On December 1, 2009, President Obama delivered his long-awaited speech on Afghanistan, which is regarded by many as the “defining moment” of his presidency. He outlined his plan to send additional 30,000 troops and at the same time declared his intention to “bring this war to a successful conclusion”. The president stated that this will be done by reversing the gains of Taliban and initiating new attacks on al Qaeda in Pakistan. He defended his decision and tried to convince the national television audience with these solemn words: “America, we are passing through a time of great trial. And the message that we send in the midst of these storms must be clear: that our cause is just, our resolve unwavering.”1.
President Obama justified the war by declaring that America “did not ask for this fight.” He explained why America was compelled to fight: “I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.”2.
Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s version of 9/11 and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, similar to that of his predecessor, President Bush, is too simplistic and to the point of blank omission or even distortion of history. Americans’ intrusion into Afghanistan affairs started in late 1970s, when President Carter signed a directive for the CIA to intervene in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet invasion. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor, candidly admitted it was a way to induce a Soviet military intervention and to give the U.S.S.R. its Vietnam War.3.
In giving the U.S.S.R. its Vietnam War, the CIA recruited Saudi-born Osama bin Laden and his Mujahideen (“warriors” for Islam) to launch the largest covert operation in Afghanistan in 1979. “Over the next decade, the U.S. government funneled more than $3 billion in arms and aid to these fundamentalist forces, and in so doing helped fuel a global Islamic movement. This is where Osama bin Laden got his start. This is where the seeds of al Qaeda and the Taliban were first born.”4.
Taliban is a movement of religious Islamic fundamentalists of the Pashtun tribe. Pashtun is Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group with 50 percent of the population, but the majority of them—numbered more than 26 million-- also lived on the Pakistani side of the border. CIA aided Taliban until May, 2001. “The CIA was planning to use Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda to stir up Muslim Uighurs against Chinese rule, and to employ Taliban against Russia’s Central Asian allies.”5.
The former Soviet republics of Asia— particularly Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan possess vast oil and mineral resources. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, American premier geopolitical strategist, these countries must not be controlled by Russia and China. The U.S. strategy for Central Asia is to deny Russia and China the oil and gas pipeline routes and at the same time to secure U.S. control over southbound and eastbound corridors.
With this in mind, Americans cultivated relations with Taliban during the Clinton administration in 1996. This was the time when Unocal, a U.S. oil company, planned an oil and gas pipeline from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, then to Arabia Sea. Accordingly, the United States decided to finance and arm the Taliban in their war with the Northern Alliance. “As recently as 1999, U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official.”5.
But in addition to Unocal, Taliban cleverly “played one company against the other” by negotiating with Bridas Energy, an Argentinean oil company. By February 1996, the Taliban government entered a preliminary agreement with Bridas Energy, and Unocal suspended negotiations with the Taliban in August 1998 in the wake of the East African U.S. Embassy bombings.7.
As soon as George Bush entered office in 2001, Unocal resumed its negotiations with the Taliban with the full backing of the new administration. Apparently, these negotiations have not been smooth sailing, as according to the inside information published in the British, French and Indian media, and the Bush administration has long planned military action against the Taliban before 9/11.8.
The bombing of Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11 brought out Hamid Karzai as the head of interim government of the country. Karzai was supposed to secure the pipeline deal for the U.S. oil company.7.
According to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan: “Karzai has been a Central Intelligence Agency’s covert operation agent since 1980s. He collaborated with the CIA in funneling U.S. aid to the Taliban as of 1994.”7. He, along with Zalmay Khalizad, the first U.S. ambassador to Kabul in the aftermath of the U.S. military occupation were consultants and lobbyists for Unocal in the negotiations with the Taliban prior to the U.S invasion.
The Taliban, the tribesmen from one of the poorest countries in the world, do not pose any threat to the United States, the most powerful country in the world. They have no desire or capacity to attack America and do not regard it as their enemy. In driving out the Soviets, the Taliban just wanted to end foreign occupation. Ironically, by occupying Afghanistan and bombing the country with full military forces and setting up puppet governments with corrupt officials and drug lords, the Americans and their NATO allies are, in the eyes of most Afghans, enemy number one.5.
Moreover, “U.S. forces—hailed as heroes by Obama—have committed countless atrocities in Afghanistan—from bombing wedding parties, to murdering civilians, to humiliating Afghans with house-to-house searches, to locking up people in U.S.-controlled dungeons, where torture, illegal detention, and rendition have been in effect.”8. This is no way to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans. While the U.S. armed forces never provide any figure for civilian deaths, Prof. Mac Herold has documented 3,000 to 3,400 civilian deaths during the first six months of the war. Others estimated that 8,000 civilians died in the war.8.
What is even more troubling is that since the Obama presidency, “precise” air strikes have been intensified against people in the remote Afghan villages, where in one instance it may have resulted in over 100 deaths, 70 % women and children. U.S. drones, the unmanned aerial vehicles, have increasingly killed civilians daily in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. This atrocity not only violates Pakistan’s sovereignty, but it is a crime against humanity and a violation of international law. Moreover, under the intense pressure from Washington, Pakistan’s military embarked on a bombing campaign against the Pashtun tribe in its own Northwest Frontier Province (NWEP). As a result, 1,000 of the civilians died, and “the operation has created close to 2 million refuges.”9. This certainly will ignite deep anger among the 26 million Pashtun tribesmen in Pakistan against the government of Islamabad. Since the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan is artificially drawn by the British imperialists, the Pashtun people in Pakistan and Afghanistan could demand a new independent Pashtun state. “This would rend Pakistan asunder, probably provoke its restive Baluchi tribes to secede, and might tempt mighty India to intervene militarily, risking nuclear war with beleaguered Pakistan.”9. By forcing the Pakistan’s military to make war against its own people; Washington could create another failed state similar to Iraq, where ethnic strife, poor people’s uprisings, paralyzed and dysfunctional government are the order of the day.9.
This is indeed a horrible scenario not only for South Asia, but for the world, as the United States, under the Obama administration, has ignited a new civil war in Pakistan. However, President Obama in his speech presented a different scenario about the war since his new administration assumed office: “Since then, we’ve made progress on some important objectives. High-ranking al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have been killed, and we’ve stepped up the pressure on al Qaeda worldwide. In Pakistan, the nation’s army has gone on its largest offensive in years.”2. Thus, the wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan have become Obama’s Wars.
Ironically, this war warrior jetted off to Oslo to collect his Nobel Peace Prize soon after he announced intensifying killings in Afghanistan. In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Mr. Obama declared that he would “vigorously defended his use of military force as a tool of ‘global security’….I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake—evil does exist in the world.”10.
Unfortunately, the president’s assertion of the threat to America and the justification for increased military forces are based on shaky ground. According to veteran North American correspondent Eric Margolis, who specializes in Middle East, South Asia and Islam affairs: “9/11 was organized in Germany and Spain, allegedly by Saudis and Pakistanis. Attacks on New York, Washington, London, Madrid and Mumbai were plotted in apartments and houses, not the mountains of Afghanistan.”11. These attacks were carried out by young Muslims to protest against the horrific treatments administrated to the Palestinians by Israel and against the Afghan war. As a matter of fact, according to President Obama’s own National Security Adviser James Jones, Al-Qaeda now has fewer than 100 men in Afghanistan, and a small number of fugitives scattered all over Pakistan.
It is incredible that a band of less than 100 men taking refugee in one of the most primitive countries in the world would pose a threat to the mighty United States, which possesses the most lethal weapons in the world. What is even more incredible is that for the first time, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient would use his acceptance speech to expound the concept of a “just war.” “Just war,” according to Mr. Obama, “suggesting that war is justified only when it meets certain preconditions: it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spare from violence.” 12.
Sadly, judging from the records of both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America has failed miserably by this definition of “just war.” For example, the war in Iraq has cost 500,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqi lives, most of them are civilians, and with over four million refugees. Despite of these horrible outcomes, Mr. Obama still wants to escalate the war in Afghanistan and start a new civil war in Pakistan.4.
While Mr. Obama in his acceptance speech, declared America’s commitment to the Geneva Conventions and that he has ordered closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, “his administration seems set on continuing many of the illegal, repressive policies of the disgraced Bush White House that it had vowed to end: torture, kidnapping, wiretapping, assassinations, Constitutional infringements, denial of due process.”6. The appointment of Gen. Stanley McChrystal by President Obama, as the new commander in Afghanistan, shows how much the president cares for human rights and the rule of law. Mr. McChrystal was distinguished for his career of running Pentagon’s secret death squad. Moreover, the killing of civilian population—90 percent of the victims-- by the remote controlled drones thousands miles away represents another act of terrorism, or war against humanity.12.
President Obama was elected on the slogan of the promise of change. However, by continuing George Bush’s War on Terror and the War of Pre-emption, Mr. Obama showed his about face and betrayed many of his supporters. It is not a big surprise that his approval rating has been steadily in decline. By justifying naked aggression as a just war, and by disregarding human sufferings as a result of war, President Obama showed us the true color as head of an imperial state, whose only objective is world domination under the cover of protecting American people against unfounded threats, of safeguarding national interest. He has no respect for international borders. This is no different from the actions of the Roman or the British Empire.
Notes:
1. Stolberg, Sheryl and Cooper, Helene: “Obama adds troops, but maps exit plan”, December 1, 2009 New York Times
2. Text: “Obamas’s Address on the War in Afghanistan”, December 2, 2009 New York Times
3. CNN Cold War Documents: “U.S. Memo on Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan”
4. Everest, Larry: “Obama’s War Speech: The Question It Raises…And the Answer That Must be Given”, December 9, 2009 Global Research
5. Margolis, Eric: “Afghanistan: “A War of Lies”, October 12, 2009 Toronto Sun
6. Chossudovsky, Michel: “America’s ‘War on Terrorism’” P 80 Global Research 2005
7. Ibid: PP 86-89
8. Martin, Patrick: “U.S. planned War in Afghanistan long before September 11”, November 20, 2001 www.wsws.org
9. Margolis, Eric: “Destroying Pakistan to Make It Safe” May 19, 2009
10. Fox News.com: “Obama Accepts Nobel Peace Prize, Defends Expansion of Afghanistan War”, December 10, 2009
11. Margolis, Eric: “Taliban Terror”, May 4, 2009
12. Margolis, Eric: :The U.S. Has No Business Being in the Murder Business”, July 20, 2009
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