The Times Online reported a British envoy and a French diplomat are warning that our war in Afghanistan is pretty much done for. Obviously there is no need to be concerned about the legitimacy of the illegal war in the first place or the justice for the perpetrators of the crime…
What interested me was the leaked cable by a French deputy ambassador to Kabul, François Fitou.
Why? Because if there is one thing the French know it’s how to tell when a war is lost, and they have lost plenty of them. I know. What a typical American-chauvinistic thing to say. But there is a little truth in every joke we tell.
In a September 2 meeting the French diplomat summed up the situation in Afghanistan:
The current situation is bad. The security situation is getting worse. So is corruption and the Government has lost all trust. Our public statements should not delude us over the fact that the insurrection, while incapable of winning a military victory, nevertheless has the capacity to make life increasingly difficult, including in the capital.The presence – especially the military presence – of the coalition is part of the problem, not the solution. The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them. In doing so, they are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis (which, moreover, will probably be dramatic).
For those of us on the Left this is nothing new. We are well accustomed with our government’s anti-democratic policies and our wars of aggression – which Afghanistan is one of many.
It’s too bad that our general’s are responding to this worsening situation by calling for more fuel to be thrown on the fire, and the icing on the cake is Obama’s comments that we "dropped the ball." For some reason I don’t think Obama is saying he wants to play soccer with the kiddies…
Perhaps one of Obama’s foreign policy advisors, Zbigniew Brzezinski – President Carter’s former National Security Advisor – is the one who is behind Obama’s pugnacious comment. This wouldn’t surprise me considering that it would not be the first time Bzrezinski has seen the people of Afghanistan as an expendable pawn in the global world stage of power whores. Yes, I am referring to this infamous interview.
It’s bullshit like this that makes people frustrated and conclude that nothing changes. Though maybe with the fact that as a result of American voters bombarding congressional phone lines with massive opposition towards the financial bailout the initial legislation was defeated. Maybe this can help us see a glimmer of hope in this failing democracy and reign in our elected thugs while putting an end to their myriad of injustices brutally imposed on not just the American working class but the poor and disenfranchised everywhere.
Maybe that’s even more frustrating: seeing our effective power and how little it is used…
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