REDEYE 2/21/18

Bush-Obama-Trump’s 17-year-war on Afghanistan continues
NYT, 1/30/18 — In coming months,…American troops in Afghanistan will grow to…15,000….4,000 will have been sent under President Trump’s war strategy….in a war that began with airstrikes and a few hundred Special Operations forces in 2001, and…later saw as many as 100,000 troops deployed….
American optimism goes all the way back to Nov. 17, 2001, when Laura Bush, then the first lady, said the Taliban “is now in retreat across much of the country….At the time, American troops had been in Afghanistan for a month. And just days into 2002…the first American soldier [was] killed….followed by…2,215 more….
Three months after[wards], Condoleeza Rice,…White House national security advisor, declared that “the Taliban regime has been routed….”
A year later…Donald Rumsfeld said the main war effort was ending….He called most of Afghanistan “secure….”
Still, days before he left office, President George Bush…on Dec. 16, 2008…[told] troops that “the Taliban is gone from power, and it’s not coming back.”
Except the Taliban had already returned. In July 2008, the group bombed the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing 58. Nine American troops died the same month in an attack on a NATO base….But American commanders were still predicting victory….
President Obama authorized sending 17,000 more troops….And by December, Obama agreed to a surge of an additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan….The Taliban kept up its onslaught….Military bases at Bagram and Kandahar were attacked in 2010 and a NATO convoy in Kabul was bombed, killing 18….
…An estimated 100,000 United States troops were in Afghanistan at the peak of war operations….In 2015….the Taliban soon overran Kunduz — the first…take over [of] a major city since 2001….By the end of 2016, General Nicholson, the current war commander….ordered the dropping of the “mother of all bombs” — the most powerful conventional bomb in the American arsenal — on eastern Afghanistan.
In November, General Nicholson delivered another bright update….”The Taliban cannot win….Their choices are to reconcile, live in irrelevance or die.”
The[y]…chose a different option. The Taliban launched a bloody 15-hour siege on a major hotel in Kabul last week, killing 22. On Saturday, at least 95 people died when an ambulance packed with explosives blew up on a busy street in the capital….The United States military alone dropped more than 4,000 bombs across Afghanistan in 2017.
U.S. poverty matches the world’s worst
NYT, 1/25 — …When we compare absolute poverty in the United States with absolute poverty in India and other poor countries, we should be using $4 in the United States and $1.90 in India….
There are 5.3 million Americans who are absolutely poor by global standards….more than in Nepal (2.5 million)….
It is precisely the cost and difficulty of housing that makes for so much misery for so many Americans, and it is precisely these costs that are missed in the…global counts….The essentials of health are more likely to be lacking for poorer Americans and there are places — the Mississippi Delta and much of Appalachia — where life expectancy is lower than in Bangladesh and Vietnam.
Many Americans, especially whites with no more than a high school education, have seen worsening health:…this group life expectancy is falling; mortality rates from drugs, alcohol and suicide are rising….
There are millions of Americans whose suffering, through material poverty and poor health, is bad or worse than that of poor people in Africa or Asia….It is time to stop thinking that only non-Americans are truly poor….especially when they are as destitute as the world’s poorest people.

Deadly fires still trapping exploited workers in ‘democratic’ India
NYT, 1/22 — A fire at an industrial building on the outskirts of New Delhi broke out as workers were stuffing gunpowder into firecrackers, trapping many of them on the factory’s upper floors as it spread, leaving at least 17 dead.
The laborers were paid only a few dollars a day to work in harsh conditions and at least 10…who died…were women….Frequent fires are a…reality in India’s urban areas…including ones manufacturing shoes and plastics catch fire with…regularity….
The building that went up in flames…in Bawana, an industrial area outside New Delhi, had no clear safety arrangements….Many factories have shifted to…industrial clusters like the one in Bawana…where they often employ low-wage workers from neighboring states….The presence of explosives in the building may have accelerated…[the fire’s] spread….
“We did not find any fire safety arrangements in the building,”…said [the chief fire officer].
Israel’s fascist rulers: assassinators-in-chief
NYT, 2/1/18 — Book review — “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations; by Ronen Bergman.
“Since World War II, Israel has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western World….” Belligerent Ariel Sharon…as an army commander,…as minister of defense and as prime minister. Bergman describes Sharon as a “pyromaniac” and obsession with killing Yasir Arafat…verging on monomaniacal. In his hunt for Arafat, Sharon almost had the Mossad shoot down a plane of 30 wounded Palestinian children by mistake; he even countenanced…downing…a commercial airliner if Arafat were on it….”an intentional war crime….”
 Israel [is] getting more…ruthlessly efficient….]It is]now capable of planning four or five “interceptions” a day. “You get used to killing. Human life becomes something plain, easy to dispose of. You spend a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes, on who to kill”…[said] Ami Ayalon,…head of [domestic security] Shin Bet in the late ’90s.