I don’t like the sound of this:
The American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, flies to Britain this week to meet a crisis entirely of London and Washington’s creation. They have no strategy for the continuing occupation of Afghanistan. They are hanging on for dear life and praying for something to turn up. Britain is repeating the experience of Gordon in Khartoum, of the Dardanelles, Singapore and Crete, of politicians who no longer read history expecting others to die for their dreams of glory.
Every independent report on the Nato-led operation in Afghanistan cries the same message: watch out, disaster beckons. Last week America’s Afghanistan Study Group, led by generals and diplomats of impeccable credentials, reported on “a weakening international resolve and a growing lack of confidence”. An Atlantic Council report was more curt: “Make no mistake, Nato is not winning in Afghanistan.” The country was in imminent danger of becoming a failed state.
A clearly exasperated Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, has broken ranks with the official optimism and committed an extra 3,000 marines to the field, while sending an “unusually stern” note to Germany demanding that its 3,200 troops meet enemy fire. Germany, like France, has rejected that plea. Yet it is urgent since the Canadians have threatened to withdraw from the south if not relieved. An equally desperate Britain is proposing to send half-trained territorials to the front, after its commanders ignored every warning that the Taliban were the toughest fighters on earth.
If Afghanistan goes down, Bush’s legacy will be without a single silver lining.
Arguably, the threat of Taliban-supported international terrorism is almost insignificant in the face of the real danger, which is a flood of heroin around the world. Which, of course, the conservatives are fundamentally incapable of handling in a productive way, either.
maybe not productive, but profitable is another story.
I wrote about those profits 18 months ago. Now I see why there`s 3000 more US troops going to the stash. Why should the other countries get to ship only bodies back in their body bags, when the US has a history of double bagging.
No matter what happens, the only silver involved in the monkey`s future, is the 30 pieces he`ll squander on coke & beer. There`s not much left after squandering American lives, uncountable Iraqi lives, trillions of dollars, international moral standing (ya right), & … don`t get me started.
The lining should be the padding that should line his cell, the better to make sure his stay there, lasts the course of natural life. Plus, for added safety, no exercise bike, & absolutely no pretzels.
more notes of import here – the Pakistan and Iran relationships to Afghanistan.
NATO winning battles, losing Afghanistan
And it does not help the U. S. – with a deteriorating of diplomatic ties with Germany and other allies.
This week Robert Gates is seen fighting Germany – stern letters being exchanged:
Berlin slaps down US demand to send troops to fight the Taleban
fissures widening. The Soviets had 500,000 troops in Afghanistan and did not prevail.
But imho, Pakistan is the upcoming hot spot. These two countries will become failed states. Soon in the next 2-3 yrs.
quite a Pandora’s box that’ll hobble the next President.
Democrats are no better on the drug war.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee all have one thing in common, they are all ardent supporters of the crime fostering, terrorist funding, Jim Crow drug war.
AlQaeda has been telling their supporters since the mid 1990’s that they should be producing heroin to flood the west for the specific purpose of addicting people and destabilizing western culture. They are doing the same thing in Pakistan in their efforts to get their hands on that country’s nuclear weapons.
The U.S. government admits that as much as 25% of the 18-metric tons of heroin consumed each year by Americans is coming from Afghanistan. That is 4.5 tons of materials coming across American borders each year that originate with alQaeda and the Taliban.
alQaeda also advocates among its international supporters that they should sell drugs to fund their independent terrorist operations. The Madrid train bombing is a textbook example of this. they used drugs for cash and also recruited from disaffected drug prisoners in north African prisons.
Last summer the intelligence department of the New York City Police Department issued a report on homegrown terrorism, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat” where they said:
“Prisons can play a critical role in both triggering and reinforcing the radicalization process. The prison’s isolated environment, ability to create a “captive audience” atmosphere, its absence of day-to-day distractions, and its large population of disaffected young men, makes it an excellent breeding ground for radicalization.”
Consider that in context with America’s world record prison population of disaffected and disenfranchised drug war POW’s. The police characterized prisons as “A Radicalizing Cauldron”.
Ending the Jim Crow war on drugs would significantly reduce these national security threats. American drug warriors in the two dominance parties ‘just say no’.
I wish I could argue that, but I cannot. One of the reasons I was dismayed by the first (and hopefully last) Clinton administration was the enthusiasm with which it adopted the Reagan-era anti-drug (read: anti-minority, anti-youth, anti-dissident) pogrom. Substitute Bill’s opportunism with Hillary’s sincere Calvinism, and things can only get worse.
Until 1995 when I realized that Bill Clinton’s Democrats simply did not reflect or respect my social justice, human rights and civil liberties based anti drug war values.
I wrote this about it just today.
Bill Clinton’s Jim Crow Legacy
OR: Why do Jim Crow Democrats eat our young
And I fear the next Ollie North wannabe is facilitating some of these drug shipments to the west in return for arms to supply the next neo-con friendly banana republic dictator.
More likely, I think, is that Bush still harbors a delusion of inspiring
Armageddon and supporting the terrorist armies of the world with the drug war is the fastest route to it.
A silver lining on a mushroom cloud.
One can only wonder exactly what will be stored in the obligatory Bush presidential library. Deleted records/tapes/e-mails? Media accounts of his many successes? Perhaps the famous flight jacket and codpiece.
I was just thinking the other day that they might not even bother creating one.
“I was just thinking the other day that they might not even bother creating one.”
That`s just wrong, that he shouldn`t have a library.
I think there should be one. One that documents what never to allow to happen again.
This should be the best researched & investigated administration ever, & include all documents including arrest reports of the traitors.
This library would be the most transparent learning facility, & should be made of glass. The holding cells should also be made of glass, that way if you don`t really have a question for one of the traitors, you could at least see how they look while being watched.
It should definitely be a first glass library.
Geez, I better go eat something, a piece of fruit maybe.
And a huge pile of cut brush as the centerpiece.
Pop-up books with big pictures; scratch-and-sniff books about the processing of coca leafs…
As for the centerpiece:
My Pet Goat
How pathetic.
The 2004 Congressional Research Service report, “Illicit Drugs and the Terrorist Threat: Causal Links and Implications for Domestic Drug Control Policy” characterized how the prohibition economy supports terrorism.
“The international traffic in illicit drugs contributes to terrorist risk through at least five mechanisms: supplying cash, creating chaos and instability, supporting corruption, providing “cover” and sustaining common infrastructures for illicit activity, and competing for law enforcement and intelligence attention. Of these, cash and chaos are likely to be the two most important.”
See my essay:
The Crime Subsidizing Economics of Prohibition
Last year New York University foreign policy expert Barnett R. Rubin told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “The international drug control regime, which criminalizes narcotics, does not reduce drug use, but it does produce huge profits for criminals and the armed groups and corrupt officials who protect them. Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies.” Seeds of Insurrection in America’s Field of Dreams
The alQaeda campaign to destabilize the west by flooding it with heroin is well known to U.S. policy makers of both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Has been for years.
Democratic Senator John Kerry, as the World Trade Center still smoldered was quoted as saying this about the campaign that alQaeda calls its “silent jihad”:
“That’s part of their revenge on the world,” Kerry said. “Get as many people drugged out and screwed up as you can.”
Our government knows for fact that alQaeda is targeting the children of the west and that by continuing to maintain this policy they are giving alQaeda its asymmetric weapon of heroin.
I recall a meme – under the Taliban, drug production – poppies – was highly curtailed and the production of opium was way down from previous years, even under the Russians it was down. They were doing drastic things to opium farmers.
Now, something like 90% to 95% of the world production of opium comes from Afghanistan. 80% goes to Europe.
Way to go Bush!
.
KABUL (Reuters) Feb. 3, 2008 – Afghan police lifted a brief siege of the house of former ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in Kabul after he and a group of around 50 armed men beat up a former ally, a police chief said.
The standoff highlights the problem of powerful warlords who helped tear Afghanistan apart in the 1992-96 civil war and are still waiting in the wings should President Hamid Karzai fail in the fight against Taliban insurgents and lose his grip on government.
Dostum, a fierce warlord with a reputation for brutality and treachery, beat up his former election manager Akbar Bay late on Saturday, said Kabul police chief Salem Hasaas. One of Bay’s bodyguards was shot and Dostum and his men fled to the warlord’s house, Hasaas said. Bay was taken to hospital.
Dozens of police armed with assault rifles and machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks surrounded Dostum’s house in a relatively upmarket part of Kabul and other officers took up positions on the roofs of neighbouring houses.
Afghanistan: Economy is booming
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
IF?????
There’s a question?
There is no way that we can fully capture and hold Afghanistan. None. All we can do is destroy more things, spill more blood, corrupt and bribe more unsavory warlords, produce more opium patches, and make more enemies.
Every wedding party we blow apart, every market town bombed, every person whisked off to torture and death produces more ever enemies as friends and relatives are forced to action. The war profiteers rejoice at the continuous escalation.
Occupying a country on the far side of the planet is a silly idea at best, workable only if it was centralized, domestically tamed, and reliant upon infrastructure. A mountainous area bristling with independent fighters who freely move over their smuggling routes can never be “occupied”. The best we could have done is loot it and gotten out with as little life lost as possible (a revenge act for harboring an enemy). But in that case, we’d also have had to strike Saudi Arabia and Yemen and Pakistan for nurturing those same enemies.
Afghanistan is not a victory, despite what that codpiece-wearing cowboy said. It never will be either.
As usual, the Bushies want to use the Military to do a policeman’s job.
Talk about failed states – Afghanistan is one, has been, and will continue to be one. The best thing to to would be to legalize the drugs – IN THE WEST – so it can be controlled and taxed appropriately. Take the motive away in Afghanistan, see what happens. Watch the governments scramble, and see the people grow food.
The four Horsemen are here, and they are us:
The US brings this to the Asian ‘stans’:
1 – Oil and gas exploration and transfer
2 – Trade and economic incentives
3 – Military support and training
4 – Counter Terrorism and/or Internal dissent suppression
Admiral Fallon, head of the US CENTRAL COMMAND, is visiting UZBEKISTAN (‘We boil people’ is their state motto). I find it hard to admire the admiral.
Why is he there? For trade? I don’t think so.
Must be we are selling some fighters again. To a madman. Good move. Who taught these people to play chess?
All of the Stans, and Russia, are moving to ‘personality cult’ governments. Iran is the most stable of the bunch. Hmmm.
Does anyone do math in our government?
Let us hope and pray and vote (as often as possible) that we can change our foreign policy, before they ‘no-bid contract’ it out.
Are we too late? I don’t think so. No. And to your next point – Yes, I do think we can, as long as we don’t divide by zero.