[Peace-discuss] Fw: Crimes of the State: Real History: Afghanistan, by Michael Parenti

[John W.]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 9:50 PM, unionyes <unionyes at ameritech.net> wrote:

 A short concise history of the current Afganistan war, going back to the
> mid-1960's.
> Written by Michael Parrenti, who use to be a local activist and is a cousin
> of Susan Parrenti.
>
> A must read to understand the REAL reason for this conflict and the real
> motivations of U.S. foreign policy.
>
> David J.
>
>
>
> http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/2008/12/real-history-afghanistan-by-michael.html
>


Excellent conclusion:

...One might agree with John Ryan who argued that if Washington had left the
Marxist Taraki government alone back in 1979, “there would have been no army
of mujahideen, no Soviet intervention, no war that destroyed Afghanistan, no
Osama bin Laden, and no September 11 tragedy.” But it would be asking too
much for Washington to leave unmolested a progressive leftist government
that was organizing the social capital around collective public needs rather
than private accumulation.

US intervention in Afghanistan has proven not much different from US
intervention in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada,
Panama, and elsewhere. It had the same intent of preventing egalitarian
social change, and the same effect of overthrowing an economically reformist
government. In all these instances, the intervention brought retrograde
elements into ascendance, left the economy in ruins, and pitilessly laid
waste to many innocent lives.

The war against Afghanistan, a battered impoverished country, continues to
be portrayed in US official circles as a gallant crusade against terrorism.
If it ever was that, it also has been a means to other things: destroying a
leftist revolutionary social order, gaining profitable control of one of the
last vast untapped reserves of the earth’s dwindling fossil fuel supply, and
planting US bases and US military power into still another region of the
world.

In the face of all this Obama’s call for “change” rings hollow.
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