Deep Respect to Craig M. Mullaney. I am sure he is a wonderful person, otherwise he would not be a part of Team Obama.

However, what is wroing with OnPoint. Why cannot we bring somebody, anybody, a single peace activist who have been occupying a foreign country who has not done a single thing to us. Yes, Afghanistan and people of Afghanistan, even Taliban did not do anything to us.

Let us understand “fully”, WHY we occupied and interfered to internals of a foreign country? What has led to it; what happened to us? Who benefited?

Why can’t we ask the right questions to ourselves before killing other people. Even MIT faculty is under scrutinity on this:
http://www.HumanGenome.org/MITBeijing.htm
We have to use our brains for a change – WE ARE GOING BANKRUPT, with or without feeding our soldiers with Chinese Yuan.

Response to Lilya Lopekha-

Let’s not forget that the Taliban while ruling Afghanistan provided safe haven for Al-Qaeda. This was during the planning of the September 11th attacks. You are being a bit disingenuous to suggest that they have not anything to us.

I do not nor never did I support the invasion of Iraq. Afghanistan is another matter entirely.

What does Craig think of the “3 Cups of Tea” approach of eschewing the military and focusing on the humanitarian / diplomatic intervention?

I listened to Craig speak of his time at Oxford when he was reading and traveling. It seems that he should have read a bit more history to realize we are not going to remake Afganistan or be successful as occupiers. As for time, no we don’t have the time or money to be there while the Army tries to get it right. I hope there are some others who have more life experience giving Barack advice on Afganistan.

After hearing todays interview, I will read and promote this book and author. I hope Craig comes to NYC and gives a lecture.
thanks mike mc

While I’m happy Mr. Stringer pointed out the fallacy of Ms. Lopekha’s premise, the caller at the end of the show who pointed out that Afghanistan is not a country was on to something.

How many armies have to be humiliated in this region before someone gets a clue? The British and the Russians are only the most recent examples. You cannot rule a people who do not consent to be ruled without resorting to butchery, plain and simple.

The level of hubris that allows Americans of any stripe to believe that we can do what NO ONE else has done is staggering. The world is not simply made of Americans and those who want to be (like) Americans. This is the central problem with the Neocon world view.

This is the legacy that the morons who were running our government for the last eight years have left us with.

Obviously, Craig Mullaney is smart, tough, and courageous. He has shown and continues to show a great deal of responsibility to his men and his country. My son has served tours in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with those academy types. He has a great deal of respect for their capabilities. I was impressed with the fact that Mr. Mullaney is willing and ready to serve in the Pentagon. I think he’ll bring a excellent mix to a position in the Pentagon. I only hope he’ll be able to make a difference for our country, those men on the ground he spoke about, and even those in Afghanistan seeking freedom from the Taliban. I understand that the Pentagon can be a very frustrating environment. Good luck Mr. Mullaney and thank you for serving and the book. Godspeed!

I, like Erika, would have loved to hear what he thinks of the relationship between and work with programs like Central Asia Institute (Three Cups of Tea).

At the beginning of the program it was billed as the military version of Three Cups of Tea. Where was the discussion of the humanitarian aspect of this relationship building. There will always be people out there, and here at home, for that matter, who hate us for whatever reason. Fighting them on their turf in their way is bleeding us all, emotionally, financially, morally and socially.

Craig talked about not having enough time to build relationships with Afghanis when they are in a village once each 6 months. Why isn’t relationship building a focus of this process. What happened to reaching a hand out (Obama’s great visual from his inauguration speech)??? Surely, there has to be a better way.

“You cannot rule a people who do not consent to be ruled without resorting to butchery, plain and simple.”

Doug, assuming that all Afghanistan residents unanimously believe in that, and assuming that they all want to be ruled by Taliban because they so love them. Doesn’t seem to be the case given how some Pashtuns from the Swat valley working in the US are being threatened by Taliban (that the Taliban will kill their family members back home) to extort money.

Here’s the tricky issue – say we leave the country now, and it descends into further chaos, mob rule, be-headings, stoning of women and human rights violations. Guess who will start crying that we shouldn’t have left Afghanistan? People like you who are criticizing American presence there and clamoring for a pull-out.

There are other countries surrounding/neighboring Afghanistan that will be threatened if Taliban comes to rule Afghanistan once America leaves now.

The best we can hope for is the death of OBL and other top leaders (natural or otherwise) and once that happens, maybe the situation will start to improve. Till then, whether we like it or not, we’re in for the long haul. Start investing in lemonade.

“This is the legacy that the morons who were running our government for the last eight years have left us with.”

To a large extent, that’s true – the focus was shifted to Iraq by Bush and his neo-con buddies. But other than that, the US military expansion policy has been in place for decades, and it hasn’t seen much change whether it was a Democrat or a Republican as our President. The number of US military bases around the globe has been expanding – it’s not as if Carter and Clinton actually reduced the number of US bases, or were peaceniks. Innocent Iraqi civilians continued to die under Clinton. Carter had his friend Suharto and East Timor, and supported Shah of Iran.

My point is: the idiocy goes beyond just eight years, and involves both Democrats and Republicans.

Actually, if you decide to read the book, you will see that Mullaney seems to have a huge amount of respect for the sort of “Three Cups of Tea” relationship-building you are asking about. In the book, those were the moments he seemed to feel he was having an actual impact in the lives of the people. But the problem with this, and in general in Afghanistan, is the relatively tiny number of US troops stationed there, a tiny percentage of those in Iraq, in a much larger, more problematic(terrain-wise) and more populous country. There are just too few boots on the ground to cover so much land, so many people, and so this type of relationship-building seems to get lost in the attempt to police such a complicated country. Perhaps with Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan, more boots on the ground will mean more opportunities to build relationships and infrastructure in this war-torn country.

I suppose that our empire-building, oil-pipeline-building efforts in Afghanistan would be less mysterious to me if I had any confidence that the “casus belli” — the events of 9/11/2001, were not a “false flag” operation.

That is, I have as yet no assurance that the death and destruction on 9/11/2001 was not caused by, or aided and abetted by malfeasance, ignorance or perhaps even complicity by individuals within my own government.

There are just too many unanswered questions, too much actual forensic and “crime scene investigational” private research results now amassed about what happened in the World Trade Center buildings–not least of which is the fact that somehow the collapse of #7 WTC, also known as the Salomon Bros. Building, is always skipped over.

The building did collapse, fairly obviously by controlled explosive demolition (and examination of the dust, the residues of sulphur, iron, aluminum oxide, magnesium and manganese which are the “fingerprints” of the demolition devices known as thermate proves that point). Yet Philip Zelikow’s novel, “The 9/11 Commission Report,” did not mention WTC #7. Nor did the initial NIST report. Nor did Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton’s after-the-fact attempt to bolster Zelikow’s fictional treatment of 9/11 with their apologia pro whitewash-sua “Without Precedent,” mention WTC #7.

We can say that the official Washington myth-makers are nothing but conspiracy theorists ’til we’re blue in the face, but that won’t get us any closer to the truth. (By the way, a criminal conspiracy consists of two or more persons planning an illegal act and taking ONE provable action in furtherance of that plan. So by any definition, the official myth, with its 19 “hijackers” working in concert with a few folks hiding in Afghani caves, easily qualifies as a pretty large conspiracy theory.

Kean and Hamilton in their book also try to discredit, demonize, mock, dismiss any and all critics of their whitewash. It would have been far better for them to have conducted a true investigation–but they, the commissioners and virtually all of the 80 or so “staff members” of the whitewash are so completely beltway insiders that there was no way they could have created an independent, meaningful, honest investigation.

Zelikow talks with Karl Rove ongoingly as the investigation progresses; he was already a tight buddy with Condi Rice, and almost immediately after she takes over as Secretary of State, Zelikow joins her staff as a special aide/assistant/deputy, or whatever. How do YOU spell “conflict of interest”? And then he shows up on Lehrer’s PBS Newshour as some kind of “expert,” when he should most probably be indicted and tried for lying to the American people, and appear only in interviews from behind bars.

Or perhaps 9/11/2001 is just another of those “too big to fail” matters as we watch our war-strangled and greed-choked economy spiral down the drain. 9/11 as a false-flag operation, or inside job, or knew-but-did-not-protect-us-from operation, is “too monstrous to be true,” while “our” huge banks, the “Federal Reserve System”–non federal, no reserve–it’s all “system” — have committed fraud on such a massive scale that criminal complicity here is also deemed “too monstrous to be true,” and so the institutions, like the 9/11 myth, are “too intertwined to fail.”

We have the Wall Street (and Fairfield County, CT, too) gamblers rigging insurance bets and such that total multiple times the value of the underlying loans. This is called a pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

And we have our government saying that our military, the best, most sophisticated ion the world, is powerless to follow its own protocols and shoot down four “hijacked” airplanes, that our “intelligence” agencies are too stupid to protect us from internal threats, our Federal Aviation Administration flight controllers are too stupid to protect us from airborne disasters. And then promoting every one of the “too stupid, or incompetent to do their jobs” individuals involved with the 9/11 failures to a higher rank, higher salary, being given gilded medals.

And our Fourth Estate doesn’t think there’s “Something Rotten in the State of Denmark” ??? Or the State of United. Give. Me. A. Break.

I find it difficult to be patient with any program(s) or discussions which are based upon anything that rests upon the false initial premise of 9/11/2001. And, unfortunately, almost everything SINCE 9/11/2001 has been justified by the official myth that the US was “attacked” on 9/11, by people who had been trained in our military bases, who had been paid by various of our governmental entities, who were overt or covert “assets” of various of our governmental entities. D’you see anything wrong with this picture. (Even worse, journalists in other lands have reported seeing many of the “hijackers” alive and well, consuming their daily bread, in various foreign cities around the world. We should probably arrest these “zombies” and bring them to trial. It would certainly make for interesting courtroom drama, wouldn’t it. I can just imagine the Daily News and NY Post headlines: “Zombie Hijacker Insists He Died On 9/11; Waterboarding Fails To Make Him Change His Story”. (Much too long for Post OR Daily News heads, but you get the idea.)

As many have said, “Wake up, sheeple.”

“Even worse, journalists in other lands have reported seeing many of the “hijackers” alive and well, consuming their daily bread, in various foreign cities around the world.”

Um, that can be explained quite easily. The names of terrorists/hijackers are quite common in the Muslim world, and you would find two people with the same first-and-last names (similar to John Smith). The other explanation could be that for those terrorists (surely, it’s only in the case of a couple of them that the “hijackers” are alive and well post 9-11) whose doubles are alive, their identities were stolen and used by the hijackers.

Another theory was the temperature at which steel melts – as the temperature in the towers never reached that limit. Which ignores that the structural rods didn’t need to melt, just weaken to the extent that the building would collapse. And the temperature did reach to weaken them.

It’s the tendency of human mind to construct elaborate explanations in the absence of facts, to fill in the blanks. And conspiracy theories fit the bill.

Which is not to say that the 9/11 Commission was above-board, or that there are no unanswered questions, but to ascribe it all to a vast conspiracy seems a bit far-fetched. Maybe I should go watch The Parallax View one more time.

Posted by Doug..
“How many armies have to be humiliated in this region before someone gets a clue? The British and the Russians are only the most recent examples.”
——————————————————
Doug,

people like yourself who continue to use this argument are being intellectually dishonest. All other countries prior to the U.S. have sought to OWN Afghanistan; to make it a COLONY, adding to their empire. Their aim was to conquer, overthrown the government and RULE the country.
We have no intentions of making Afghanistan the 51st state of America! President Obama has no intention of being the next president of Afghanistan.
There are many reasons to criticize the war in Afghanistan but please stitch to TRUE historical FACTS. This “U.S. empire building” myth is both simplistic and false.

Read the posting by Bill W., on February 24th, 2009 at 3:27 pm EST

The Difference between Bill W. and the producers of OnPoint is that Bill W. somehow took the time and did some research. Once you cross the line…
“Hmmm, the events of 9/11 looks fishy”, for every 5 minutes of research, you discover something more fishy that the previous fishy strange fishy thing that happened on 9/11.

It is just a matter of dropping everything we were told and get rid of the horror images of planes hitting buildings, just concentrate about the major players and who benefited from the events of 9/11.

To the producers of OnPoint: Why can’t you bring Richard Gage on. He is not dillusional. Thouosands of scientists are not dillusional. Millions of people (90% of Europe) who believe that something is weird about 9/11 are not dillusional.

I didn’t listen to the entire show, but I was a bit disappointed in the moderator. He basically served in the role of a cheerleader, awed by the story the guest told. I didn’t hear one question or comment that indicated any doubt or challenge to the assumption that because people are courageous, the “cause” is noble and good. The “cause” is a scam, the completely phony “war on terror,” cooked up by the Bush criminal regime. It was instigated as a means of seizing unlimited power at home and abroad, and guaranteed to fail. I suspect the reason the moderator was in such awe is that he didn’t serve in the military. A sense of guilt and inadequacy often accompanies this lack of service. This sense is easily cured. Sign up!

to BillW,
Please start drinking again immediately.

Oh, and Lilya…A. Chekov called, you’re late for your costume fitting!

To oliversarmy:

Excuse me…. regarding your funny joke.

The total Cost of NORAD was about $440 billion (not million) up until 2001. It is true, every year they do track Santa’s movements around Christmas time. But the only (t-h-e o-n-l-y) time they were actually needed was on 9/11 when 4 non-friendly planes were up in the air n US airspace for as long as 1 hour and 20 minutes and there was not one single NORAD plane intercepted them. Normally it takes 6-11 minutes for them to appear next to the commercial airline.

How can this happen? If had cost us $440 thousand, I would have let it slip.

I agree with those who question “On Point’s ” integrity as a “public’ radio program. While I admire Mr. Mullaney and believe he is a good man, why does “on Point” and other NPR programs always promote a war agenda with no critical counterpoint?Isn’t that in violation of what ostensibly public radio is about?
Where infact are the anti-war voices on ‘public” radio? We are not getting the whole story on Afghanistan and program did not help.But one question. Why did such an intelligent man like Mr. Mullaney serve in Afghanistan without ,apparently asking any questions as to the real intentions o fthe Bush administration?

Dana,

I’d sent a few emails to On Point and NPR last Fall asking them to invite Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney (positions of both of them on Iraq war were to the left of Obama’s position, and closest to what can be considered “anti-war”) on the program, but to no avail. You’re not likely to find too many anti-war voices in the mainstream today.

Except for Dennis Kucinich and Russ Feingold (and maybe a few others), you’ll be hard-pressed to find many Democrats who take a consistent position on war issues as they lack moral courage, and instead blow whichever way the wind takes them.

By the way, it’s also people’s fault because while they cry about lack of anti-war voices and hold such anti-war positions themselves, when it comes to voting, they chicken out and vote for someone like Obama instead of voting for someone like Nader/McKinney who truly reflects their position on such issues. As long as we have this disconnect and don’t show moral courage in our actions by supporting people like McKinney/Green Party/Nader, why expect elected leaders to do the same? After all, they represent their constituents and if we are rotten and don’t act according to strong convictions, is it any surprise that the rot goes to the top too?

Change begins with oneself.

And On Point has jumped the shark – try Democracy Now instead.

I am dismayed by this comment thread. This man deserves much more respect than he is getting. The larger quetions of Afghanistan are important for us to address as a nation, but he can’t be singly held responsible our policies there. His story is about the service and sacrifice of a small subset of the members of his (my) generation, and we should deal with it at that level. He is obviously highly aware of the larger questions implicated in our policies in the region, hence his advancing career advising at top levels of government. But we should listen to what he has to say now on his terms. We need to seek to deepen our understanding of the sacrifices of these young citizens in our midst. Anyone who is an at all regular listener to On Point knows Tom is deeply committed to this endeavor, as well as to broadening the conversation to the wider range of views. Anyone with a problem with this type of show should go elsewhere.

Mike, no one is holding him responsible . But he seems all too willing to embrace the rhetoric of “sacrafice” and “honor” without asking “for what?”. And Tom Ashbroook ,in keeping with NPR’s tone has also failed to ask these questions. as a result the show turns out to be defacto propaganda for a war that needs a few questions. That’s what democracy is about and that is what real public radio should be about.After all doesn’t a good warrior know when and when not to fight?

You raise good points, millard fillmore, about voting for Ralph Nader but come on, did you really want to see mcCain get in ,especially with the very real possibility of -ugh!- Sarah Palin becoming president?
yes, I do listen to Democracy Now instead of the first hour of All Things Considered. But by the same token , as a believer in democracy,I want to see the public restored to “public’ radio and therefore will always keep a critical ear twoards them.

You raise good points, millard fillmore, about voting for Ralph Nader but come on, did you really want to see mcCain get in ,especially with the very real possibility of -ugh!- Sarah Palin becoming president?
yes, I do listen to Democracy Now

ooops, how did that haooen?

Dana,

Yes, life is complex.
But then I don’t see how those who are anti-war can vote for someone who doesn’t reflect their position and still expect that person to be anti-war. That’s just illogical and irrational. Sorry, I don’t subscribe to that kind of disconnect (I know many do) between what I stand for and what I believe in, and the person I vote for; because in my opinion, that kind of disconnect is the root of many problems. Again, this is only when one has strong convictions on issues like war.

FYI, we don’t decide on a President based on a popular vote, so it doesn’t really support your point of McCain winning if voting for a third-party candidate. Both candidates campaigned in only a handful of states (while Nader did in almost all), so your point would make perfect sense in those states where the race was close, but in Massachusetts or California? C’mon!! You could have easily voted with your anti-war conscience for McKinney or Nader while supporting Obama over McCain, without it affecting the outcome in any way. But I also know that elections are not about making decisions based on logic and rational thinking – there’s emotional appeal, there’s party affiliation, and most of all, the desire to be on the winning team, all of which play a huge part. And that also makes it all the more challenging for voices like the Green Party to emerge. Pogo said it.

Yes millard, I do concede I wasn’t thinking rationally. I was motivated by FEAR. No I don’t have to be on the “winning team”.But the thought of Palin being so close to the presidency still sends a chioll up my spine. Obama is more flexible. Maybe he can be talked into changing his views on Afghanistan. better chance with him than McCain.

Yes millard, I do concede I wasn’t thinking rationally. I was motivated by FEAR. No I don’t have to be on the “winning team”.But the thought of Palin being so close to the presidency still sends a chill up my spine. Obama is more flexible. Maybe he can be talked into changing his views on Afghanistan. better chance with him than McCain.

Dana,

On Point routinely examines the moral and strategic arguments behind the wars we are involved in. It was founded in response to the dishonest buildup to the Iraq war (did you know that?). A show specifically examining Afghanistan strategy and questioning the justification of Obama’s escalation there is in order, and I presume it is in the works. The purpose of this show, however is otherwise as I described above. On Point has been committed to making the experiences of our soldiers more immediate and real for Americans. If you see that as propaganda, then you should look elsewhere for commentary more for your liking. Their experiences are real, and therefore a legitimate subject of journalism. Performing that service does not make On Point a propagandistic outlet as you suggest, not even within the limited context of the individual shows in which it does so.

Mike,
Yes, I remember that On POint was founded in response to 9/11 but over the years most of what I’ve heard (and i listen every day)conerning bith wars was about tactics or strategies. But no I’ve yet to hear until this week any critical inquiry into the stated intentions for invading and occupying both countries. If NPR had more that as befits independent media in a democracy, I would not object to shows about the personal experiences of soldiers. But when that’s about all we get , I ahve no choice but to infer that it’s hero propaganda pushing wars of questuonable value

Without being too negative; I’ll just point out my past experiences, and what I have asked of current active duyt service members, about officers conducting training as was mentioned on you show. The only involvement officers had with training was to put what somebody told them to sign their name to on a Training Schedule. Non Commissioned Officers were the ones responsible for coming up with what his soldiers needed training in and conducted that training. I agree with the Captain on most of what he says, but it is a discredit to his credentials, in my opinion, to say that he was different than what I’ve seen and heard of officers involved in their soldiers training.