In an article titled, Hamid Karzai’s Rebellion, Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation reports: “President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the almost classic definition of a pawn […in] a series of angry, frustrated outbursts, […] has declared that the United States is acting like an invader and occupier, that ‘there is a thin curtain between invasion and cooperation-assistance,’ that the heavy-handed US and NATO military operations could transform the insurgency into a ‘national resistance’ and that he himself might throw in his lot with the Taliban.” Dreyfuss’ conclusions come to this: “that the US enterprise in Afghanistan is hopelessly misguided.”
Today we read that NATO forces shot at a civilian coach and killed 4, wounded 18, including women and children. “President Hamid Karzai, who has wept in public demanding Nato stop killing innocent people, issued a statement condemning the attack and offering his condolences to the victims yesterday.”
Typifying all that is wrong with allied attitudes, this from Canada’s Defence Minister Peter McKay: “’I called for more constructive and active engagement. People need to see a more visible presence of the Afghan government in Kandahar province,’ explaining [President Karzai’s] comments have a ‘corrosive impact on Canadian soldiers and citizens.’ Raising the topic, he said, was ‘very uncomfortable for them.’ The Defence Minister added that he purposely decided not to meet with Mr. Karzai during his weekend visit.”
You see, he didn’t meet with Karzai, “on purpose” – that’ll show him! And after all, lets not forget how distressing all this is for Canadian soldiers and citizens, it’s so uncomfortable for them!
These portrayals – that Afghanistan is an ungrateful, spoiled little narco-economy that could have had democracy and women’s rights and everything, if only they’d, you know, let the U.S. and their allies do whatever they wanted, including wantonly killing civilians (and covering it up if deemed necessary) – is unsupportable. The U.S. IS “acting like an invader and occupier” because that is what it is. The war in Afghanistan is an excuse, a symptom of U.S. failure to understand that it no longer freely dominates world-affairs, precisely because it has failed to reject the illegal and out-of-control military policies established by the corrupt and criminal Bush administration (which are the natural progression from the corrupt and criminal Reagan administration).
This morning people were chanting not only “Death to America” but “Death to Karzai” – how he is supposed to be an effective leader when his rise to power made no attempt to hide the puppet strings connecting him to the U.S., is a question few are concerned to answer, as it seems simply condemning him is enough to content the western media. Meanwhile, “Elsewhere in the city of Kandahar, three suicide bombers attacked an Afghan intelligence services compound, but were killed after security forces shot at them, said the provincial government spokesman. Four intelligence agents and six civilians, including a teacher at a nearby school, were wounded in the attack, said the spokesman, Zelmai Ayubi.” In April alone we heard of several successful Taliban attacks: on U.S. tanks killing all the soldiers inside, attacks on a British tank patrol killing or wounding all soldiers inside, attacks on police stations, fatal attacks on foot patrols and a Kandahar police station, and only days ago, “a deadly assault by militants on the American consulate in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar. The Pakistani Taliban say they carried out the attack, which left three guards and four militants dead. …The raid came hours after 43 people died in a suicide attack just to the north-east, near the Swat Valley. “
What can be done? What IS being done? Nothing is being done, nothing can be done. Slowly, the sick workings of these unjust wars will unwind themselves into useless heaps of gears and broken war machinery, and the “allies” will walk away, the “winners” rewriting the ‘history’ in their wake. Meanwhile, the “war on terror” continues to claim lives, claim freedoms and liberties in the name of a “security” that will never come. Will just getting out of Afghanistan be enough? I believe it will be another decade until that question is finally asked in earnest. War is now the business of America: “…an incoming administration inherited a strategy heavily weighted toward high-intensity warfare among well-equipped adversaries, mostly in Europe and Asia; now, as then, the response has been to redirect the Pentagon’s attention toward low-intensity combat on the fringes of the developing world. The result back then was Vietnam; today it is Afghanistan and an unknown number of ‘future Afghanistans.’ »
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100426/dreyfuss
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article7095461.ece
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/world/asia/13afghan.html?hp
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/mackay-snubs-karzai-on-afghan-visit/article1531429/
http://www.statestimes.com/2010/2010/04/02/afghanistan-attacks-on-us-led-forces-and-on-afghan-police-several-killed-taliban/
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100426/klare