A very strange Oped piece appeared in the Globe and Mail on the weekend, written by none other than Stephen Harper. It was a follow up to a government announcement that we would be giving the Ukrainian military another 220 million dollars, on top of the 300 million already provided, to assist in their battle with rebel forces.
It reads like a typical propaganda piece, laying all of the blame on Russia's doorstep, for the horrific downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, that killed 298 innocent civilians.
Had this appeared under a different byline, it would simply reflect the views of the author. However, when it comes from the leader of a country, it is something much more.
An official position. And that position is pretty clear. Russia is our sworn enemy.
The United Nations is investigating the incident, and most in the international community are taking a wait and see approach, before becoming judge, jury and executioner.
While there are calls to strip Russia of their right to host the The World Cup in 2018, British Prime Minister David Cameron, is calling for cooler heads to prevail, and FIFA see it as a potential "force for good". It might just be the golden ticket for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, since sanctions don't appear to be working.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot, has actually called Vladimir Putin personally, to discuss the situation. This is something that is no longer an option for Canada, as our government has already burned too many bridges with the Russian leader, making us irrelevant.
Australians still don't approve of Abbot, but do believe he is leading the way in diplomacy, with a position contradictory to Harper's.
It is not inconceivable that the shooting down of the passenger flight was an accident. As the National Post points out, '-Iran Air Flight 655—shot down on July 3, 1988, not by some scruffy rebel on contested soil but by a U.S. Navy captain in command of an Aegis-class cruiser called the Vincennes.'; it's happened before.
The Reagan administration tried to cover it up, but eventually the truth came out, as it no doubt will in this latest tragedy.
Conservative MP, Peter Goldring, is joining Sarah Palin, in calling for an all out war with Russia, reminding us of Harper's Reform Party and their bumper sticker foreign policy. Simple and dangerous solutions to complex issues.
Obama may provide equipment that would help to reveal 'specific locations of surface-to-air missiles controlled by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine so the Ukrainian government could target them for destruction', but with only 17% of Americans supporting military engagement in the area, I doubt he would consider doing anything more.
Besides, the optics may not be good, given that Joe Biden's son now works for a Ukranian company that is pushing for energy independence from Moscow.
So what is Harper's endgame here? Is he trying to earn some respect, given his abysmal record on foreign policy?
In 2003, when Leader of the Opposition, he spoke out in favour of Canada joining the U.S. In Iraq, and now that country is in shambles, with 63% of Republicans believing that it was a mistake.
He escalated our involvement in Afghanistan, and now the Taliban is stronger than ever, even winning in areas they never held before the invasion.
Canada led in the regime change in Libya, and despite spending $800,000 on a "victory" celebration, Libya is in a bloody mess. Republicans blame Obama, but who should we blame?
Engaging in a war of words, with an enemy he will never have to actually fight, (despite the views of the crazy wing in his Party), is a safe way to inflate his ego. However, I think there may be another motive.
Vladimir Putin was tanking in the polls, until he took a firm stand on Western interference in the Ukraine. Now his popularity with Russian citizens is overwhelming.
Is Stephen Harper hoping that by taking a firm and very public stand with Russia, that Canadians will view him as not so bad after all, despite his horrendous policies?
A known drug trafficker and underworld boss, he was also the man given a $50 million contract to provide "protection" for SNC Lavalin as they fulfill another military contract.
Part of the quagmire that Stephen Harper has created.
Ahmad Wali played a key role in the war as the most powerful man in Kandahar, so his death will no doubt have a negative affect on the "mission".
Having a war monger as prime minister is bad enough, but having a war monger with no military experience, yet still trying to control every aspect of the war, is insanity.
This was why I was so skeptical when the NDP agreed to bombing the hell out of Libya for oil, in exchange for an increase in humanitarian aid. Karzai's brother was providing such aid.
I posted a piece in December, on how the Harper government had turned the War in Afghanistan into a mafia style playground, buying protection, and hiring firms blacklisted by everyone else.
The Star now reports that Harper has finally decided to fire the corrupt organization, run by the Karzai family.
The firing is being called "a victory for Canadian taxpayers." What the hell? A victory for us would have been not hiring this group in the first place. Instead we were complicit in their crimes.
In his new book Obama's Wars, Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, discusses Canada and confirms that the Taliban is being paid "protection money". What a mess this government has made of things.
Harper is calling the mission a success. What a farce. As Thomas Walkom reminds us, with a view shared by many, we have won nothing. The Taliban is just as strong and the Afghan forces just as weak.
And with Harper's new "spreading of democracy", will our soldiers really be coming home, or just sent someplace else?
I'm still not convinced that Harper himself is terribly religious, but he has taken the Religious Right into his party, much of it transported from the United States.
And because of it, aid to women in Afghanistan is being hampered.
The former head of Canada’s aid program in Afghanistan has expressed concern that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s religious beliefs are hampering humanitarian efforts.
Speaking to the Straight from Kabul, Nipa Banerjee noted that Harper is a born-again Christian, and she argued that his religious beliefs could be adversely affecting the Canadian International Development Agency’s efforts to help Afghan women.
We have got to get rid of this regressive government.
After hearing from Rick Hillier that Stephen Harper wants to handle military maneuvers from the safety of his office, it would appear that the Minister of Defence is now obsolete.
The unelected Dimitri Soudas is instead handling all matters relating to the military, including the possibility of a three year extension to the Afghan mission. He even outranks the DND.
A motion before Parliament, prompted by a petition presented by 30 million Canadians, will provide all citizens with free Ambien. Otherwise, we may never sleep again.
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada
Stuart Langridge appears on the TV screen, a young and confident soldier. It's 2003, and the tank gunner with Lord Strathcona's Horse, an armoured regiment based in Edmonton, is exuberantly talking about his job for a documentary crew filming an episode of Truth, Duty, Valour, a popular show about the Canadian Forces.
Five years later, the Afghanistan veteran would be dead. His world would crash down around him in a haze of alcohol and drug abuse. In the course of a year, he would attempt suicide six times, before successfully hanging himself in a CFB Edmonton barracks. (1)
But the nightmare for the young man's family was only beginning.
A week after they buried their son, Sheila and Shaun Fynes received a letter from National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa. They opened it and were stunned by the first sentence: "I hope this letter finds you in good health and spirits." The letter was an invitation from the director of casualty support to complete a survey about how the military treated the family.
Included were questions about the family's experience in CFB Trenton, Ont., the base where the bodies of soldiers, killed in Afghanistan, arrive by aircraft. The Fynes had never been to Trenton.In the months following Cpl. Stuart Langridge's suicide by hanging in an Edmonton army base in March 2008, and his burial in Victoria, the Fynes got little peace. Instead they became trapped in a legal and bureaucratic nightmare they say the Army helped create. (2)
And things went from bad to worse, as the military tried desperately to cover their tracks.
On Jan. 21, Maj. Stewart Parkinson, the officer assigned to help the family, wrote to headquarters that the Fynes were increasingly unhappy with the delay and the couple wanted to have input into the board, as was their right. "You'll understand if after 10 months of being deceived, misled, and intentionally marginalized (at) various points that they have no faith left in the system," wrote Parkinson. "A bottom line for them at this point is some sign of real respect for Cpl. Langridge and a meaningful participation in the BOI."
In early March, the Fynes walked into a hearing in Edmonton, feeling that at last some good would come from their son's death. The purpose of a BOI is not to lay blame but to identify what the military could do to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. "We thought they would come up with recommendations so soldiers who are sick wouldn't fall through the cracks," said Sheila.
That hope disappeared. A parade of witnesses came forth to talk about Stuart's drug and alcohol abuse problems. A military doctor made a point of noting that the soldier did not suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. A psychiatrist voiced the opinion that Stuart shouldn't have been allowed to attend the funeral of a fallen comrade the day he committed suicide, adding that ceremony likely prompted him to take his own life. The Fynes couldn't believe what they hearing. Their son had never attended the funeral in question — he was already dead at that point. The Fynes also thought it was highly unusual that the civilian doctor who diagnosed Stuart with PTSD and the base psychiatrist who evaluated him previously were not asked to testify. (3)
Now remember, Stephen Harper controlled every aspect of his war, including the messaging. Clearly the notion that soldiers may suffer from depression, would not be something he would want made public. So instead they attacked the victim.
Dawson Bayliss
Dawson Bayliss died in his sleep on Nov. 23, 2009, lying alongside his pregnant wife in their Calgary home. "I heard him gasping for air," recalls Naomi Bayliss, eyes moistening. "That's what woke me up. His whole body was convulsing. His fists were balled up and his eyes were rolling back. I tried shaking him but he was totally unresponsive." Naomi lunged for the phone and called 911. Paramedics arrived within minutes. "I'd just given him four breaths and they were there." Despite intense efforts to revive him, Bayliss was pronounced dead at the scene within the hour. (4)
But Dawson did not receive a military funeral or the honours bestowed on a soldier who dies in combat, despite the fact that his death began on those battlefields.
...there is an alternate version of events, another narrative which is very much in dispute; maddeningly elusive and bureaucratically impenetrable, for all that his widow and friends have searched for answers. It goes like this: Pte. Lawrence Matthew (Dawson) Bayliss actually started dying on April 2, 2006, on a dangerous stretch of highway outside Kandahar city, bleeding from a head wound. I was there.
As Liberal MP Dan McTeague put it, before the deaths of five more Canadian soldiers last month: "Pte. Bayliss would appear to be the 134th Canadian to die as a result of combat in Afghanistan." But the official record doesn't say that. (4)
Dawson died in combat with a government that would prefer you become a casualty of war, to "limit the liability", not a causality of this government. But that's what happened. Dawson Bayliss died fighting the system.
And someone else fighting the system, is the recently fired Veterans advocate, Pat Stogran.
The silence has been broken. Veterans are speaking out after years of silently fighting with a system that is not effectively meeting their needs, and they are being heard. The fact that so many Canadians have become engaged in this debate shows that veterans issues matter deeply to them. Today, Canadians are watching and listening intently to what happens next. It is time for government action.
Veterans are intricately woven into the fabric of Canadian society. It is important how they are treated, not only because of our obligation to them, but also because of the associated long-term social and national security implications. If military members are not effectively re-integrated into society after their service, it can have significant impact on our social, health and justice systems. (5)
And as Stogran suggests: "Canadians may not agree on why their sons and daughters are fighting in far-off lands, but there is no lack of fervour when it comes to their support for the troops and their families." You can pin a yellow ribbon or a poppy to your sweater, or plaster your car with 'support the troops' stickers, but unless you are prepared to really stand up for our soldiers, past and present, then you are only blowing smoke.
We need to be mad about this and we need to be damn mad. I know I am.
Sources:
1. MENTAL HEALTH AND MILITARY: One soldier's story of depression, addiction, and suicide: Grieving parents blame military's indifference, By David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen, June 22, 2009
3. A FAMILY'S FIGHT: Part II of a two-part series: Parents of dead soldier felt deceived, marginalized by military following his suicide, By David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen, June 22, 2009
5. It's time to stand up for them: Canadians may not agree on why our troops fight in far-off lands, but they overwhelmingly support them. So should their government, By Pat Stogran, Citizen Special, August 26, 2010
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada
On June 3, 2008; Canada's then Ambassador to Afghanistan, Arif Lalani, was interviewed on a U.S. radio program via telephone.
What the morning talk show host, Renee Montagne, wanted to know was why Canada was suffering a disproportionate number of losses in the war. The highest ratio of all NATO forces.
Whenever you hear that a NATO soldier has been killed in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar, it's probably a Canadian soldier. Canada only has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan but they are fighting in one of the most dangerous regions of the country. So while Canadian troops make up only a small fraction of NATO forces, they've suffered the highest number of fatalities proportionately. (1)
Soon after being elected in January of 2006, Stephen Harper made Afghanistan his first official visit anywhere as prime minister. There he gave his now infamous "cut and run" speech, which was simply a scaled down version of one that George Bush had presented at the U.S. Naval Academy* a year before.
"You can't lead from the bleachers. I want Canada to be a leader," Harper told about 1,000 troops at the Kandahar airfield base the day after he arrived on an unannounced visit to Afghanistan. "Your work is about more than just defending Canada's national interests. Your work is also about demonstrating an international leadership role for our country."
"There will be some who want to cut and run, but cutting and running is not my way and it's not the Canadian way," he said, to a round of applause. "We don't make a commitment and then run away at the first sign of trouble. We don't and we will not, as long as I'm leading this country." (2)
Up to that time, 10 Canadian soldiers and a diplomat had been killed, and 26 Canadian soldiers had been injured. But that was about to change. To impress George Bush, Stephen Harper sent our men and women into the most dangerous areas of battle. According to Rick Hillier: "It was Stephen Harper's decision to move Canadian troops from Kabul and reposition them in southern Kandahar province, where they are now at much more danger of being killed by roadside bombs." (3)
And speeches were not the only thing Harper borrowed from his mentor. He also made the decision to discontinue flying the flag at half mast as a show of respect to fallen soldiers, and forbid the media from capturing for history, the images of flag draped coffins.
"Look, don't bring the Airbus in, or if you bring the plane in, turn it away from the cameras so that people can't see the bodies coming off, or do it after dark, or do it down behind the hangars, or just bar everybody from it," Hillier quotes the PMO staffers as saying. "They clearly didn't want that picture of the flag-draped coffin on the news."It is Canadian military policy that every Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan will be honoured as a war hero. Harper's disrespect for soldiers was the last straw for Hillier and prompted his early retirement at the age of 53. (4)
Harper expected backlash for this decision, from the media that he had already silenced, but was unprepared for the reaction of Canadians, especially from military families.
Nothing "casual" About Our Losses
Last week Canada revealed itself once again as a truly unique nation. In a world where dead warriors are commonplace and taken for granted, this country stopped, paid attention, lowered the flags and gave full military honours to four soldiers, who died inexplicably and tragically at the hands of our allies. (Lesley Hughes, April 2002)
Hughes was referring to the "friendly fire" deaths of four Canadian soldiers, the first reports of our country's losses in this war. And a nation mourned. Bill Leger, the father of Sgt. Marc Leger, spoke in reference to Stephen Harper's 2006 decision to ban the media from covering the flag draped coffins of fallen soldiers:
"... in 2002 it was a great thing for us to have the media there. It was something that we felt at that time, and still feel the same way, that it was a Canadian thing. It was something that we wanted to show all Canadians what the cost of their liberty is. It's nothing else but that. And it's still heart-warming to see the faces and everything else when people were lined up on the 401, in 2002, all the way from Trenton to Toronto. They wanted to be there. They had to be there. I was told that often, over and over again. And those are the memories that I have, and those are the things that I carry with me all my life." (5)
And Leger's mother was interviewed more recently:
Ask Claire Leger what the past decade has meant to her, and she'll tell you a story of abiding sorrow ... After the tragedy, Leger and her husband Richard planted four small Canadian flags in the garden of their home near Ottawa, in memory of Marc and his comrades, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, 24; Pte. Richard Green, 21 and Pte. Nathan Smith, 26.
Seven years later, the Legers haven't sought ''closure'' from their grief. As the war years have ticked by they've maintained a steady vigil, dutifully marking the death of every Canadian soldier in Afghanistan. ''Every time I have to go put a little flag in our garden, it feels like I'm burying our son all over again,'' she says. ''I send a card to every family that loses a soldier and I often get a card back, with a picture of their son or daughter.''''There's less and less attention paid to those who are killed and it's heartbreaking to me,'' says Leger. ''I wish I could share with other families the support we had when Marc died. We were embraced by Canadians. That's what kept me going - I felt people actually cared.''Leger is a fierce critic of what she considers an unwinnable war, and says Canada's participation has made us ''puppets'' of the Americans. (6)
Stephen Harper then did an about face, finding a way to make himself look good, and with the help of the ad firm Hill and Knowlton, quickly turned the war into a giant photo-op. Canada had not witnessed a propaganda campaign of this magnitude since the last world war. But it was not about "King and Country" this time, it was about Stephen Harper and ... well ... Stephen Harper.
His first defense minister, Gordon O'Connor had been an employee of H&K, lobbying for military contracts. In the United States, the ad firm was well known for using dirty tricks to sell wars:
Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to enforce it. Nine days after Saddam's army marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund a contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration. (7)
Canadians were no longer going to oppose the war. Belligerent nationalism would reign supreme, and they were going to instead cheer from the bleachers. Rah, rah, rah!
And what did they use to whip us into a frenzy?
Hill & Knowlton's yellow ribbon campaign [my emphasis] to whip up support for "our" troops, which followed their orchestration of Nayirah's phony "incubator" testimony, was a public relations masterpiece. The claim that satellite photos revealed that Iraq had troops poised to strike Saudi Arabia was also fabricated by the PR firm. Hill & Knowlton was paid between $12 million (as reported two years later on "60 Minutes") and $20 million (as reported on "20/20") for "services rendered." The group fronting the money? Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a phony "human rights agency" set up and funded entirely by Kuwait's emirocracy to promote its interests in the U.S. (8)
So in Canada, H & K not only had one of their own (O'Connor) as Minister of Defense, deciding which of their clients got what military contracts; they were also able to sell a yellow ribbon campaign that had been mothballed, to a country not known for outward displays of such aggression.
And to make sure that everyone stayed on message, Stephen Harper completely controlled the media, by completely controlling that message.
The Harper government used a pervasive message-control tool to persuade Canadians their foremost purpose in Afghanistan was building schools and fostering democracy rather than waging a war that was turning bloodier by the day.
An investigation by The Canadian Press shows the Conservatives systematically drafted “Message Event Proposals” as part of a quiet campaign to persuade Canadians their country was primarily engaged in development work to rebuild a shattered nation rather than hunting down and killing an emboldened insurgency.The government used MEPs literally to script the words it wanted to hear from the mouths of its top diplomats, aid workers and cabinet ministers in 2007-2008 to divert public attention from the soaring double-digit death toll of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. (9)
And when reports began to surface as early as 2007, that Canadians could be charged with war crimes:
WASHINGTON–Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office used a "6,000-mile screwdriver" to oversee the denial of reports of Afghan detainee abuse when the scandal first erupted in 2007, according to a former senior NATO public affairs official who was then based in Kabul. The former official, speaking on condition his name not be used, told the Toronto Star that Harper's office in Ottawa "scripted and fed" the precise wording NATO officials in Kabul used to repudiate allegations of abuse "at a time when it was privately and generally acknowledged in our office that the chances of good treatment at the hands of Afghan security forces were almost zero."
"It was highly unusual. I was told this was the titanic issue for Prime Minister Harper and that every single statement that went out needed to be cleared by him personally ... [my emphasis]" (10)
In February, the Hill Times reported on the suffering of our men and women who saw service in Afghanistan:
More than 6,000 Canadian Forces members and discharged veterans who are receiving physical or psychiatric disability benefits from Veterans Affairs Canada have either served in Afghanistan or have a disability that has been related to their service in Afghanistan, the department says. The majority of the soldiers receiving benefits are likely suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or war-related psychiatric conditions, according to global figures the department and the Canadian Forces provided The Hill Times. They also do not appear to be included in Afghanistan combat or non-combat casualty figures the Canadian Forces compiled, even though the veterans and serving members who have psychiatric conditions likely have them as a result of serving in the Afghan war. (11)
And when this report came out, Harper's head media cheerleader, Jane Taber, turned it into a hyper-partisan sideshow. I have never been so ashamed.
So given Stephen Harper's callous disregard for human life, and anal control of the media, should we be surprised to learn that he is now attacking our veterans? Should we be surprised to learn that he has fired the man advocating for them? Or should we be surprised to learn that he has forbidden our broken soldiers from telling their stories?
A half dozen Afghan war veterans who wanted to talk about how their injuries affected their lives were told by senior military staff they were not to attend a press conference held earlier this week by Veterans Ombudsman Pat Stogran. The instructions come as the debate over how injured veterans are being treated reached a highpoint in Ottawa earlier this week, when Stogran held a news conference and criticized Veterans Affairs Canada and the government for not doing enough for the country's injured military personnel. Other veterans, no longer serving in the Canadian Forces, also spoke out at the conference about the failure of government to provide for them. (12)
Are you mad yet? Are you ashamed? Are you Canadian?
This may have been Stephen Harper's War when he changed our direction from Peacekeepers to Peacemakers, but this is now our war, as we go into battle against a government who would allow our veterans to be treated like this.
George Bush (April 2005): "Some are calling for a deadline for withdrawal. Many advocating an artificial timetable for withdrawing our troops are sincere — but I believe they're sincerely wrong. Pulling our troops out before they've achieved their purpose is not a plan for victory. Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would send a signal to our enemies — that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run and abandon its friends... To all who wear the uniform, I make you this pledge: America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins so long as I am your Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.)"
5. Canadian Government Imitates Bush Regime: Dishonors Their War Dead Too, Afraid To Let The Public See The Cost Of Empire, Associated Press, April 26, 2006
6. Afghanistan war: Canada's defining event of past decade, By Richard Foot, Canwest News, 2009
12. Wounded vets claim they were muzzled by brass: Soldiers were willing to discuss injuries, but steered away from ombudsman's press conference, By David Pugliese, The Ottawa Citizen, August 21, 2010
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada
"To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom. Their courage teaches us a great lesson—that there are things in this world worth defending. To the Afghan people, I say on behalf of all Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and your relentless struggle against your oppressors." Ronald Reagan (1)
When Ronald Reagan first came to power, he had no intention of promoting peace, other than through the Orwellian "Peace Through Strength" initiative. He had been a member of the revived Committee on the Present Danger, whose mandate was to encourage an aggressive foreign policy, to assume control of the world's resources, especially oil. As a result the defense budget was increased to unheard of levels in an effort to build up arms.
When the Reagan administration took office in January 1981, it had little interest in nuclear arms controls or disarmament. To staff its national security posts, the administration drew heavily upon members of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), a hawkish group that had led the opposition to Carter-era nuclear arms control ventures. By November, 32 members of the CPD--including Ronald Reagan himself--had joined the administration. CPD member Richard Perle, the new assistant secretary of defense, told the press: "That we and the Russians could compose our differences, reduce them to treaty constraints ... and then rely on compliance to produce a safer world--I don’t agree with any of that." Indeed, as Reagan recalled, "there were some people in the Pentagon* who thought in terms of fighting and winning a nuclear war."Reagan’s personal qualms about nuclear weapons were offset by his virulent anticommunism and the hawkish military posture it entailed. (2)
Most members of the CPD were neoconservative followers of Leo Strauss, but they also had the backing of the American Enterprise Institute, whose members include Newt Gingrich, Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, Michael Novak, Richard Perle and David Frum. (who has since been fired)
And after 9/11, whether you believe it was a conspiracy or not, it definitely provided a very large window of opportunity.
The new Pearl Harbor arrived at 8:46 A.M. on the morning of September 11, 2001, less than eight full months into the Bush presidency .... Bush's first-day response to he attack appeared wobbly but the next few weeks were arguably the strongest of his presidency, highlighted by a well-received speech to Congress and a military move against Afghanistan that was supported by leaders of both parties and most Americans.
But behind the scenes, Bush and some of the PNAC alums immediately saw an opening for also ousting Saddam, strengthening America's presence in the world's main oil-producing region. "Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at the same time," Secretary Rumsfeld scribbled on a pad while the Pentagon was still on fire. "Not only UBL [Osama, or Usama, bin Laden]. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." By mid-2002, the push for invading Iraq, one of the things not related, was under way, and it became clear how much America and the world had changed. While Reagan had declared publicly that killing civilians in a military response to terrorism was "terrorism itself," U.S. officials spoke in 2002 and into 2003 of a new doctrine of "shock and awe," massive bombing aimed at scaring an enemy population into a speedy surrender. (3)
Sounded good to some, but why were they bombed in the first place?
In his book Lawless World, Philippe Sands, a law professor at University College London, describes the actions of the Bush administration as mounting to "a full-scale assault, a war on law."' This rejection of the rule of law and the global rules created following the Second World War has freed up a boisterous crowd of neoconservatives operating within the U.S. administration to unabashedly pursue policies aimed at enhancing America's global dominance. The administration's plans, the Wall Street Journal noted in March 2005, envision "a military that is far more proactive, focused on changing the world instead of just responding to conflicts" (italics added).' The distinguished U.S. journalist Mary McGrory captured this aggressive U.S. behaviour colourfully in a column in the Washington Post when she described America as the "SUV of nations. It hogs the road and guzzles the gas and periodically has to run over something—such as another country—to get to its Middle Eastern filling station."' (4)
David Frum and the Axis of Evil
While Ronald Reagan brought on members of the Committee on the Present Danger to direct his foreign policy, George Bush recruited directly from the American Enterprise Institute, including the Canadian David Frum, to act as speech writer. He has been credited with creating the term "Axis of Evil", but according to Frum the original speech read "Axis of Hate." With that speech, Frum was hoping to invoke the sentiments of Reagan's "Evil Empire' and FDR's justifications for going to war.
When Bush delivered his first post-9/11 State of the Union address, he stunned many watching by describing Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an "axis of evil." Critics immediately questioned the remark, noting that not only did it seem overly aggressive but there was no evidence that the nations were working in concert, as was the case with the original "Axis" powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan, which had signed a nonaggression pact before World War II. (Iran and Iraq, in contrast, had fought a protracted war against each other in the 1980s.)
Delaware Democrat Joe Biden, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, said that America's allies were confused by the resident's "axis of evil" remark, and so was he. "Was it meant to stake out a general notion that we know these guys are bad guys but not the only bad guys? NOr was it meant to be an all-inclusive list? Or was it ... a rhetorical connection between Roosevelt and Reagan—'axis' and 'evil'?" The short answer was, yes.
White House speechwriter David Frum, who authored that section of the speech, said he'd been reading up on Franklin Roosevelt's response to Pearl Harbor, in part because he wanted to learn how FDR had convinced the nation to enthusiastically support the war against Germany when it had been Japan that attacked the United States. He believed that the three nations made up what he called an "axis of hate," and he claimed Bush himself changed it to "evil." (2)
But Frum went beyond simple aggressive speech writing to launching a media campaign, along with Richard Perle, to demonize those he erroneously brought into his "Axis of Hate." Or as Gary Kamiya, in a review of their book, An End to Evil, put it: "Undaunted by the Iraq debacle, uber-hawks David Frum and Richard Perle air their fevered wet dream of a national-security superstate that slaps down uppity Muslims, bombs North Korea, slices and dices civil liberties and scatters the Palestinians like birdseed."(5)
Frum is a member of the Civitas Society, that helps to direct Harper's foreign policy, and a close associate of Jason Kenney's.
Other Past Presidents: Tom Flanagan, William Robson, and Lorne Gunter
Founding Directors: Janet Ajzenstat, Ted Byfield, Michel Coren, Jacques Dufresne, Tom Flanagan, David Frum, William Gairdner, Jason Kenney, Gwen Landolt, Ezra Levant, Tom Long, Mark Magner, William Robson, David E. Somerville, Michael Walker
Frum is the son-in-law of the controversial Peter Worthington and long time associate of Conrad Black. His sister Linda was given a patronage senate appointment by Stephen Harper.
Things in Afghanistan Now Worse Than Ever
With the leaked documents related to the War in Afghanistan, several important things have been revealed.
The most pertinent point for Canadians is that the situation in Afghanistan today is far grimmer than painted in the leaked papers. Obama’s military surge of 30,000 additional troops has not stopped the Taliban from controlling more territory. They are using more roadside bombs and hitting more NATO convoys and bases, even in Kabul. They are organizing more suicide bombing missions and assassinations.
The NATO offensive in Marjah also failed to root the Taliban out of that key district in opium-producing Helmand province. The area remains ungovernable, “a bleeding ulcer,” as the dear departed Gen. Stanley McChrystal called it. The much-touted offensive in Kandahar, designed to bring the entire Taliban-dominated south under NATO/Afghan control, was set for spring, then June, then July. It won’t begin this month, either, as the fasting month of Ramadan starts mid-August. It may not begin until October, if it all, the locals having revolted against the prospect of another American-led war. So much for the Afghans wanting us to liberate them from the Taliban, whom many now consider the lesser of two evils. (6)
I never supported the war in the first place. The Taliban government wanted to negotiate with the Bush Administration, and agreed to turn over Bin Laden if they had evidence that he was behind 9/11, but Bush turned them down flat. He wanted a war.
In fact, there was also an opportunity to create an allegiance with Iran.
What the world didn't know—but was reported four years later in the American Prospect—was that a back channel of cooperation to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan and deal with al-Qaeda, which Tehran saw as a threat, had secretly opened between the United States and Iran, and Bush's efforts to sound Reaganesque all but destroyed these links. (A second push for accommodation by Iran did come around the time of the Iraq invasion, but it was also rebuffed.) Rather than encourage and work with moderates in Tehran, the overt U.S. hostility was greeted with the election of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president and escalating tensions over its nuclear program. (2)
We are now in a situation where we can't realistically pull out of Afghanistan, even if we wanted to. Harper has simply set a date for retreat, without any peace initiative He wants to "cut and run", meaning that all those lives and all that money was for nothing.
We need to resume our Peacekeeping role, while we rebuild, not simply hand everything over to the private sector as the Harper government proposes.
2. Reagan and Nuclear Disarmament: How the Nuclear Freeze movement forced Reagan to make progress on arms control, By Lawrence S. Wittner, Boston Review, April/May 2000
3. Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy, By Will Bunch, Free Press, ISBN: 978-1-4165-9762-9 5, Pg. 178-179
4. HOLDING THE BULLY'S COAT: Canada and the U.S. Empire, By Linda McQuaig, Doubleday Canada, ISBN 978-0-385-66012-9, Pg. 1-2
With Harper's tight controlling of the message when it comes to the War in Afghanistan, these leaked documents could spell trouble.
"We have certainly not misled the Canadian public in any way, shape or form," Cannon said, calling the government's handling of information on Afghanistan "extremely transparent". "This is about leaked US documents, and yes, our government is concerned that operational leaks could endanger the lives of our men and women in Afghanistan," he added.
"Extremely transparent... Not misled the Canadian public in any way"? That's all they've done since taking over in 2006. Harper intentionally put our troops into the most dangerous situations to impress George Bush, but misled us into believing they were building schools.
I don't think we can simply walk away next year, after the mess we've made of things, but this invasion was doomed from the beginning. And what's different about these leaked documents is that none will be redacted, and apparently there are more to come.
There is one thing that really angered me though and it has nothing to do with the Conservatives mishandling of this mission. It was the fact that the US claims to be still "looking" for Bin Laden. The man has been dead since December 2001.
Last week, Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, visited Islamabad to announce US$500-million in aid to Pakistan. During her trip, she repeated she believes Osama bin Laden is hiding somewhere in the country.
Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader. "The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead," the source said.
Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.
Stephen Harper has had a pattern of running away and I think he would have liked to have given up on the War in Afghanistan long ago, if it weren't for having to keep up appearances.
When he was first elected in 2006, he had a buddy. And to show his buddy that he could play, he put Canadian soldiers in the worst places, where the fighting was the fiercest. George Bush said that he wasn't going to follow the Geneva Convention, and Harper said what Geneva Convention?
And with the mission supposedly winding down, and despite all of his bluster, things are worse in Afghanistan than they were when we first invaded.
THE DRASTIC developments in Afghanistan in recent days have certainly left the self-proclaimed "pro-mission" lobby spinning in all directions.What they propose now is to end the "combat" phase of the operation, but to continue providing as many as 1,000 troops to act as trainers for the Afghan security forces.
Their main selling point is that after sacrificing so much in both blood and gold, that it would be a national shame if Canada were to cut and run just as the NATO chefs are putting the icing on the victory cake.
The NATO mission in Afghanistan will not be successful without a credible partner leading the Afghan government, says a former UN envoy to the country, who called the campaign "a waste of resources" if soldiers are unable to do their jobs.
I thought all that money was going to create a credible partner. Training the Afghan police and military. Harper threw billions of dollars into that 'mission'.
Unfortunately, he spent far too much money in training our media, so to learn of the protests against us from the people of Afghanistan, we have to read U.S. papers or the U.K. Guardian
KABUL -- Afghan protesters torched NATO supply vehicles in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, hours after allegations emerged that U.S. and Afghan troops had killed three civilians, including two brothers, in their home.
The demonstration occurred in Logar province after a nighttime joint patrol of U.S. Special Operations forces and Afghan soldiers fatally shot three people and arrested two others. NATO officials said the men were insurgents who had displayed "hostile intent." One of those captured was a low-level Taliban Commander who planned suicide bombings, they said.
"Hostile intent"? What the hell are we displaying?
With NATO planning a major spring offensive, the largest since the war began eight years ago; it would appear that president Karzai has had enough.
During a visit to Southern Afghanistan he threatened to join the Taliban, if NATO goes ahead with their plans.
When President Obama visited the country recently he warned the Afghan President to clean up the corruption, and I don't think he took to kindly to the remarks.
Karzai was a former member of the Taliban government from 1995-98, before Unicol hired him as an insider to try to clinch an oil pipeline deal.
The Afghan president toured one community where dozens of residents died in an explosion several weeks ago. Local residents said they lived in constant fear and sharply criticized him for not doing enough to stop the violence.
Later, community leaders told Karzai they were worried about NATO's planned spring offensive, when troops are expected to launch the largest operation in the eight-year-old war against the Taliban. But Karzai told the local leaders there wouldn't be an offensive.
I think we should get out of there. What are we fighting for now? Bin Laden's dead and the drug trade is stronger than it ever was.
It's time to stop this nonsense and bring our soldiers home. Harper's lost interest anyway, since Bush is out of the picture.
We have been receiving reports of this for the past few years, and yet where's the debate over the issue?
Of course, we can't ask Harper himself because he doesn't take questions, and if anyone brought it up the House, they would be shouted down as a "Taliban dupe."
PRESIDENT BARACK Obama yesterday arrived in Afghanistan on a surprise trip intended to push the government of Hamid Karzai to crack down on corruption and drug trafficking.
But, the American President added, Karzai could do a bit more about corruption, and the rampant drug problems in Afghanistan. Corruptions after all helps build Taliban support. Afghans figure that if the legitimate government is cheating them, why not back the illegitimate one. And, of course, drugs, poppy crops and opiate production, directly funds the Taliban, and al Qaida.
Apparently most of the drug trade is being run by Karzai's own family, and yet according to the Harperites, he's the best thing that ever happened to the country.
We need to get out of there now. Too many lives lost for nothing.
Last spring, when news that the Afghan Parliament had passed a law depriving women of their children in cases of separation, banning them from appearing in public without the permission of their husbands, and making it illegal for them to refuse to have sex with them; Canadians were outraged.
We immediately demanded answers from our government.
Our young men and women are fighting in that country and one of the things they are fighting for is the rights of women; or so we're told.
Canadian officials contacted Karzai's office, and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon spoke to two Afghan cabinet ministers Tuesday seeking clarification. Karzai's office has so far refused to comment on the legislation, which has been criticized by some Afghan parliamentarians and a UN women's agency but has not yet been published.
Critics say Karzai's government approved it in a hurry to win support in the upcoming election from ethnic Hazaras — a Shia Muslim minority that constitutes a crucial block of swing voters.
"If these reports are true, this will create serious problems for Canada," said International Trade Minister Stockwell Day, who fielded questions in the House of Commons. "The onus is on the government of Afghanistan to live up to its responsibilities for human rights, absolutely including rights of women.
So should we be surprised to learn that Cannon knew of the new Afghan law months before it was passed, so his huffing and puffing was nothing more than that?
But apparently, Cannon was not the only one who knew.
Ottawa’s man, Aurel Braun, did not appreciate the fact that employees contradicted two Conservative ministers about what was known about Kabul’s misogynistic law….
So there were two high ranking Conservatives who knew of the law and supported it with their silence. We can only assume that the other one was Stockwell Day, since it was he who stood up in the House of Commons and said "The onus is on the government of Afghanistan to live up to its responsibilities for human rights, absolutely including rights of women."
He probably took notes to see if he could get away with enacting a law like that here.
"War is always at the most unrestrained when religion vests it with holy purpose." Michael Ignatieff, Warrior's Honour
There has always been a double standard when it comes to war in the Middle East. Islamic fundamentalism is blamed for all conflict, while western interventionism is deemed noble and righteous.
We are fighting a ferocious enemy who hates what we have accomplished and wants to destroy it.
To further justify unwarranted attacks and illegal invasions, we resort to fear mongering.
From the pulpit, millennialists like John Hagee, preach of an apocalyptic need to destroy the perceived spread of Islam, to fulfil a biblical prophesy. But in order to do that he must create the illusion of imminent danger.
“Ladies and gentlemen, America is at war with radical Islam,” Hagee said. “Jihad has come to America. If we lose the war to Islamic fascism, it will change the world as we know it .... They hate us because we are free. They hate us because it is their religious duty to hate us. They are trained from the breast of their mother to hate us. Radical Islam is a doctrine of death. It is their desire, it is their hope, it is their ambition, it is their highest honor to die in a war against infidels. And you are ‘infidels’ and there is nothing you can do to accommodate them. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”
His message is pretty clear.
And even the military resorts to similar logic, though they attempt to make it sound more rational.
In Linda McQuaig's book, Holding the Bully's Coat, she speaks of attending a lecture in Toronto given by U.S. Lt.-Gen. Thomas Metz, former commander at Fort Hood, where many believe that it was this Islamophobia that drove Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to go on a shooting rampage.
Rick Hillier took training at Fort Hood and referred to the Taliban as "detestable murderers and scumbags" and further stated "We're not the public service of Canada ... our job is to be able to kill people." (If the Wall Street Journal is correct, Hillier may already be the subject of a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court)
The Islamic faith is not evil," says the general [Metz], then quickly adds. "but it's been hijacked by thugs ... Most of the Islamic World believes the suicide bombers of the World Trade Center are now in the land of milk and honey." The general notes that there are almost a billion people in the Islamic world, and that if only one per cent of them are radical, "that's ten million radicals." He then shows a chart depicting the military challenges America faces, measured in terms of level of danger and level of likelihood. At the very apex—the most dangerous and the most likely—sits just one: radical Islamic terrorism. "Radical Islam wants to reestablish the Caliphate," says Metz. "Just as Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, you can read what they want to do." (Holding the Bully's Coat, Canada and the U.S. Empire, Linda McQuaig, Doubleday Canada, ISBN 978-0-385-66012-9, pg. 67-68)
It is said that there are roughly two to three billion Christians in the world. So by the general's mathematical reasoning, could that mean twenty to thirty million Christian radicals? There's no denying that nuts like Jason Kenney, Charles McVety and John Hagee have hijacked the faith.
Their ilk want nothing less than the total destruction of the Muslim world, and they are using Israel to achieve that goal, so they don't have to get their own hands dirty.
But what of the real reasons for this mission?
Pope Urban II may have used the battle cry "God Wills it" to rally his troops for the first Crusade in 1095, but he also dangled a prize: "The possessions of the enemy, too, will be yours, since you will make spoil of their treasures and return victorious to your own ... "
And General Metz did not disappoint his audience of senior Canadian military officers, soldiers, defence analysts and lobbyists; gathered on a Saturday morning in the Toronto neighbourhood of Armour Heights. He too dangled the spoils of war:
In the midst of his talk about the dangers of Islamic terrorism, Lt.-Gen. Metz abruptly shifts gears and starts talking about America's dependence on oil.
In his southern drawl, the general notes how much oil the U.S. consumes—roughly 25 per cent of the world's consumption, even though Americans make up only 5 per cent of the world's population—and how central this is to the country's high standard of living. To dramatize the importance of energy, the general points out that one can put a pint of gasoline into a chainsaw and then go out and cut a huge amount of wood before the gasoline runs out.
The next day, he says, one could feed a big, strong man an enormous breakfast and send him out to cut wood—and he'd be able to cut only a fraction of what the gasoline-fired chainsaw had been able to cut in far less time. The lesson from this little fable is clear: America needs oil to go on being the rich, advanced society that it enjoys being. Without oil, Americans would be like that big strong man with the big breakfast—with only a tiny pile of wood to show for it.
The general's little discourse on the importance of energy to America is certainly interesting. But what is it doing in a speech about military threats to the United States', The connection between America's voracious oil consumption and the dangers of radical Islamic terrorism are never explicitly stated by Lt.-Gen. Metz; he simply notes that the Islamic world has a lot of oil and what happens there has an impact on energy markets. But an important element has clearly been added to the picture: the U.S. needs what lies under the ground and in the Islamic world if Americans are to go on living the bounteous life that lies at the heart of the American dream—a life that has them devouring the lion's share of the world's energy. (McQuaig, Doubleday, Pg. 68-69)
Of course later, this sentiment shifted a bit as the U.S. began sounding the alarm over what would happen if the 'enemy' got hold of all that oil, making this a mission of defense, not aggression fueled by greed.
So what of that threat suggesting that the Islamic world is trying to convert the entire planet to Islam? That notion has been sounded from many pulpits across the west. Is there any truth to that?
I don't believe there is. In fact, I would argue that the opposite is true.
As far back as Desert Storm, Commander Norman Schwarzkopf, had to put a halt to plans to send 30,000 Arabic language Bibles to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. The intention here is pretty clear and the general knew that this action would put his soldiers at greater risk.
But George Bush had no such reservations, and he quickly vested the wars with a holy purpose; and once Stephen Harper got involved, we had us a modern day crusade.
"More alarming still is a book called Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel, by an air-force lieutenant colonel named William McCoy (another Fort Hood alumni) , publicity for which describes the separation of church and state as a “twisted idea.” Nor is this the book’s only publicity: it comes—with its direct call for a religion-based military—with an endorsement from General David Petraeus.
... I found I had been sent a near-incredible video clip from the Al Jazeera network. It had been shot at Bagram Air Force Base last year, and it showed a borderline-hysterical address by one Lieutenant Colonel Gary Hensley, chief of the United States’ military chaplains in Afghanistan. He was telling his evangelical audience, all of them wearing uniforms supplied by the taxpayer, that as followers of Jesus Christ they had a collective responsibility “to be witnesses for him.” Heating up this theme, Lieutenant Colonel Hensley went on: “The Special Forces guys, they hunt men, basically. We do the same things, as Christians. We hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down. Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them in the kingdom. Right? That’s what we do, that’s our business.”
The comparison to the Special Forces would seem to suggest that the objects of this hunting and hounding are Afghans rather than Americans. But it’s difficult to be certain, and indeed I am invited to Colorado Springs partly because chaplains there have been known to employ taxpayer dollars to turn the hounds of heaven loose on their own students and fellow citizens. As the Bagram tape goes on, however, it becomes obvious that Afghans are the targets in this case. Stacks of Bibles are on display, in the Dari and Pashto tongues that are the main languages in Afghanistan. A certain Sergeant James Watt, a candidate for a military chaplaincy, is shown giving thanks for the work of his back-home church, which subscribed the dough. “I also want to praise God because my church collected some money to get Bibles for Afghanistan.
... In another segment, those present show quite clearly that they understand they are in danger of violating General Order Number One of the U.S. Central Command, which explicitly prohibits “proselytizing of any religion, faith, or practice.” A gathering of chaplains, all of them fed from the public trough, is addressed by Captain Emmit Furner, a military cleric who seems half in love with his own light-footed moral dexterity. “Do we know what it means to proselytize?” he asks his audience. A voice from the audience is heard to say, “It is General Order Number One.” To this Sergeant Watt replies: “You can’t proselytize but you can give gifts.… I bought a carpet and then I gave the guy a Bible after I conducted my business.”
Coded biblical inscriptions have been found on the telescopic sights of rifles used by soldiers from several nations, including Canada, who are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The company that supplied the inscribed weapons initially defended its actions unapologetically, and the response by the American military spokespersons has been under whelming. The inscriptions, placed where they are, represent a betrayal of the Christian scriptures and their central message of peace and reconciliation, although some obviously see this activity as admirable and patriotic. The incident and responses to it raise deeply troubling questions about elements of the American military.
Surely I'm not the only one who sees the dangers of these practices. How difficult is it for actual Islamic extremists to recruit when they too can suggest that their basic religious freedoms are being threatened. Sometimes the only thing people have left is their soul, and few are willing to give that up without a fight.
I wish we had a real Governor General, who would recognize what's happening here and call a halt to this government's actions. But sadly she abandoned her adopted country the day she allowed Stephen Harper to prorogue Parliament simply to avoid a fall. Sigh.
Michael Byers is a leading expert in international law and has lent his voice to the Afghan situation. Early on he was concerned with our role, and also concerned with the handling of detainees, not just from a humanitarian perspective, but a legal one.
He would be someone Harper's Reformers would dismiss as a 'University type', suggesting that their supporters would not listen to someone like Mr. Byers. That's unfortunate, because these are the people we should be listening to.
At the beginning of the interview, they are discussing the Manly Report, and I posted on Linda McQuaig's reactions to that report. Journalist Terry Glavin, and indeed most of the mainstream media thought it was wonderful, but I don't agree.
We need to get our soldiers off the battlefields and if we're not prepared to do that, then bring them home. The mission does need a new direction, but one of negotiation, or at least an honest attempt at negotiation. But I can just hear Harper now as I'm typing "we don't negotiate with terrorists'.
Mr. Byers wrote a piece in the Tyee in October of 2006, explaining why Canada should not be in this war. I'm all for humanitarian aid and protecting the aid workers, and reconstruction, but no more U.S. style aggression.
Afghanistan: Wrong Mission for Canada The coolly reasoned case made by a leading expert in international law. By Michael Byers October 6, 2006, TeTyee.ca Tipping point nearing.
We are approaching the five-year mark of Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan. Joint Task Force 2, Canada's special-forces unit, has been active in that country since shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. We know that JTF-2 soldiers transferred detainees to U.S. custody in January 2002, participated in an attack at Tora Bora in December 2002, and transferred detainees to U.S. custody again during the summer of 2005.
The first deployment of regular soldiers came in January 2002, when 750 infantry from the Princess Patricia's Regiment were sent to Kandahar as part of an U.S. counter-insurgency task force. Four of these soldiers were killed, and eight others injured, in a "friendly fire" incident in April 2002. Then, over a two-year period from August 2003 to October 2005, some 6,000 Canadian soldiers were rotated through Kabul as part of a UN-authorized, NATO-led "international security assistance force" providing security and stability for Afghanistan's new government. ....
And what I have learned is that we need to get out of there now. I'm not prepared to spend one more dollar, or lose one more of our soldiers, for a lost and immoral cause.
This does not make me unpatriotic. As Linda McQuaig states in her book; Holding the Bully's Coat: The Harper government has managed to deflect some of the public dissatisfaction over its increasingly militarized pro-Washington stance by portraying any criticism of our Afghan role as a failure to "support the troops."
But support for the troops isn't the issue. The legitimacy of the war—and Canada's involvement in it—is the issue. And it is ludicrous to suggest that criticism of a government decision to commit our troops to war amounts to criticism of the troops, whose job it is to carry out government orders. The government is clearly hoping to shield itself from such criticism by hiding behind the troops, trying to make Canadians feel that any condemnation of the government smacks of ingratitude for the enormous sacrifices Canadian soldiers are being called upon to make. (McQuaig, Doubleday, 2007)
I will be linking up all of my archived postings on Rethinking Afghanistan, but thought I'd give a brief history of a country in perpetual conflict. I guess being prime for a pipeline to the Caspian and immense poppy fields, isn't all it's cracked up to be.
My personal knowledge is limited, so I'm going to share an article from one of my favourite writers, Phil Gasper. He's very bright and many of his articles are humorous, yet concise. It was written at the beginning of the war when Bin Laden was still alive.
The U.S. war on Afghanistan is a brutal attack on a country that has already been almost destroyed by more than 20 years of foreign invasion and civil war.' The Soviet occupation, which lasted from 1979 to 1989, left more than a million people dead. Millions still live in refugee camps More than 500,000 orphans are disabled. Ten million land mines still litter the country, killing an average of 90 people per month.
At 43 years, life expectancy in Afghanistan is on average 17 years lower than that for people in other developing countries. The countryside is devastated and is currently experiencing a severe drought, with 7.5 million people threatened with starvation. The death and destruction wrought by the U.S. bombing campaign-and the cut off of food aid deliveries it has caused-have already killed hundreds and produced thousands more refugees scrambling to escape into Pakistan.
But not only is Washington attacking one of the poorest countries in the world, past U.S. government actions are in no small part responsible for the current situation in Afghanistan. The Bush administration claims to be targeting Osama bin Laden, who it says masterminded the September 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (even though it has offered no concrete evidence to back up this accusation), and Afghanistan's Taliban government, which is sheltering him.
But as the Economist magazine noted soon after September 11, " [U.S.] policies in Afghanistan a decade and more ago helped to create both Osama bin Laden and the fundamentalist Taliban regime that shelters him." An examination of this history will reveal the extent to which U.S. foreign policy is based on hypocrisy, realpolitik, and the short-term pursuit of narrow interests.
Before the Russians invaded
Modern Afghanistan was created in the nineteenth century as a buffer state between the Russian and British empires as they played their "great game" in the region. This historical circumstance, coupled with the country's forbidding mountainous terrain, not only made it difficult for imperialist countries to conquer Afghanistan (it did not undergo colonial rule), but also resulted in little economic development.
The country contains many different ethnic groups. The Pashtuns-from whom Afghanistan's traditional rulers have come-constitute 52 percent of the population. The Hazaras are 19 percent of the population. The Tajiks in the north constitute 21 percent; Uzbeks, also in the north, 5 percent. About 85 percent of Afghans are Sunni Muslims, and about 15 percent, among the Hazaras, are Shia Muslims.
Afghanistan survived as a medieval island in the modern world, characterized by backwardness and extreme poverty. In the postwar period, some changes began to occur as a result of foreign aid from the USSR and, to a lesser extent, the U.S., which were vying for influence during the Cold War. Power shifted toward the state, and an educated middle class began to emerge. But industry still barely existed.
In 1973, following a severe drought, King Zaher's cousin Daud overthrew Zaher's corrupt and repressive regime and declared a republic. But government corruption increased and promised modernization did not take place. Meanwhile, Daud began to collaborate more closely with the Shah of Iran. Lower-level officials and members of the middle class grew increasingly discontented. In April 1978, as Daud attempted to move against his opponents on the left, he was overthrown and killed by army officers sympathetic to the pro-Soviet People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA).
Following the coup, a broad ruling coalition was set up, controlled by the Khalq, one of the PDPA's two factions. Nur Mohammad Taraki, a well-known novelist, became president.
Within a few months, however, the Khalq pushed Barbrak Karmal and other members of the rival Parcham faction out of the government. Karmal was made ambassador to Prague, and other Parchami were also given diplomatic posts. The new government lacked any social base outside Kabul, and its program of reforms soon provoked a popular backlash. The Kabul regime was completely isolated from the mass of the population in the countryside:
[They] had neither survey information nor local leaders with knowledge of actual conditions in the countryside. In short, it would have been virtually impossible for them to devise a successful land-reform program. As it was, their reforms were implemented by blundering and often brutal officials from the city who dropped into the countryside by parachute.
Rebellion and resistance started to spread around the country. The resistance was spontaneous, but soon came to be led by an alliance of conservative Islamic groups who referred to themselves as "majahideen" (holy warriors). By the spring of 1979, rebellion had spread to most of the country's 29 provinces. On March 24, a garrison of soldiers in Herat killed a group of Soviet advisers (and their families) who had ordered Afghan troops to fire on antigovernment demonstrators. From this point, the regime was no longer merely isolated from peasants in the countryside, but divided by open hostility from an overwhelming majority of all the people. The regime had no choice now but to crush much of the population.... [Prime Minister Hafizullah] Amin's secret police and a repressive civilian police force went into action across Afghanistan, and army troops were sent into the countryside to subdue "feudal" villagers.
Government repression was severe. "Mass arrests were commonly followed by torture and execution without trial. Police terror was common in the city as well as the countryside, where virtually all social groups joined in the rebellion." The rebels' tactics were equally brutal. The Washington Post reported that the mujahideen liked to "torture victims by first cutting off their noses, ears, and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another."
As the situation got out of control, the Soviets advised Taraki to dismiss Amin, reunite with Parcham, and adopt a policy of "democratic nationalism." But Amin got wind of the plan and arrested Taraki in September, assassinating him soon afterward. Amin was now in the position of publicly accusing the Russians of plotting to overthrow the Afghan government while being totally dependent on Soviet military and economic support.
In December, hard-liners in Moscow decided that Amin had to go. They believed that he could be removed by a dramatic show of force and quietly replaced by Karmal. On December 27, a force of 5,000 Soviet troops advanced on Kabul, but Amin refused to leave office quietly and fought back. On December 28, " [a]fter twelve hours of bitter combat with Soviet forces at the presidential palace, Amin was killed, along with 2,000 loyal members of his armed forces."
Having killed the man whom they claimed had invited them into the country, the Russians proclaimed Karmal to be president and flew him back from Moscow. Within a few days, the number of Soviet troops in Afghanistan had reached 80,000. The figure later climbed to more than 100,000. What was to be nearly a decade of Russian occupation had begun.
The CIA's anticommunist jihad
President Jimmy Carter immediately declared that the invasion jeopardized vital U.S. interests, because the Persian Gulf area was "now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
But the Carter administration's public outrage at Russian intervention in Afghanistan was doubly duplicitous. Not only was it used as an excuse for a program of increased military expenditure that had in fact already begun, but the U.S. had in fact been aiding the mujahideen for at least the previous six months, with precisely the hope of provoking a Soviet response.
Former CIA director Robert Gates later admitted in his memoirs that aid to the rebels began in June 1979. In a candid 1998 interview, Zbigniew Brezinski, Carter's national security adviser, confirmed that U.S. aid to the rebels began before the invasion:
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan [in] December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.... We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would....
That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap.... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."
The Carter administration was well aware that in backing the mujahideen it was supporting forces with reactionary social goals, but this was outweighed by its own geopolitical interests. In August 1979, a classified State Department report bluntly asserted that "the United States' larger interest...would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan." That same month, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, State Department spokesperson Hodding Carter piously announced that the U.S. "expect[s] the principle of nonintervention to be respected by all parties in the area, including the Soviet Union."
The Russian invasion in December was the signal for U.S. support to the Afghan rebels to increase dramatically.
Three weeks after Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul, Carter's secretary of defense, Harold Brown, was in Beijing arranging for a weapons transfer from the Chinese to the ClA-backed Afghani troops mustered in Pakistan. The Chinese, who were generously compensated for the deal, agreed and even consented to send military advisers. Brown worked out a similar arrangement with Egypt to buy $15 million worth of weapons. "The U.S. contacted me," [then-Egyptian president] Anwar Sadat recalled shortly before his assassination [in 1981]. "They told me, 'Please open your stores for us so that we can give the Afghans the armaments they need to fight.' And I gave them the armaments. The transport of arms to the Afghans started from Cairo on U.S. planes."
By February 1980, the Washington Post reported that the mujahideen was receiving arms coming from the U.S. government.
The objective of the intervention, as spelled out by Brezinski, was to trap the Soviets in a long and costly war designed to drain their resources, just as Vietnam had bled the United States. The high level of civilian casualties that this would certainly entail was considered but set aside. According to one senior official, "The question here was whether it was morally acceptable that, in order to keep the Soviets off balance, which was the reason for the operation, it was permissible to use other lives for our geopolitical interests."
Carter's CIA director Stansfield Turner answered the question: "I decided I could live with that." According to Representative Charles Wilson, a Texas Democrat, there were 58,000 dead in Vietnam and we owe the Russians one.... I have a slight obsession with it, because of Vietnam. I thought the Soviets ought to get a dose of it.... I've been of the opinion that this money was better spent to hurt our adversaries than other money in the Defense Department budget.
The mujahideen consisted of at least seven factions, who often fought amongst themselves in their battle for territory and control of the opium trade. To hurt the Russians, the U.S. deliberately chose to give the most support to the most extreme groups. A disproportionate share of U.S. arms went to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, "a particularly fanatical fundamentalist and woman-hater."' According to journalist Tim Weiner, " [Hekmatyar's] followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. CIA and State Department officials I have spoken with call him 'scary,' 'vicious,' 'a fascist,' 'definite dictatorship material."
There was, though, a kind of method in the madness: Brezinski hoped not just to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, but to ferment unrest within the Soviet Union itself. His plan, says author Dilip Hiro, was "to export a composite ideology of nationalism and Islam to the Muslim-majority Central Asian states and Soviet Republics with a view to destroying the Soviet order." Looking back in 1998, Brezinski had no regrets. "What was more important in the world view of history?... A few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War"
With the support of Pakistan's military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, the U.S. began recruiting and training both mujahideen fighters from the 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and large numbers of mercenaries from other Islamic countries. Estimates of how much money the U.S. government channeled to the Afghan rebels over the next decade vary, but most sources put the figure between $3 billion and $6 billion, or more. Whatever the exact amount, this was "the largest covert action program since World War II" - much bigger, for example, than Washington's intervention in Central America at the same time, which received considerably more publicity. According to one report:
The CIA became the grand coordinator: purchasing or arranging the manufacture of Soviet-style weapons from Egypt, China, Poland, Israel and elsewhere, or supplying their own; arranging for military training by Americans, Egyptians, Chinese and Iranians; hitting up Middle-Eastern countries for donations, notably Saudi Arabia which gave many hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year, totaling probably more than a billion; pressuring and bribing Pakistan-with whom recent American relations had been very poor-to rent out its country as a military staging area and sanctuary; putting the Pakistani Director of Military Operations, Brigadier Mian Mohammad Afzal, onto the CIA payroll to ensure Pakistani cooperation.
When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, he found the Democratic-controlled Congress eager to increase spending on the Afghan war. A congressional staffer told a reporter, "It was a windfall [for the new administration]. They'd faced so much opposition to covert action in Central America and here comes the Congress helping and throwing money at them, putting money their way and they say, 'Who are we to say no?"
Aid to the mujahideen, who Reagan praised as "freedom fighters," increased, but initially Afghanistan was not a priority:
In the first years after the Reagan administration inherited the Carter program, the covert Afghan war "tended to be handled out of [CIA director William] Casey's back pocket," recalled Ronald Spiers, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, the base of the Afghan rebels. Mainly from China's government, the CIA purchased assault rifles, grenade launchers, mines and SA-7 light antiaircraft weapons, and then arranged for shipment to Pakistan.... The amounts were significant-10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983, according to [Pakistani General Mohammed] Yousaf-but a fraction of what they would be in just a few years.
In March 1985, the Reagan administration issued National Security Decision Directive 166,29 a secret plan to escalate covert action in Afghanistan dramatically:
Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers, the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an array of U.S. high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit and demoralize Soviet commanders and soldiers....
Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujahideen rebels with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban sabotage, and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.
Between 1986 and 1989, the mujahideen were also provided with more than 1,000 state-of-the-art, shoulder-fired Stinger antiaircraft missiles. By 1987, the annual supply of arms had reached 65,000 tons, and a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon officials were visiting Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters in Rawalpindi and helping to plan mujahideen operations:
At any one time during the Afghan fighting season, as many as 11 ISI teams trained and supplied by the CIA accompanied mujahideen across the border to supervise attacks, according to Yousaf and Western sources. The teams attacked airports, railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges and roads....
CIA operations officers helped Pakistani trainers establish schools for the mujahideen in secure communications, guerrilla warfare, urban sabotage and heavy weapons.
Although the CIA claimed that the purpose was to attack military targets, mujahideen trained in these techniques, and using chemical and electronic-delay bomb timers supplied by the U.S., carried out numerous car bombings and assassination attacks in Kabul itself.
Bin Laden and the Arab-Afghans
As well as training and recruiting Afghan nationals to fight the Soviets, the CIA permitted its ISI allies to recruit Muslim extremists from around the world. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid reports: Between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan mujahideen. Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the hundreds of new madrassas [religious schools] that Zia's military government began to fund in Pakistan and along the Afghan border. Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be influenced by the jihad [against the USSR].
In camps near Peshawar and in Afghanistan, these radicals met each other for the first time and studied trained and fought together. It was the first opportunity for most of them to learn about Islamic movements in other countries, and they forged tactical and ideological links that would serve them well in the future. The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism.
One of the first non-Afghan volunteers to join the ranks of the mujahideen was Osama bin Laden, a civil engineer and businessman from a wealthy construction family in Saudi Arabia, with close ties to members of the Saudi royal family. Bin Laden recruited 4,000 volunteers from his own country and developed close relations with the most radical mujahideen leaders.
He also worked closely with the CIA, raising money from private Saudi citizens. By 1984, he was running the Maktab al-Khidamar, an organization set up by the ISI to funnel "money, arms, and fighters from the outside world in the Afghan war."
Since September 11, CIA officials have been claiming they had no direct link to bin Laden. These denials lack credibility. Earlier this year, the trial of defendants accused of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya disclosed that the CIA shipped high-powered sniper rifles directly to bin Laden's operation in 1989. Even the Tennessee-based manufacturer of the rifles confirmed this.
According to the Boston Globe, some military analysts and specialists on the weapons trade say the CIA has spent years covering its tracks on its early ties to the Afghan forces.... Despite the ClA's denials, these experts say it was inevitable that the military training in guerrilla tactics and the vast reservoir of money and arms that the CIA provided in Afghanistan would have ended up helping bin Laden and his forces during the 1980s.
"In 1988, with U.S. knowledge, bin Laden created Al Qaeda (The Base): a conglomerate of quasi independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across at least 26 countries," writes Indian journalist Rahul Bhedi. "Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda, confident that it would not directly impinge on the U.S." After the Soviet withdrawal, however, bin Laden and thousands of other volunteers returned to their own countries: Their heightened political consciousness made them realize that countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt were just as much client regimes of the United States as the Najibullah regime [in Afghanistan] has been of Moscow.
In their home countries they built a formidable constituency-popularly known as "Afghanis"-who combined strong ideological convictions with the guerrilla skills they had acquired in Pakistan and Afghanistan under CIA supervision.
Over the past 10 years, the "Afghani" network has been linked to terrorist attacks not only on U.S. targets, but also in the Philippines, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, France, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and elsewhere. "This is an insane instance of the chickens coming home to roost," one U.S. diplomat in Pakistan told the Los Angeles Times. "You can't plug billions of dollars into an anti-Communist jihad, accept participation from all over the world and ignore the consequences. But we did.
Romancing the Taliban
As the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan in early 1989, American policymakers celebrated with champagne, while the country itself collapsed into virtual anarchy. Almost a quarter of the population was living in refugee camps and most of the country was in ruins. Different factions of the mujahideen struggled for power in the countryside, while the government of Muhammed Najibullah, the last Soviet-installed president controlled Kabul.
Eventually, in April 1992, Kabul fell to some of the mujahideen factions and Burhannudin Rabbani was de dared president, but civil war continued unabated. Hekmatyar in particular was dissatisfied with the new distribution 0f power. With his huge stock of U.S.-supplied weapons, he began an artillery and rocket assault on Kabul that lasted for almost three years, even after he was appointed prime minister in 1993. "The barrage...killed more than 10,000 Afghans [drove] hundreds of thousands into squalid refugee camps, created political chaos, and blocked millions of exiles from returning." The rest of the country disintegrated into isolated fiefdoms dominated by local warlords.
In 1994, a new group, the Taliban (Pashtun for "students"), emerged on the scene. Its members came from madrassas set up by the Pakistani government along the border and funded by the U.S., Britain, and the Saudis, where they had received theological indoctrination and military training. Thousands of young men-refugees and orphans from the war in Afghanistan-became the foot soldiers of this movement: These boys were from a generation who had never seen their country at peace-an Afghanistan not at war with invaders and itself. They had no memories of their tribes, their elders, their neighbors nor the complex ethnic mix of peoples that made up their villages and their homeland. These boys were what the war had thrown up like the sea's surrender on the beach of history ...
They were literally the orphans of war, the rootless and restless, the jobless and the economically deprived with little self-knowledge. They admired war because it was the only occupation they could possibly adapt to. Their simple belief in a messianic, puritan Islam which had been drummed into them by simple village mullahs was the only prop they could hold on to and which gave their lives some meaning. Untrained for anything, even the traditional occupations of their forefathers such as farming, herding or the making of handicrafts, they were what Karl Marx would have termed Afghanistan's lumpen proletariat.
With the aid of the Pakistani army, the Taliban swept across most of the exhausted country promising a restoration of order and finally capturing Kabul in September 1996. The Taliban imposed an ultra-sectarian version of Islam, closely related to Wahhabism, the ruling creed in Saudi Arabia. Women have been denied education, health care, and the right to work. They must cover themselves completely when in public. Minorities have been brutally repressed. Even singing and dancing in public are forbidden.
The Taliban's brand of extreme Islam had no historical roots in Afghanistan. The roots of the Taliban's success lay in 20 years of "jihad" against the Russians and further devastation wrought by years of internal fighting between the warlord factions. Initially, villagers-especially the majority Pashtuns in the south who shared the Taliban's ethnicity-welcomed them as a force that might end the warfare and bring some order and peace to Afghanistan. Their lack of a social base within Afghanistan made them appear untainted by the factional warfare, and their moral purism made them appear above compromise. Before launching their war to conquer power, they first won some public support by appearing as the avenger against the warlords' raping of women and boys. Of course, they could not have risen so far and so fast without the financial and military backing of Pakistan.
The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban's reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. "The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul," adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw "nothing objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: "The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan."
"The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that," said another U.S. diplomat in 1997. (They are now also accepting Sharia Law in Iraq)
The reference to oil and pipelines explains everything. Since the collapse of the USSR at the end of 1991, U.S. oil companies and their friends in the State Department have been salivating at the prospect of gaining access to the huge oil and natural gas reserves in the former Soviet republics bordering the Caspian Sea and in Central Asia. These have been estimated as worth $4 trillion. The American Petroleum Institute calls the Caspian region "the area of greatest resource potential outside of the Middle East." And while he was still CEO of Halliburton, the world's biggest oil services company, Vice President Dick Cheney told other industry executives, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." The struggle to control these stupendous resources has given rise to what Rashid has dubbed the "new Great Game," pitting shifting alliances of governments and oil and gas consortia against one another.
Afghanistan itself has no known oil or gas reserves, but it is an attractive route for pipelines leading to Pakistan, India, and the Arabian Sea. In the mid-1990s, a consortium led by the California-based Unocal Corporation proposed a $4.5 billion oil and gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. But this would require a stable central government in Afghanistan itself. Thus began several years in which U.S. policy in the region centered on "romancing the Taliban." According to one report, in the months before the Taliban took power, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for South Asia Robin Raphel waged an intense round of shuttle diplomacy between the powers with possible stakes in the [Unocal] project.
"Robin Raphel was the face of the Unocal pipeline," said an official of the former Afghan government who was present at some of de meetings with her....
In addition to tapping new sources of energy, de [project] also suited a major U.S. strategic aim in the region: isolating its nemesis Iran and stifling a frequently mooted rival pipeline project backed by Teheran, experts said.
But Washington's initial enthusiasm for the Taliban's seizure of power provoked a hostile reaction from human rights and women's organizations in the United States. The Clinton administration quickly decided to take a more cautious public approach. Plans to send the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan on a visit to Kabul were canceled, and the State Department decided not to recognize the new regime immediately. Nevertheless, Unocal executive vice president Chris Taggart continued to maintain, "If the Taliban leads to stability and international recognition then it's positive."
Tacit U.S. support for the Taliban continued until 1998, when Washington blamed Osama bin Laden for the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and retaliated by launching cruise missiles at bin Laden's alleged training camps in Afghanistan. The Taliban's refusal to extradite bin Laden- not its atrocious human rights record-led to UN-imposed sanctions on the regime the following year. "Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright used to say that she cared about the women suffering under the Taliban, but after the Taliban took over the U.S. accepted very few refugees," points out journalist Laura Flanders. "In '96 and '97 no Afghan refugees were admitted to the United States; in '98, only 88, in '99, some 360."
Whatever the U.S. government's current rhetoric about the repressive nature of the Taliban regime, its long history of intervention in the region has been motivated not by concern for democracy or human rights, but by the narrow economic and political interests of the U.S. ruling class. It has been prepared to aid and support the most retrograde elements if it thought a temporary advantage would be the result. Now Washington has launched a war against its former allies based on a strategic calculation that the Taliban can no longer be relied upon to provide a stable, U.S.-friendly government that can serve its strategic interests.
No matter what the outcome, the war is certain to lay the grounds for more "blowback" in the future.
(Phil Gasper is a professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University in California)
