The lies upon lies to which our corrupt U.S. Foreign Policy is built upon hasn’t changed at all, with the 2008 Election and a new President. Unknown perhaps to most Americans, we today are just getting spoon-fed even more and more lies.
Quoting from Eric Margolis excellant article in CommonDreams.org: Afghanistan
An election held under the guns of a foreign occupation army cannot be called legitimate or democratic. This week’s stage-managed vote in Afghanistan for candidates chosen by western powers is unlikely to bring either peace or tranquility to this wretched nation that has suffered 30 years of war.The Taliban and its nationalist allies rejected the vote as a fraud designed to validate continued foreign occupation and open the way for western oil and gas pipelines.
The Taliban, which speaks for many of Afghanistan’s majority Pashtun, said it would only join a national election when U.S. and NATO troops withdraw.
The current war in Afghanistan is not about democracy, women’s rights, education or nation building. Al-Qaida, the other excuse, barely exists. Its handful of members long ago decamped to Pakistan.
The war really is about oil pipeline routes and western domination of the energy-rich Caspian Basin.
There will be neither peace nor stability in Afghanistan until all ethnic groups are enfranchised. The West must cease backing minority Tajiks and Uzbeks against majority Pashtun — who deserve their rightful share of power and spoils.
We can’t solve Afghanistan’s social or political problems by waging a cruel and apparently endless war. The solution to this unnecessary war is not more phoney elections but a comprehensive peace agreement among ethnic factions that largely restores the status quo before the 1970 Soviet invasion.
Obama last week portrayed Afghanistan as the bulwark against international terrorism. “This is not a war of choice,” he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars at their convention in Phoenix. “This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”
But while many Americans once shared that view, the credibility of that justification has faded eight years into this war. The share of Americans who said the war in Afghanistan was worth fighting has slipped below 50 percent in a survey released last week by The Washington Post and ABC News. A July poll by the New York Times and CBS News showed that 57 percent of Americans think things are going badly for the United States in Afghanistan, compared with just 33 percent who think they are going well.
A military solution in Afghanistan doesn’t exist even if it were based upon a more honest premise. Condemning our Country to 8 more years of senseless War, and the people of Afghanistan to 8 more years of bloodshed and American War Profiteering is never going to eliminate the motivations that cause anti-American hatred. The more chaos and murder that we create, the deeper and longer those hatreds will have reason to persist.
And if neither Alexander The Great, The British Empire, The U.S.S.R in their respective heyday could not occupy or control Afghanistan, the idea that a Nation over $30 Trillion dollars in debt should invest its taxpayers money in such a doomed cause is foolhardy. Even worse, Obama has the taxpayers money going largely into the pockets of private military contractors (who outnumber the troops) and are accountable to no branch of U.S. Government, nor are they accountable the Geneva Conventions.
It is a cesspool of War Profteering with no end in sight and no exit strategy.
It was back in 1997, when The US Congress passed a resolution declaring the Caspian and Caucasus region to be a “zone of vital American interests“. Think about that. Whenever you hear the words “vital American interests” this is really all just Washington-speak for enslaving American citizens for the purpose of Corporate profits.
It’s only the private Corporations who benefit from this madness.
The people do not.
3 comments
That’s how it is in international politics. It’s been that way as long as there’s been civilization. What’s interesting is how people actually believe the propaganda even on the left. I know for a fact that most American foreign policy types do actually care about the well-being of the people in places like Afghanistan. But they still endorse brutal policies and try to make them less brutal. The rest is just cognitive dissonance working itself out. I’ve seen this up close.
Many diplomats understand however that after 9/11 U.S. policy changed wherein the default position is to use force. They know that the U.S. military rules the roost. Some feel Hilary is out to change that–but I see no evidence of that yet.
of US domination is currently scheduled for the second week of October. It has been decided that greater profit margins are readily available in climbing “third world” countries whose populations enjoy positive work ethics and have not been exposed to US excitotoxicity, educational dumbing down and deliberate propaganda media for extended periods of time. The meme of a minority world population demanding and consuming most of the world resources is at an end, by decision and design by those very same elite controlling assholes who fucked it up in the first place.
Really, depopulation this fall is a win win, for them anyways. Don’t forget to line up for your own personal Unicorn flu shot.
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