was the bomb that rid the world of Zarqawi.
Posted by C.H. | January 3, 2010, 12:09 amSpeaking of the Jordanian scum bucket Zarqawi, I searched KABOBfest for "Zarqawi" and found a grand total of 11 posts. The first Kabober to post about Zarqawi was by Nabeel in Nov. 2005:
"In Wednesday’s comments section someone asked why we haven’t posted anything regarding the Bombings in Amman, Jordan.
Although, I cannot speak on behalf of the other kabobfesters, I for one did not want to jump on the Arab Nationalist Sunni bankwagon in condeming this violent and atrocious attack only. Obviously anytime innocent civilians are killed it is a crime against all of humanity.
I do not want to be one of those people who was not publicly criticising Zarqawi & Co. when he was blombing Shia areas, but immediately took offense to his targeting of Arab Sunnis.
Another point I’d like to make regarding this matter is the comparison to 911. Jordanian authorities would like the public to think of this event as Jordan’s 911 (it’s funny how every authoritarian govt wants a 911). 911 is not the appropriate tragedy for the Jordanians (or the media for that matter) to draw a parallel to. A more appropriate parallel would be the Oklahoma City Bombing. In both cases you have a deadly combination of homegrown religous zealotry, political disemfranchisement, and war veterens (Vietnam in the Oklahoma case, Afghanistan in the Jordanian case)."
http://www.kabobfest.com/2005/11/jordan-bombings….
Kudos to Nabeel for pointing out that Sunni Arabs were not condemning Zarqawi until his attack in Jordan.
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 3, 2010, 1:12 amThis wouldn't be the same Zarqawi that was trained by the CIA, would it?
Posted by Sean2009 | January 3, 2010, 5:20 pmI remember having dinner with a Palestinian hottie in Houston three years ago. We talked about Iraq, of course, and as soon as I mentioned Zarqawi, she interrupted me and said "IF he exists".
I wonder if Arabs still insist that he was a figment of the American imagination. Or did they finally admit he existed, and that the CIA trained him? The training took place in the 80s, no doubt, just like bin Ladin's training. Or maybe the CIA wanted him to provoke a US war with Iran:
"The question remains, how to draw the Americans into fighting a war against Iran? It is not known whether America is serious in its animosity towards Iran, because of the big support Iran is offering to America in its war in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Hence, it is necessary first to exaggerate the Iranian danger and to convince America and the West in general, of the real danger coming from Iran …"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Musab_al-Zarqawi
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 3, 2010, 5:50 pmI am sure Zarqawi is real enough. What I am not so sure of is what role, if any, he plaes in the events in Iraq, Jordan or elsewhere that are attributed to him. There is no doubt that on many levels, the Zarqawi story is a fiction deliberately created by the Pentagon, by its own admission, to demonize the Iraqi resistance. The idea that Zarqawi was at one time the leader of the Iraqi resistance, as claimed in the media and elsewhere, is surely ludicrous. We have seen that elements of the Sunni resistance itself have been so appalled by terrorist violence as to reach out to the Americans, of all people, for assistance in combatting it. They seem unlikely allies of the man said to be responsible for all the "suicide bombings."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va…
It is interesting and almost comical that we now have the mythical Zarqawi playing the role of instigator of a US war with Iran, when it is well know that the US has funded anti-Iranian terrorist organizations like the MEK/MKO and Jundallah who have carried out terrorist bombings, assassinations and beheadings in Iran. It is a particularly absurd fiction when the same neocons and Israeli lobby stooges who lied us into a war with Iraq are stridently demanding we start a war with Iran based on the same recycled fictions about WMDs.
We have Jane Harman on video openly advocating the fomenting of ethnic strife as a means of destabilizing Iran, and we know the US has allocated over $400 million to groups hostile to Iran's government to destabilize the regime.
We also know Israel armed and trained the Kurdish Peshmerga and other Kurdish separatist groups, and the US encouraged the Shia to revolt against Saddam only to leave them hanging in the wind. We know the real agenda behind the neocon invasion of Iraq was to overthrow Saddam and replace him with a puppet ruler to eliminate the threat Iraq posed to Israel, as revealed in PNAC's own papers. We know that PNAC, the Council of Foreign Relations, and other neocon groups openly advocated the division of Iraq into three separate ethnically pure enclaves— a prospect that would surely have resulted in a brutal civil war. We know that this division of Iraq has been advocated by Joe "I'm a Zionist" Biden.
But now it's all Zarqawii's fault.
Priceless.
It is amazing the way in which these supposedly independent terrorists work so hard to achieve the objective of all imperialist invaders to divide and rule the people and discredit and destroy nationalist resistance to the invaders through acts of terror directed against the people and the wholesale slaughter of the country's most outspoken intellectuals and opponents of the occupation. The neocons couldn't ask for better "enemies" than this. It's the El Salvador option, delivered courtesy of Al Qaeda. How nice of them.
Zarqawi is an Arab Emmanuel Goldstein, and like Goldstein, to what extent he is real or fiction is not entirely clear. But if Zarqawi did not exist, it surely would have been necessary to invent him.
And invent him they did.
Posted by Sean2009 | January 3, 2010, 6:57 pmOuch. Someone just got served.
Posted by yaman | January 3, 2010, 8:37 pmlooks like someone just got served a warm plate of bullshit.
Posted by Anonymous | January 3, 2010, 9:19 pmThat's not what you said before, but you might be interested in knowing that's not even argument. It's just a comment.
I'll also take the opportunity to share a lesson in logic. Just because you have never read a post condemning so-and-so, does not mean there are no posts condemning so-and-so.
Posted by yaman | January 2, 2010, 10:54 pmYou're right – it was a comment, an observation on Arab hypocrisy.
My first comment was "The Kabobers would probably condemn the bombing of a volleyball game if Americans did the bombing." You responded be telling me that your are concerned about the consequences of US policies, as if this justifies the Kabobers' lack of condemnation of Arab terrorism.
I searched for "Iraq" on KABOBfest, hoping to find strong condemnation of the extremists who have been responsible for the mass murder of Iraqis: http://www.kabobfest.com/page/5?s=iraq
A few interesting posts, some of which I've read before, like "18 Arab Leaders You Would Want with You in a Bar Fight" By Hanitizer, who summarized the criminality of Saddam. Also I read with great interest "Western Hypocrisy Shines at the Racism Conference" By Will, who wrote "Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have paid with their lives. " But he blamed the deaths of Iraqis directly on "Westerners". No mention of the thousands of Arab "mujahideen" and "resistance" dickheads who repeatedly bombed and attacked innocent Iraqis.
Also I just read "A Moving Diatribe to Mobilize the Iraqi Police" By Will, who condemned the American soldier's lecturing of Iraqi police, even though they deserved to be lectured like that because Shia militias had infiltrated the Iraqi police and some of them killed innocent people, often attacking Sunni Arabs. One would think that Sunni Arabs should applaud the soldier's lecture. But no, Will wondered "if this video is planted by Military strategic communication experts to show why the Iraqi police are inadequate and a US presence is needed, and how the US is trying to get them in shape to take control of their country." WOW
I noticed Kalash wrote on March 8, 2009 in which he appeared to condemn the suicide bombers (he actually mentioned them!), and he wrote that "Sunni residents of Samarra welcomed over a million Shia pilgrims. No major acts of violence were reported. Three years ago, the Golden Mosque was attacked sparking a bloody civil-war." WOW I thought, this Kabober is not like the others. But at the bottom he wrote : "Ali Hassan Al Majid (aka Chemical Ali) was given his third death sentence… That court is more of a joke than the ICC." So Iraq isn't even allowed to try and convict a mass murderer? The court is a joke?
I noticed this Kalash guy has written many posts that mention the horrendous violence in Iraq. Almost a year ago he wrote in "Remembering Iraq (Dec 19 – Jan 18)": "Well over 175 people have died in Iraq over the past month (in addition to any casualties resulting from military operations). That number pales in comparison to the dead in Gaza, but it is a clear sign that the beleaguered nation still has a long way to go."
At first glance it appears to be a condemnation of the terrorists who kill innocent Iraqis, but it's just a condemnation of America and Bush, who according to the Kabobers have caused the deaths in Iraq, which was hunky dory before 2003. In that post Kalash wrote: "Although he’s already been given two death sentences, a new trial began for Ali Hassan al Majid (aka Chemical Ali). This time the charade is centered on his role in the Halabja massacres ."
So Kalash, the smartest of the Kabobers, does not know of Ali Hassan al Majid's role in the massacres of Kurds and called his trial a "charade". How fitting!
In "Remembering Iraq: House of Saddam" Kalash criticized the film for not covering US support for Saddam in the 80s, the crippling effect of sanctions, and most importantly, the atrocities following the 2003 invasion. I wonder if Kalash even knows about the 1991 intifadha and how Saddam's goons mass murdered Iraqis. Also, if the film were to cover the atrocities following the 2003 invasion, wouldn't they have to tell the story about Zarqawi and the thousands of Arabs who travelled hundreds of miles to ostensibly fight the American occupiers, but ended up mass murdering mostly Iraqi civilians and Iraqi security forces?
But Kalash did write: "Saddam Hussein was a ruthless thug responsible for the misery of millions of Iraqis. There were good reasons to take him out". I agree with him on this! Kalash wrote a few of these "Remembering Iraq" posts and on Nov 28, 2008 he called it "Iraq’s elected representatives" – that is progress for an Arab! Kalash has written a lot about Iraq, and I thank him for it. But like most Arabs, he seems more interested in condemning Americans and their "occupation" of Iraq rather than condemning the Saddamist and Salafi scum of earth who continue to mass murder Iraqis.
I will search further back because many posts (507) mention Iraq, and I thought surely when of you Kabobers must have been angered by the civil war of 2006 and 2007. Very interesting reading on KABOBfest that symbolizes how biased (and sometimes clueless) the Arabs are on Iraq.
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 2, 2010, 11:55 pmI just read this: "what about the militants that come into Iraq to defend “Islam” and all its glory at the present state. I’m sorry but this is disgusting, another sign of why we don’t get along and why arabs will never be friends."
on "Saudi Jarabia" By NarcelX: http://www.kabobfest.com/2008/07/saudi-jarabia.ht…
EXCELLENT! Thank you NarcelX!
So NarcelX is the smartest Kabober, not Kalash. Where is NarcelX these days?
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 3, 2010, 12:31 amI just discovered that NarcelX is Iraqi, and that he quit this blog after one of the clueless Kabobers called NarcelX an idiot for hating the 3arab jarab of KSA. No wonder I agreed with NarcelX, and no wonder the other Kabobers attacked him for expressing his outrage, which other Kabobers evidently did not share. His post "Saudi Jarabia" was the strongest condemnation of "mujahideen" I've seen on KABOBfest. But he is Iraqi, and that makes sense!
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 3, 2010, 12:50 amSurely ONE of you Kabobers must have been angered in 06 & 07, I mean. I just read this post by Maytha: "Iraqi Refugee Situation Part II: The Strain on Syria". Now here is an Arab who pointed out that Syria was one of the few Arab countries that does not allow the US to use its territory to launch a war.
But ya haram, poor Syria, which had "nothing to do" with the invasion and occupation in Iraq. LOL. Any Kabobers read this in 2007?
Suicide bombers head to Iraq from Damascus: http://iraqimojo.blogspot.com/2007/10/suicide-bom…
The Iraqis appreciate their neighbors' hospitality, but it has cost IRaqis much money staying for so long in Syria and Jordan and wherever. NO doubt the economies of both Syria and Jordan benefited from the large influxes of IRaqis. Arabs never mention that.
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 3, 2010, 3:04 am"I do not want to be one of those people who was not publicly criticising Zarqawi & Co. when he was blombing Shia areas, but immediately took offense to his targeting of Arab Sunnis. " -Nabeel
Actually that is the first time I've seen any Arab say something like that. A big SHUKREN to Nabeel, even though it's more than 4 years late.
Posted by Iraqi_Mojo | January 3, 2010, 1:25 am"In light of all that, the media’s “search for answers” after this attack seems a little over the top. It’s very easy to solve this security hole: Get out of other people’s countries!"
The USA is a killing machine, they survive off the carcasses and blood of dead people that are poor around the globe. Like vampires cannot get enough blood, Americans can't get enough of war and occupation.
Posted by Ana Min Falastin | January 3, 2010, 4:14 amand a tinfoil helmet
Posted by C.H. | January 3, 2010, 9:21 pmThe CIA shouldn’t even be in Afghanistan…
Really? Where should they be, then? In Yaman's back yard with night vision goggles? I'm no fan of the CIA but to claim they shouldn't be operating in Afghanistan is nuts.
Posted by programmer craig | January 5, 2010, 12:26 amHey. I just wanted to point out, in case you missed it, that the person responsible for these attacks was not an Afghani fighting for his country's freedom. It was a Jordanian informant for Al-Qaida. Remember them? They were the group responsible for September 11th, killing 3000 people, and prompting the US to go to war in Afghanistan in 2001. Just thought that was important to keep in mind.
I strongly disagree with many of the United States actions around the world historically and including Afghanistan both before and after 9/11. However, I totally believe that it must continue to be involved in Afghanistan in one way or another as long as that threat continues. The US should also get more involved in Yemen, not as an occupying force, but to help the Yemeni government in controlling Al-Qaida and other extremist elements in that country.
Posted by NLH | January 5, 2010, 3:01 amI didn't say the attacker was an Afghan or a freedom fighter so I don't know why my post prompted you to respond that way. I would caution, however, against reducing the complexity of the world, of power disparities, and of politics, to the narrow level of "security." What does it mean to "help" the Yemeni government control extremist elements? Is this the kind of "help" that we gave South American countries against their people, ie, the kind of "help" that armed, funded, an bestowed international legitimacy on to authoritarian death squads that ironically ended up being the biggest terrorists against their own people?
Posted by yaman | January 7, 2010, 2:06 amMedia found out the bomber was a Jordanian, recruited by the CIA as a double agent.
They never figured he'd turn out to be a triple agent!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8442371.st…
All the better. Less evil-scumbag walking the earth (-8).
Posted by Ooo | January 6, 2010, 4:36 amNow why don't we see Egyptians do these kinda stuff?/
Posted by OooKhalid | January 6, 2010, 5:47 amThe "Mujahideen" in Iraq was/is led by an Egyptian, Ayyub Al-Masri. He hasn't been heard from in a while, we can only hope he was blown to pieces while trying to pull on a suicide vest.
Posted by C.H. | January 6, 2010, 6:09 am