Yet again, the head of
Karzai's “Peace Council” has been assassinated by the people he's trying to
make peace with. This is the second time this has happened in less than a year.
One side is trying to negotiate a peace deal, and the other side is murdering
the negotiators!
The victim was formerly with
the Taliban. So that “sends a message” (i.e. terrorizes) any other Taliban who
might be tempted to “reconcile” with the Karzai regime.
Another sign of how well the
U.S.’ “strategy” is working in Afghanistan.
I don't think the Taliban,
their fellow-traveler terrorists, and their Paki
sponsors/aiders/abetters/protectors/accomplices are looking for peace,
reconciliation, or power sharing. Kinda obvious, isn’t it? (1)
Yet Obama and Karzai persist
in their delusional strategies. Obama offers the American people the prospect
of endless semi-occupation of Afghanistan. Karzai is- well, he's Karzai, a
slippery hustler who just wants to snooker the West into continuing to prop him
up and shovel billions into the pockets of himself, his relatives, his cronies,
and a horde of Afghan leeches.
In 2011, the “Central Bank”
of Kabul admits that four billion six hundred million dollars in cold, hard cash,
actual physical money, was taken out of the country through Kabul
“International Airport.” The thievery is absolutely naked, yet the U.$. media
is very quiet about it.
Of course, not every last
cent is stolen. Most of the rest is frittered away in Potemkin-village-style
demonstration projects and wheel-spinning. And stuff that the Taliban blows up as soon as it gets the chance.
The U.S. is taking billions
of dollars of our money and putting it directly into the pockets of looters.
For what? To keep up a facḁde of “fighting terrorism” and this paper
organization Al-Qaeda, which supposedly barely exists any more. The Obama
regime is constantly bragging about the latest terrorist bigwig they’ve
assassinated, yet the villains are never defeated. It's an endless comic book
war against cartoonishly evil fiends.
The truth is, the U.S.
strategy is one of quiet desperation. Like LBJ and Nixon in Vietnam, Obama
doesn't want to “lose” a war. The asshole could have pulled out right after his
election, by saying “Al-Qaeda was driven out of Afghanistan, and the Taliban
were overthrown.” Why is the U.S. obligated to determine the regime in
Afghanistan?
Since the real problem is
Pakistan, and the U.S. won't go to war with them (in fact that's another gang
that's shaken down the U.S. taxpayers for billions, to arm them to menace
India, which is the victim of Pakistani terrorism) the situation in fact is
hopeless, and throwing billions down a rathole in perpetuity to prop up a
loathsome hustler like Karzai is nauseating. Karzai has shown no inclination in
over a decade of leeching off the U.S. to create an actual government, provide
services for the Afghan people, or do anything other than pose as a “leader.”
It's all hollow, pompous theater with that guy.
Speaking of how well things
are going in Afghanistan, the newly-assassinated head of the “Peace Council”
was unprotected, despite the fact that his predecessor was murdered, and that
he had been receiving death threats. I guess death threats are so common in
Afghanistan that they don’t merit any particular attention.
Oh, and two British soldiers
were just killed by an Afghan “policeman or a man dressed in an Afghan police
uniform.” (You can buy such uniforms freely in the bazaars in Kabul, e.g. Yeah,
they got things under control there.)
Not to worry, the Afghan
“security forces” will be ready to take over by year-end 2014. At least that’s
what the U.S. poohbahs keep saying. And the line that U.$. media scribes dutifully
regurgitate.
Once in awhile we hear from
soldiers on the ground who seem to think exactly the opposite.
One fact- about half the Afghan “security forces”
disappear/desert/quit each year.
That’s sort of a high attrition rate, wouldn’t you say?
Oh, and hardly any of them
can even read or write.
And their commanders are
corrupt.
And lots of them are in
cahoots with the Taliban or are Taliban infiltrators.
And they can’t fight their
way out of a paper bag, except perhaps for the small number who are U.S.
Special Forces mascots. (Shades of “South” Vietnam, where U.S. Special Forces
similarly cloned Vietnamese versions of themselves, ideologically fanatical and
zealous killers.)
Other than all that,
everything is “on track,” in Official-Speak.
A footnote on the colossal
waste of our money in Afghanistan: the Washington
Post just revealed a real scandal- unlike the ginned up pseudo-“scandal” of
the GSA conference cum party that
didn’t even cost one million dollars, but cost the head of the agency her job,
even though she was unaware of it. The State Department signed a ten year
contract to build a consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. The building was
finished, and then it was finally recognized what was obvious all along- this
part of Afghanistan was “dangerous.” (Are there any “safe” parts of
Afghanistan?) (2)
This scandal cost $80 MILLION, but no heads are rolling- except
possibly the head of the anonymous leaker who gave documents to the Post. That person risked their career,
if not criminal prosecution by the vindictive Obama administration.(3)
I guess some scandals are just more scandalous than others.
It turns out that this
boondoggle was the doing of the thuggish Richard Holbrooke, who bullied the
State Department apparatchiks into approving this total waste.
But Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, that weird, controlled, Queen Bee who has spent her life
shimmying up the slippery pole of state power [Notice how alike she and Obama actually are? He’s just better at it.] ran
interference for the undeserved reputation of the late and greatly-lamented (by
the bourgeois elites) Holbrooke, saying, ““Everything that we have accomplished
that is working in Afghanistan and Pakistan is largely because of Richard
Holbrooke. It may have to wait until I write my memoirs, but that is a fact.”
Well, if she says it’s a “fact,”
it must be. Actual facts be damned.
Explain it to me again,
Madame Secretary, what exactly is it that is “working” in that region?
And the “accomplishments”?
Well, Al-Qaeda was driven out of Afghanistan- they went elsewhere. And the
Taliban were (apparently temporarily) driven from power.
But Bush did that. Holbrooke
had nothing to do with it.
Any other “accomplishments?”
Anyway, Holbrooke and
Clinton belong to a very charmed, elite club, a mutual admiration society of
made members of the U.S. nomenklatura.
Of course, aside from money,
there is also the misery caused by maimed and killed Afghans, U.S. soldiers,
and aid workers who try to help ungrateful, stubbornly primitive Afghans. No
price tag can be put on those losses.
I truly despise the anti-human
Taliban and their cynical Paki masters. But unless one is going to go to war
with Pakistan, I fail to see any way to “win” this. [Mitt Romney, on the
“campaign trail,” during one of the GOP candidate “debates,” attacked Obama in
empty rhetorical terms and vowed that he’d
attack the Taliban “wherever they are.” What a phony bastard. You’re not
gonna go to war with Pakistan, Willard. What a blustering phony.]
1) But apparently not
obvious enough for some- like the Obama and Karzai regimes and the U.S. media.
For example, NPR, in a brief headline report on the hit (5/13/12, 11 am EST)
spun it thusly: “Gunmen dealt a blow to the effort to negotiate a peace
agreement with the Taliban” by shooting the Peace Council head.
As if “gunmen”
and “the Taliban” are separate entities. This preserves the illusion that there
is a point in “negotiating” with the Taliban as they or their allies murder the
negotiators.
But NPR let slip a couple of
interesting facts. The assassination was carried out with a silenced gun, and
with a single shot. I.e. it was done by highly trained professionals, and they
have access to hard-to-get weaponry. To me that indicates that these hitmen are
one of the ISI’s cat’s paws.
2)
“U.S. abandons consulate site in Afghanistan, citing security risks,” Washington Post, undated article on
their website, as all their web articles unprofessionally are, at:
The
“print”version online says “published May 5.”
For
a compendium of items on waste and futility in Afghanistan, see cashiered and
persecuted State Department career official Peter van Buren’s site at http://www.wemeantwell.com/
Van
Buren is being kicked out of the State Department 6 months shy of retiring (and
qualifying for his pension) in retaliation for publishing a book about waste,
fraud, and abuse in Iraq. That’s the Obama regime for you.
All
those politicians and bureaucrats yammering about how they’re against waste,
fraud, and abuse are apparently full of shit. They’re actually FOR it. It’s how
their crooked capitalist patrons get paid (out of our pockets) and how they
line up cushy post-government sinecures for themselves. More and more, the U.S.
Government looks like a big criminal racket.
3) Gee, Obama sure is like
Nixon. Not his personality, his behavior.
The fact that he sneakily knifes people unemotionally, coldly, calculatingly,
not in a frenzy of angry cursing like Nixon, merely makes him more chilling
than Nixon. And he’s a much better public liar than Nixon. Nixon always licked
his lips nervously and even broke out in a sweat. Apparently Nixon had a
conscience, unlike, by all evidence, Obama, who’s cool as a cucumber when he
lies, with oh-so-convincing tonal qualities. He’s on a par with Reagan,
acting-wise.
But who remembers Nixon? Not
the historically-amnesiac American people. And those who didn’t actually live
through the horrible Nixon years are taught nothing but exiguous lies in their
“history” classes. The same classes that indoctrinate people to view the
Confederacy as a noble if misguided enterprise, not a horrible slave empire,
and reviles “carpetbaggers” and irresponsible blacks who needed to be put back
in their place by the KKK. And that Andrew Johnson was unfairly impeached! In
fact he was a virulent racist who openly violated the Reconstruction laws
enactly by Congress and thus should have been removed from office.
These days we’re told that
Nixon was a liberal! The architect of
massive terrorist bombing of Vietnam, of invasions and “secret” bombings of
Laos and Cambodia, the architect of the Pinochet coup in Chile, backer of the
fascist junta in Greece, overseer of repression and assassination programs
against black “militants” and leftist opposition movements- this man is a
“liberal” because, we’re instructed, the EPA was created during his term, and
he saw the obvious about Russia and China- that they were adversaries, not allies- hell, they fought lethal border skirmishes
with each other!- and he played on that division to “open” to China in order to
try and “win” the Vietnam war. Which he failed to do.
No, I didn’t mention that
little peccadillo, the Watergate burglary. That nothing event is the only black
mark on his record as far as the U.S. bourgeoisie are concerned. Which tells
you all you need to know about the morality of that bunch.
Trying to bug the Democratic
Party? THAT warrants removal from office. Unlike instituting neoslavery via
terrorism in the Confederate states!
(Nixon was forced to resign
when he was informed that two-thirds of the Senate was ready to vote to convict
him. To save his pension, free S.S. guards, free office, and other lifetime
perks, he quit.)
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