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The "Good Good War" Is A Bad War

By John Pilger

10/01/08 "ICH" -- - In his latest article for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how the invasion of Afghanistan, which was widely supported in the West as a 'good war' and justifiable response to 9/11, was actually planned months before 9/11 and is the latest instalment of 'a great game'.

"To me, I confess, [countries] are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for dominion of the world."
Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, speaking about Afghanistan, 1898

I had suggested to Marina that we meet in the safety of the Intercontinental Hotel, where foreigners stay in Kabul, but she said no. She had been there once and government agents, suspecting she was Rawa, had arrested her. We met instead at a safe house, reached through contours of bombed rubble that was once streets, where people live like earthquake victims awaiting rescue.

Rawa is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which since 1977 has alerted the world to the suffering of women and girls in that country. There is no organisation on earth like it. It is the high bar of feminism, home of the bravest of the brave. Year after year, Rawa agents have travelled secretly through Afghanistan, teaching at clandestine girls' schools, ministering to isolated and brutalised women, recording outrages on cameras concealed beneath their burqas. They were the Taliban regime's implacable foes when the word Taliban was barely heard in the west: when the Clinton administration was secretly courting the mullahs so that the oil company Unocal could build a pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian.

Indeed, Rawa's understanding of the designs and hypocrisy of western governments informs a truth about Afghanistan excluded from news, now reduced to a drama of British squaddies besieged by a demonic enemy in a "good war". When we met, Marina was veiled to conceal her identity. Marina is her nom de guerre. She said: "We, the women of Afghanistan, only became a cause in the west following 11 September 2001, when the Taliban suddenly became the official enemy of America. Yes, they persecuted women, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the west over the atrocious nature of the western-backed warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and terrorise, yet they hold seats in [Hamid] Karzai's government. In some ways, we were more secure under the Taliban. You could cross Afghanistan by road and feel secure. Now, you take your life into your hands."

The reason the United States gave for invading Afghanistan....

Link to article

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.... The Bush administration will not make a decision to withdraw no matter how favorable the opportunity. It has adopted the ugly baby approach, planning to hand the war off to its (probably Democratic) successor.

But what of the Democrats who control both Houses of Congress? Why do they keep funding the war, as they just did again?

The reasons are several, and none of them are pretty. Obviously, Democrats think they will garner more votes in November if the war is still going on with no end in sight. Running against "Bush's war" appears more promising than ending it.

Most of the leading Democratic Presidential candidates are ambiguous, at best, about ending the war in Iraq if they win. Why? In part, because just as the neocons now dominate Republican circles, so the Democratic Establishment is in thrall to the neoliberals. Both cabals of neos favor a world-dominating American empire, run of course by themselves. We are reminded once again that while there may be, at least on paper, two parties, there is one Establishment. It does not look favorably on ending the games off which it feeds....

Link to article

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Lind,on the other hand,is a respected commentator and a realistic critic of the Evil Empire ( Western Chapter, G Bush proprietor.)

I read in the Pakistan papers that India and Pakistan have come to terms with Iran to build a gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan and on to India. That should be enough to make Charlie Wilson's clones go all medieval.

Oil is projected to climb to $150 per barrel over the next five years as conventional oil depletion rates accelerate and new projects are ever more mired in delays and increased costs.

One cannot separate Iraq and Afghanistan from the geopolitical reality that American adventurism is more interested in destabilisation than reconstruction.

I have an uneasy feeling that Iran is also busily involved in Pakistan and that when conditions warrant, Iran will create mischief in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan simultaniously, leaving the Americans with little options.

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Originally posted by jester:
I have an uneasy feeling that Iran is also busily involved in Pakistan and that when conditions warrant, Iran will create mischief in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan simultaniously, leaving the Americans with little options.

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I think if Iran really wanted to create mischief in Iraq, they would be supplying insurgents with stinger missile or shoulder rocket equivalents, similar to what the CIA supplied to "freedom fighters" in 1980's Afganistan and Pakistan when Talibanization and widespread drug addiction of both those countries began. If and when U.S. cargo planes and choppers start falling out of the sky like flies, the USSA's military occupation of the two countries could be in a heap o trouble. I believe the problems now are with snipers, roadside bombs, suicide bombers, and the odd RPG attack on helicopter gunships.

Things really could turn nasty for the military occupations in Asia, and I think the Iranians want to provide as few excuses as possible for shock and appall part two.

[ 10 January 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Webgear:
There are large numbers of American aircraft being lost in Iraq. I would not doubt at least 40 or 50 aircraft have been lost since 2003.

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I was reiterating what Seymour Hersh said a few months ago about the situation in Iraq, more or less.

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Things really could turn nasty for the military occupations in Asia, and I think the Iranians want to provide as few excuses as possible for shock and appall part two.

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A plausible reason for laying low is to influence the US elections in order to elect a "softer" president. There is credible evidence that Al Sadr's Mahdi Army is laying low because Iran requested him to.

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Originally posted by jester:
According to William S. Lind, Iran believes Bush has already decided to attack Iran before the end of his term.

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It's plausible. I mean what does anyone know besides what we read on the net, newspapers and the odd book?

The way I look at it is drawn, I guess, from several left-wing and Liberal writer's points of view in generalities. And so,

At least 333 helicopters and 118 jets where lost during Afghan-Soviet War of 1979-89.

"FIM-92 Stinger is a passive surface-to-air missile, shoulder-fired by a single operator."

It was effective because it force Soviet aircrew to change their tactics.

ETA: link

excerpt:

The Pentagon is preparing to send at least 3,000 marines to Afghanistan in April to bolster efforts to hold off another expected Taliban offensive in the spring, military officials said Wednesday.

[ 11 January 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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I think what we're witnessing is a continuation of the cold war. The military industrial complex was running out of enemies after dissolution of the soviet union. There were cases of KGB and western intel actually betraying their own agents to further their own careers and-or just to keep the whole thing rolling along. It's an absurd game of international punch buggy with sadists in control.

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The cold war was a competition between opposing military-industrial complexes to keep the funding flowing. The new dynamic involves a one-sided military technology industry facing an opposition that is militarily inferior but controls the energy needs of its opposition.

Add in the cultural and religious chasm between the parties and one is faced with the distinct possibility of WWIII.

One important consideration is that the US war effort is funded by foreign investors who mostly hold trade surplusses and foreign reserves in US dollars, NOT by the wealth of Americans themselves.

the "Great Game" is what the imperial powers called it, and some of the most enlightening reading one could do to familiarise oneself with the history of these machinations is in two books by Karl Meyer, the first called "Tournament of Shadows, the history of the Great Game in Central Asia" and his follow up book "Dust to Empire" which i quote below. I am very excited about his new book coming out in the spring which carries on with the regional history apparently with interviews and perspectives from the actual imperial characters from Britain, Russsia, and America that actually created the borders of the Middle Eastern countries "we" are now at war with.

from "The Dust of Empire" by historian Karl Meyer:

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p.115: "...The Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated massive arms shipments via Pakistan, including state-of-the-art Stinger surface-to-air missiles. Three U.S. administrations promoted a bipartisan pokicy of covert aid that persisted through a decade of occupation. Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush pére hailed the mujahedin as "freedom fighters," and their acclaim was echoed on Capitol Hill and by editorial boards coast to coast..."
p.132: "...In Islamabad, Brzezinski agreed to an arrangment that determined what followed. Its key provision was that all arms for the resistance were to be covertly channeled through Pakistan and not directly from the United States. On this matter, Zia was adamant: Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency was to recieve and distribute all weapons. His terms were accepted in Washington without serious debate....

p.133: "...As the frontline state in a holy war, Pakistan in a decade harvested more than $3 billion in aid from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf sheikdoms, even as Islamabad turned to the godless Chinese for supplemental help. Materially, this enabled Pakistan's armed forces to deduct its tithe in weapons and cash. Moreover, as soon became evident, President Zia's military intelligence service had it's own agenda. Here was it's long sought opportunity to acquire "strategic depth" by installing a new regime in Kabul that would be under Islamabad's influence. Here was a chance to train militants for the ongoing fight in Kashmir. Finally, once a friendly fundamentalist regime took root in Afghanistan, the sword of Islam could be directed at Soviet Central Asia.

p.135 "...Yet once the Soviets were gone, Washington all but literally walked away, abandoning the wounded, closing purses and hearts, sending no special emissaries to help form a transition regime..."

"...To fight the Soviets, the CIA provided weapons and funds exceeding $3 billion to the Afghan resistance; after the Russians vacated, U.S. aid dwindled to a pittance. Anger at being treated like discarded mercenaries turned thousands of resistance fighters into easy converts for Islamic jihadists.

" ...In practice, Weaver found, the CIA helped train and fund what eventually became an international network of highly diciplined Islamic militants, the "Arab Afghans" or the "Children of the Jihad", an new breed of terrorists. "When the Soviet Union left Afghanistan and the CIA closed down it's pipeline to the mujahideen," she writes, Washington left behind tens of thousands fo well-trained and well-armed Arab, Asian, and Afghan fighers available for new jihads"

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to the above historical context i will add the next part that wasn't really relavent to the Bhutto thread but is highly relavent to this one:

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p. 136:...There was never a real debate, in Congress or in the press, about letting Zia dispense American largess. NOr was there serious discussion of Washington's failure to press for a broad based transition regime in Kabul, headed by the willing former Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah. The absence of debate and accountability is, in these circumstances, an unavioidable cost of bipartisan foreign policy. Since both Democratic and Republican lawmakers were complicit, neither had any political incentive to reopen the matter.

Among the silent were the two members of Congress who had clamored most insistently for aid to the Afghan resistance, Senator Gordon Humphrey, a New Hampshire Republican, and Representative Charles Wilson, a Texas Democrat. As a member of a House subcommittee on appropriations, Wilson succeeded in quadrupling the $30 million requested by the CIA in 1984 for the Afghans, which rose from $120 million to $250 million in 1985, $476 million in 1986 and $630 million in 1987, each increment matched by the Saudis. It was Wilson who in 1986 overcame resistance from the Pentagon, CIA and State Department to supplying the mujahedin with the high-tech, shoulder-fired Stinger missile, capable of downing helicopters - or, as opponents noted - civilian airliners. In all, a thousand missiles and 250 launchers were provided to Afghan fighters. (Years later, the CIA attempted to buy back leftover Stingers at twice their original cost, but Harrison, citing intelligence estimates, from two hundred to four hundred remain unaccounted for.)

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basically, Canada should get out now from any and all military involvement whatsoever. The Brits, Soviets, and the US created this mess, and as Pilger points out, planned the "invasion" long before 9/11 to further their geo-strategic aims from a military and oil/gas perspective.

The Afghan people are in need of humanitarian and structural help. Canada could play a role in that, certainly. but as long as we are involved militarily, essentially as an arm of the US military, we will be hated and loathed as every other invading military force has been, and we will be defeated and kicked out in disgrace as every other military force has been spanning the enitre history of Afghanistan's existance.

fer crying out loud, the Pashtun Mountaineers, as the "Taliban" fighters are known domesitcally, are local people, fighting for thier own land. They were who the British and US based their special forces fighting units on, because they were basically undefeatable. who are we kidding here?

[ 11 January 2008: Message edited by: farnival ]

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jester:
More marines. That should set the hearts and minds effort back on its heels.

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Of course the Marines are much better at hearts and minds than the Army. The big problem with hearts and minds is that a true hearts and minds program runs counter to the main goal of the mission which is control of the region.

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jester:
One important consideration is that the US war effort is funded by foreign investors who mostly hold trade surplusses and foreign reserves in US dollars, NOT by the wealth of Americans themselves.

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Do Americans have much wealth themselves anymore, or is the major pools of wealth now held by transnationals with the US serving as their main enforcer?

If the US were to cancel its debt how would that affect corporate America that is part of the transnational system?

This will take stress of Canadian and British troops operating in the two most dangerous provinces in Afghanistan.

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Do Americans have much wealth themselves anymore, or is the major pools of wealth now held by transnationals with the US serving as their main enforcer?

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Who knows. Many transnational types such as entertainers are now insisting on being paid in Euros,not the USD.

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If the US were to cancel its debt how would that affect corporate America that is part of the transnational system?

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There would be no transnational system. American foreign assets as well as domestic assets would be secured by military force. In other words, WWIII.

American xenophobia may be dormant but it has the latent potential to blossom into the fore if the American way of life is seriously threatened.

Whether the Euros, Chinese, Arabs, Jews,whatever,the fact remains that the recent machinations are only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and they are all aboard. American derivatives were peddled all over the world and infests every banking system.

The conventional wisdom is that holders of American dollars through trade surplusses and debt instruments will only hurt themselves by selling dollars and allowing the USD to furthur deteriorate BUT the fact of the matter is that while the Arab oil states and China are publicly supporting the USD, privately they are attempting to unload without triggering a collapse. If you desire conspiracy theories,this jockeying should provide a surplus of them.

Major world banks like Citibank,UBS, HSBC etc as well as the major US financial houses are on the brink of bankruptcy. They are getting support and capital infusions not from the market but from sovereign wealth funds owned by governments that the US is not interested in having own US assets for political reasons.

The same US government that got up in arms over the Chinese National Oil Company buying Standard Oil of California is now begging Chinese sovereign wealth fund bailouts of Citibank and Merrill Lynch.

These big banks cannot be allowed to go broke so the strategy is to keep them afloat while they are carved up and profitable divivsions sold off bit by bit. The shareholder of course will be the bagholder for the unprofitable bits.

Never doubt the resiliency of the American economy. (Resiliency in this case referring to the bottomless ability of the capitalist system to rise to the occasion and stick the little guy with the tab)

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jester:
There would be no transnational system. American foreign assets as well as domestic assets would be secured by military force. In other words, WWIII.

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On the other hand maybe the Americans are merely the spear carriers for the transnational system. Perhaps the plutocracy transcends nations.

Do you suppose that given the choice between keeping their wealth or keeping their country the transnational capitalists would opt for a country?

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The capitalist system will rise to the occasion by wiping out the savings and investments of the little guy by draining all the excess liquidity in the financial system.

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List of US Military Bases

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
It must be an extrordinary expense for the taxpayers back home.

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Originally posted by Webgear:
Can anyone provide a list of these 700 bases?

List of US Military Bases

Because I can not account for all 700 of them.

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excerpt:

Today, almost six months after the attacks on New York and Washington, the US is putting in place a network of forward bases stretching from the Middle East across the entire length of Asia, from the Red Sea to the Pacific.

US forces are active in the biggest array of countries since the second world war. Troops, sailors and airmen are now established in countries where they have never before had a presence. The aim is to provide platforms from which to launch attacks on any group perceived by George Bush to be a danger to the US.

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Thanks for the link. I think the problem is there is a difference between bases and installations. I am not sure what the US military definition of a base or installations however from my understanding an installation is much smaller includes hospitals, laboratories and hospital.

Your map is similar to the website I posted, it is to bad there is not a list.

US Military Satellite installations worldwide

Thanks for the links. I counted only 71 bases and installations outside of the USA, which is not really that high of number considering.

The number of 743 does seem correct however I saw a few incidents where several places that had combined units at the same location yet counted twice or more.

Some the locations are NATO bases with multiply nations using the base.

Rather than diddling around with the exact numbers, however, it is more important to recognize the fact that the US has a massive military presence outside of the United States, including thousands stationed on major bases outside of the war zones.

Asking why they have all of these installations and detachments is indeed a good question.

Recommended reading around this topic are the latest works of Professor Chalmers Johnson:

Blowback

Nemesis

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Do you suppose that given the choice between keeping their wealth or keeping their country the transnational capitalists would opt for a country?

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Originally posted by Jerry West:

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Rather than diddling around with the exact numbers, however, it is more important to recognize the fact that the US has a massive military presence outside of the United States, including thousands stationed on major bases outside of the war zones.

Asking why they have all of these installations and detachments is indeed a good question.

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From one of my links posted above:

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She said: "We, the women of Afghanistan, only became a cause in the west following 11 September 2001, when the Taliban suddenly became the official enemy of America. Yes, they persecuted women, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the west over the atrocious nature of the western-backed warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and terrorise, yet they hold seats in [Hamid] Karzai's government. In some ways, we were more secure under the Taliban. You could cross Afghanistan by road and feel secure. Now, you take your life into your hands."

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If this is how RAWA feels in general, there is absolutely no moral high ground whatsoever for being in Afghanistan. Pilger is right. Plans for these invasions were in the making regardless of the excuses they (the US administration) came up with.

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Conservative MP Helena Guergis put "lives at additional, unnecessary risk in the name of playing petty politics," Liberal spokesman Jean-François del Torchio charged yesterday.

He accused the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of endangering their lives by speaking about the Liberal itinerary in Afghanistan 12 hours ahead of schedule, at a time when a complete news blackout surrounded their visit to Kandahar.

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Jeffrey Kroeker, Ms. Guergis's spokesman, said that his boss was only making an educated guess as to where the Liberals might visit. While there is one PRT in Kandahar where the Canadians are based, there are many throughout Afghanistan

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Ms. Guergis is incredibly stupid to even make an "educated guess" on operational security given her position as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

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Originally posted by jester:
The capitalist system will rise to the occasion by wiping out the savings and investments of the little guy by draining all the excess liquidity in the financial system.

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Good comments by all as usual. I like Jerry's theory that the U.S. carry's the spear of transnational capitalism. I think that's true.

And I think we have to remember that it was during the cold war that political promises for widespread prosperity were made. The propaganda machine had most of the developing world believing our streets in the west were paved with money, everyone owns a mansion and three cars etc. We are still pretty well off compared with the East and global South, but the it's not one influential economic superpower anymore since the end of the USSR as jester mentions. At some point, they start renegging on promises for widespread prosperity here in the west unless the military spending comes down. They can offload the banking losses and corporate bailouts on workers, yes. But at some point they begin to lose political capital and middle class support for the right-wing economic agendas.