[Peace-discuss] Mendacity of hope from Canada to Kandahar

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Published on Saturday, September 19, 2009 by The Independent/UK
	Everyone Seems to Be Agreeing with Bin Laden These Days
	Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message
	that we’re losing Afghanistan
	by Robert Fisk

Obama and Osama are at last participating in the same narrative. For the US 
president's critics - indeed, for many critics of the West's military occupation 
of Afghanistan - are beginning to speak in the same language as Obama's (and 
their) greatest enemy.

There is a growing suspicion in America that Obama has been socked into the 
heart of the Afghan darkness by ex-Bushie Robert Gates - once more the Secretary 
of Defense - and by journalist-adored General David Petraeus whose military 
"surges" appear to be as successful as the Battle of the Bulge in stemming the 
insurgent tide in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq.

No wonder Osama bin Laden decided to address "the American people" this week. 
"You are waging a hopeless and losing war," he said in his 9/11 eighth 
anniversary audiotape. "The time has come to liberate yourselves from fear and 
the ideological terrorism of neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby." There was 
no more talk of Obama as a "house Negro" although it was his "weakness", bin 
Laden contended, that prevented him from closing down the wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. In any event, Muslim fighters would wear down the US-led coalition 
in Afghanistan "like we exhausted the Soviet Union for 10 years until it 
collapsed". Funny, that. It's exactly what bin Laden told me personally in 
Afghanistan - four years before 9/11 and the start of America's 2001 adventure 
south of the Amu Darya river.

Almost on cue this week came those in North America who agree with Osama - 
albeit they would never associate themselves with the Evil One, let alone dare 
question Israel's cheerleading for the Iraqi war. "I do not believe we can build 
a democratic state in Afghanistan," announces Dianne Feinstein, the California 
Democrat who chairs the senate intelligence committee. "I believe it will remain 
a tribal entity." And Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, does not believe "there 
is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan".

Colin Kenny, chair of Canada's senate committee on national security and 
defense, said this week that "what we hoped to accomplish in Afghanistan has 
proved to be impossible. We are hurtling towards a Vietnam ending".

Close your eyes and pretend those last words came from the al-Qa'ida cave. Not 
difficult to believe, is it? Only Obama, it seems, fails to get the message. 
Afghanistan remains for him the "war of necessity". Send yet more troops, his 
generals plead. And we are supposed to follow the logic of this nonsense. The 
Taliban lost in 2001. Then they started winning again. Then we had to preserve 
Afghan democracy. Then our soldiers had to protect - and die - for a second 
round of democratic elections. Then they protected - and died - for fraudulent 
elections. Afghanistan is not Vietnam, Obama assures us. And then the good old 
German army calls up an air strike - and zaps yet more Afghan civilians.

It is instructive to turn at this moment to the Canadian army, which has in 
Afghanistan fewer troops than the Brits but who have suffered just as 
ferociously; their 130th soldier was killed near Kandahar this week. Every three 
months, the Canadian authorities publish a scorecard on their military 
"progress" in Afghanistan - a document that is infinitely more honest and 
detailed than anything put out by the Pentagon or the Ministry of Defense - 
which proves beyond peradventure (as Enoch Powell would have said) that this is 
Mission Impossible or, as Toronto's National Post put it in an admirable 
headline three days' ago, "Operation Sleepwalk". The latest report, revealed 
this week, proves that Kandahar province is becoming more violent, less stable 
and less secure - and attacks across the country more frequent - than at any 
time since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. There was an "exceptionally high" 
frequency of attacks this spring compared with 2008.

There was a 108 per cent increase in roadside bombs. Afghans are reporting that 
they are less satisfied with education and employment levels, primarily because 
of poor or non-existent security. Canada is now concentrating only on the 
security of Kandahar city, abandoning any real attempt to control the province.

Canada's army will be leaving Afghanistan in 2011, but so far only five of the 
50 schools in its school-building project have been completed. Just 28 more are 
"under construction". But of Kandahar province's existing 364 schools, 180 have 
been forced to close. Of progress in "democratic governance" in Kandahar, the 
Canadian report states that the capacity of the Afghan government is 
"chronically weak and undermined by widespread corruption". Of "reconciliation" 
- whatever that means these days - "the onset of the summer fighting season and 
the concentration of politicians and activists for the August elections 
discouraged expectations of noteworthy initiatives...".

Even the primary aim of polio eradication - Ottawa's most favored civilian 
project in Afghanistan - has defeated the Canadian International Development 
Agency, although this admission is cloaked in truly Blair-like (or Brown-like) 
mendacity. As the Toronto Star revealed in a serious bit of investigative 
journalism this week, the aim to "eradicate" polio with the help of UN and World 
Health Organization money has been quietly changed to the "prevention of 
transmission" of polio. Instead of measuring the number of children "immunized" 
against polio, the target was altered to refer only to the number of children 
"vaccinated". But of course, children have to be vaccinated several times before 
they are actually immune.

And what do America's Republican hawks - the subject of bin Laden's latest 
sermon - now say about the Afghan catastrophe? "More troops will not guarantee 
success in Afghanistan," failed Republican contender and ex-Vietnam vet John 
McCain told us this week. "But a failure to send them will be a guarantee of 
failure." How Osama must have chuckled as this preposterous announcement echoed 
around al-Qa'ida's dark cave.

2009 Independent News and Media.
Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper.  He is 
the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for 
Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/19