Afghanistan: it's all coming apart ...

[welshTerrier2]

the US built a few permanent bases in Afghanistan ... coincidentally, they just happen to be located right along our shiny new oil pipeline ... if you weren't absolutely certain that we're in Afghanistan to build a democracy there and "drain the swamp" of those terrorists who could be about to attack us at any minute, you might get the wrong idea that all we were really doing over there was providing a private security force to big oil at taxpayer expense ... no one could possibly be that cynical, could they??

the following is an excerpt from a recent article in a Tunisian newspaper ... the author really hits the nail on the head ...

source: http://www.watchingamerica.com/tunishebdo000040.shtml

The horrifying images reaching us from Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan, which demonstrate a singular cruelty, are an unambiguous demonstration of this fiasco, which does not dare say its name. Elated by virtual victories, not to say fantasies, the occupant of the Oval Office stubbornly perpetuates his mistakes. He would only need to confront the situation with a statesman's objectivity to realize that such victories are only a mirage, shining up out of shifting sands.

The New Afghanistan – jewel of Uncle Sam's political crown – whom he believed was pacified and democratized for a long time to come, is again the theater of large-scale confrontations, where America's presence is strongly resisted by the indigenous population and other forces in the country. In a mechanic's jargon, we call that backfiring. Today, over five years after the overthrow of the old regime by U.S. forces, insecurity again rules everywhere in the land of the untamables.

Intimidation, violence, mass arrests, assassinations, urban guerilla warfare, daily attacks against American and Western troops: this is the nightmare image projected to the world by Afghanistan today. Even in the capital city, Kabul, where 2 million people reside, where "law and order" is in the hands of an international police force of 5,000 men and military contingents, insecurity endures and is more and more prevalent. <skip>

Above all, what worries America and its allies the most is the spectacular on-the-ground return fighters of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Men such as their ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former warlord whose guerrillas made the Soviet army bite the dust in the 1980s. Educated by the GI's defeat in Iraq, the three movements (al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hekmatyar) have apparently united their forces. Aided and encouraged by Iran and other Middle East nations, and backed by Islamist parties in Pakistan, their coalition is said to command tens of thousands of troops. Information from the region indicates a massive rallying of the population to the coalition, after the promises that were made to appease them failed to materialize. In a sign of the times, the guerillas now operate openly without hoods for the TV cameras.

By throwing himself into a vast adventure of war from the moment he became president, George Walker Bush hoped to achieve three major goals: to eradicate terrorism, to bring democracy to the Arab-Muslim world and to reduce the price of oil to the lowest possible level by gaining control of the huge oil fields in Mesopotamia. We can now see the results: terrorism has increased in intensity; after the staggering victory of Hamas, the Arab-Muslim world is no way nearer democracy; and oil prices have reached historical highs.

[AnOhioan]

1. You said...the author nailed it. n/t