(top)

By William Rivers Pitt, Turthout Columnist

There was the battle of Mazari Sharif, and the battle of Qala-i-Jangi, and the battle of Tora Bora, and the massacre at Dasht-i-Leili, and the Tamak Farm incident and the slaughter of a wedding party in Uruzgan Province.

There was the Damadola airstrike in Pakistan made by US forces, and there was the Battle of Lashkagar, and the battle of Panjwaii and the Shinwar massacre. There was the battle of Chora, and the Baghlan sugar factory bombing and the battle of Musa Qala.

There was the Kabul Serena Hotel attack, the Kandahar bombing, the Gora Prai airstrike, the Sarposa Prison attack and the bombing of the Indian embassy. There was the battle of Wanat, and the Uzbin Valley ambush, and the Azizabad airstrike and the Angoor Ada raid into Pakistan again.

There was Operation Anaconda and there was Operation Red Wing. There was Operation Mountain Thrust, and Operation Medusa and Operation Mountain Fury. There was Operation Achilles and there was Operation Eagle's Summit.

All of this was, and remains, Operation Enduring Freedom. All of this was, and remains, America's war in Afghanistan.

Our war in Afghanistan began almost 3,000 days ago, on October 7, 2001. Our war in Afghanistan has lasted longer than World War I, World War II, the Civil War, the Korean War, the first Gulf War in Iraq and the second Gulf War in Iraq. If we are still fighting in Afghanistan a year from now, the war will have lasted longer than the American Revolution. Children who were born on the day the war began are now halfway through grammar school.

All the bad economic news and the turmoil in the financial and housing markets have America looking inward these days. We rarely hear anything about Iraq anymore, and even less about Afghanistan. For the record, and to bring everyone up to speed, the following events have taken place in Afghanistan during the last 72 hours.

Taliban fighters killed nine police officers. Three Australian soldiers were wounded. Pakistan's intelligence service was accused of aiding and abetting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Two Afghani farmers were killed by NATO troops. A bomb killed ten civilians in eastern Afghanistan. A Canadian woman held captive by the Taliban was made to plead for her life. Two separate bombings in southern Afghanistan killed 11 people.

All told, it's been a quiet week over there. That is about to change.

President Obama will soon be announcing his administration's plans for the future of our conflict in Afghanistan. Reportedly, this announcement will include the deployment of 17,000 more US soldiers Obama promised during the campaign, and will also reportedly include the deployment of an additional 4,000 troops, as well. "President Obama will deploy as many as 4,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, beyond the 17,000 he authorized last month, as trainers and advisers to the Afghan Army, according to a senior Pentagon official who has seen the new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy Obama will unveil Friday," wrote The Washington Post.

"Since the United States invaded Iraq six years ago," reported the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday, "its attention, effort, and military know-how has tilted toward the Gulf. Perhaps as soon as Friday, President Obama is expected to shift that focus, announcing a new strategy for Afghanistan and the neighbor with which it is entwined, Pakistan. Yet the challenges presented by Afghanistan are an order of magnitude greater than they were in Iraq - involving a state with virtually no rule of law, a government rife with opium-fueled corruption, and an insurgency spanning two nations and entrenched in some of the world's most inhospitable terrain."

"President Barack Obama insisted on Sunday that military force alone would not end the war in Afghanistan," reported Reuters on Sunday, "and suggested a U.S. 'exit strategy' could be part of a new comprehensive policy he is expected to unveil soon. Obama, in an interview on CBS's '60 Minutes' program, previewed in broad terms his administration's review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy based on recommendations from senior U.S. officials and consultations with allies."

For the last seven years, the war in Afghanistan has been a collective effort shared among the United States and several other countries by way of NATO. That also appears to be changing soon. "After years of often testy cooperation with NATO and resentment over unequal burden-sharing," reported the Washington Post on Thursday, "the United States is taking unabashed ownership of the Afghan war. Even as the U.S. military expands its control over the battlefield, the number of American civilian officials will also grow by at least 50 percent - to more than 900 - under the new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy Obama will announce as early as tomorrow, according to administration officials. American diplomats and development experts plan to spread into relatively peaceful western and northern regions of Afghanistan that until now were left to other NATO governments. New U.S. resources and leadership also will be brought to bear over critical issues such as counter-narcotics efforts and strengthening local government institutions."

"The Americanization of the war is visible in the turbulent south," continued the Post's report, "where the regional NATO command, led by a Dutch general, with Dutch, British, Danish and U.S. troops, faces the primary Taliban threat. Most of the additional U.S. troops will deploy there, and dozens of C-130 transport aircraft land at the Kandahar airfield every day with pallets of supplies. In a dusty parking lot not far from the main runway, more than 200 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, await the supplementary U.S. troops. When they arrive, there will be more American personnel at the Kandahar base than at the current largest U.S. facility - at Bagram, north of Kabul, the capital. 'This will become an American headquarters,' one non-U.S. military officer in southern Afghanistan said of Kandahar. 'They're going to have almost three times as many troops as any other NATO member here. And that's going to mean they'll be in charge.'"

Is the Obama administration simply working with the hand it was dealt by George W. Bush, or are the same Bush administration mistakes about to be committed all over again? Norman Solomon, writing for Truthout on Tuesday, noted, "We desperately need a substantive national debate on US military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While the Obama administration says that the problems of the region cannot be solved by military means, the basic approach is reliance on heightened military means. And so, with chillingly familiar echoes, goes the perverse logic of escalating the war in Afghanistan. 'Strategic patience' - more and more war - will be necessary so that those who must die will not have died in vain."

However this all shakes out, one thing is certain: Both the United States and Afghanistan are likely going to be Enduring Freedom for a long time to come.

(top)

Hepsi Interview with special guest JJ

<<<Names, Instruments, Ages >>>

Ryan, Bass, 23

Jason, Guitar/Kickin Ass, 23

Benji, Drums, 41(-10)

Mike, Vocals/guitar, 22

<<<What is your common element? Why did you come together?>>>

Ryan : How else are we gonna be revolutionary without a band? We didn’t hear any other band that was singing what we wanted to hear.

Jason: I like that fact that we can write songs that will give us all the same feeling. Like we could kick the shit out of each other in a mosh pit, but yet pogo like hell in the same three minutes.

Ryan: It would be badass in a skate video too.

<<<Oh, do you skate?>>>

Jason: Well Ryan and I have been skating for years. But he *points to Mike* dropped out a long time ago. But Ryan and I still skate. Benji used to skate too.

Benji: Yeah I used to skate. It was my first love. But I had to give it up and go to drums because I blew my knee cap out.

Ryan: Yeah. You can’t stop us.

<<<Influences? Musically or otherwise??>>>

Jason: Kakistocracy, Choking Victim, Leftover Crack, David Hillyard & the Rocksteady 7, Crimpshrine, a lot of east coast and Berkley style fuckin just ska punk. And like I said, something that’s really crusty but still has an upbeat part of the song.

Ryan: Tim Armstrong is my main influence. Anything Tim Armstrong… Rancid or The Transplants.

<<<Uh…. I had a lot of questions in my head… buuuuut I forgot to write them down…*JJ hints “Where does the name come from?”*>>>

<<<Oh yeah… So who has Hep C? *Laughs hysterically*>>>

Everyone laughs…

Jason: Well we got the name Hepsi because Mike’s dad died from Hep C because the government cut off his Medicare. And he couldn’t afford treatment.

Mike: Yeah… that slower ska song we have called Medikill is about all of that shit, involving the social security program and pretty much my first hand experiences. They use people that are really really sick and on their death bed and make it almost impossible to get into the program. And the government is fighting them and making it really hard to help them to get into the program by going against them.

*Benji and JJ are shooting each other with capguns*

Mike: It’s like the statistics, all of these people are dying and if they can’t get their benefits back the government just gets to keep the money. The money these people have been working for all their lives doesn’t go back to their families or anything. Instead it goes to all the wrong places where the government deems necessary.

Jason: The number two reason for the name is it is spelled like “Pepsi” but with an “H”. It’s to label big business conglomerates for the disease that they are. Because all it’s doing is infecting general America with inhibitions and influences that are going to make people spend money on shit that is killing them and they don’t even realize it.

*JJ: Nobody drinks pepsi anyways… heh*

<<<When did you all come together as a band?>>>

Jason: Back in 2005 the band was known as The Crude and I was brought in by Mike as a replacement guitar player. We played as The Crude for about a year… played a few shows. Then we changed our musical style and changed into Hepsi.

Ryan: Well I came in and said if I’m going to be in your band you better change the fuckin name… heh…

*Everyone talking over everyone else… blah blah blah… inaudible chatter… mumbo jumbo*

Benji: I came in about eight months ago.

Mike: Our old drummer just started flaking out.

Jason: This band has been together for what… about 3 years? I think actually our band and Benji’s old band played together one time.

Ryan: Yeah yeah at the Albina…. Albino House? *laughs*

Jason: The Pink House? I like that place. I like their beer.

<<<Who writes the lyrics for the band?>>>

Unanimously: Mike.

Jason: Mike writes pretty much all of the lyrics and half the guitar. And I write the other half of the guitar.

<<<So what are your favorite lyrics and what inspired them?>>>

Jason: The one thing that really sticks out to me is um the main lyric from the song Think For Yourself which is “what would jesus do if you thought for yourself?”

Mike: Attacking religion in a sort of socio political kind of way. Trying to recognize jesus and Christianity as not really being so much of a religion anymore, but more of an institution. And being critical on what Christianity has become.

Jason: Right because the whole fucking point of Christianity is not to follow somebody’s cultist ideas, but to find righteousness.

… And I was raised Christian, but sometime during my teenage years when I was… homeless… I woke up at like 6 in the morning at a Buddhist temple downtown and they took me in for a few days. So I spent the next few days with them, and they talked to me about all their ideals… I’m not religious… and I’m not a Buddhist but I definitely have strong beliefs in some of their ideas.

<<<Do you have a message?... for jesus?... haha just kidding… What’s Hepsi’s message? (to jesus)>>>

Ryan: My message is that… I’m here to rock... I’m just here to rock (for jesus). Um… and afterwards I’m ready to fuckin… just keep going.

Mike: Generally a message I’d like to get across just to fucking Portland is to get it’s head out of it’s ass. And just enjoy itself a little bit more. Kinda… kinda… (jesus says spit it out god damn it) just celebrate more diversity with the punks. Most of the kids are just into their specific scene and their type of music and they just shun everything else.

<<<So generally what’s your opinion of the Portland punk scene?>>>

Mike: You know, what I think of the Portland punk scene is that there is a lot of work to be done.

<<<What types of changes would you suggest?>>>

Mike: There should be a lot more shows where every band is a different type of music.

Jason: That’s why I liked the show at Rature so much because there were probably 40 bands…

Benji: Yeah that was fun!

Jason: I’d say 75% of the bands were different styles.

(ah.. I see.. jesus must have possessed the other 25% to conform and be similar.)

Benji: Yeah I’d like to see more diversity at shows instead of all the same shit.

Jason: That’s why I say compost pile. Because a lot of the styles of music people have been into for so long begin to warp into one big mound. People live off of that for the first ten years they are into that type of music. But what does compost do? It helps bring life into plants. The same can be said about musical styles. Things crawl out of the mound… Nutrients… to influence new styles.

Ryan: We’re trying to bring new style to Portland.

(and jesus.)

Mumbo jumbo… drunken babble….

<<<Where are you headed as a band?>>>

Ryan: STRAIGHT TO THE TOP!!

*extreme laughter*

Jason: We have all sorts of people from all over the world hitting us up on the internet asking when we are going on tour. So one of my biggest goals for this band is to travel. I’m hoping within the next couple years we will have our shit together enough for that to happen.

JJ: What about the fact that you guys aren’t a D-Beat band?

Mike: Oh so we’re just not going to make it, huh??

JJ: Well there’s a huge D-Beat scene in Portland and you guys aren’t doing that sooo….

Benji: I like that man. I really like that actually.

Jason: Oh is that why….? I guess I have to get a shoelace headband…

*more extreme laughter*

Jason: Yeah I gotta put soap in my hair and get a shoelace headband.

JJ: Fucked if it rains. *chuckles*

Jason: Sorry I like to be able to see when it’s raining….

Ryan: Uuuuugh.. I got soap in my eyes.

<<<If you guys were to be interviewed by someone famous, who would it be?>>>

Jason: Carson Dailey… No… FUCK Carson Dailey. Conan O’Brien.

Ryan said Daisy Fuentes …something about a penis but edited out by… you guessed it! jesus.

Final Thoughts:

The gutter is the penthouse of the sewer. We live upstairs.

~Sick and delirious Consuela deleted some of the interview thinking it was possessed by jesus… But look out for Hepsi’s recently recorded DEMO and upcoming full length album within the next few months. Check out their band page for their calendar worthy benefit show in March.

…cough cough…. Satan?

Terminator: From the Ashes