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Perhaps? Perhaps? Let's see. The US funds this nightmare, through the Saudis and Pakistan, to bleed the USSR and NOW "there may be grave geopolitical tension" when the US pulls out? The grave political tension is the result of the US being involved in the first place. Perhaps, just perhaps, the US needs to maintain grave political tensions and armed conflict. Perhaps the US wants to stay there not to defeat the Taliban or Al Qaeda but for its own reasons, like maintaining a threat against Russia from the southeast to go along with the threat it maintains from the west. There's no "informed" commentary needed. Are the Taliban the NLF? Absolutely not, but Afghanistan is Vietnam, and the US will destroy anything and everything that moves in country unless it is forced out. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rakesh Bhandari" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2009 10:17 PM Subject: [Marxism] Afghanistan > ====================================================================== > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > ====================================================================== > > > It may well be true that the US presence in Afghanistan helps the > recruitment for the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan (the support by > the Pakistani army to the US efforts in Afghanistan may be backfiring as > well in that the hands of the fundamentalists are strengthened). It may > also be true that the tens of billions of dollars spent on the occupation > would be be better spent on development projects in the north of > Afghanistan, an agonizingly poor country after all. And surely the US > military strategy has been biased towards the security of its own troops > rather than the safety of innocent civilians (the majority of whom seemed > to have supported even Bush's overthrow of the Taliban), and that has > undermined the humanitarian nature of the intervention. > > Yet what happens when the US pulls out (don't forget that Steve Coll and > Ahmed Rashid argue that the strict deadline will just encourage the > Taliban to lay low and recommence its offensive)? It's not clear to me > that the Taliban will not become implicated with foreign powers, take > power and create chaos and catastrophe in both Afghanistan and the already > increasingly Saudi-influenced Pakistan, resulting in a grave geopolitical > tension. The least of the problems may be the terrorist attacks against > the West staged from the region. Should NATO look away? Perhaps. But I > would surely like to see much more informed commentary. Even Juan Cole has > not been that interesting. > > Rakesh > > ps. I am not going to revisit the question of the NATO bombardment of > Serbia; Chomsky may well be right that negotiations were short circuited > but I don't make much of Tariq Ali's counterfactual that this NATO > 'humanitarian' intervention was a necessary dress rehearsal for the > occupation of Iraq. Of course Russia got the last laugh as the world > scoffed at the Bush's criticism of its actions in Georgia as illegal. > > > > > > ________________________________________________ > Send list submissions to: [email protected] > Set your options at: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sartesian%40earthlink.net ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
