Charles, you should blog this, its from: http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2006/09/afghanistan_tim.php
AFGHANISTAN: TIME FOR TRUTH
Do not believe what OUR media and politicians are telling us about Afghanistan. Nearly all the information we get about the five-year old war in Afghanistan comes from US and NATO public relations officers or `embedded’ journalists who merely parrot military handouts. Ask yourself, when did you last read a report from a journalist covering Taliban and other Afghan resistance forces?
Now, the official rosy view is being flatly contradicted by impartial observers.
The respected European think-tank, Senlis Council, which focuses on Afghanistan, just reported the Taliban movement is `taking back Afghanistan’ and now controls that nation’s southern half.
This is an amazing departure from claims by the US and its NATO allies that they are steadily winning the war in Afghanistan. Or, more precisely, winning it again, since the Bush Administration claimed to have won total victory in Afghanistan in 2001. At the time, this column predicted that victory was an illusion and the war would resume in force in 4-5 years.
According to the Senlis Council, southern Afghanistan is suffering `a humanitarian crisis of starvation and poverty…caused by `US-British military policies.’
Deflating optimistic western reports, Senlis investigators found, `US policies in Afghanistan have re-created the safe haven for terrorism that the 2001 invasion aimed to destroy.’ This is a bombshell.
The US and NATO have been insisting any withdrawal of their forces from Afghanistan - or from Iraq - will leave a void certain to be filled by extremists. These claims are nonsense, given that half of Afghanistan and a third of Iraq are already largely controlled by anti-western resistance forces.
Were it not for omnipotent US airpower, American and NATO forces would be quickly driven from Afghanistan and Iraq. If Afghan and Iraqi resistance forces ever manage to obtain effective man-portable anti-aircraft weapons, such as the US Stinger or Russian SA-18, the US-led occupation of those nations may become untenable. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980’s was doomed once mujahidin forces obtained American Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
Last week, Canadian and British commanders boasted they were about to annihilate Taliban forces `surrounded’ around Panjwai and Zahri. They crowed an `estimated 500 Taliban,’ had already been killed.
A storm of bombing and shelling did kill many Afghans, but most of the dead `suspected Taliban militants’ turned out, as usual, to be civilians. NATO failed to show bodies of dead enemy fighters to back up its absurd claims.
When NATO forces entered Panjwai after weeks of air strikes and shelling, the supposedly `surrounded’ Taliban had vanished. Embarrassed British and Canadian commanders admitted `we were surprised the enemy had fled.’ Surprised?
Doesn’t anyone remember the Vietnam War’s fruitless search and destroy missions and inflated body counts? Don’t NATO commanders know their every move is telegraphed in advance to Taliban forces? Don’t they see what’s going on now in Iraq?
Did Canadian officers making such fanciful claims really believe Taliban’s veteran guerillas would be stupid enough to sit still and be destroyed by US air power?
Now, Canadian-led NATO forces are crowing about having finally occupied Panjewi. `Taliban has fled!’ they proudly announced. Don’t they understand that guerilla forces don’t hang on to fixed positions? Occupying ground is meaningless in guerilla warfare.
Seemingly immune to history or common sense, Canada is sending a few hundred more troops and a handful of obsolete tanks to Afghanistan. Poland, which will send troops anywhere for the right price, is adding 1,000 more soldiers next year.
US, British and Canadian politicians say they are surprised by intensifying Taliban resistance. They have only their own ignorance to blame.
Attacking Pashtuns, renowned for xenophobia, warlike spirits, and love of independence is a fool’s mission. Pashtuns are Afghanistan’s ethnic majority. Taliban is an offshoot of the Pushtun people. Long-term national stability is impossible without their representation and cooperation.
What the west calls `Taliban’ is actually a growing coalition of veteran Taliban fighters led by Mullah Dadullah, other clans of Pashtun tribal warriors, and nationalist resistance forces led by Jalalladin Hakkani and former prime minister, Gulbadin Hekmatyar, whom the CIA has repeatedly tried to assassinate.
Many are former mujahidin once hailed `freedom fighters’ by the west, and branded `terrorists’ by the Soviets. They represent national resistance to foreign occupation. In fact, what the US and its NATO allies are doing in Afghanistan today uncannily mirrors the brutal Soviet occupation during the 1980’s.
The UN’s anti-narcotic agency reports Afghanistan now supplies 92% of the world’s heroin. Production has surged 40% last year alone. Who is responsible? The US and NATO. They now own narco-state Afghanistan.
Dominating the main oil export route from Central Asia was a primary objective of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Ironically, instead of an anticipated oil bonanza, the US now finds itself mired deep in the Afghan drug trade.
Washington and NATO can’t keep pretending this is someone else’s problem. Drug money fuels the Afghan economy and keeps local warlords loyal to the US-installed Kabul regime.
Afghanistan’s north has become a sphere of influence of Russia and its local allies, the Uzbek-Tajik Northern Alliance led by notorious war criminals and leaders of the old Afghan Communist Party.
The US and its allies are not going to win the Afghan war. They will be lucky the way things are going not to lose it in the same humiliating manner the Soviets did in 1989.
In recent week, near panicky calls by British PM Tony Blair for more NATO troops to be sent to Afghanistan show that western occupation forces are on the defensive, fighting to hold their bases, and facing the specter of eventual defeat. Just, in fact, like every other invader that has ever occupied Afghanistan.
A final point. US and NATO forces are not fighting `terrorists,’ as their governments claim. They are fighting the Afghan people. In the 1980’s, I saw mujahidin too poor to afford shoes strap 110lbs of mortar shells on their backs, and climb 6-8 hours over mountains through snow to bombard a Communist base, then trudge home. These are the people we are fighting. Anyone who knows Afghans know they will not be defeated, even if they must resist for an entire generation.
copyright Eric S. Margolis 2006
10 comments:
EMBEDDED reporting! This should give You a Clue as to what type of news we will receive! Certainly wont be objective and open thats for sure! ((The 1st causualty of war is the truth!))
And the second causality is Atlantic Canada citizens.
21 of the 53 Canadians killed in Afghanistan were from Atlantic Canada.
How many from quebec?ontario?
So should we be proud or recognize when your being suckered again.
Yes remember Vimy,where all the Newfoundlanders where sent to slaughter.
As usual all the same old rhetoric. The same old, their lying to you but I'm telling you the truth! Of course with Mr. Margolis you do get the added bonus of his ever sympathetic feelings towards those misunderstood Taliban freedom fighters. Yes not a one sided biased bone in that mans body. As usual with both extremes on this topic there is never time for solutions, never time for thoughtfull discussions. There is just never enough space left in their little columns once they finish telling us how bad things are to find real solutions.
Actually, go to his website and there are all kinds. There are 'solutions' being proposed all over the place, but as usual Mr. "I only read mainstream media but its pretty objective" doesn't realize that because mainstream media never talks to people who have all kinds of 'solutions' that oppose Harper and Bush. Thanks once again JP for proving the point that mainstream media is far from objective, if it was, you'd hear all kinds of solutions.
We can leave it up to readers to see if the article's ten paragraphs from a guy who's spent considerable time in Afghanistan and all over the middle east or an anonymous poster with one paragraph with nothing else to offer except attacking the messenger constitutes 'thoughtful discussion'.
Actually you have no Idea what I read. More to the point one must really question your abilities to function at even that simple level as I will assure you I have never described myself as " only a mainstream media reader" But then from reading the drivel Mr. Margolis writes I can see where making up what ever is convenient at the time appeals you. As to the above ten paragraphs in question, I consider it a testament to my ability to succinctly reduce the meanderings of such a biased blow hard to a single paragraph. Why I consider it the least I could do for the general public.
On the point of my anonymous-ness I would like to point out that despite the fact that I do have the good common sense not to use my real name in places like this, it should be noted that at least I have the BALLS to use one that identifies me as the repeat offender I am. Unlike some that at best can only be identified by their...limitations.
(the 1st casualty of war is the truth) There will be no winning this war other than the companies and stockholders that supply the war machine.
Ask the Soviet Vets of Afgahnistan if they won? We have no rights to be there no more than they have right to occupy our country!
It's often the case the force with which a journalist is denounced, is proportional to their grasp of the facts. Like they say, when the emporer has no clothes, its all the more important that guards make sure people don't engage in fashion criticism.
If a discussion is desired, then simply calling people names is not too conducive. However, everybody has a bias, just like every company does and like every industry does, that's why its important to get the facts from as varied a place as possible.
For people who are ACTUALLY interested in debate and discussion and understanding the world, then obviously questioning what people say is important. So IF somebody actually wanted to state what exactly is baseless and pointless in the article then that would be somebody who wanted discussion. When people simply say 'thats garbage that person doesn't know what they are talking about', then obviously that's not a person interested in, well, anything. It's nice at least JP posts that though, because otherwise many people might have passed right over the blog, but many people like reading the comments sections, so maybe if they didn't read or think about the article then they'll do so.
Your a fine one to talk anonymous 10:10. You ramble on for posting after posting complaining about what others post. Lamenting that no will debate and yet have not so much as even put on cohesive thought on the page. I could care less that you what you read and where you read it from. Mr. Margolis isn't here to debate. If you have your own opinions lets here them. In your worlds not those cut and pasted from some article. Are you so bereft of opinions of your own that you have to use this mans? Can you not even formulate your own thoughts on the subject. I comment on this article because it deserved it. If you want a debate stop your whining and start posting your solutions to this war. Strat asking your own questions and give us your answres. If you indeed have any.
Well, I did do so, but it wasn't due to the above rhetoric. I posted this post because it made points that are virtually never in the media. I wasn't complaining that nobody was debating, I don't really care. I sent the article into Charles so that people would see it, that's it, there really wasn't any more to debate-until JP started making statements that essentially amounted not to debate but to telling people to pay no attention to people who actually have ideas.
Ideas come from all sorts of places and there is certainly no fault in having somebody express a view better than one's own. I suspect JP just wants me to state my own opinion so that he can label it and then tell people to ignore it, or pick one sentence and state why the whole thing is garbage because he disagrees with one line of it.
So I wouldn't want people out there to be insulted, thinking I'm faulting them for not debating, it was JP who was saying not to pay attention to Eric Margolis, not anybody else. His frequent refrain of 'stop whining' sounds a lot like whining, but like I said, at least it serves a purpose.
Even without the above article we can see here that a good percentage of people already see through the government's BS instinctively, however, there are lots of people who don't pay attention because they don't know whats going on. And of course on blogs most people take the 'safe route' and don't talk about the war at all.
The idea that my solutions are the same as the solutions presented by other people also isn't something to be ashamed of, as the above seems to imply. Like many wars there are typically thousands of people saying the exact same thing, that hardly makes people some kind of unthinking automaton. Margolis made the above comments, and I agree with him on what he said, so whats wrong with that?
I didn't think you had anything to say anonymous 3:46. Thanks for backing me up on that one.
Post a Comment