03/07/11 – Kathy Kelly – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'd like to introduce you again to Kathy Kelly.
She is a renowned human rights and peace activist and a local Chicago area teacher.
She's a three-time Nobel prize nominee, peace prize nominee, who has devoted her life to the anti-war movement.
She currently helps coordinate Voices for Creative Nonviolence, an anti-war project that advocates stopping wars through direct intervention.
She's traveled to Iraq 26 times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both U.S.
Iraq wars.
She's the author of Other Lands Have Dreams, From Baghdad to Pekin Prison.
Probably didn't pronounce that right.
Welcome back to the show, Kathy.
How are you doing?
Hello, Scott.
I'm fine.
Thank you.
Well, uh, that's good to hear.
Uh, did I pronounce that right?
Pekin prison, Pekin?
What?
Nothing more Pekin prison.
And where's that?
Well, it's in central Illinois.
It's right in the middle of a couple of ethanol producing factories in a very poor area of the state.
And it's a place where there's a medium to high security prison for men, where the median sentence length is 27 years.
And then there's a camp, a minimum camp for women who may do all the maintenance of the camp.
They're pretty much in servitude to the prison system.
Crazy.
Well, that's a whole other show.
What we could do right there is all about the American, uh, prison system and the need for, well, it's abolition.
But anyway, uh, I wanted to ask you, it says here in your bio that you've been to Iraq 26 times for, I know more than that by now, I wonder how many times have you been to Afghanistan?
Well, on March 15th, it will be my fourth trip to Afghanistan.
I sense that as with Iraq, we're doing too little too late, but it seems to me that we have a big responsibility to try to educate the US public so that the 57% of the public who say that they believe the war is futile and they disapprove of this war can be active in saying, and we're not going to tolerate it, we're not going to put up with spending $2 billion per week on the war.
And I think that part of what can help is if a US people go to Afghanistan and say, look, this is what we've seen and heard.
The 25 of us will congregate in Kabul as guests of a group called the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers.
Yeah.
Well, and I hope you're bringing video cameras because that's the most important part, right?
Is that the American people really don't ever get to see civilians in Afghanistan, or if they do, they see people in Kabul who, uh, you know, apparently are dependent on us.
Well, sure.
And we think that, uh, it's a good idea to go to the website for these Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers.
It's called a journey to smile.
I know our journey to smile.org.
And there you can see some of the videos of places like the Chattahee Kamba refugee camp.
And these youngsters were in a refugee camp when they were little tots.
And, and they can remember that as their family fled to, uh, evacuate their village and, uh, ran to a wintry setting where they slept in the snow.
Some of the people that they fled with, uh, flipped down the mountainsides and couldn't be rescued.
So their mothers have nightmare memories of that terrible time.
And yet these youngsters don't want to see militias forming in their community or any other community, even though that's the plan of General Petraeus and the United States military.
And they feel great remorse over the people who've had to flee from their homes because of drone attacks.
And also, uh, the most recent attack that we read about, uh, which is not an unusual one, but, but, but horrific in as much as helicopter gunship, uh, mercilessly killed nine children while they were collecting firewood on a mountainside.
Uh, the one survivor, he was badly injured, but he, he was able to see the helicopter gunship swoop down low and then, uh, go high in the air.
And then, uh, one by one, each of the children were killed.
Yeah.
The account March 1st, the account in the New York times that the one surviving child gave to the New York times reporter there, I believe it's the direct quote to the times reporter is just, uh, it's as horrifying as it is.
You know, well done.
I mean, he really explains exactly how it happened in, uh, I don't know if they had a, it was all just through a translator or what, but, uh, it's, you know, a very detailed account of what happens and, you know, I thought that I, perhaps the most objectionable thing in the article was they said, this is one of the worst things, the worst times this has ever happened in the war.
And I thought, who are you kidding?
This is what they do every day.
I mean, nine kids maybe doesn't happen every day, but you know, I mean, tens of thousands, does anybody even know how many civilians have died in the Afghan war?
Is anybody even counting?
Is there afghanbodycount.com at all?
Well, there is, there are counts and there are counts of how many civilians are killed by Taliban and, um, improvised explosive type devices, uh, Taliban attacks and IED devices, and how many are killed by United States forces.
And I think the United States would say, well, we don't kill as many as the armed opposition groups.
But I think that when you engage in warfare, when you pour weaponry into a country, when you engage in night raids and assassinations and death squads of tactics of choice, along with the drone surveillance and the many attacks.
I mean, on August 26th, six children were collecting scrap metal on a mountain in the same district.
These districts are small.
There are 365 districts in Afghanistan.
And this was also in the Kunar province.
And six children were killed while they were out collecting scrap metal.
65 civilians were killed last week.
And the United States government has refused, not only has refused to apologize for it.
They've claimed there were only seven civilians.
And when a charge was made about the fact that there were injured children, like how did these children sustain burned feet and arms, General Kutreya said, well, that's how the parents in Afghanistan sometimes discipline their children.
They punish them by burning their feet and their arms.
Well, this created just dizzying, staggering feelings of rage and bewilderment.
How could anybody say this was the response of some of the Afghans?
And of course, even President Hamid Karzai is deeply antagonized by these kinds of statements.
And yet, you know, when General Kutreya quickly apologized for the murder of the nine children, I think perhaps word was out that there was an eyewitness and that his account would be recorded by the New York Times.
So that occasion, a swift apology.
But we keep track on our website of what we call the Afghan atrocity list.
And it's a very difficult list to read because you see a pattern in which quite often there will be an attack.
The United States will say those were insurgents, they weren't civilians.
And then if you stay on it, you know, two months later, you might get the acknowledgment, oh, well, we did kill civilians and we're sorry.
You know, it's funny, I guess I went around back then or anything, but I would think that people during World War Two got more news at the movie theater once a week with the movie tone news.
The heroic generals conquer the bad guys and whatever.
They probably got more news about World War Two that way then than we get about the Afghan war in America.
Now, I mean, I keep MSNBC on during the show here every day on mute in the corner of my eye.
There's nothing about Afghanistan ever.
And it's very troubling, I think many Americans will know about Kate Middleton's wedding dress more than they'll know about the fact that we're in war and it's a forgotten war, which is a huge scandal that a war could be going on and it's already been forgotten about.
But again, I think we have to hold ourselves responsible.
You know, there was a huge outpouring of protests shortly before the Shakhnoor bombing.
I was in Baghdad.
I wasn't here, but I heard about it.
And that didn't happen because the mainstream news was informing people about the plight of people in Iraq in the years from 1991, after the United States had invaded and bombed Iraq back to the Stone Age, practically, and then the ensuing years of economic sanctions.
Those sanctions were never reported in the mainstream media.
You're absolutely right that people really had no idea about the Clinton policy in Iraq.
So they were able to believe that Iraq could possibly be powerful in 2003.
Well, what I want to say especially is that nevertheless, people did turn out on the streets and protest large, large numbers.
And the world came closer than ever before to stopping a war before it started.
And I think of that because those people that went out to protest were not learning about the conditions in Iraq from the mainstream news.
And so I think that's what we can place our hope in, that as we continue to do grassroots education and outreach, we can again motivate the 57 percent of the U.S. public.
We already say they disapprove of the war to take action, to see it as a political problem for them, that politically their wealth and productivity is being poured into a war to the tune of two billion dollars per week.
That isn't occasioning security for anybody ordinary.
It's securing the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India pipeline so that the United States can have greater control over the pricing and the flow of oil and fossil fuels, natural gas, which would be important to China.
And I think we have to keep educating ourselves and keep asking, why are we in Afghanistan?
The answer President Obama gives is to dismantle and eradicate Al Qaeda operatives.
But then Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, says there are only 57 Al Qaeda operatives in all of Afghanistan.
Right.
Yeah, Anand Gopal, the renowned journalist, said he counts, you know, maybe 100 or 200 on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
All told, it's obviously much more about power politics, as you say.
But, you know, it really is amazing to me.
And I guess it's because of the way the media frames the debate in this country.
But, you know, this is a very religious country.
And I don't mean like the hypocritical religious right or whatever, but most people in this country believe in God one way or another.
And here we are, you know, when you talk about, you know, a killing like this where this helicopter comes and basically kills every young boy in the neighborhood.
I mean, imagine I think about my neighborhood I grew up in, me and all my friends when we were kids and how the moms would have felt had the helicopter came and killed all of us one day while we were out playing.
I mean, this is insanity to think that we can just go on killing people, never mind the two billion dollars.
Hell, we deserve to lose our two billion dollars when we have a government that we just basically ignore it while it goes around murdering children all the time.
And I'm in Colorado Springs today waiting to leave for a retreat with some Colorado college students who are studying nonviolence.
But here this town is about to have an influx of infrastructure to produce 150 more helicopters.
And these helicopters are huge.
You know, they have engines the same as the ones that are used in the M1 tank because these are supposedly needed in Afghanistan.
Well, imagine 150 more helicopters flying over the population of Afghanistan and terrorizing people there.
If the shoe were on the other foot, if there were helicopters and drones flying over our neighborhood, as you say, people would be insane with anger and revenge and a desire for retaliation.
I'm all the more impressed by the people I've met in Afghanistan who don't express hostility toward ordinary people like ourselves, but who are so weary of warfare.
And, you know, I sat with some young women, maybe age 15 to 18, and I asked them in the very remote village of Samyan, had they ever heard of a time when a passenger plane flew into a tall building?
And they looked at me like I was a little crazy.
They'd never heard of 9-11.
And that's what has shaped their young lives, because ever since they've been toddlers, the United States has been at war with their country because of something that they never even heard of.
Well, you know, the devil's advocate position, the war party's position is, yeah, but Kathy Kelly, what about whoever takes power after we leave?
You say you want us to go, but then the Taliban will come and they'll be like it'll be like the 13th century or worse over there and it'll be all your fault.
Well, I think the United States has walked away from Afghanistan before.
Zbigniew Brzezinski had said himself that if the United States could somehow encourage the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, that would be so great because then the Soviets would have their Vietnam.
And then the United States helped to organize resistance fighters against the Soviets.
And then when the Soviets left, the United States paid no attention whatsoever to people in Afghanistan.
So we've certainly done that before.
I'm not against the assistance that could go to civil society in Afghanistan to the 85 percent of the people who are agricultural laborers who would need thirty four billion dollars to reseed their orchards and replenish their flocks and repair the irrigation systems.
But I don't think it should be coming with any strings attached whatsoever to the United States State Department or the United States military.
At this point, I think we've shown so much capacity for corruption and squandering wealth that is supposedly intended to help people in Afghanistan.
Just bring these troops home.
Even Greg Mortensen has said that if you brought home 143 U.S. troops, given that the United States spent 500,000 to a million dollars on each troop each year, the money saved would be enough to fund all of higher education in Afghanistan.
Bring these troops home.
Stop sending the M1 tanks, the XM-25 hideous new guns that they have.
Stop polluting the land.
Stop sending Beltway bandits to start shoddy reconstruction programs.
Don't finish them and leave with their pockets bulging with money they've paid to themselves.
Just end it.
It's sickening.
It's gruesome.
It's creating more and more of an antagonism toward the United States as a menacing, threatening country that is causing other people all around the world to feel unsafe sharing the planet with us.
Well, you know, I guess I'm no foreign policy realist or anything, but if I pretend to be, I'm pretty sure that never mind the moral cost, but the financial cost, the utilitarian approach from an imperialist point of view, it seems like they're really blowing it, just trying to keep a few pipelines from crossing Pakistan into India or headed toward China.
I mean, if China buys more oil from the Caspian Basin, then that just means they'll buy less from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia so we can buy more there.
It's a world market for a liquid resource.
Who cares which way the pipelines go?
I mean, we're paying trillions of dollars and waging endless war to determine which way the pipelines go.
It's stupid.
Well, I sure I think a better thing to do would be to ask what's the fair price to pay for other people's resources and either pay it or cut back on how much we consume and hope that people in other parts of the world would take our lead and follow that example.
But I think that the United States is in a cold war with China and we don't want to be at a disadvantage in which China would have access to very badly needed fossil fuels and natural gas at prices that are cheaper than what we might pay for our importation.
And so I think that's one reason.
And also, I think the United States wants bases connected by roadways all across Afghanistan so that it will be in a militarily strong position to squeeze Iran next door, to squeeze Pakistan, which is the one country in the world that has the nuclear bomb, and to be able to have some threat to Russia and China if need be.
So Afghanistan is in what's considered, I'm sure, a pivotal place geopolitically and militarily.
But I think that the idea that by, for instance, paying $1,000 per truck for the 7,000 trucks that cross every day into Afghanistan, and that's just for a stretch of the roadway they go along.
The United States has to pay that sum as a toll to the people who control the roads.
Well, that's putting thousands and thousands of dollars every day into the hands of precisely the same warlords who can use the weapons they buy with that money to turn against the United States troops and to turn against U.S. people.
It's foolhardy.
It's almost impossible to see an outcome that would be positive for Afghan people in this continued presence.
All right.
Now, that's foreign policy realism for you right there, if you ask me.
That is Cathy Kelly from Voices for Creative Nonviolence.
Tell us the name of a couple of websites.www.vcnd.org and ourjourneytosmile.org.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you so much for your time today, Cathy.
Appreciate it.
OK.
Bye-bye, Scott.
That's the road.
Cathy Kelly, everybody.
We'll be right back.