[R-G] When in Doubt, Bomb Afghanistan

[Anthony Fenton]

January 7, 2009
When in Doubt, Bomb Afghanistan
America's Other Glorious War

By WILLIAM BLUM

http://www.counterpunch.org/blum01072009.html

The Pentagon pushes hard for a large increase in troops for  
Afghanistan. Barack Obama has been calling for the same since well  
before the November election. Listen to the drumbeats telling us that  
the security of the United States and the Free World necessitates  
increased action in this place called Afghanistan. As urgent as Iraq  
2003, it is. Why? What is there about this backward, reactionary,  
woman-hating, failed state that warrants hundreds of deaths of  
American and NATO soldiers? That justifies tens of thousands of Afghan  
deaths since the first US bombing attacks in October 2001?

In early December, reports the Washington Post, "standing at Kandahar  
Air Field in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the  
United States is making a 'sustained commitment' to that country, one  
that will last 'some protracted period of time'." The story goes on to  
discuss $300 million in construction projects at this one base to  
house additional American forces, erecting guard stations and towers  
and perimeter fencing around the barracks area, putting in vehicle  
inspection areas, administration offices, cold-storage warehouse, a  
new power plant, electrical and water distribution systems,  
communications lines, housing for 1,500 personnel who sustain the  
systems, maintenance shops, warehouses ... America's wealth bleeds out  
endlessly.

Back in April Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, commander of the US Army's  
82nd Airborne Division, when asked how long it would take to create  
"lasting stability" in Afghanistan, replied: "In some
way, shape or form ... I think it's a generation."

"Stability", it should be noted, is a code word used regularly by the  
United States since at least the 1950s to mean that the regime in  
power is willing and able to behave the way Washington would like it  
to behave. It is remarkable, and scary, to read the US military  
writing about how it goes around the world bringing "stability" to  
(often ungrateful) people. This past October the Army published a  
manual called "Stability Operations". It discusses numerous American  
interventions all over the world since the 1890s, one example after  
another of bringing "stability" to benighted peoples. One can picture  
the young American service members reading it, or having it fed to  
them in lectures, full of pride to be a member of such an altruistic  
fighting force.

For those members of the US military in Afghanistan the most  
enlightening lesson they could receive is that their government's  
plans for that land of sadness have little or nothing to do with the  
welfare of the Afghan people. In the late 1970s through much of the  
1980s, the country had a government that was relatively progressive,  
with full rights for women; even a Pentagon report of the time  
testified to the actuality of women's rights in the country. And what  
happened to that government? The United States was instrumental in  
overthrowing it. It was replaced by the Taliban.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, US oil companies have been  
vying with Russia, Iran and other energy interests for the massive,  
untapped oil and natural gas reserves in the former Soviet republics  
of Central Asia. The building and protection of oil and gas pipelines  
in Afghanistan, to continue farther to Pakistan, India, and elsewhere,  
has been a key objective of US policy since before the 2001 American  
invasion and occupation of the country, although the subsequent  
turmoil there has presented serious obstacles to such plans. A planned  
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline has strong support  
from Washington because, amongst other reasons, the US is eager to  
block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India  
from Iran. But security for such projects remains daunting, and that's  
where the US and NATO forces come in to play.

In the late 1990s, the American oil company, Unocal, met with Taliban  
officials in Texas to discuss the pipelines.[6] Zalmay Khalilzad,  
later chosen to be the US ambassador to Afghanistan, worked for  
Unocal[7]; Hamid Karzai, later chosen by Washington to be the Afghan  
president, also reportedly worked for Unocal, although the company  
denies this. Unocal's talks with the Taliban, conducted with the full  
knowledge of the Clinton administration, and undeterred by the extreme  
repression of Taliban society, continued as late as 2000 or 2001.

As for NATO, it has no reason to be fighting in Afghanistan. Indeed,  
NATO has no legitimate reason for existence at all. Their biggest fear  
is that "failure" in Afghanistan would make this thought more present  
in the world's mind. If NATO hadn’t begun to intervene outside of  
Europe it would have highlighted its uselessness and lack of mission.  
“Out of area or out of business” it was said.

In June, the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives published a  
report saying Taliban and insurgent activity against the US-NATO  
presence in Kandahar province puts the feasibility of the pipeline  
project in doubt. The report says southern regions in Afghanistan,  
including Kandahar, would have to be cleared of insurgent activity and  
land mines in two years to meet construction and investment schedules.

"Nobody is going to start putting pipe in the ground unless they are  
satisfied that there is some reasonable insurance that the workers for  
the pipeline are going to be safe," said Howard Brown, the Canadian  
representative for the Asian Development Bank, the major funding  
agency for the pipeline.

If Americans were asked what they think their country is doing in  
Afghanistan, their answers would likely be one variation or another of  
"fighting terrorism", with some kind of connection to 9-11. But what  
does that mean? Of the tens of thousands of Afghans killed by American/ 
NATO bombs over the course of seven years, how many can it be said had  
any kind of linkage to any kind of anti-American terrorist act, other  
than in Afghanistan itself during this period? Not one, as far as we  
know. The so-called "terrorist training camps" in Afghanistan were set  
up largely by the Taliban to provide fighters for their civil conflict  
with the Northern Alliance (minimally less religious fanatics and  
misogynists than the Taliban, but represented in the present Afghan  
government).

As everyone knows, none of the alleged 9-11 hijackers was an Afghan;  
15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia; and most of the planning for the  
attacks appears to have been carried out in Germany and the United  
States. So, of course, bomb Afghanistan. And keep bombing Afghanistan.  
And bomb Pakistan. Especially wedding parties (at least six so far).

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA  
Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's  
Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.

He can be reached at: BBlum6 at aol.com