I enlisted in the US Army during the Vietnam conflict because I
believed the war was just, and because it was the duty of male
citizens of democracies to perform military service in wartime.
Thirty -five years later, White House tape recordings revealed
that by 1967, President Lyndon Johnson knew the war was lost, yet kept
sending tens of thousands of American soldiers to their deaths because
he had no better plan and feared the domestic political consequences
of a pullout. Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara
persistently lied to and deceived Americans.
This bitter experience, and two decades as a journalist, left me
with deep cynicism and a profound distrust of most politicians. The
current war in Afghanistan fills me with unease. Once again, the White
House is not telling the full truth to its citizens, and is risking
the lives of soldiers in a war whose aims are constantly shifting,
nebulous, and overreaching. What began as a limited operation to kill
the elusive Osama bin Laden has ballooned into a campaign to invade
Iraq and dominate South/Central Asia. The former King of Afghanistan,
Zahir Shah, whom Washington is about to put on the throne in Kabul,
aptly summed up America's military intervention in his nation as
`stupid and useless.'
Afghanistan, as last week's bloody fighting above Gardez showed,
was not the cakewalk predicted by hawks and instant experts. Far from
`mopping up isolated al-Qaida remenants,' US forces and their
auxiliaries battled heavily-armed forces that included hundreds of new
Afghan volunteers. The remarkable resistance at Gardez of Taliban and
Qaida forces against the full might of American military power will
likely be greeted across the Muslim World as an important and dramatic
victory.
The Pentagon and unquestioning US media always refers to Afghans
fighting on the US side as `anti-Taliban Afghan forces.' In fact,
almost all are US-paid mercenaries. Their lack of martial ardor is why
US troops were used in last week's attacks. The going price for an
Pushtun warlord is $250,000 a month.
President Bush's claims the US invaded Afghanistan to `defend
democracy' and/or `stamp out terrorism' is certainly not the whole
story. The Pentagon had drawn up plans to invade Afghanistan, and US
Special Forces were operating in Kyrgystan, well before 9/11. Over the
past five months, the US has established permanent military bases in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
facilities in Kazakstan. In short, a constellation of air and army
bases designed for long-term strategic control of the region, under
the command of the US 3rd Army, whose headquarters was recently moved
from the southern USA to Kuwait.
The so-called `war on terrorism' is being used to mask a far
grander imperial design: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein that will
allow the US to a. gain control of Iraq's huge oil reserves, which are
second only to Saudi Arabia's, and b. secure American control of the
giant Caspian Oil Basin. The new US bases just happen to follow the
route of the planned American pipelines that will bring Central Asia's
oil and gas riches - the `new Silk Road' - south through Pakistan.
Each day, the US is plunging deeper and deeper into South and Central
Asia. American soldiers could end up fighting there fifty years hence.
In fact, the Bush Administration seems to be emulating the old British
Empire.
What was known in Vietnam as `mission creep' is already at work. A
brief US incursion into Afghanistan is now growing into permanent
commitment and the very `nation-building' that Bush vowed to avoid.
The client regime of US-appointed Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, is kept
in power in Kabul by British and US bayonets - just as former Afghan
communist regimes were maintained by the Soviet Red Army. The affable
Karzai has become the darling of the US media, which gushes over him
and his green cloak with the same misplaced rapture it showed for
another CIA `asset,' Egypt's late leader, Anwar Sadat, who was adored
in New York but hated in Cairo.
The US relied on the Russian-controlled Northern Alliance, run by
the reinvigorated Afghan Communist Party, to overthrow Taliban. Russia
sent $4 billion worth of arms to the Alliance, the real power behind
Karzai's let's pretend regime. The Alliance is bankrolled by the drug
trade, which it restored after Taliban was overthrown. Because Pushtun
mercenaries hired by the US are unreliable, the US now plans to build
an 80,000-man Afghan national army, trained by American `advisors.'
(shades of Vietnam). The Soviets did exactly the same thing after they
invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The Afghan communist Army proved as poor
and often disloyal as most of South Vietnam's Army.
Old Afghan hands have repeatedly warned the US not to get involved
in Afghan tribal and ethnic politics, not to set up permanent bases,
not to drive north into Central Asia, and not to force Pakistan into
becoming another obedient US client state, like Egypt or Turkey. But
Bush Administration crusaders, gripped by lust for blood and oil, are
charging forward. In a truly shameful act, the Administration is even
sending troops to Georgia to battle Chechen independence fighters in
the Caucasus mountains.
America has been scourged by terrorist attacks because of its
often heavy-handed interventions abroad, not because Muslims hate
democracy or McDonalds. The Saudis who stage kamikaze attacks on the
US did so because of the agony of Palestine and Iraq, and American
domination of Saudi Arabia. Deeper US involvement in Asia will likely
mean more, not less, risk of terrorist attacks.
[Eric Margolis is a syndicated foreign affairs columnist and broadcaster, and
author of War at the Top of
the World - The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Tibet which was reviewed in
The Economist, May 13, 2000]