S-a-a-a-y WHAT?
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Yep, it's true. Sen. Dick Durbin has an office in Springfield, Illinois, right in the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. It's a beautiful, peaceful little park, with historic Lincoln-era homes. Durbin's office is in the George W. Shutt House, and Mr. Shutt was a neighbor of the Lincolns. The house and neighborhood are managed by the National Park Service, and Sen. Durbin has rented office space here since he was a member of the House of Representatives.
I'm blogging away, right now, on the right side of the porch as you face it.
And, it's no secret he has an office here. Take a look at his Senate home page. At the bottom of the page, you'll see the address: 525 South 8th St, Springfield IL 62703.
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Why blog here?
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Well, here's one reason which is totally enough, all by itself ----- because I can.
I CAN, because this is a public place, owned by the Dept of the Interior, managed by the National Park Service (i.e., Sen. Durbin doesn't own the porch any more than you or I do.)
I CAN, because of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of peaceable assembly - actual and virtual.
I CAN, because I'm a citizen and I reside in this state.
You could call it live on-site citizen journalism. As soon as I arrived, I informed the office that I'm here, and what I'm doing.....no secret to it. I won't be surprised if the office staff invite me in, since they're nice folks and know me....but I like the porch.
Sen. Durbin wants our troops to be in Afghanistan, and I'm questioning the premises for this deployment. Also, Sen. Durbin does not perceive that re-deploying our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan is a priority for Americans, which is so because our government and WAR FOR PROFIT companies have some nice tricks to keep it off the radar.
Besides, even though it's warm here today in Springfield, it's not 135 degrees hot, like it is in Afghanistan and Iraq. If our troops can put up with the heat there I can certainly take the heat here.
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I've made maybe a half dozen visits to Durbin's Springfield office. The office director has always been quite kind, and he's definitely done his part to make communication happen. I've had two appointments with Sen. Durbin himself, for discussion of redeployment of our troops from Iraq.
It is on the topic of Iraq where, in the past, I've had deep disagreements with Sen. Durbin's actions as a member of the Senate, and deep disagreements with the Senate Democratic Caucus as a whole.
During the reign of Unitary Executive Humpty Dumpty The First, I pleaded with Sen. Durbin to stop funding forward operations in Iraq. Why? Because funding this is the same as buying more boards and nails to crucify our troops there. (It's hard to fool military families on this one.)
I pleaded with Sen. Durbin to use his knowledge and position in the Senate and take those actions necessary to stop further funding of forward operations in Iraq, and to seek only those funds needed to redeploy our troops in a safe and orderly manner. It would have taken only forty-one Senators to stop funding for forward operations.
Sen. Durbin, in a well-publicized speech at the Center For Public Policy on Sept. 7, 2007, entitled No More Blank Checks For Iraq, stated:
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But this Congress must not give this President another blank check for his war in Iraq.
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Yet a mere three weeks later, Sen. Durbin, and the whole Democratic caucus (save for Feingold), voted for the blank check.
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I pleaded with Sen. Durbin that the nation NEEDED the Senate to act as a bulwark against an out-of-control Executive Branch. But instead, the Democratic caucus rolled over, abdicated its power in an independent branch of government, and played dead.
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Now, a Democratic President, and a Democratic Congress, are determined to ramp it up in Afghanistan.
The Casualty - Creation - Machine is Running - Full Tilt
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But the American public is not actually, truly supporting the war effort.
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They are not financially bearing the burden, since it's being put on the Bank of China Mastercharge card.
Most Americans have zero skin in this fight, their own or a family member's, and most don't even know someone who has been deployed, or who is deployed, or who will be deployed. And, since there's no up-front draft, Mr. and Mrs. America aren't worried that their progeny will have to go to Basic Combat Training where those mean old drill sergeants will yell at them, and then deploy to a hot combat zone.
Our troops and their families are being worn out, with multiple deployments and stop loss draft-by-default. And according to the Department of Defense, WAR FOR PROFIT companies are filling in all the other 242,657 job slots with contractors, most of whom are local and third country foreign nationals in the areas of operation, since Americans aren't being drafted to serve.
This is a slick trick by the politicians and WAR FOR PROFIT companies Halliburton/Bechtel/Blackwater/Xe/etc. It functions quite well to keep the reality of war out of the consciousness of Mr. & Mrs. America, while keeping the war machine running full tilt, in the midst of a huge economic downturn.
And ya know what? Military families are TIRED of carrying this alone.
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So, just why ARE we expending our troops' lives, and tens and hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan, eight years after we invaded the country?
Sen. Durbin says it's because if the Taliban resumes power there, then AQ will certainly be able to launch attacks against the US from there again.
Or is this a case of It Ain't Necessarily So?
Prof. John Mueller wrote in Foreign Affairs that any threat from there is being overblown:
President Barack Obama insists that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is about "making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies" or "project violence against" American citizens. The reasoning is that if the Taliban win in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will once again be able to set up shop there to carry out its dirty work. As the president puts it, Afghanistan would "again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." This argument is constantly repeated but rarely examined; given the costs and risks associated with the Obama administration’s plans for the region, it is time such statements be given the scrutiny they deserve.
Multiple sources, including Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower, make clear that the Taliban was a reluctant host to al Qaeda in the 1990s and felt betrayed when the terrorist group repeatedly violated agreements to refrain from issuing inflammatory statements and fomenting violence abroad. Then the al Qaeda-sponsored 9/11 attacks -- which the Taliban had nothing to do with -- led to the toppling of the Taliban’s regime. Given the Taliban’s limited interest in issues outside the "AfPak" region, if they came to power again now, they would be highly unlikely to host provocative terrorist groups whose actions could lead to another outside intervention. And even if al Qaeda were able to relocate to Afghanistan after a Taliban victory there, it would still have to operate under the same siege situation it presently enjoys in what Obama calls its "safe haven" in Pakistan. [Emphasis added by the diarist]
And, none other than Juan Cole (his blog is listed on the Dkos front page) in a piece titled "Top Ten Ways The US Is Turning Afghanistan Into Iraq" says the threat is overblown.
A sobering assessment of the enormity of controlling Afghanistan is provided by former CIA Pakistan station chief Milton Bearden in an article in Foreign Affairs entitled Obama's War, where he states in the concluding paragraph:
Every foreign power to enter Afghanistan in the last 2,500 years has faced these challenges in one form or another. All failed to overcome them. The likelihood of the United States breaking this pattern is slight. It is becoming clear, however, that the Obama administration at least understands the odds it faces.
And given the extraordinary challenges faced by our soldiers in Afghanistan which Mr. Bearden describes, I take the last sentence to mean the same thing as, "The Titanic has struck the iceberg, and the Captain is apprised of the situation".
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So, for the past several weeks, I've been trying to find out what is driving Sen. Durbin's Afghan policy.
To do this, I've had a long exchange of email with his top policy advisor in the Hart Senate Office Building. I've asked him to identify what justifies our expenditure of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan.
I've been told the following: "We know that the Taliban want to regain control of Afghanistan. We know that if we allow them to regain power, they are likely again to impose total control over the country and to provide protection to al Qaeda, giving al Qaeda valuable space to develop, train for, and try to implement further attacks against the United States."
I've made repeated requests for transparent, verifiable, publicly-available references and sources, governmental or non-governmental, to back up the above assertions by Mr. Policy.
The result? Zip. Nuttin'. El Zilcho.
I asked for any think tank studies, journal articles, governmental or NGO reports....anything at all...that is informing and serving as basis for Sen. Durbin's war posture.
And it ain't there. All Mr. Policy can give me is this: "Senator Durbin did not get his position on Afghanistan from 'think tanks.' He reached his conclusions as a result of his own interactions with experts and officials and his own time in Afghanistan.
Nothing which you can actually put your hands on, and see for yourself.
That wouldn't even pass muster for a blog at Daily Kos, where you have to back up your story somehow. Are senators exempted from showing their work?
Sounds fishy to me. Nothing to back up the expenditure of who-knows-how-many American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, purportedly because it makes us safer?
Here's some more hypotheses, as to why Sen. Durbin and others are eager for continuous, endless war. These are the kind that are really difficult to prove, especially when they are true. And no one will ever admit they are true, even when they're true.
Is it because Democratic senators like Durbin are afraid they'll be painted as "weak on terror" if we redeployed our troops? Oooooh, that one smarts, because if it's true, then it means our Democratic senators are enthusiastically endorsing war operations just because it's politically more expedient to get the body bags coming back home than face the wrath of the Rush Gasbag Society.
Or, how 'bout this one: once politicians get on a war path, they just can't/won't get off of it, ala MacNamara's Band.
Or, maybe this: they just can't stand up to the War$ For Profit contingent.
One thing I won't do is just hand the premises for constant, endless war to these folks on a silver platter. Nope. Sorry, but THEY have to show ME that it's justified.
For the record, I like Sen. Durbin. He's smart. He's capable.
And, I cut him no quarter when it comes to what I consider unconscionable misuse and abuse of our Armed Forces to which he is a party and an enabler. I can't find any certainty that fighting "the Taliban" in Afghanistan is keeping us safer. The only certainties I can find are the body bags and horrible injuries which are coming home, and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars (just think of what all that capital could do for us, right here at home....schools, bridges, technology to get us off foreign dino grease.....)
I won't be too surprised if Sen. Durbin's policy chief and others in his office give me the cold shoulder after this. That's not too hard to figure. They don't like being put in the position of having pesky questions put to them in public. It's the same thing journalists deal with every day...you have to go along to get along. BarbinMD diaried recently here about how journalistic integrity melts away in Washington-land. I'm not the go-along type. We'll just wait and see if they freeze me out.
There's really too much to cover about Afghanistan, here today, in one diary. But there's plenty more to cover, which leaves lots of room for more installments.
If there's any doubt about the topic of this diary, it's questioning, in an up close and direct manner, the premises given by our government for these continuous, endless deployments. Do you write and call, and feel like you you're being ignored? Do you visit the offices of your congress critters in person, and set expectations and demand answers? on this issue or any other one, for that matter? How's it going?