It's Obama's war now

[IndianaGreen]

It's Obama's war now

Barack Obama kept a campaign promise--for a second time--with the announcement that he would send an additional 30,000 U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan.

December 2, 2009

U.S. backing for Afghanistan's mujahideen fighters against the ex-USSR's occupation in the 1980s gave rise to the armed networks that eventually produced al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

Now the Obama administration cites the fight against the terrorists of al-Qaeda as the primary justification for sending even more U.S. troops to kill and be killed in Afghanistan. This involves a double conceit--historical amnesia about the bitter fruits of U.S. policy in Afghanistan since the 1970s, and deception about the real reasons for the continued U.S. interests in cultivating a pro-U.S. regime in Afghanistan.

That effort goes back to the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. "The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter," recalled Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was Carter's national security advisor from 1977 to 1981. "We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."

At the time, U.S. foreign policy officials encouraged the growth of the most extreme Islamic elements because they considered them the key to defeating the USSR. After the U.S. achieved its goal, the mujahideen fighters it had backed came to power--and Washington stepped aside and watched, as the country descended into a civil war among the divided factions that had triumphed over the Soviet Union.

When the Taliban emerged as the victor in 1996, the U.S. adopted an attitude of benign indifference. At least the Taliban brought stability and an unrelenting hostility to the opium trade, reasoned U.S. officials.

But September 11 gave the U.S. a new opportunity to project military power into the heart of Central Asia. It quickly installed military bases in countries that had been part of the old USSR, giving the Pentagon the means to pressure China, Russia and neighboring Iran, and provide greater U.S. access to the region's oil and gas resources.

http://socialistworker.org/2009/12/02/its-obamas-war-now