OBAMA LIES ON AFGHAN POLICY
Does President Obama really believe the things he said when he announced his decision to send another 30,000 soldiers to fight in Afghanistan?
Obama said he concluded after a “long review” that it was in “our vital national interest” to send the additional troops, which will bring the level of U.S. military personnel in Afghnistan to more than 100,000.
“I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda,” the president said.
Does he really think that the Taliban, a rag tag group of fighters without modern weaponry or firepower, represent a mortal threat to the United States? Does he believe that al-Qaeda --- which was certainly a powerful terrorist force eight years ago --- still presents a grave danger, when its total number of fighters has been reduced to just over 100?
My opinion is, no, he doesn’t.
Obama, I think, made his decision partly out of politics and partly because of pressure from those who think the U.S. should control all the vital natural resources of the world.
Obama knew there would be a fierce right-wing backlash if he announced he was immediately winding down the Afghan war. Republicans and their myriad of allies in the media would have savaged him, saying he was being “weak” in the face of a foreign enemy. The Democrats as a whole would have been labeled “the party of cut and run.”
My feeling is that Obama could have weathered this storm, in time, considering that half the American people don’t think there’s any value to our being in Afghanistan.
But Obama didn’t want to take a chance, and decided to look strong and macho, rather than doing what’s right. In a figleaf to the left, he did say that in 2011 --- after strengthening the Afghan government forces and stabilizing the country, U.S. forces would begin pulling out. I doubt that highly.
And that leads to the second reason why Obama decided to increase troop levels. American officials, including many in the Pentagon, absolutely do not want a hostile regime like the Taliban taking control in Afghanistan. This has very little to do with fighting terrorism. As noted, the Taliban and a decimated al-Qaeda pose little threat to the United States homeland.
An unfriendly regime in Kabul, however, would complicate U.S. efforts to exploit the vast oil reserves in Central Asia. For years, U.S. planners and corporate officials have coveted the oil and gas in the Caspian Sea basin, in the area just north of Afghanistan. Some of that energy is now being taken out via pipelines running to eastern Europe. Russia and China are also competing for rights to tap oil in the area.
There had been a push by officials of the Houston-based Unocal corporation in the 1990s and then later in 2001 with help from the Bush administration to get a pipeline to transport Central Asian oil and gas south through Afghanistan to ports on the Persian Gulf. Efforts to arrange a deal with the then ruling Taliban government of Afghanistan for the pipeline were unsuccessful. The Taliban had already negotiated an agreement with an Argentinian company for a pipeline and wouldn’t budge on voiding it.
While there has been no talk about it in the press, I believe that there’s still a strong desire to have a U.S.- controlled oil-access route through Afghanistan. That’s a key reason why American military bases have been built there and why the occupation is taking place.
According to Michael Klare, author of “Rising Power, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy,” concern over the safety of vital resource supplies has for decades been a key feature of U.S. strategic planning. But today, given the projected long-term decline in oil supplies, as well as increased competition for oil from countries like China, access to energy is an even bigger factor in planning. “Faced with these dual challenges, Pentagon strategists believe that ensuring U.S. primacy in the global resource struggle must be a top priority of American military policy,” Klare wrote in “The Nation” last year.
One has to believe that the military officials who advised Obama recently on Afghanistan policy made clear the importance of keeping that country under U.S. sway for purposes of oil access. Allowing the Taliban to hang around and possibly retake control of the country runs counter to that goal.
It’s a tragedy on so many levels that Obama made the decision to up the ante in Afghanistan. More than 800 Americans have died so far in the war there, and now hundreds more will die. Thousands of Afghanis will die, on top of a huge toll so far.
The financial cost is staggering. According to Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat who wants the U.S. to end the war and pull out, estimates it will cost us $160 billion a year to stay in Afghanistan.
Think of all the better ways that money could be spent --- like creating a massive public jobs program to rebuild the nation’s cities, transportation systems and schools. That would do wonders for the economy.
But no, “Mr. Change,” Barack Obama, has chosen to not lose face by leaving Afghanistan “precipitously.” He’s also going to make sure the U.S. has a pliant government in that country to guarantee we have access to more oil. This at a time when we should be phasing out fossil fuels if we are going to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming.
Lunacy.
Footnote:
When Obama gave his speech last week at West Point outlining his plans for moving more troops to Afghanistan, he repeated the same lie about the Taliban that Bush had before him. Obama, painting the Taliban as evil, just as Bush did prior to the invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, said that the Taliban had refused to turn over the head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.
The fact is that the Taliban made multiple offers to capture bin Laden and hand him over to the U.S. government, according to several reports. Officials in the Clinton administration had originally been seeking bin Laden because al-Qaeda had been responsible for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa and the naval ship, The U.S.S. Cole.
According to Richard W. Behan, the author of “The Fraudulent War,” an offer from the Taliban to turn over bin Laden was waiting for Bush when he became president. Bush stalled on accepting the proposal, and administration officials instead began pressing the Taliban to make a deal that would give American companies like Unocal exclusive rights to run a pipeline through their country. The Taliban refused. Two other offers were made by the Taliban to turn over bin Laden, Behan said, and those were also rejected.
In July, Bush was making preparations for an attack on the Taliban by October, according to a report in the BBC.
Then, Behan said, bin Laden and al-Qaeda struck on 911, killing 3,000 Americans.
Even after 911, Behan wrote, the Taliban --- trying to forestall an American attack --- made offers to hand over bin Laden, as well as shut down al-Qaeda training camps. These offers were also turned down.
Just weeks later, Bush launched the invasion of Afghanistan, telling the American people that the Taliban had failed to turn over the perpetrator of the 911 attacks.
It’s clear the Bush administration was more interested in oil than landing bin Laden, both before and after 911.
And now we have another president repeating the same lie about Taliban non-cooperation, apparently to serve a similar agenda.