[Peace-discuss] Why are we in Afghanistan?

[C. G. Estabrook]

While the administration tells us that it is spending billions of dollars and 
killing thousands of people to "shield people from violence" in Afghanistan (and 
Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, et al.), we need to hold on to two points:

   [1] Afghanistan (et al.) is part of what the Pentagon calls the Long War, 
because it stretches back at least a generation and is being planned into the 
next; and

   [2] the Long War is about oil.

Even Tom Friedman, the chief government flack at the NYT, writes this week, "I 
have never bought the argument that Iraq was the bad war, Afghanistan the good 
war and Pakistan the necessary war. Folks, they’re all one war with different 
fronts."

But what he can't admit is that the US prosecutes the war to control energy 
resources.  For him (and he represents Informed Opinion in the political class, 
alas), "It’s a war within the Arab-Muslim world between progressive and 
anti-modernist forces," which the US got into in a "blundering attempt to do 
good" (as the liberal propaganda about Vietnam put it long ago).

It's a fantastic lie, of course, but even so it can't explain why we're doing it 
in the Middle East rather than in, say, Central Africa. (See [2], above.)  --CGE


C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> You may have wondered.  You may also wonder why we've invaded and 
> occupied a half dozen other countries in the Middle East, half a world 
> away.  This week Obama's choice as Afghanistan commander, Lt. Gen. 
> Stanley McChrystal (known for assassination, torture, and the 
> establishment of death squads in Iraq, as an article in the current 
> Nation explains) "defined America’s essential goals there," as the New 
> York times put it:
> 
> “The measure of effectiveness will not be the number of enemy killed," 
> Stan said. "It will be the number of Afghans shielded from violence."
> 
> How would we have reacted, a generation ago, during the Soviet invasion 
> and occupation of Afghanistan, to a Soviet general who said (as he 
> undoubtedly did), "The measure of Soviet military effectiveness will be 
> the number of Afghans shielded from violence"?  Why should we react 
> differently now?  --CGE
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