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Vol. 12 Issue 40…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…October 4, 2009

A General's Prognosis or Postmortem

By John Burl Smith

After reviewing reports and articles discussing the current situation in Afghanistan, it is unclear whether the discussion represents a prognosis for Afghanistan or a look back at Vietnam. According to the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, prospects of success, as anticipated just six months ago, have not followed the course laid out and the peculiarities presented represent a dismal picture for recovery without radical procedures. If one replaced the words Afghanistan and the Taliban with Vietnam and Viet Cong, the General's report would read like a postmortem of the failures and mistakes in Vietnam.

Reminiscent of a stroll down memory lane, the general's desire "for more forces within the next year" or conflict "will likely result in failure" evoked images offered in the mid-1960s to justify escalating the Vietnam incursion. Beginning with Gen. Westmoreland's demand for more troops to "combat a growing insurgency," generals on the ground wanted more troops to stabilize the situation while they "Vietnamize the war." Behind growing losses, they needed another 50,000 soldiers to clear out sanctuaries along the borders of Laos and Cambodia. Finally, to drive the "North Vietnamese back across the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), they needed another 100,000 troops."

After 560,000 troops and well over 200,000 American deaths, Congress ended the madness. But the generals insist even today, "We were not given a chance to win." History has never witnessed a general who did not say he needed more troops when defeat stared him in the face. A general's job is to fight wars not to find a road to peace. German generals sent children and old men into combat to keep WWII going a few more years. Like a mad scientist needing subjects for an experiment, McChrystal said, "While the situation is serious, success is still achievable. But without more forces and rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely."

Taking a page from the Vietnam War playbook, McChrystal described the Taliban as, "a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit and plan operations." Vietnam commanders described the Viet Cong with similar phraseology to magnify their request for more troops. The thing US generals failed to accept in Vietnam and now in Afghanistan is that they were fighting local farmers, teachers, preachers and shopkeepers, which is why they are losing, as the British lost to the same kind of rag-tag army in 1776 here in North America. They should have learned from Ho Chi Mien that any time a foreign invader or occupier faces a determined local opposition that is willing to fight no matter what the odds or how long it takes, the occupier/oppressor always lose.

Afghanistan has been known as the "graveyard of empires" since Alexander the Great faltered there. It has no oil or other valuable resources -- except opium. Militarily, its rugged terrain constitutes a fortress, augmented by roughly 40,000 rural villages and hamlets. Afghans have resisted would-be conquerors, including Romans, Medians, Persians, Turks, Mongols, British and the Soviets, for thousands of years. No matter their claims or justification, every would-be conqueror has met the same fate. At some point, each has come to the same realization, regardless of the amount of treasury and lives expended, "Afghanistan is not worth another dime or young life," and left. Given that history, how smart does one have to be to understand "the hand writing on the wall?" This is where that prophecy occurred.

Like most "brave new" leaders in a "brave new world," President Barack Obama came to power convinced he was smart enough to pick people smart enough to whip a bunch of backward warlords in a country without a standing army. Based on his "intelligence," he threw in 21,000 more troops and upped the ante to around 100,000 foreign occupiers. The Afghans called his bluff and six months later, Gen. McChrystal's prognosis calls for a pot of 130,000 to stay in the game. Again, Obama is following the generals into the same kind of morass that became Richard Nixon's postmortem in Vietnam.

First, the war was widened with the incursion into Laos and Cambodia, as Obama has moved into Pakistan. After failing to chase the Viet Cong from their border sanctuaries, Nixon tried bombing them into submission. (Laos is actually the most heavily bombed country in world history, and on average one person is still being killed by American bombs every two days in Laos, 25 years after the war ended.) Smart guy that he is, Obama should realize generals will always claim that one more Gallipoli, Battle of the Bulge, Dien Bien Phu or Mogadishu occupation will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

However, in the end, desperate generals, who believe victory depends on whether they get another few thousand troops, when they already possess overwhelming technical superiority, never win. Obama needs to recognize that Generals enjoy their greatest power when a country is at war. They are heroes when they win but blame politicians when they lose.

The Vietnam War postmortem shows that as long as the US was there, corruption was rampant. The prognosis is that corruption will be the death of the Karzai regime. Afghanistan is riddled with the same problem as Vietnam because the US is trying to buy support for western-style democracy, which Afghans do not trust or understand. If Afghanistan was a patient with cancer, one would say it has a quack for a physician, who keeps prescribing heavier and heavier doses of radiation which will kill the doctor long before killing either the cancer or patient.

Bit of History

Hamid Karzai

"If I am called a puppet because we are grateful to America, then let that be my nickname." (Afghan President Hamid Karzai in 2008 interview)

Hamid Karzai is an ethnic Pashtun of the Popalzai tribe. Born December 24, 1957 in the village of Karz, which is located on the southern edge of the Afghanistan city of Kandahar, his family enjoyed close ties with the former Afghan King, Zahir Shah. His grandfather, Khair Mohammad Khan, served in Afghanistan's war of independence (1919) and was Deputy Speaker of the Senate. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, served as Deputy Speaker of the Parliament during the 1960s.

Karzai attended Mahmood Hotaki Elementary School in Kandahar and Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani School in Kabul. In 1976, he graduated from Habibia High School. From 1979 to 1983, Karzai studied political science at Himachal Pradesh University in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. After obtaining his Master's degree, Karzai worked as a fund-raiser for the anti-Soviet Mujahideen or Holy Warriors during the Soviet intervention of Afghanistan. The US supplied and funded the Mujahideen; Karzai served a contact for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time. While Karzai remained to fight the Soviet occupation, his six brothers immigrated to the US.

When the Soviet-backed Afghan government fell in 1992, Karzai served as Deputy Foreign Minister in the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was overthrown by the Taliban in 1996. Initially, Karzai was a Taliban supporter, but he later refused to serve as their ambassador to the United Nations, instead choosing to live in exile in Quetta, Pakistan, where he worked to reinstate the former Afghan king, Zahir Shah.

Following the July 14, 1999 assassination of his father, presumably by Taliban agents, Karzai swore revenge and worked to overthrow the Taliban. In 2001, following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, Karzai and Mujahideen loyal to the Northern Alliance worked with the US military to overthrow the Taliban. In December 2001, Karzai was sworn in as chairman of the interim government. On June 13, 2002, the Loya Jirga appointed Karzai interim President of the Afghan Transitional Administration. In 2004, following a brief campaign marred by voting irregularities and a surge in violence, Karzai was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. He garnered 21 of the 34 provinces in defeating his 22 opponents.

Since being installed in power, Karzai has survived a number of assassination attempts. In general, he is viewed as so weak that he has often been ridiculed as the "Mayor of Kabul." His efforts to unify the country and bring peace have largely failed, and he has been accused of being corrupt.

While he has promised to eliminate opium-poppy cultivation in the country, which helps fuel the ongoing insurgency, fear of harming the livelihood of his countrymen has led Karzai to reject US proposals to end poppy production through aerial spraying of herbicides. In addition, his younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is rumored to be involved in the heroin trade.

Because the more remote areas have historically been under the influence of various local leaders, Karzai has moved cautiously on reform for fear of risking an uprising. Failure to secure Afghanistan from the Taliban and the growing number of NATO soldiers' deaths, in addition to the economic crises they face at home, some Western nations have began to distance themselves from the Karzai government.

Karzai is well versed in several languages, including his mother-tongue Pashto, as well as Persian (Dari), Urdu, Hindi, English and French. He is often seen wearing a Karakul hat, something that has been worn by many Afghan kings in the past. The recipient of a number of honorary degrees and awards, including an honorary doctorate in literature from his alma mater Himachal Pradesh University in India and an honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from Georgetown University, Karzai became an Honorary British Knight in 2003.

Karzai is married to Zeenat Quraishi, an obstetrician, who has worked with Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. The couple has a son, Mirwais Karzai, who was born in 2007. In 2009, Karzai won re-election for presidential with 54.6% of the votes. (Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org, www.globalsecurity.org and www.achievement.org)

Intuit's Vibe

Exporting Democracy

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

Since 2001, U.S. presidents have tried to sell their foreign adventures and invasions as exercises in exporting democracy -- as if democracy was a crate of corn, or a barrel of oil.

Few modern presidents spoke of this more often or with more intensity than former president George W. Bush. Few were more disbelieved than he.

It was the height of irony for him to declare, as he often did, that democracies were peaceful, as he spoke atop a rotting hill of bomb-blasted bodies and bones.

Many apologists for the Afghan war have used the export of democracy argument to justify its invasion and occupation.

The installment of Hamid Karzai was supposed to be the crystallization of this democratizing impulse, as was the recent 'election.'

Perhaps the urbane Karzai learned his lesson only too well, if the explosion of ballot-box stuffing, corrupt voting, and other violations are any indication.

Americans certainly know a thing or two about stolen elections and botched balloting. The two Bush campaigns were exemplars of the art.

Democracies, like cuisine, are best home-grown. Bayonets of foreigners are poor conductors of democracy.

Karzai is about as puppet-like as can be seen without strings. He is British raised, U.S. paid and U.S. preserved. He is, essentially, the Mayor of Kabul, who heads a cabinet of narcotraffikers and warlords. And despite the title, he is controlled and led by them, rather than the reverse.

For years, Karzai was so distrustful of his fellow Afghans, and so devoid of even his own tribal support, that his personal bodyguards were a corps of beefy, buzz-cut Americans. Imagine a U.S. president surrounded by an armed cadre of foreign soldiers!

Afghanistan is about as much a democracy as Iraq is, or Pakistan is. It is a state ruled, not by Afghan will, but by foreign elites and local compradors. But it is not, and can not be, a place of peace.

For it is not a democracy, nor governed by popular will. Call it a narcocracy (rule by drug lords); or a kleptocracy (rule by thieves). Just don't call it a democracy.

Venue for an Artist

Afghanistan Graveyard of Empires

By Milton Bearden

Michni Point, Pakistan's last outpost at the western end of the barren winding Khyber Pass stands sentinel over Torkham Gate, the deceptively orderly border crossing into Afghanistan. Frontier Scouts in gray shalwar kameezes (traditional tunics and loose pants) and black berets patrol the lonely station commanded by a major of the legendary Khyber Rifles, the militia force that has been guarding the border with Afghanistan since the nineteenth century, first for British India and then for Pakistan. This spot, perhaps more than any other, has witnessed the traverse of the world's great armies on campaigns of conquest to and from South and Central Asia. All eventually ran into trouble in their encounters with the unruly Afghan tribals.

Alexander the Great sent his supply trains through the Khyber, then skirted northward with his army to the Konar Valley on his campaign in 327 BC. There he ran into fierce resistance and, struck by an Afghan archer's arrow, barely made it to the Indus River with his life. Genghis Khan and the great Mughal emperors began passing through the Khyber a millennium later and ultimately established the greatest of empires-but only after reaching painful accommodations with the Afghans. From Michni Point, a trained eye can still see the ruins of the Mughal signal towers used to relay complex torch-light messages 1,500 miles from Calcutta to Bukhara in less than an hour.

In the nineteenth century the Khyber became the fulcrum of the Great Game, the contest between the United Kingdom and Russia for control of Central Asia and India. The first Afghan War (1839-42) began when British commanders sent a huge army of British and Indian troops into Afghanistan to secure it against Russian incursions, replacing the ruling emir with a British protégé. Facing Afghan opposition, by January 1842 the British were forced to withdraw from Kabul with a column of 16,500 soldiers and civilians, heading east to the garrison at Jalalabad, 110 miles away. Only a single survivor of that group ever made it to Jalalabad safely, though the British forces did recover some prisoners many months later.

According to the late Louis Dupree, the premier historian of Afghanistan, four factors contributed to the British disaster: the occupation of Afghan territory by foreign troops, the placing of an unpopular emir on the throne, the harsh acts of the British -supported Afghans against their local enemies, and the reduction of the subsidies paid to the tribal chiefs by British political agents. The British would repeat these mistakes in the second Afghan War (1878-81), as would the Soviets a century later; the United States would be wise to consider them today.

In the aftermath of the second British misadventure in Afghanistan, Rudyard Kipling penned his immortal lines on the role of the local women in tidying up the battlefields:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains

and the women come out to cut up what remains

Jest roll to your rite an' blowout your brains

An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

The British fought yet a third war with Afghanistan in 1917, an encounter that neither burnished British martial history nor subdued the Afghan people. But by the end of World War I, that phase of the Great Game was over. During World War II, Afghanistan flirted with Aryanism and the Third Reich, becoming, fleetingly, "the Switzerland" of Central Asia in a new game of intrigue as Allied and Axis coalitions jockeyed for position in the region. But after the war the country settled back into its natural state of ethnic and factional squabbling. The Soviet Union joined in from the sidelines, but Afghanistan was so remote from the consciousness of the West that scant attention was paid to it until the last king, Zahir Shah, was deposed in 1973. Then began the cycle of conflict that continues to the present.

About Me: From 1986 to 1989, Bearden served as CIA station chief in Pakistan, where he was responsible for the spy agency's covert action program in support of the Afghan resistance to the Soviet-supported government.

News You Use

Anti-War Movement

Within weeks after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the US was on its way to pounding Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, supposedly because the Taliban would not turn over Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the plot. Eight years later, the US and NATO are no closer to winning the war against the Taliban or finding bin Laden's hiding spot than they were on October 7, 2001. In the meantime, more Americans have died in Afghanistan and Iraq than perished in the initial terrorist attack.

As the deaths continue to mount, with a majority of Americans opposed to these conflicts, the generals are demanding more troops and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression is taking its toll on the American heartland. This perfect storm of events has energized the anti-war movement. Anti-war protests are planned all over the country, as veterans, loved ones and others take to the streets to object to the continued expenditure of lives and treasure in a war that experts claim cannot be won by the force of arms alone.

In October, Military Families Speak Out and others are planning anti-war demonstrations across the nation to mark the eighth year of a war with no end. The October protestors plan to place 500 pairs of empty boots within sight of the White House as a symbol of Americans soldiers killed in the war.

On November 7, 2009, the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations plans to hold a rally and march at the Malcolm X Park in Washington, DC from 10 AM to 6PM. For more information, visit www.blackisbackcoalition.org.

On March 20, 2010, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition is planning a national march on Washington, with coinciding marches in San Francisco and Los Angeles. People from all over the country are organizing to converge on Washington, D.C. to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan and Iraq. According to its organizers, "We will march together to say 'No Colonial-type Wars and Occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine!' We will march together to say 'No War Against Iran!' We will march together to say 'No War for Empire Anywhere!'" For more information, visit A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition at www.answercoalition.org/.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Phone Calls

Email vikingjohn@juno.com Tehran dumps dollar for euro...By Martin Morris...Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered the replacement of the US dollar by the euro in calculating the value of the country's Oil Stabilisation Fund (OSF). The edict, issued on Sept 12, follows a recommendation by the trustees of the country's foreign reserves. The move was taken because the government wishes to protect itself from the fragility of the US economy and the weak dollar. The OSF, which forms part of Iran's foreign exchange reserves, is a contingency fund set aside to cushion the economy against fluctuating international oil prices. It is also used to help both the public and private sectors with their hard currency needs by extending loans.

Email www.fpif.org Good War Vs. Great Society...By John Feffer....The Vietnam War ruined everything. It not only destroyed Vietnam and killed a huge number of its inhabitants. It not only killed so many American soldiers and destroyed the futures of so many veterans. It not only spread into Cambodia and Laos and wrecked those countries for generations. The Vietnam War also killed the Great Society. President Lyndon Johnson, with a large Democratic majority in Congress after the 1964 elections, enacted sweeping reforms in education, health care, and transportation, along with landmark civil rights legislation. But the pressure of spending on the Vietnam War - guns vs. butter debate of the 1960s - eventually brought this last, great program of genuine American liberalism to a halt and scuttled the hopes of its architect for a second presidential term. Will the Afghanistan war drive a similar stake through the heart of President Barack Obama's ambitious domestic program? The two major issues currently on the public agenda are health care and the war in Afghanistan: the guns vs. butter debate of the 21^st century.

Email www.timesonline.co.uk ...US accepts Hamid Karzai as Afghan leader despite poll fraud claims...By Giles Whittell...The White House has ended weeks of hesitation over how to respond to the Afghan election by accepting President Karzai as the winner despite evidence that up to 20 per cent of ballots cast may have been fraudulent. Abandoning its previous policy of not prejudging investigations of vote rigging, the Obama Administration has conceded that Mr. Karzai will be President for another five years on the basis that even if he were forced into a second round of voting he would almost certainly win it. The decision will increase pressure on President Obama to justify further US troop deployments to Afghanistan to prop up a regime now regarded as systemically corrupt.

Email www.guardian.co.uk ...US diplomat 'forced out' over stance on Afghan election fraud...Peter Galbraith removed from UN post after pressing for inquiry into results heavily favouring Karzai...The most senior American diplomat at the UN mission in Afghanistan has been fired after he failed to secure support for a full and robust investigation into widespread fraud favouring President Hamid Karzai in the August presidential elections. Peter Galbraith, the deputy UN special envoy responsible for electoral matters, was removed after a dispute with his Norwegian boss, Kai Eide, after Galbraith had taken an outspoken line over alleged vote-rigging in the 20 August election, a position that reportedly angered Karzai.