A Look At The Real Questions Assange Has Brought To The Table.Is it a signal of the beginning of the end of direct U.S. war in Afghanistan? Is it really a new Pentagon Papers?On July 31st, 2010, Frank Rich had an interesting op-ed in the New York Times titled, "
Kiss This War Goodbye" concerning the recent WikiLeaks release of the Afghanistan war logs. Besides the obvious implications of his title, the reasoning of those implications are linked to the Pentagon Papers and the drawing down to the end of the Vietnam war. In expressing those feelings, he essentially wrote,
The only people that seem to be drawing parallels between Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers and Julian Assange's WikiLeaks document dump are Ellsberg and Assange. The Pentagon Papers didn't impact the Vietnam War as much as it did the press and the same scenario is likely concerning the WikiLeaks revelations. But the parallel is spot on in that they are narratives on downward trendlines in both wars.
The public is hardly interested anymore and according to a recent CBS News poll, nearly two-thirds think the war is going badly. Add in a Post-ABC News survey that found support of Obama's handling of the war is at 45 percent with only 43 percent thinking the war is worth it.
It's hard to argue with any of the op-ed. The information, despite massive enforced secrecy by the U.S. government and two Presidents, revealed precious little to informed people (Fox and right wing radio propaganda afficionados the exception) or to enemies. In fact, the only thing that sticks out is the narrative of nine years of the Afghanistan conflict. That narrative is, of course, one that the United States was just sitting here, uninvolved in Afghanistan and that Osama Bin Laden ordered an attack by plane hijack, on the United States because radical Muslims hated our "freedoms" and Christians and Jews. Since there are closer targets to Afghanistan, or Hamburg Germany where the largely Saudi Arabian contingent of hijackers left from, than the United States that do not have a military garrisoned in 135 countries across the globe and fit those categories, a logical mind would think that rationale a little weak. In fact, the CIA has a term for terrorism, which is "blowback". But that can be forgiven given the premise of the op-ed that rings true.
As written previously at American Commentary Blog in December of 2009 titled, "
http://americancommentary.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/where-the-u-s-military-meets-frankenstens-monster-at-the-grave-yard-of-conquerors-obamas-afghan-decision/">Where The U.S. Military Meets Frankensten’s Monster At The Grave Yard Of Conquerors. Obama’s Afghan Decision." the history and motives are much more involved and long.
As I wrote in 2008 at the
DailyKos and the
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/mmonk/39">Democratic Underground in a piece titled,
Colonial Wars In A Postcolonial Era (Benazir Bhutto on Iraq)" the Taliban and the groups that ultimately formed al Queda are our "Frankenstein's monster" by borrowing Benazir Bhutto's quote
Post cold war imperial ambitions of the U.S. have pushed the Middle East and Central Asia into intolerable peril for these regions the U.S. desires to control for unmatched hegemony. Benazir Bhutto knowing the true nature of the mujahideen coalition even down to each leader of each group and what they were capable of, warned George H.W. Bush in June of 1989, "Mr. President, I fear we have created a Frankenstein that will come back to haunt us" according to her book. The United States, blinded by the Wolfowitz doctrine, has not seen the warning signs until too late. It did not see bin Laden’s rebellion among its jihad network.
and that we should understand the historical background of where we currently find ourselves
The road to 9/11 and its continued bloody aftermath began in earnest at the tail end of the Carter administration when the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI decided it would be a good idea to train and fund a coalition of groups of mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan to give the Soviet backed government of President Mohammed Najibullah more problems than it could handle. For the Pakistani military, the strategy was to provide itself with more reach and influence. For the United States, it was to create a Vietnam type of quagmire for the Soviet Union and its success began when the USSR invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Day, 1979. Ironically, this Soviet quagmire that ultimately led to the implosion of the USSR now threatens us with the same fate.
Of equally important background information is this from The Nation and it's online blog from 2008 titled, "
The Afghan Pipeline You Don't Know About"
Just as Americans were getting used to Big Oil and Iraq, they were hit with revelations on Afghanistan. Did anyone remember in 1999 Unocal providing an all expense paid trip for Taliban officials to the United States (including a trip to Mt. Rushmore) while negotiating a $1.9 billion pipeline bringing Turkmeni natural gas through Afghanistan to Pakistan? What about who was a special consultant to Unocal or the Karzai connection? How about George W. Bush's neocon ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad being rumored as a future "Afghan" presidential candidate?
The pipeline negotiations broke down for good in August, 2001, one month before "well, you know". Toronto's Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin put it, "Washington was furious, leading to speculation it might take out the Taliban. After 9/11, the Taliban, with good reason, were removed -- and pipeline planning continued with the Karzai government. U.S. forces installed bases near Kandahar, where the pipeline was to run. A key motivation for the pipeline was to block a competing bid involving Iran, a charter member of the 'axis of evil.'"
Turns out in April (2008), Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India (TAPI) signed a Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement to build a US supported $7.6 billion pipeline. It would by-pass Iran and energy giant Russia carrying Turkmeni natural gas to Pakistan and India. Construction would begin in 2010 and go through Kandahar right through the heart of Taliban country (think of the additional troop request)
and this news item from the BBC in 2002 titled,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2017044.stm">"Afghan pipeline given go-ahead" . Also, the blog at The Nation online magazine went on to state Americans would not know these things unless they regularly scan news items from foreign press sources. The question is, is this still about al Queda and the right war (since the US's own assessments are that there are maybe only about 100 persons connected to the al Queda groups left in Afghanistan) or is this just a continuation of the strategic game of the empire project concerning Central Asian oil and gas trade?
Recently, there has been some press about Pakistan's ISI being involved with the Taliban and current insurgency. This has been well known by people in the know, especially given that the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia created most of these groups and funded and trained many of them to drive out the Soviet Union. In fact, many sources had connected Pakistan's ISI officials and the flow of money to 9/11 hijacker Atta. The religious radicalization of many of the groups and their recruits through those years was funded by U.S. taxpayers as revealed in a 2002 report titled "
From U.S., the ABC’s of Jihad" in the Washington Post including the textbooks for the religious schools. This was, of course, what the military industrial complex had decided to do in order to control the resources and the flow of oil and natural gas for multi-national corporations since the fall of the Soviet Union leaving many former soviet states in the region to U.S. hegemonic exploitation. There was not going to be a peace dividend following the cold war for the American people if the profiteers were to have their say and they had both political parties on board.
A warning and a choice A dire warning to the U.S., which is now following the footsteps of the now defunct U.S.S.R., came from former Soviet General Igor Rodionov in an article from 2009 titled "
Veterans of Soviet war see same errors by US" by Charles Clover of the Financial Times where he said "they would come, the insurgency would leave, then we would leave, and they would return and it just went around in circles for 10 years". He said "sending more troops is just going to mean more deaths." Indeed, Afghanistan throughout history, has shed its would be conquerors. These lessons come amid the recent collapse of the U.S. economy under deregulation and the Bush tax cuts which have deprived the government of billions and if preserved will cost the budget $700 billion in the next decade while state budget cuts have further contracted economic activity. With current budget cuts including shutting down schools to shutting off street lights at night across America or breaking up roads to gravel to avoid the cost of repaving as revealed in pieces by Glenn Greenwald titled "
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/06/collapse">What collapsing empire looks like" and Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman's column called "
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/opinion/09krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss">America Goes Dark", isn't it time to shift away from tax cuts at the top and the massive spending on the American Security State and imperial priorities of this neocon empire to our millions of unemployed people in dire straits? Isn't it time to put our priorities back on our people and their welfare before we suffer a fate like that of the Soviet collapse?
http://americancommentary.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/will-the-wikileaks-saga-end-the-near-40-year-u-s-involvement-in-afghani-conflict-a-look-at-the-real-questions-assange-has-brought-to-the-table/">Back In Black
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