Karzai's Afghanistan, Last Nail in the West's Coffin
The most powerful empire in history proves to be dumb as a bag of hammers.
President but not accounted for: Karzai
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Afghanistan Transforms Canada
To play junior partner to empire, we've militarized our identity.
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The Real Costs of the War in Afghanistan
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Afghanistan's Coalition of the Killing
Group wants to topple Karzai, but has bloody hands. A Tyee special report from Kabul.
It was extremely unlikely that the runoff election next weekend would have saved U.S. and Canada from the continuing catastrophe in Afghanistan but at least there was a chance. There could have been a sheen of legitimacy -- provided the second farce was a little less farcical than the first.
But it wasn't to be and now the whole picture is sure to become more grotesque than ever. With Abdullah Abdullah pulling out, the U.S. will have the worst of both worlds in President Karzai -- a man they detest and don't trust and who can claim virtually no legitimacy, but who they cannot get rid of. Declaring him president is actually illegal because there is nothing in the Afghan constitution that allows for it. But fearful of more violence and a voter turn-out that might go as low as single digits, the West had no choice.
Abdullah pulled out for both mischievous and legitimate reasons. He knew he would lose and this way he cripples the credibility of his rival and preserves his own stature and perhaps even enhances it. But what has not received much coverage -- or not enough -- is his demand that that the Afghan Independent Election Commission be purged of its worst Karzai sycophants, the ones who ensured that voting places be opened (and used for ballot stuffing) where everyone knew no one would vote. The whole commission was appointed by the government and were it not for the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, the phony election would have gone unchallenged.
Ideology and bombs aren't enough
Were it not so tragic, were we not looking at several more years of carnage and misery. the whole situation would be comical. The most powerful empire in the history of the world has, from the start, been as dumb as a bag of hammers. An empire at its peak would hire the best talent to design its adventures; one in the late stages of decline thinks it can get by with ideology and bombs. The Taliban, whatever else they are thinking, must be shaking their heads at the breathtaking incompetence of their adversary. This what Canada has signed on to.
For the next five years, the U.S. has to accept Karzai because, of course, he is no longer just an appointee of the empire, he is the elected president. Well, sort of elected. The Canadian government has to accept as legitimate someone who literally nobody else believes has any moral authority. It doesn't get much worse than that. Stephen Harper and Obama "warned" Karzai that he would have to deal with corruption. And if he doesn't? Short of assassinating him or allowing him to be killed (I am sure it is an option on the intelligence table), there is nothing they can do. Any of the ways of punishing Karzai for non-performance would just make the situation worse.
And you can hardly blame Karzai. He was given an impossible job: create a democracy out of total chaos, ancient tribal hatreds, and a total lack of civil society institutions and tradition without which pluralist democracy is next to impossible. To maintain even the semblance of governance, Karzai had to enlist the only people who could actually claim to control the country -- the murderous war criminals of the Northern Alliance and other warlords around the country. The "mayor of Kabul" facing a nation with no loyalty to a central government has few tools at his disposal -- bribery, forbearance of the drug trade, and acquiescence to hard line Islam. Most people educated enough to even understand the role of government let alone play a role in it, left the country after the Taliban took power.
Obama's exit strategy?
There is only one way out now, and according to some analysts Obama is already designing the exit strategy by initiating talks with so-called "nationalist" Taliban as opposed to the more fundamentalist version. These negotiations could focus on what Obama has said repeatedly: that his principal goal is to ensure that al Qaeda does not return to Afghanistan and once again set up its "training camps" to plan attacks on the U.S. That would mean a deal with the Taliban allowing them a major role in the governance of the country and acceptance of the continuing dominance of the warlords in the North, in return for the Taliban breaking ties with al Qaeda and their foreign fighters.
That might actually appeal to most Afghans, who are intensely nationalist and suspicious of foreigners, even Muslim ones. But handing power over to the Taliban is not much easier than fighting them. The U.S. will want something for the lives and treasure lost -- at the very least a contract for a U.S. gas pipeline through the south of the country. And there is the sticky problem of Mr. Karzai -- the "legitimate" president, symbol of American democracy. Just how the U.S. will now justify negotiating with the enemy, if it means Karzai losing authority, is unclear.
As if we needed another symbol of just how impossible this war has become, five British soldiers were killed this week by one of the policemen they were training. This training is the key element to the only exit strategy the West has. As for the Canadian government, it is acutely aware of the incredible mess it is in. But Harper will not lose face and his dedication to the empire runs deep. And so far the whole political elite, Liberals and Conservatives, are taking the line that in order to do development you have to have security. In other words, keep doing what we have been doing and hope for totally different results.
According to Steve Staples of the Rideau Institute, that will mean the death of approximately 60 more Canadian soldiers and the expenditure of another $4 billion up to December 2011, when the current mission is supposed to end. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
ReeferMadness
05-11-2009
Reap what you sow?
After 8 years and a body count likely into the tens of thousands, the allies are going to exit and hand the country back to the people who had it when they arrived. What a fiasco.
Jeffrey J.
05-11-2009
Terrorism Continues
People will look back on these dark times as a low water mark for Western 'civilization'. North America has been terrorizing the Middle Eastern Arab nations since 911. We have invaded countries with impunity, killed and bombed and destroyed cities, villages, civilians, men, women and children.
As Mr. Dobbin describes, it has been an UNMITIGATED DISASTER.
Imagine if you will the reaction of Canada's PM, military and other neocons who send young men to die, if the shoe were on the other foot. If Arab states decided to 'civilize' Canada, to bring 'freedom' and 'democracy' to Canada.
The entire invasion of Afghanistan is a crime. All for what...
Fiat lux
05-11-2009
The Taliban have been put
The Taliban have been put into power, dined, feted and financed by the US govt. who had no problem with their religious fanaticism, until the balked on a large pipeline project across the Western part of the country. Then the suddenly became terrorists and enemies.
The name of the game are the estimated vast mineral and metal resources of the country the US is trying to get while preventing the Chinese and Russians from taking control.
Does anybody really believe that the occupiers are there to bring democracy to that, or any country ?
Ed Deak.
Dan the socialist
05-11-2009
Does anybody really believe
Does anybody really believe that the occupiers are there to bring democracy to that, or any country ?
====
Nope and a good start would of been not letting Karzai run in the runoff. The list just goes on and on.
Look at the democracy the US brought to Chile on the first 9/11 in 1973 that brought in Pinnochet.... Has the US brought 'democracy' anywhere? I think not.
soleprobe
05-11-2009
vast mineral and metal resources of the country
Don't forget the opium... the harvest has never been so plentiful
dave49
05-11-2009
Dan the socialist
I’m reminded about a favourite exchange from the 1982 movie ‘Missing’. Jack Lemmon is playing a distraught father, whose activist son has disappeared in the wake of Pinochet’s takeover of Chile. He repeatedly visits the US Embassy and is told they can do little. In exasperation, his character asks (something to the effect of), “well, what ARE you here for?” The reply: “the Embassy is here to protect the interests of 2500 American corporations doing business in Chile.”
I don’t know that any government official actually said that, but it certainly sounded correct.
Fiat lux
05-11-2009
Look up what US Marine Gen.
Look up what US Marine Gen. Smedley Butler, twice Medal of Honour winner, wrote about war many years ago.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
Ed Deak, WW2 vet on the wrong side.
Dr Alexander
05-11-2009
Well Fiat lux, my mother was on the wrong side too.
And in the wrong town. Dresden.
She was one of the lucky ones though.
I have heard enough stories from her to understand that war is bad for everybody except the corporations and the banking families.
Fiat lux
05-11-2009
I had no problem with the
I had no problem with the war crimes trials after WW2, the more the better, only with the fact that they were done by one side and nothing was said about the criminals on the so called "winning side".
Including the terror bombings and the post war POW deaths.
Ed Deak. .
OilbertaRedTory
05-11-2009
Switching Sides
Good?
http://robwipond.com/?p=32
Bad?
http://tinyurl.com/AfghanSoviet
New and Old?
"If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier."
Kipling 1895 /The Young British Soldier
***
Afghanistan
[with apologies to Kipling]
Anonymous 2009
When you're lying alone in your Afghan bivvy,
And your life depends on some MoD civvie,
When the body armour's shared
(one set between three)
And the firelight's not like it is on tv,
Then you'll look to your oppo, your gun and your God.
As you follow that path all Tommies have trod.
When the gimpy has jammed and you're down to one round
And the faith that you lost is suddenly found,
When the Taliban horde is close up to the fort,
And you pray the arty don't drop a round short.
Stick to your sergeant like a good squaddie should
And fight them like satan or one of his brood
Your pay it won't cover your needs or your wants
So just stand there and take all the Taliban's taunts
Nor generals nor civvies can do aught to amend it
Except make sure you;re kept in a place you can't spend it.
Three fifty an hour in yoour Afghani cage,
Not nearly as much as the minimum wage.
Your missus at home in a foul married quarter
With damp on the walls and a roof leaking water
Your kids miss their mate, their hero, their dad;
They're missing the childhood that they should have had
One day it will be different, one day by and by
As all stand there and watch, to the pigs fly.
Just like your forebears in mud dust and ditch
You'll march and you'll fight, and you'll drink and you'll bitch
Whether Froggy or Zulu or Jerry or Boer
The Brits will fight on 'till the battle is over.
You may treat him like dirt, but nowt will unnerve him
But I wonder sometimes if the country deserves him.
***
reported 4 Aug 09 / Mail.online
lynn
05-11-2009
Who are we...and the US trying to fool?
Quote:"The Canadian government has to accept as legitimate someone who literally nobody else believes has any moral authority." End of Quote.
Having to accept an illegitimate lack of moral authority, eh? Geez....most days I get the same feeling living here in BC.... and in Canada of late.
I think George Bernard Shaw nailed it in a 1905 preface to one of his novels when he said with the dry as vermouth humour he is noted for:
Quote:
"Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.” End of Quote.
And by George, "They" do....and "We" do, too.
He then goes on with the same dry wit exposing a 1905 world that has a very familiar ring to it:
Quote:
"It is the secret of all our governing classes, which consist finally of people who, though perfectly prepared to be generous, humane, cultured, philanthropic, public spirited and personally charming in the second instance, are unalterably resolved, in the first, to have money enough for a handsome and delicate life, and will, in pursuit of that money, batter in the doors of their fellow men, sell them up, sweat them in fetid dens, shoot, stab, hang, imprison, sink, burn and destroy them in the name of law and order. And this shews their fundamental sanity and rightmindedness; for a sufficient income is indispensable to the practice of virtue; and the man who will let any unselfish consideration
stand between him and its attainment is a weakling, a dupe and a predestined slave. If I could convince our impecunious mobs of this, the world would be reformed before the end of the week; for the sluggards who are content to be wealthy without working and the dastards who are content to work without being wealthy, together with all the pseudo-moralists and ethicists and cowardice mongers generally, would be exterminated without shrift, to the unutterable enlargement of
life and ennoblement of humanity. We might even make some beginnings of civilization under such happy circumstances....."
The instinct which has led the British peerage to fortify itself by American alliances is healthy and well inspired.
Thanks to it, we shall still have a few people to maintain the tradition of a handsome, free, proud, costly life,
whilst the craven mass of us are keeping up our
starveling pretence that it is more important to be good than
to be rich, and piously cheating, robbing, and murdering one another by doing our duty as policemen, soldiers, bailiffs, jurymen, turnkeys, hangmen, tradesmen, and curates, at the command of those who know that the golden grapes are not sour.
Why, good heavens! we shall all pretend that this straightforward truth of mine is mere Swiftian satire, because it
would require a little courage to take it seriously and either act on it or make me drink the hemlock for uttering it."
End of quote.
DPL
05-11-2009
Go check out Olophan's
Go check out Olophan's excellent editoral cartoon today. Karzi, the mayone of Kabul is telling a Us military they have to protec his brother, drug loard and CIA operative as well as him. Canadians too are dying protecting the US puppet.
coyoteman
05-11-2009
Meting Out Justice On Their Own...
Welll, down in Texas, at Fort Hood today, the home of the infamous 1st Cavalry, the forces of the Empire are gunning down their own. Which is a good thing, and rattles them in a way that were it even the Taliban, it would not in the same way.
Better they attack themselves anyway. It saves anybody else the bother.
It's going to be interesting to watch them squirm in anguish, as only the Empire Homeland can, over the coming next few days. And they will do much hand wringing, you know it, as only they can, as if they really were the innocents in all this.
Now, all we've got to hope is, that being the bootlick state we are, and serving the US Empire cause ourselves, OUR own forces don't start shooting themselves up here at home, or attract home some Afghan guerrilla forces (terrorists to some ignorants), to carry out an unexpected attack on our homeland. We might, with our pathetic enabling, deserve it on some level, but still, better that our military simply just get its ass out of there, and leave the Empire to sink in the muck of its own creation. Increasingly clear, the sooner the better.
Jeffrey J.
06-11-2009
War Is A Racket: US Marine General Writes Book
Thanks Ed Deak for the this link to General Smedley Butler's incredible indictment of war:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"WAR is a racket. It always has been."
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:
"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."
coyoteman
06-11-2009
Letting the scales fall from one's eyes...
Thanks for posting this Jeffrey, and Ed for turning us onto it. It is proof that "sometimes" at least, the most profound truth about war does indeed sometimes come out of the mouths of those who are expected to fight it.
I remember being part of a flotilla of Canadian naval ships that went into Saigon in Vietnam in 1958, along with a covoy of US Empire warships. Canada was part of the Internation Truce Commission that had overseen the withdrawl of the defeated French at the time, and was supervising the ongoing truce between the North and the old "colonial" regime of the South. We were "formally", in our face to the world at least, "neutral".
Our ships had been in the Sea of Japan, and the North and South China Seas, doing war games exercises with the then rising US Empire fleet, then still in the process of replacing the British and French Empire's in the world. Quite a sight for an awe struck prairie boy, I assure you.)
I rememver listening to a radio broadcast over the ship's speaker system at the time, coming out of Red Chine. (I assume being allowed for our amusement.) Anyway, the announcer speaking perfect English said to us, addressing directly to our fleet and that of the US said, we had been told, as we had, that we were just doing war game exercises there, but that what we were really going to be doing was, going into Saigon to supply war preparations the US was already engaged in there. Immediately thereafter, the radio went dead, and I never thought anymore of it.
Then the next thing I knew, bingo, there we were cruising up the Mekong River, escorting these US "supply ships" into Saigon. Once there, I come up on deck from the engine room after a time, and already some of these US supply ships were off loading jeeps, artillery pieces and all manner of stuff, the likes and volumes of which boggled my mind.
It was then I first realized I think, immediately thinking back to this radio broadcast from out of Red China, that there was a whole bunch more to the world and what I was doing than I fully realized. Having been raised a "Christian" boy at that time of course, I was aware of the concepts of good and evil, only for the first time I was less than certain I was on the side of "good" in all this. And I was very aware of being a small expendable pawn in what was going on all around me there.
A lot of military folks never talk to each other about such things, of course, choosing the path of ignorant bliss. But sometimes, like that then naive 18 year old sailor boy, and General Smedley Butler here, we do eventually come to "get it", and see through the bullshits, despite "the system's" best efforts to pull the wool over our eyes.
Jeffrey J.
06-11-2009
Change CAN occur
This exchange is a perfect example of how we, the citizens, become aware of systemic injustices in our society, and begin to make change. It starts just like this. And in order to ensure change DOESN'T occur, monopolies grew to dominate critical areas like the press.
We are currently experiencing a phenomenon not seen in many years: spontaneous citizen discussion and awareness. Brought to you by independent media (thank you Tyee, David Beers, rabble.ca, Gush Shalom etc). Clearly, monopoly media is stumped by this odd occurrence. And thus, it is IMPERATIVE that we follow this reconnection with other citizens by becoming more and more involved in community and social organizations.
p.s. Don't forget to cancel your cable TV.
Great discussion!
soleprobe
06-11-2009
independent media (thank you Tyee....
Tyee is not my idea of "independent media" seeing that the majority of its authors have mainstream dependent views. But I do agree with the "spontaneous citizen discussion and awareness"
dorothy
06-11-2009
Really???
"This exchange is a perfect example of how we, the citizens, become aware of systemic injustices in our society, and begin to make change."
And, pray, what change would that be? All I see in this blog is a bunch of people kicking away at the sorry carcass of something they believe is already lying down; nothing new in that. We are just as good at mobbing as the next bunch of political tinsmiths.
Renewal would entail constructive criticism to replace schadenfreude, giving the credit that was actually due in place of cynicism. I don't have a lot of patience with cynical people. And I don't see it as something to gloat about that women in Afghanistan will possibly again be subject to public flogging or worse, because some dirty-minded men can get a glimpse of their (gasp!) ankles.
I do not 'get' the self-satisfied smirking radiating out of the screen here, from some people. And even less do I 'get' why one stays in the midst of a society, the entire foundation for and value set one has naught but contempt for. Why not buy a condo in Leningrad or Havana and get it over with??
OilbertaRedTory
07-11-2009
Outsourcing the new Crusades
... 'coz we all know the government can't run anything as effectively as the private sector :
http://tinyurl.com/CrusadingMercenaries
'Christendom might quite reasonably have been alarmed if it had not been attacked. But as a matter of history it had been attacked. The Crusader would have been quite justified in suspecting the Moslem even if the Moslem had merely been a new stranger; but as a matter of history he was already an old enemy. The critic of the Crusade talks as if it had sought out some inoffensive tribe or temple in the interior of Thibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded. They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris.'
G.K. Chesterton In The Meaning of the Crusade, 1920
****
Perhaps we just need to redefine the quest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHsbwY4EPyA&feature=related
Or this updated version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYmEA4O6a10&feature=related
Jeffrey J.
07-11-2009
Crusading Mercenaries Indeed
Blackwater at work. And to think, this is what the US has come to, after all the people who died fighting in WWII against tyranny and fascism.
'The shooting was so heavy it was like rain,' says Farid Walid, who was shot in the attack two years ago, a massacre which left 17 Iraqis dead.
http://tinyurl.com/CrusadingMercenaries
"The convoy of SUVs threading through Baghdad's busy streets came to an abrupt halt at Nisour Square. Inside the vehicles were a team of black-clad security guards from the infamous Blackwater private military contractor - the American private army accused last week of embarking on a 'crusade to eliminate Muslims'.
This supposed 'crusade' has earned the company's mysterious founder, Erik Prince, over $1billion for government security contracts alone. But, as we shall see, this huge pay-cheque certainly wasn't gained without getting some hands dirty.
For the Blackwater guards who stopped at Nisour Square were bristling with guns. What happened next is now the subject of a court case.
According to one observer, the American mercenaries began shooting at random into the Iraqi crowd. 'The shooting was so heavy it was like rain,' says Farid Walid, who was shot in the attack two years ago, a massacre which left 17 Iraqis dead.
'I saw lots of people getting shot. The driver who had been in front of me died and his wife fell out of the car. Her child was killed as well. The shooting went on for about ten minutes.'
Umm Tahsin, widow of one of the men killed, says: 'They [Blackwater] are a group of criminals. [It] was a massacre. They destroyed our family.'
Blackwater insists its guards returned fire against armed insurgents threatening American diplomats.
However, an Iraqi government official has claimed the U.S. security men opened fire because they were stuck in traffic, throwing stun grenades in order to clear the road.
An eyewitness backs up his story. Hairdresser Suhad Mirza, 29, was working in her salon about 250m from Nisour Square when she heard sirens. 'I went outside the shop to see a convoy of SUVs with security guards shooting randomly at people,' she says.
'Apparently, the guards wanted to make their way through the traffic jam made by an Iraqi army checkpoint. Minutes later, the ambulances arrived to pick up the wounded and dead.'
lynn
07-11-2009
When they get behind closed doors.......
"The people of this country and the people of the U.S need to distance themselves from the shadow government that rules Canada and the U.S. from behind the scenes. In order to do this the people of both nations need do identify who the shadow government is and by what means have they seized control."
Bang on, soleprobe.
A couple of years ago I found an old book on my Dad's bookshelves called "The Double-Cross System: The Incredible True Story of How Nazi Spies Were Turned into Double Agents".
It's well worth reading.
It's true tale foreshadows how the reigning shadow governments of today have learned to operate in so-called "peace-time". It's instructive lessons in deception have obviously been well-learned and applied - the intentional mis-information, the intentional confusion of the false with the genuine, the art of supplying accurate information only when it is too late for the public to change the consequences of the devastating subterfuge.... but most importantly to still make it appear as if they did not intentionally mislead so that the public would not only trust but have faith in the further lies about to be told to them.
None of these phantoms/double agents of today work in the interest of democracy.
They work in the interest of those waging war against it.
It's the grandest deception of all - to wage a war fronted by phantoms where most of the citizens hardly know a war is even going on... and those who do don't know who to trust or how to effectively launch a counter attack against such shape-shifting forces.
Maybe wars don't really end..... they just mutate.