Kony, Globalization, International Women's Day, and My Intermittent Blogging Schedule

ATTENTION: THIS BLOG IS MOVING TO http://tangentialromantic.com/

If you enjoy this post, or any of the previous, than please go to this website to continue reading.  It's a new layout, but I'm going to try to continue the majority of writing here!  I'll update this blog from time to time, to hopefully redirect any readers here to the new website! :) Thanks for all the views here at blogger.com!

It is difficult to keep up with the world and my personal life sometimes.  Sorry for the über-long title.  I am running back and forth between the Housing and Finance Offices on post because this week I moved into my apartment!  I posted some pics on Flickr of this new place. More on that later... now, about these pics below.  This is a picture I took while visiting Cape Verde in 2009, an archipelago off the west coast of Africa.  It's a small country with relatively low rates of violence, a problem with drought, and was originally uninhabited.  It is one of Africa's most stable democratic governments (source: CIA World Factbook).

The media frenzy surrounding Kony in Uganda and the fierce reactions I've read from both fervent supporters and disdainful skeptics, have got me thinking about the rights and wrongs surrounding the issue.  It is true that some parts of the viral video are a little misleading... read this article Joseph Kony is not in Uganda by Michael Wilkerson if you aren't tracking yet.

In spite of the misinformation, part of me is inherently opposed to dismissing the international crimes of one individual because they don't directly influence my life.  Still, I agree with a lot of what Michael Wilkerson wrote; namely that there is no clear solution and simply getting media attention is not the answer (and is a bit suspect if it's directly related to a fundraising effort. I'm vaguely reminded of The Twelve Chairs, where Ostap Bender is smoothing appealing for everybody to give money for a "good cause." p.s. if you haven't seen the Mel Brooks film... do it!)

There are a lot of injustices in the world, and globalization almost suggests that the more a country can guarantee it won't meddle outside of its borders, the less likely the international community is to do anything about it.  Eddie Izzard has a great skit about "mass-murdering f***heads" that covers this phenomena.  The atrocities committed by the warlord Kony, are worse than anything NATO Soldiers have done as individuals (because their countries' governments always pursue some sort of disciplinary action even if it's not totally satisfactory to the international community) in recent international conflicts, yet they are so ubiquitous in times of civil war in Africa, they rarely make the headlines.  I think this doesn't excuse Soldiers of war crimes ever, but it is nice to know our Soldiers presumably follow the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC).  Meanwhile, 'warlordism' is a serious problem that developed countries tend to look at with sympathetic eyes without stirring so much as a hand in many a case (and truthfully we can't devote resources to hunt down every single warlord).  Rape as a weapon of war, has been used openly in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Liberia at an alarming level.  It has spurred U.N. Security Council Resolutions, international conferences, and is a serious issue of justice let alone international law.

Amid all this outcry over Kony and the sad reality of warlordism and the suffering of women and all victims of warmongering, I would like to remind the international community in the global effort for peace it has been proven that women are a key factor, too often an overlooked one.

Which brings me to my next point:  Happy International Women's Day 2012!  I know I sorta missed in my time zone for the post anyway, but it's still going on in my native USA.  It's a great day and I'm sorry I didn't make more room in my schedule to prepare a product this year.  I checked out the book, A Few Good Women at the library and told the librarian Happy International Women's day, to which she replied surprised and chuckling, "Why yes, I suppose so! [smile]  Same to you!"

SO, about my intermittent blogging schedule.  I am currently in the process of moving into my apartment.  I also won't have time to install high-speed internet there before I deploy to Afghanistan... and would have to cancel the plan right after it was set up... so I am just using a stick internet... which doesn't even work that well at my apartment.  I have plenty of ideas I want to blog about, but I have to set up my computer at a McDonalds or the Community Activity Center on post, so it's a little hassle to write.  Then during the deployment my blogs will be more intermittent, but I'll keep up to date as much as possible within reason with operational security (OPSEC).

Short Post Afghanistan

This post is more about Afghanistan than anything else, it's not a mini country profile like the one I did on India, but more of my thoughts on the history of Afghanistan.*

Currently the U.S. still deploys forces to Afghanistan to support ISAF (the International Security Assistance Force).  President Obama says we are drawing down in 2014, the Secretaries of Defense and Chief of Staff confirm the timeline barring national emergencies and unforeseen contingency operations of course.  The news is ripe with stories of the dependence our national security has on covert Navy Seal and CIA operations.  But lets look at Afghanistan a little more closely, in particular starting at the threadbare story of the burning of the Koran (Quran).  Though many stories about the resulting riots have ensued, it is interesting to me that such a strong response is rattling through the country.  These were not Qurans confiscated from ordinary citizens but from detainees, and they were being disposed of it seems (since the investigation is in progress, these are just my speculations as a citizen spectator of the news stories).  It doesn't seem like the holy books were being desecrated actively by misguided or misled Soldiers.  So, it seems to me to be wise to hold back on all the media judgment.

Delving into the country's history, the fiercest resistance has been intertwined with religious zealotry that many Muslims agree is a warped and twisted representation of Islam.  Even with the sensitivity military forces (e.g. ISAF) must have for the culture of a country that is the target for security and infrastructure development, it seems like making mountains out of molehills to trigger violent uprisings and revolts over the accidental improper disposal of the holy texts.  If other big cases of Quran burning are researched just quickly on Google or Wikipedia, it is clear that in those instances the Quran was being purposely defamed and disrespected.  So it confuses me why this bitter outcry?  Is it being fostered by the self-declared guerrilla fighters?  Is it an overreaction due to misrepresentation of the situation?  Research into the strict religious law imposed by the Taliban and the relationship between the leader of the Taliban - Mullah Mohammed Omar - and Osama Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda forces, shows the shocking and dehumanizing application of religious texts to an already war torn population.  Of particular pertinence to me is the treatment of women under this strict law:  which was absolutely dehumanizing.  It is not unheard of for cultures to subjugate women as second-class citizens, but it was chilling to see how what was at first a resistance to war-lord-ism became a militarily backed movement to apply a specific set of laws to many different peoples.

Since I first read about the leader who was directly opposed to Mullah Omar, Ahmad Shah Massoud has stood out to me as an extraordinary figure and a true loss to military and political operations in the country of Afghanistan.  Also known as the Lion of Panjshir, he was considered by some to be a war lord, but he fought the Taliban and effectively countered them time and time again in the northern region of Afghanistan.  This sort of internal conflict shows me there is something broken within Afghanistan.  I don't think it is a failed country, but maybe it is failed politics.  It is a country whose citizens question the elections, but that is not limited to Afghanistan.  The same goes for Russia, and it wasn't too long ago that American citizens were demanding recounts of votes in Florida.  The difference is of course in the level of activity of the resistance.  Activist groups in the United States raise money and hold up wildly offensive pickets.  Russian protesters mob streets and bridges showing force in numbers of the people who want to see change.  Afghanistan is a mine-filled, AK-47 plentiful, and dangerous land with snipers and small arms fire a risk in many places.

So, what am I saying?  Not much at the moment, just sharing the thoughts that have been brewing in my mind in light of recent news and forgotten history.  What will history think of this in ten years time?  What will we think in just five years?

*I'm still writing for me at the moment, so this isn't well-targeted writing.  I am hoping that my deployment will get me what I need to really put the right edge of genuine experience into my writing and provide direction for the motivation and passion whirring away madly in my heart and mind:  it's energy that already goes into outlets.  I'm hoping to channel it more productively in the future, though.  Comments greatly appreciated!

Very Important yet Leaves me Uncertain

First of all... I do not agree with a lot in this blog.  I definitely think it is valuably thought-provoking.  I am sorry I have not posted this response sooner.  Besides digesting all this information, I do also after all have a graduation to think about.  This is the article: 

The Urgent Importance of Mutual Respect

I would like to point out a couple criticisms before I move on to my analysis of what is important from this article.  First of all, the news references are nearly all from Fox news, which is well-known for a conservative bias and I can see how watching them would give any liberal plenty of ammunition.  The second criticism is the comparison of war to sports, as though a sport as a metaphor for war was unique to America.  I'm sure Mr. Ethan Casey would agree that the world's most popular sport of football (or soccer as we say in America) has just as much if not more exuberant cheering and uber-patriotism than a Super Bowl game.  One of my acquaintances from Brazil compared Americans having taken out Osama bin Laden as Brazilians when they win the World Cup.  Another example is the way the world uses important sports as symbolism for a lot of things:  the location of the Olympic Games for example, or the World Cup to go back to that example. Anyway, that's not to say that Mr. Ethan Casey's point about patriotism and nationalism doesn't stand, but I think in haste and perhaps just personal taste he chose to knock down American football fandom, which seems a little unfair in context with what the story appears to be saying, in my opinion at any rate.  However I think his personal taste comes out when he calls the country song God Bless the USA ugly.  I think that many Americans would probably find a lot of Pakistani music annoying and repetitive, but it's really not the point, is it?

Moving on, I know that oftentimes it seems like blogs are a competition to walk the middle ground.  There are many bloggers fighting to write scathing articles on any display of emotion on any side.  Or else it's just 'hipsters' trying to make everything seem passé.  I am just trying to write a blog to evaluate all the information coming at simple me from 360 degrees.

I completely disagree that expressing happiness at the death of Osama bin Laden is the sign of future fascism.  I don't think that it should sadden or alarm anyone that Americans were happy, hell, we were relieved!  Imagine how frustrating and to add, embarrassing, it was to invade Iraq and not find the weapons of mass destruction we foretold.  We did find incredible caches, but unfortunately not quite what the media had predicted, so it looked like and felt like failure.  We were also frustrated when our President then said we would get Osama bin Laden and many a year a news station would point out that Osama was still out there, making the occasional taunting or encouraging video to his followers.  These conflicts have been a bit of a bungled mess, and I don't think it's off the mark at all to say they were poorly-executed initially.  We went in guns blazing expecting conventional warfare, however this is a new era of conflict, and conventional war is more and more difficult to achieve.  Think of how prolonged fighting has gone on in spite of how quickly peace treaties were drawn up after invading both Iraq and Afghanistan.

So taking out a man who was absolutely anti-America even when Arab nations wanted American help to fight the Soviet Union, is a good thing.  To say we should have been more careful is hardly justifiable given that we took him out with a precision team as opposed to a drone bomb.  I don't think America would have taken him out with a bomb had it been possible at this point because it is so valuable to secure complete confirmation that he is dead.  Osama bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda, the organization responsible for the 9-11 attacks.  The problem is there is no doubt that those were attacks on American soil.  Huge attacks if you think about it.  So the correct course of action according to all existing information was war.  Think how quickly the world reacted to that.  But what could we go to war against?  Ever since we pursued military action in response to the 9-11 attacks, the term was popularized - and has remained the most popular term in spite of the attempt to rename it as Overseas Contingency Operations - as the Global War on Terror.  I have been skeptical and annoyed at this reference since its conception.  I can only now explain why.

Ever since the codification of the customary laws of armed conflict, we have obeyed some sort of rules of war.  Even when war became the huge all-consuming destructive force that mankind had never seen before in World War I, it was still re-confined, left and right limits more and more succinctly defined, by the humanitarian and pragmatic international legal experts and national leaders of that era and beyond.  From a humanitarian perspective you want to protect people whose fault it isn't that war exists and who are vulnerable to the effects of war.  From a pragmatic perspective, if everyone were to use their worst weapons today, the world would be a toxic, unlivable wasteland.

The current laws of war apply to wars with ends, and wars between "High Contracting Parties".  The very problem with the Global War on Terror is who is the enemy?  How long, where, and to what extent, should Coalition Forces be allowed to use military force?  And if it's a global police action, is it really war?  Peace-enforcement operations of the last decade have shown that casualties are a risk in unstable parts of the world regardless what name you give the operations.  But what rules should apply?  Should we be allowed to target anyone part of the group we are hunting?  Can we afford to go wherever these non-state actors appear?  Shouldn't that be part of normal state actions anyway?  Securing the nation, shouldn't that be standard protocol, not a state of war?

So, all these points are interesting and this article made me think of that.  I still don't agree with this article.  I don't think the American reaction to this specific news is bad, but I think that overall after a decade the American people would want a better definition of our military goals, and what exactly we are trying to do at this point.  If we are nation building, to what extent are we obligated to nation build?  And if we are trying to extricate ourselves from that responsibility shouldn't we acknowledge the rule of law that governs military occupation and state sovereignty?  If it isn't a responsibility whatsoever, than how can we politically bring this conflict to an end without offending our allies?  There needs to be an end-state that doesn't appear to favor only the United States.  The world is in a precarious place right now, and today is a time like any other to review our actions for the last twenty or thirty years and reevaluate how international interactions should be governed.