Video: Questioning Obama's and the US' Goals in Afghanistan

Josh Rushing has embedded with US troops in Afghanistan. Speaking with various troops, he learns that what they think they're doing is very different from what the US public thinks they're doing.

The video's message is clear: our efforts in Afghanistan will not be achieved by military force. General Nicholson's perspective is interesting. He says that he doesn't want to see more American troops--he wants to see more Afghani troops. He acknowledges that a purely white, Western force isn't going to do the job. Afghans protecting their own country is key to security, for us and for them.

This perspective resonates with that of Jeremy Scahill, who invokes history as a lesson for why we will lose in Afghanistan if we continue on our current path. He says that democracy might not even be the best system of governance for Afghanis. Their history and culture, he says, is so vastly different from ours that the country may indeed require another system of governance in order to make Afghanis safe.

These perspectives are reminiscent of Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator of Spanish speaking South America. While condoning federalism as an ideal system of governance, Bolivar distrusted American style federal democracy as a system for Venezuela and other South American countries. To him, what was needed was a system shaped around the peoples of South America, with the aim of protecting and educating the peoples until they were ready for democracy.

That sentiment remains relevant two hundred years later, when the United States, the greatest power in the world, is still struggling with its own system of democracy (it is interesting to note that Bolivar had warned about the United States and its hunger for more power). This country has arguably protected its people from foreign and domestic attack. Also, in terms of Government control, we remain the freest nation. Yet corporate entities have simultaneously weakened democracy--our influence on local, state and national decision-making--and strengthened state protection of corporate enterprise. In the mean-time our crime-rates are very high as compared to other industrialized nations. Goes to show that security is relative.

Furthermore, we cannot say that we have a well-educated populace. Again comparing to other industrialized nations, our system of secondary education is, at best, an embarrassment. Our children can barely read and do maths; minority children in the United States lag behind even further. Our post-secondary (college and university) education remains the best in the world, yet it is not accessible to many of our high-school grads. On average, private four-year university tuition is about half of family household incomes, and public four-year is about one-ninth. Again, that gap ratio is larger for minority families.

I'd say that there are three measures for the success of system of governance: security of the populace, free and open decision-making, and a highly-educated citizenry. We have not met the latter two measures, and the first has its shortcomings. That we are the richest nation in the world should make every one of us pause and wonder what we are doing wrong. We do not.

So what, exactly, are we exporting to Afghanistan and (let us not forget) Iraq? History shows that what works for one place doesn't necessarily work for another. So why should we be exporting our system of governance when it hasn't actually worked for us? Democracy is obviously an ideal system of governance for an advanced society, but that's not what we have, and that's not what we are giving to the Afghanis. It would probably be more practical if we simply stabilized what the Afghanis already had, and then left them with the means to improve themselves on their own terms. The way things are going, trying to instill democracy is going to end as a disaster. A stable country with some practical, tangible rights is always better than an unstable country with many legal rights and very few practical, tangible rights. Then we as a nation could focus on what is important for us.

TRNN: Obama's PhRMA deal

The unlikely union of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America or PhRMA and the White House has many wondering about the true nature of this partnership. Especially taking into consideration the powerful lobby’s opposition to any kind of health care reform for years. The Real News spoke with Donna Smith, Community organizer for California Nurses Association, about drug industry's possible impact on the final legislation.

Grist: Our addiction to cheap stuff has become very expensive, new book argues

Vanessa Kern interviews Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. Shell deftly weaves a compelling, cautionary tale out of disparate strands: the psychology of manipulating shoppers, the environmental costs of our lust for inexpensive things, the deskilling of the retail industry, and the loss of appreciation for “quality.” Tracing the history of discount culture from the yesteryear excitement over brown paper packages to today’s ambivalence about crammed plastic bags, Shell shows us why we feel we’ve been ripped off if we pay “full price.”

Non-violent protests against West Bank barrier turn increasingly dangerous. - Israeli troops continue to shoot tear gas and even live ammunition at peaceful Palestinian protesters, as Israeli settlements encroach further and further into the West Bank, and Palestinian farmlands are taken away from villages. Israeli troops have no regard for nationality, firing indiscriminately into crowds and hitting Palestinians, Americans and Israelis alike. Despite the dangers, some feel that non-violent protest is the only means of resistance, and the movement is slowly taking hold in the West Bank.

Looking Back at Abu Ghraib 5 Years Later - Amid controversy surrounding the upcoming release of torture pictures by the Obama administration, Mary Mapes's personal anecdote gives compelling reasons for why it was a good idea to release the Abu Ghraib pictures five years ago, and why it continues to be a good idea today. "We all like to think that if we had been at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or Baghram Air Base, we would have done the right thing. This is our chance to prove it."

I hate hackers.

Tom Engelhardt's article Killing Civilians asks us how easily we forget the atrocities that our soldiers carry out on women, children, the weak and the infirm--among other questions.

Hounds on Cheney

Rice, Ashcroft Approved Torture in July 2002 Surprised? My dad was. I'm not. But the focus point here is "July 2002." That's less than a year after 9/11. In fact, the torture programs were developed well before they were approved by top Bush officials. If nothing else, the revelations illustrate just how dire and serious times have become. Torture wasn't, as many still believe, a desperate decision from an out-of-control administration that was running out of options. Nor was it the act of a few rouge individuals without the approval of their superiors. It was deep, cold and calculated, and it involved officials at all levels. When torture was the name of the game from the very beginning, you begin to wonder, who wasn't involved?

As Arriana Huffington says, "This is a defining moment for America." If the United States is to regain its moral standing on the world's stage, something has to be done, and quickly. Obama can't afford to let this drag out. The elephant in Oval Office, torture has been a defining issue of Obama's administration since before he even took the oath. What Obama does in the near future will make or break his presidency—either paving the way for eight years of success in all areas from the finance crisis to the environment, or crippling his success in all other issues and slowly dragging Obama's administration into an early grave.

"Isn't torture one of those things where there really is no legitimate other side?" That's the essential question that Huffington asks, and it's the reason that Obama needs to quickly nip this issue in the bud. Not only is the whole world watching Obama's every move, they're judging him—and us. What Obama does concerning torture could reverse what years of Bush's foreign policy has done to strain our relationship with the rest of the world.

And then there's Cheney, defending torture and, of course, badmouthing Obama at every chance he can get. Unlike Bush, who has been deliberately lying low for the past few months, Cheney has been touring the country and sewing chaos and destruction wherever he goes. As if he didn't cause enough chaos and destruction while he was in office.

But for those Americans who, during the Bush presidency, had a steady supply of oxygen going to their brains, Cheney wore the pants in the Bush White House, and he has since become the symbol of all of the evils of the Bush era. This may explain Cheney's recent outspokenness; in other words, he's feeling cornered. Convicting Bush, like single-payer health care, is off the table. So why not Cheney? He knows he's guilty, and his only strategy is to produce as much controversy against Obama as he can before the blood hounds catch up with him. And the hounds are on his trail. But not Obama's hounds, apparently. Not Bo, either.