Eric Margolis is right again. Everyone loses except the M.I.C.

It is time to go home. But global powers seeking more oil continue to play a global chess game with devastating consequences for local peoples.

"An election held under the guns of a foreign occupation army cannot be called legitimate or democratic."

How about elections held under the financial control of exactly the same sponsorship at home?

Will Americans ever wake up to the fact that they too are victims of the imperial power that operates globally in their name? If they ever do, and actually decide to do something about it, maybe then the "occupation army" will be redeployed homeward to ensure "peace and tranquility." Otherwise, not likely.

Always good to see Eric's perspective on this absurd mission.

Damn good article by Eric.

This government is SO compromised and the treasury has been plundered.

"The current war in Afghanistan is not about democracy, women's rights, education or nation building. Al-Qaida, the other excuse, barely exists. Its handful of members long ago decamped to Pakistan. The war really is about oil pipeline routes and western domination of the energy-rich Caspian Basin."

That would make it an illegal war of choice/conquest.

AFPAK is where empires go to die. Give 'em rope.

The best comment I saw below was...."its time to go home"

"The war really is about oil pipeline routes and western domination of the energy-rich Caspian Basin."

Say that out loud in this country and you're a looney-radical-lefist-American-hating-terrorist-lovin-conspiracy-nut.

And never, ever mention the fact that without Afghanistan on fire, DoD 'private contractors' would go bust - bullets and bombs are only profitable when there's some evil foreigner to drop em on and shoot at.

Over $1 trillion in the Pentagon budget - think they're looking to declare peace and see that gold mine shrink anytime soon?

Margolis is going senile. His blatant support of Pakistan and its ISI as well as the virulent Talibs is well-known. How else can he state this:
"The powers now stirring the Afghan pot -- the U.S., NATO, India, Iran, Russia, the Communist Central Asian states -- must cease meddling."

... and not mention Pakistan !! What a joke ! I suppose Margolis is still in the ISI payroll like in the Reagan days.

--"Real power remains with strongmen from the Tajik and Uzbek minorities and local, drug-dealing tribal warlords who are paid by Washington to pretend to support Karzai. Behind the Tajiks and Uzbeks stand their patrons, Russia, India and Iran."

Is this warlord-envy ? Is Margolis upset that his puppet-masters the Pakistan ISI do not have the requisite support amongst the Northern tribes. Is this why Pakistans envoy is slathering all over Abdullah Abdullah ?

Karzai is a attempting to break-away from the U.S. grip and make amends with a cross-section of Pashtuns and Tajiks and Uzbeks. The U.S. and Pakistan cannot handle an independant Karzai and so the dance with Abdullah Abdullah has commenced. I wonder what the lion of the Panjshir valley would have thought of this !!

It's quitting time, for sure.

But the US will not leave Afghanistan as a neutral buffer state.

There will be sanctions and constant sabotage performed by proxy forces.

The price for the people of Afghanistan for driving out the US will be a globally rigged regime of racist imperialist brutality.

It's way past time to end the colonial war for pipelineistan, and to stop throwing tax $ at the MIC!

>>An election held under the guns of a foreign occupation army cannot be called legitimate or democratic.

Indeed this the very arguement used by the USA and her allies when they Indicated that Syria must withdraw from Lebanon.

This article describes exactly what I have read from several other sources, so I believe it is correct. We should leave Afghanistan. Why keep on doing something that is obviously wrong.

This article seems to be based on talking points supplied by the Pakistani military/intelligence establishment - right from how the Taliban "arose". Notice the complete absence of any blame on the Pakistani establishment. So I had to post my comment on a different story today again here:

Whenever I see such comments, I try to remind people of the "distinction" between the mujahideen - who were aided and armed by the Americans, and the Taliban - who were a creation of the Pakistani military/intelligence agencies.

'Taliban' means "students", and these were originally students of madrassas (religious schools) inside Pakistan. After the Soviets pulled out, there was chaos. There was nominally a government, but warlords also controlled various parts of the country. And the USA, for some inexplicable reason, seemed to have completely washed its hands off - now that the Soviet Union no longer existed. It was a perfect opportunity for the Pak. establishment. They had always wanted a so-called "strategic depth" on their western frontier, so they could "focus" on the eastern side - i.e., India/Kashmir. In a short, dramatic operation, the Taliban took over Kabul and in short order, the entire country. They simply COULD NOT HAVE pulled this off without official Pakistani support at that time.

The relationship continued for quite a while - and everything seemed to work perfectly for the Pak. establishment. Musharraf, who was heading the Army, got to work on the eastern side - there was a brief war (Kargil) with India over Kashmir. Then Musharraf took over the government in a coup. All this didn't matter to the USA - until 9/11 "happened". Then Musharraf had to officially dump the Taliban (though there was every likelihood that the ties with the Taliban continued at various levels within the Pak. military/intelligence esablishment). Today, the Pak. establishment cannot really stand Karzai and his government, whereas earlier, they had a real cozy relationship with the Taliban.

Meanwhile, the neocons decided to pluck the "low-hanging fruit" (Iraq; the phrase itself, referring to Iraq, is from "It's the Crude, Dude" by Linda McQuaig - an excellent read) first. Though things didn't go according to script in Iraq, it seems to be "in the bag" in some form - as far as oil is concerned. So, now it's back to Afghanistan.

But some lessons did seem to have been learned - that the Pakistani establishment cannot be fully trusted. So, it's now "Af-Pak" time. That's probably also the reason why there are plans for a massive "embassy" complex ($1 billion) in Pakistan, and to set up a massive "consulate" in Peshawar. Unfortunately the 5-star hotel which was supposed to be turned into this "consulate" was blown up by the Taliban. Once again, my suspicion is that the "tip" must have come from some in the Pak. establishment. Of course, it's their country - you can't blame them for trying to sabotage any kind of American intrusion. But in the past they were trying to play cute and have this barbaric outfit on their western front, just because it suited them.

What's my point? The Taliban is different from the earlier mujahideen (some of whom are the warlords - who are actually the rivals/enemies of the Taliban). The other point is that the whole thing is a mess today - only God knows if it's going to get better in the future. Oh, and the next time you read stuff from this chap Margolis (or see him on TV), look for the ever so slight slant towards a Pakistani establishment's viewpoint. It'll be interesting.

"paid by Washington to pretend to support Karzai. Behind the Tajiks and Uzbeks stand their patrons, Russia, India and Iran."

The great majority of USan who support US imperialism put forth imperial competition from other states as their compelling justification. The far-left is the only group in the USA that challenged this dysfunctional rationalization and formulated an effective policy to displace it, which is to simply demand a complete halt to US imperial competition.

The far right will of course shriek when the imperial competitors advance. The response to this from the far left is to demand that the far right overcome its fears and its imperial ambitions and join the far-left in demanding international law and order as the proper means to reign in the imperial ambitions of other states.

The far-left is fully confident that this approach will succeed because the far-left has the support of the great majority of USans while the far-right has the support of only a tiny minority. In other words, the potential strength of the USA in upholding international law and order is far greater than the potential strength of the USA in advancing zero-sum imperial ambitions.

Again, the far-right reveals catastrophically fatal flaws. So it's bizzare that the great majority of USans continue to support the far-right by voting elite candidates in the elections, and consuming the opiates from elite pushers, against their own principles. The chickens have been coming home to roost. When will USans wake up?

Karzai attended a few days rest at the Bush Compound in Kennebunk-Port, Maine, a few years ago, with the top man, George H W Bush. more secrets
The Hartford Advocate ran a story with a sketch outlining
the Pipe-Line that has been kept secret.
The reporter seems to have dissapeared.
How about another story and a re-run of the Pipe Line??

Hallelujah! Well said.

Margolis is belaboring the obvious again, but that is besides the point. Peace in AfPak will bring about poverty in the US.

"No sign of voters on election day in Afghanistan despite official claims",

by Tom Coghlan in Pul-e-Charki, Kabul, Aug 21 2009

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6804537.ece

I got that link at Uruknet and what the article describes about eye-opening, say, electoral fraud could be interpreted as being illustrative of one of the reasons why it should definitely be "quttin' time in Afghanistan", without reneging on the duty of providing reparations and they wouldn't be of small measure. There are absolutely no reasons to not end this war and for the US and NATO to withdraw to locations far from Afghanistan, but this electoral fraud surely could still be interpreted as one example reason.

"The only way to end the epidemic of drug trading is to shut border crossings to Pakistan and the Central Asian states. But those nation's high officials, corrupted by drug money, will resist."
There is amother way.
Legalize and tax/regulate all drugs.
The illegal drug trade creates floods of money that wash over the traffic routes, enriching corrupt officials and the criminal cartels.
The "War on Drugs" has been a covert program for US conquest in Asia and South America, and in dispassionate terms, a total failure in it's stated mission, the cessation of Drug Abuse.
What it has been successful in is arming everyone from the Northern Alliance to the Taliban with much more plentiful and powerful weapons.
It has also been successful in shredding the Constitution and militarizing our streets, up-arming the gangs and the cops. Meanwhile, it costs $30 billion/year to fail this big. That's just the federal outlay for DEA. States are struggling with justice and prison systems that are bulging at the seams with drug offenders to the tune of billions more across the country. Meanwhile an economy of hundreds of billions of dollars flows around this country and the world, untaxed. It's been estimated that a $50 tax on every ounce of pot sold in this country would wipe off one trillion dollars in debt in FIVE years!
But don't hold yer breath.

Eric Margolis should pull his tongue out of Ronald Reagan's rotting arsehole and study the actual history of the period on which he claims to be writing.

Neither the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan nor its Soviet ally ever "peddled drugs" in Afghanistan - in fact, both parties attempted to put a stop to the heroin trade and cripple the power of the warlords who benefit from it.

It was the CIA (funnelling money through Osama bin Laden in Pakistan) that raised the mujahadin to fight the USSR, enlisting these same opium-growing warlords to help.

And whatever other crimes the Taliban have committed (and they are many), they also attempted to put a stop to the opium trade. Yet Bush, and now Obama, *supported* the very same drug-peddling warlords that Orrin Hatch and the CIA did during the Reagan years.

Incidentally, this is a remarkably similar policy to the one the US has been pursuing in Colombia for the last 20 years - let the drug lords keep the US version of "order" in their own countries, while we pretend to be fighting a "war on drugs" in the US Heimat (Homeland).

Sadly, Washington's motivations are not so mysterious, and their cause not so doomed to immediate failure.

Washington does not need a pipeline; it needs to prevent alternate pipelines outside of its control. Washington's largest motive building a pipeline in Afghanistan is almost certainly to prevent uncontrolled passage of energy between Central Asia and China.

Sadly, that means that Washington does not need stability in Central Asia, but the absence of commercially viable opposition.

Sure they would love to see the Afghanis and Pakistanis lie down and submit cheaply. Since they will not, Washington's best-of-all-possible-worlds scenarios all involve neutralizing the productive capacity of the region with ongoing violence.

In presidential language, this can be expressed as ". . . ongoing war on terror."

If one reads "terror" as "resistance," intentions become clear. The US has expected since before 2001 to fight a multi-decade war of occupation in the region.

The opium trade, of course, is just a side-show. Corrupt officials or no, Afghanistan needs that money. Given that US shadow military and CIA ran much of the Colombian coke trade in the '80's (and likely now, especially given the new bases), given the rich trade of drugs through the American military and intelligence communities during the American occupation of Vietnam, one may assume that Afghani poppies fuel whatever the executive does not want to parade before Congress.

The volume of product reportedly moving out of Afghanistan suggests extensive US governmental and para-governmental complicity.

In all of this, possession of and control over resources may prove more durable than manipulations of currency.