THE HIDDEN SIDE OF AFGHAN NEGOTIATIONS--For those of us WHO HAD HOPE!

[KoKo]

Just when I was Feeling SO GOOD about Obama/Kerry's "New Foreign Policy"...this comes along...Reality Hit ME...in the head.

CORRENTE:

Chris Floyd in “Seepage and Suffering: Obama’s Civil War Scenario for Afghanistan” sums up how the Afghanistan hell will escalate now that the US is doing an incomplete rather than complete withdrawal:

It's obvious that the Afghan "national army" will not be able to stay in the field against the Taliban and its allies without the continuing and direct assistance of the American military. It is equally obvious that the Afghan army won't be able to defeat the Taliban in these conditions; indeed, the combined forces of NATO have been unable to defeat the Taliban in 10 years. So the upshot of Obama's "plan" will be an interminable civil war, with a weak and demoralized "national army" given just enough support to stave off total defeat, while the war profiteers on every side continue to gorge themselves sick.

Stephen Lendman’s assessment:

Overseeing this humanitarian catastrophe is a collection of thugs and warlords kept in power by US arms and profiting off of both foreign aid and the Afghanistan’s opium trade, which accounts for up to 90 percent of the world’s supply.

The rising number of so-called “green-on-blue” incidents—Afghan soldiers and police turning their guns on foreign troops—points to far broader anger and hostility to the continued US presence.

Dave Lindorff in “No Country for Young Men as Old Men Play for Time: The End in Afghanistan is Totally Predictable”:

In Afghanistan, the soldiers [American] being ordered to fight on can have no such illusions. Soldiers in the Afghan army and police, whom US forcers are training, supposedly to be able to take over from them, are turning their guns on the Americans with alarming frequency.

snip

The “government” of Afghanistan, meanwhile, knowing its days are numbered, will be preparing its exit, with money spirited out of the country, while the police and army, knowing that they will ultimately pay a deadly price for serving the US master, and too poor to buy their way out of the country, will increasingly turn on American forces, or simply switch to what they know will be the ultimate winning side. This is all totally predictable.

The fate of active a/k/a cannon fodder US and NATO troops in the chaos and carnage of Afghanistan and its ongoing civil war hell or the fate of the collaterally damaged Afghans who struggle to survive and coexist with unending war which they have been doing for decades and decades are once again NOT any sort of priority to the present amoral U.S. military decider in chief and his criminal profiteering cronies he consistently makes decisions on behalf of, foregoing the welfare and even survival of many of the rest of humanity, within or without his own country.

There is one additional incentive to continuing the nasty occupation for Obama and the corporatists he so consistently serves. Afghanistan according to Stephen Lendman possesses serious amounts of untapped natural gas, oil and minerals. Western rapacious corporate criminal opportunists are ready and waiting.

In June 2010, The New York Times headlined “US Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan,” saying:

They’re worth an estimated $1 trillion. Estimates are notoriously inaccurate.

Whatever they’re worth, they include “huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium – are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.”

An internal Pentagon memo calls Afghanistan the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.” It’s a key material needed to produce “batteries, laptops and BlackBerrys.”

Years of development are needed. Huge potential exists. Heavy investment is likely. An economic bonanza awaits profiteers.

Don’t expect ordinary Afghans to benefit. Surviving concerns them most.

Of course ordinary Afghans would not profit from the resources of their own country. Might makes right and money trumps the law, international or domestic. War criminality from the U.S. Democratic president gets a pass, at least by some amoral U.S. citizens.

Lendman in “A War Without End; US Atrocities in Afghanistan” writes of the deplorable conditions in Afghanistan, how millions have little or no access to clean water. How mllions are food insecure.

Van Auken offers some tragic statistics. Life expectancy in Afghanistan: 44.5 for men, 44 for women. Maternal mortality rate is one of highest in the world -- 1,600 deaths for every 100,000 births. More than 50% of children under age 5 are malnourished. 1 out of every 3 Afghans live in poverty. 40% of the population is unemployed. 65% of the people suffer from stress disorders and other forms of mental illness due to “unending war”.

Lendman concludes:

Extreme poverty, unemployment, human misery, and constant fear reflect daily life. Washington prioritizes conquest, colonization, plunder and dominance.

War without end rages. Human needs go begging. Wherever America shows up, death and destruction follow. So does unrelieved dystopian harshness. No end in sight looms..

As for us U.S. citizens, wouldn’t it be nice to have our will for peace in the world heeded? To not have mass war criminality be committed in our names fueled not only by our tax dollars but the blood of our naive and young patriots who volunteer for the military? Wouldn't it be freeing to declare that we understand our government is waging a WAR OF TERROR and not one against it and assert our collective moral outrage as citizens to stop it? To not wait to get our values and opinions from the idiot box spokespeople whose paychecks come from corporations with anti-humane agendas.
When Obama calls on us to be bobbleheaded zombies cheerleading him on for his not so lesser but positively spun evil, let’s try not to heed the call! Please?

More at:

http://correntewire.com/us_deepens_afghanistan_s_doom

[polly7]

1. There was no way in hell all those riches were going to be abandoned. nt.

[KoKo]

2. Thanks "polly 7" that's what struck me in the head.

Being a "Hopeful Person" in these times where one wonders what the "backstory is" often leads to a "re-think," when more info comes out.

[TwilightGardener]

3. As much as I want us out of there, and disagree with the administration about staying

past 2014, I don't think Afghanistan is going to be a peaceful, happy place in our absence. It wasn't before we arrived. And I think the whole metal-mining deal is pretty comparable to us getting Iraq's oil: basically, nah gah happen. I don't think that's why we're staying. I think we're staying because we really hate to leave places for good, and give up our strategic footholds.

[KoKo]

5. I can understand what I think you are saying. Global Remapping?

Sort of like how the NFL and other Sports Owners "Re-Balance" their teams who they think can win and get the MSM to give rights to broadcasts of "THE GAME?"

I could see that. But, a part of me says it's STILL all about the Minerals and the Opium which kind of serves two huge interests.

As I said: I hoped for Peace but looking at how the Global Players are moving it seems something darker than we idealists had hoped for.

I wish for the best...but, now thinking we will get "more of the same" and that what's going on "Under the Radar" is probably the sad truth of what's going on in this deal.

[bemildred]

4. That green-on-blue stuff was called fragging in Vietnam. nt

[KoKo]

6. We don't discuss Vietnam much anymore...do we.

WHY is THAT?

[bemildred]

7. Well. It's just not a comfortable subject.

Especially after all those promises made back then about never committing this sort of folly again. But here we are, so we better talk about it.

[KoKo]

8. Being of that Generation...I understand what you say. n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. Rec'ing for the night shift..this is a must see.n/t

[Oscarmonster13]

10. it's a bloddy shame...

I can't help but feel extreme sorrow at the conditions those poor people have been living in for decades...and shame that my govt has wrought so much suffering. Of course, all in the name of greed.

[bvar22]

11. Or, in simpler words:

No Military Objective + No Exit Strategy = QUAGMIRE

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but a QUAGMIRE that continues to enrich the Armaments Industry and America's 1%.
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So... there it is.