Mohammad Daim Kakar, the director general of Afghanistan’s disaster assistance agency, confirmed that camp officials, parents and religious leaders in two of the camps in Kabul had reported the deaths of 21 children from the cold, as well as two elderly adults. The New York Times, quoting similar sources, found 22 cases of children under 5 who had died there as of last week, with a 23rd case reported on Sunday.

That’s a small glimpse of the living conditions in the country we’ve been tearing apart. But what’s more, if you read the story, is that the Afghan official basically called these bereaved villagers liars, accusing them of vying for more aid. And that’s the kind of government we’re propping up.

Wuterich received absolutely no jail time whatsoever. Instead, he got a pay cut and demotion for pleading guilty.

Now, everyone accused of even the most violent crimes deserves a lawyer — civil libertarians have unfortunately been forced to stridently argue this in recent years. But only the most brutal, sadistic, mass-murdering criminals seem to get a lawyer these days — at least up until you hit a certain station, and then no lawyer is necessary because no charges will ever be brought. Anyone else accused of applicable crimes is thrown in a hole or extrajudicially executed. This is why Puckett & Faraj seem to be a legitimate and symbolic target.

Having just escaped having to serve on a jury, I can tell you lawyers aren’t always the smartest people in the room. So it’s hardly surprising to see the twisted logic in the following tweet from Puckett & Faraj:

“Puckett Faraj cyber-attacked Friday by cowards for defending Frank Wuterich from the government the hackers seek to destroy – go figure.”

Several problems here. 1) Wuterich *is* the government. 2) Anonymous and other activists — remember Occupy Wall Street? — are angry specifically over the unequal treatment given government actors in government courts versus the rest of us. Glenn Greenwald just wrote an entire book about this. That is precisely what happened in the Wuterich case. 3) As is it literally deadly to fight against the ruling system head-on, it is from a position of self-preservation, not cowardice, that the apparatuses of state are attacked anonymously.

Should law firms who represent war criminals be so attacked? It depends. Let’s call it an iffy means to a just end, exercised on a key pillar of an oppressive system. All things are not equal.

“This may completely destroy the law firm,” admitted Puckett & Faraj’s business manager in an email.

Wuterich and his pals no doubt have a name for this. It’s called “collateral damage.”

lulz

– Stephen Walt

Young Americans for Liberty and the Future of Freedom Foundation are concluding this tour tomorrow at Ohio State University. The speakers are Glenn Greenwald, Jacob Hornberger, Bruce Fein, and Jack Hunter.

You can view the video from Tuesday’s presentation at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

A summary:

While the impact of the crisis reverberated across the world, such neighbouring countries as Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Mali, Mauritania, the Niger and Tunisia bore the brunt of the challenges that emerged as a result of the crisis. In a relatively short period of time, the Governments of these countries, especially those in the Sahel region, had to contend with the influx of hundreds of thousands of traumatized and impoverished returnees as well as the inflow of unspecified and unquantifiable numbers of arms and ammunition from the Libyan arsenal. Although the volume and the impact of the returnee population differs from one country to the other, the influx clearly has the potential to further exacerbate an already precarious and tenuous situation. In addition, these countries are directly threatened by an impending food security and nutrition crisis that could further exacerbate and negatively affect the political, social and economic situation in the region.

Good thing America came to the rescue with their “responsibility to protect” civilian populations.

The report doesn’t cover the impact that the Western-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) and their disparate militias have had on Libyan society. The people the U.S. intervention supported committed serious war crimes during and immediately following the actual conflict. Subsequently, we’ve seen rival militias battling each other in a latent civil war. Civilian residents in towns essentially occupied by these militias have complained about militia men breaking into homes, looting their possessions, abusing their families, and detaining and torturing scores for suspicion of being loyal to Gadhafi. The NTC and its fighters are imposing a harsh brand of fundamentalist Islam which is helping to impoverish and subjugate the Libyan people by attacking shop owners who sell alcohol and demolishing religious structures they disapprove of. Massive numbers of detainees are being held without trial in Libya, being subjected to widespread torture which has even killed numerous prisoners. Yet the narrative on all this remains largely what it was when Gadhafi was killed and Obama declared Libya the new shining city on a hill.

By any measure, the effects of any sort of “humanitarian intervention” in Syria would be an order of magnitude worse. This ominous prospect does not go away just because a Libya-style intervention is unlikely compared to (the now more likely) protracted proxy war, either.

(h/t Micah Zenko)

I noted a both their writings early this week here.

Intervention is in fact already taking place. The Saudis and Qataris are reported to be funding and arming the opposition. The Free Syrian Army has a safe haven in Turkey. Western special forces are said to be giving military support on the ground. And if that fails, the UN can be bypassed by invoking the “responsibility to protect” civilians, along Libyan lines.

But none of that will stop the killing. It will escalate it. That is the clear lesson of last year’s Nato intervention in Libya. When it began, the death toll was 1,000 to 2,000. By the time Muammar Gaddafi was captured and lynched seven months later, it was estimated at more than 10 times that figure. The legacy of foreign intervention in Libya has also been mass ethnic cleansing, torture and detention without trial, continuing armed conflict, and a western-orchestrated administration so unaccountable it resisted revealing its members’ names.

He also makes the point that while the West characterized the Russian and Chinese veto against the UN resolution as a mandate for more atrocities, it actually pressured the Syrian National Council (SNC) to agree to Russian mediation for talks. Not that one can really bank on the good will negotiations of a dictator, but he’s right about that pressure: a senior member of the SNC said publicly on Tuesday that they now agree to talks and Russia “should provide a roadmap for such a dialogue.”

He also covers arguments against intervention that I’ve outlined here.

Read about it at David Henderson’s blog or view the University’s flyer.

In Guatemala, Efraín Ríos Montt is standing trial for genocide and crimes against humanity. Rios Montt, an evangelical general who ruled Guatemala in 1982-83 after seizing power through a military coup, was a close ally of Washington whoreceived training at the infamous “School of the Americas”. He is accused of being responsible for “1,771 deaths, 1,400 human rights violations and the displacement of 29,000 indigenous Guatemalans.”

Reagan, with Abrams’ assistance, not only covered up, but aided and abetted war crimes and genocide in Guatemala. For example, President Reagan traveled to Guatemala in December 1982 to declare that Rios Montt was getting a “bum rap”, while praising the dictator’s “progressive efforts” and dedication to democracy and social justice. Just a few days after Reagan’s presidential visit the Guatemalan military massacred 251 men, women and children in Las Dos Erres.

Read the whole piece by Cyril Mychalejko.

As the last American soldiers left Iraq in December, so, too, did many of the journalists who had covered the war, leaving little in the way of media coverage of post-war Iraq. While there were some notable exceptions – including two fine articles by MIT’s John Tirman that asked how many Iraqis had been killed as a result of the US invasion — overall the American press published few articles on the effects of the occupation, especially the consequences for Iraqis.

As a college professor, I have a special interest in what happened to Iraqi universities under US occupation. The story is not pretty.

Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein’s regime used oil revenues to underwrite free tuition for Iraqi university students — churning out doctors, scientists, and engineers who joined the country’s burgeoning middle class and anchored development. Although political dissent was strictly off-limits, Iraqi universities were professional, secular institutions that were open to the West, and spaces where male and female, Sunni and Shia mingled. Also the schools pushed hard to educate women, who constituted 30 percent of Iraqi university faculties by 1991. (This is, incidentally, better than Princeton was doing as late as 2009.) With a reputation for excellence, Iraqi universities attracted many students from surrounding countries — the same countries that are now sheltering the thousands of Iraqi professors who have fled US-occupied Iraq.

Iraqi universities began their decline in the 12 years after the 1991 Gulf War. As the international sanctions regime cut off journal subscriptions and equipment purchases, academic salaries fell precipitously, and 10,000 Iraqi professors left the country. Those faculty who remained were increasingly closed off from new developments in their fields.

In 2003, after the invasion, many Iraqi professors hoped that their university system would be revitalized under US occupation. They expected funding to buy new books, to replace equipment, and to repair the damage inflicted by the sanctions. And they hoped for new tolerance for open debate and inquiry.

In fact, the opposite happened.