Dec 05 2009

Part 2, Pure Politics Of Obama’s Afghanistan Escalation

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

In Part 2 of his interview with Paul Jay of The Real News, former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell Lawrence Wilkerson continues his analysis of Obama’s Afghanistan escalation and of the geopolitical context of the situation, concluding that there is no solely military solution to the situation and that the occupation is simply a money making escapade as well as an attempt at controlling world energy reserves under the banner of a propaganda created fictitous “war on terror”, and that continued US attempts at imperial hegemony in the region will bankrupt America.

“This is not a future that we can sustain. We cannot be the new Rome, it is an impossibility in today’s world. We will squander our power, we will squander our resources, we will be a third world nation, we will be bankrupt in a generation if we try.”



Real News Network – December 5, 2009

America cannot be the hegemon of Western Asia

Wilkerson Pt2: Diplomacy must lead a regional solution to Afghan war; there is no military solution

Part 1 of this interview is here.

Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled “National Security Decision Making.”

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    • Edger on December 5, 2009 at 17:41
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    …would certainly be a “change you can believe in“.

    :-/

  2. This 2 part interview has been great.

    Did someone say pipeline?

    • Edger on December 5, 2009 at 19:12
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    Victory at Last!

    Monty Python in Afghanistan

    By Tom Engelhardt

    Let others deal with the details of President Obama’s Afghan speech, with the on-ramps and off-ramps, those 30,000 U.S. troops going in and just where they will be deployed, the benchmarks for what’s called “good governance” in Afghanistan, the corruption of the Karzai regime, the viability of counterinsurgency warfare, the reliability of NATO allies, and so on.  Let’s just skip to the most essential point which, in a nutshell, is this:  Victory at Last!

    It’s been a long time coming, but finally American war commanders have effectively marshaled their forces, netcentrically outmaneuvering and outflanking the enemy.  They have shocked-and-awed their opponents, won the necessary hearts-and-minds, and so, for the first time in at least two decades, stand at the heights of success, triumphant at last.

    And no, I’m not talking about post-surge Iraq and certainly not about devolving Afghanistan.  I’m talking about what’s happening in Washington.

    A Symbolic Surrender of Civilian Authority

    You may not think so, but on Tuesday night from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in his first prime-time presidential address to the nation, Barack Obama surrendered.  It may not have looked like that: there were no surrender documents; he wasn’t on the deck of the USS Missouri; he never bowed his head. Still, from today on, think of him not as the commander-in-chief, but as the commanded-in-chief.

    More…

    • banger on December 6, 2009 at 01:10
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    BTW, I would guess the majority of people in the foreign policy establishment in Washington would agree (with Wilkerson. In fact, his approach to Afghanistan mirrors much of what the Iraq Study Group recommended for Iraq which was to have a regional parley. Instead we “won” by pumping money into the hands of gangsters and called it a day. Meanwhile we achieved (there) our real goal which was to nearly utterly destroy a sophisticated and urbane society — and this was done intentionally. If you look at U.S. policy rationally rather than the lame “mistakes were made” mode of thinking you see the pattern. If you look at the details on the ground in Iraq, i.e., what activities were rewarded and what were punished as well as the contradictory policies of various gov’t agencies you would have to come to the conclusion that this could not have gone on without people noticing it was crazy. As a result Iraq can never be a force in the region again other than an outpost for Iranian, Saudi and American power.

    The trouble with Afghanistan is that the country has already been destroyed. It survives on NATO and Indian bribes along with a trickly of humanitarian aid and, most importantly, the drug trade. The drug trade and Afghanistan is where all the major dynamic forces in the world meet. Thus there is no way to do anything other than radically increase corruption which is what the result will be of the increased U.S. presence. Really “we” are there to block China — the long term goal this decade has been to make sure that the main sources of oil in the world are controlled by U.S. forces thus forcing the Chinese to deal with us. And it is working. The Chinese are cooperating with us on the essential issues — monetary and economic policy.

    The Afghan soup filled with operatives from a dozen or more countries as well as major representatives of organized crime (the coming superpower).

    I think we will see an increasing impovrishment of the U.S. which is becoming a garrison state basically surviving on by the grace of the international finance system that props up the dollar. But increasingly our sovereignty will be increasingly be diminished (the paranoid is right about their “new world order” fears) and we will live under an international empire that has no interest in our welfare or in even keeping us alive.

    Just you wait …

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