Came across a somewhat-dated but nevertheless kickass speech by Tariq Ali today while drinking after class. Since I didn't know either, I quote from Democracy Now, which calls him a "British-Pakistani writer, journalist, and historian, Tariq Ali spoke at Hampshire College on November 17 for the the Twelfth Annual Eqbal Ahmad Lecture. The annual Eqbal Ahmad Lecture honors the teaching, scholarship, and activism of the late Eqbal Ahmad, who was a longtime Hampshire College professor."
I cast this video into the web because Ali has the wonderful habit of saying things like this:
I'd say the big problem in Pakistan is the grinding poverty; is the lack of education; is the lack of basic health facilities; is the fact that many many villages still do not have electricity. Running water is in short supply. And on top of this you have a corrupt political and military elite—they're equally corrupt—who sit on the country, live in a bubble, send their children to the top schools, send them abroad, and use the English language to maintain their monopoly.
Our Glorious Leader destroyed the last shred of his already-dubious credibility last night, distorting history for his own already-decided purposes and failing utterly to assuage anyone of anything besides our own, most-cynical suspicions. At best, by dragging out his ninety-day “policy review” before more-or-less submitting to that stuck-up little poindexter of a general, Stanley McChrystal, President Obama has supplied his political opponents with distracting, rhetorical ammunition, endangering (perhaps purposefully) his halfhearted attempts to pass health care “reform” and proving, for all and sundry, that no matter how much he might him and haw, in the end Obama will bend to the prevailing winds of Washington.
Just like all the rest of 'em.
How long, oh Lord, how long? Forever, if at all possible. As the president told last night's class of West Point Cadets:
“If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow. So no, I do not make that decision lightly. I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Notice that slick insert at the end. “Afghanistan and Pakistan.” And presumably any other 'stan that might harbor “terrorists” or “Taliban insurgents” or whomever the Bad Guys will be next. If history holds, once the Taliban are “defeated” (presuming they'll ever be), the U.S. will in all likelihood turn on the corrupt, slave-driving warlords who genuinely rule Afghanistan outside of “President” Karzai's Kabul Bubble, our current “allies” in our lop-sided, ghost war against “terrorism.”
It didn't take long for President Obama to lose me. After about two minutes of rhetorically flogging the memory of 9/11 (the defining knee-jerk reaction of every American politician in this blighted age) he reminds the cadets that Congress and NATO give him the cover to continue Bush's First War. “Under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy, and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, we sent our troops into Afghanistan.”
Bullshit. If the Bush years have taught us anything, it's that the United States government requires neither domestic unity or international legitimacy. For anything. We do what we want, when we want, at times with all the subtitle tact of the Borg: We say “Comply!” and the nations of the world would do well not to hesitate, not even to ask, “How quickly?”
The fact remains, Afghanistan's Taliban-led government (which was as diverse and factious a group of power-mad assholes as you're like to find) offered to give us bin Laden repeatedly, before and after 9/11, if only we'd offered them some way to save face. The word in Pashtu is aabroh. We know the concept as "an out." Assume you've got a guest in your house. Your guest contracts nineteen guys from the surrounding neighborhood to go over to someone else's neighborhood and fuck some shit up. Representatives from that neighborhood demand you hand your guest over, but how can you do that in public and still save face with the rest of your neighbors?
As Bush's cadre of power-mad assholes rushed through the halls of NATO and the UN, State Department officials and (one can only assume) CIA back-channelers scrambled to arrange some kind of deal with the Taliban, presumably to head off the war. “We were not serious about the whole thing, not only [the Bush] administration but the previous one," Richard Hrair Dekmejian, an expert in Islamic fundamentalism and author at the University of Southern California, told the Washington Post in 2001. “We did not engage these people creatively. There were missed opportunities.”
President Obama conveniently forgot to mention that the sticking point, at the time, seems to have been the State Department's insistence that bin Laden face trail in U.S. courts, a novel idea that went by the wayside pretty damn fast once the bombs began to fall and the CIA Black Sites began to rise up. The seriousness of either side in these negotiations remains an open question, as it probably will far into the future. But there's a wonderful quote in that same WAPO article, straight from the first “war president's” mouth:
“We know he's guilty. Turn him over,” Bush said.
Let's stop right there a moment and invert things. Imagine if some crazed, fundamentalist Christian-American, or some radically Ayn Randian, freemarketeer decided to bomb...oh, I don't know...lets just say the Blue Mosque. Imagine if the Taliban demanded then-Glorious Leader George Bush hand over said “terrorist,” that he might face the “justice” of Afghanistan's Sharia-soaked court system. Now imagine if Mullah Omar (remember him?) went on television and answered our requests that Afghanistan provide evidence linking our hypothetical Randian to his alleged crime by declaring, “We know he's guilty. Turn him over.”
And what, gentle citizen of the Empire, do you think the United States would say to that?
Apparently, sometime in February, 1999
...Taliban security forces took bin Laden from his Kandahar compound and spirited him away to a remote site, according to media reports at the time. They also seized his satellite communications and barred him from contact with the media.
Publicly, the Taliban said they no longer knew where he was. [Former Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. ] Inderfurth now says the United States interpreted such statements “as an effort to evade their responsibility to turn him over.”
Others, however, say the cryptic statements should have been interpreted differently. [Former CIA station chief and footsoldier in the 1980's jihad against the Soviets, Milton] Bearden, for example, believes the Taliban more than once set up bin Laden for capture by the United States and communicated its intent by saying he was lost.
“Every time the Afghans said, 'He's lost again,' they are saying something. They are saying, 'He's no longer under our protection,'” Bearden said. “They thought they were signaling us subtly, and we don't do signals.”
We certainly don't do “subtle”.
The Thirty thousand more troops Our current-Glorious Leader plans to pour down the dank, awful hole that Afghanistan has become (on top of the forty thousand he committed back in March) are not a subtle tool. Neither is General McChrystal's plan to bribe the country's various factions into not shooting each other (as we've done in Iraq). It might work—so long as we continue paying the bribes. But what happens when we stop paying the bribes? Iran, 1979, anyone? In the meantime, this policy will leave us with a cadre of unreliable, insecure, drug-dealing warloards for allies.
And all of the above reminiscences might be immaterial anyway. Former Pakistani Foreign Minister Niaz Naik told the BBC in October, 2001, that “senior American officials” told him “in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.”
Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.
He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.
And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban [sic].
We have no real reason to believe Mr. Naik out of hand. After all, he's only accusing the Bush Administration of having a secret plan to start a war everyone now claims was foisted upon us by September Eleventh. Even Our (current) Glorious Leader repeated this last night.
“Now let me be clear:” President Obama said. “None of this will be easy.” Thus, on top of his Nobel Prize, Our Glorious Leader earns 2009's No Shit Awards Grand Prize for Speechifying. “The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will be an enduring test of our free society and our leadership in the world.”
I agree with that last sentence completely. These are dangerous times, and they will expose the true, beating, bleeding heart of this country. There's no need to assume we'll find anything as prosaic as the president describes in there, once we crack the country's ribs. Examining such a rarefied organ will require time we may no longer have. Iran may get the bomb. Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel already have it, and God knows who else is keeping it on the down low. Antarctica is melting, and nobody cares because no one can find out how to make money from the problem. Unemployment hits 10 percent and what new jobs program does our Commander in Chief roll out?
Say, do you like long hours, low pay, and freezing your ass off in the mountains of a country you couldn't even pronounce eight years ago? Discover a strength like no other, and a country so weird Alexander the Great took one look at it and said, “Fuck...”
“After 18 months,” President Obama continued, “our troops will begin to come home.” Ri-ight. “These are the resources that we need to cease the initiative while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.” Until, that is, our publicly announced troop increase causes the ranks of foreign fighters crawling across the 'stans to swell like a cake-addict's boobs. Iraq, 2004? Anybody? How about Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Soviets tried sinking a hundred thousand plus soldiers into that deeper well?
None of this enters into the calculation of our Empire's ruling class. We've known since October that leaving was “not an option” in Afghanistan. We had that right from the horse's mouth...and Robert Gibbs is no broke-down old mule: he's the Administration's designated show pony. As with health care, the real solution to the “problem” of Afghanistan was removed from consideration before we even began. This allowed President Obama to invite a bunch of people over to the White House and emerge three months later to claim what he considers his great “victory”: a “bipartisan” consensus.
The fact is, such a thing exists. In our president's mind, we can never really leave Afghanistan. As soon as we do, what stops the Russians or the Chinese from rolling right over all those poor little Pishtu tribes people? Genghis Kahn tried that too and it worked out great, let me tell ya. I say God's speed to the Russians and the Chinese if they want to waste blood and treasure in those mountains.
But nobody asked me. My opinion is not considered in the debate.
“I am painfully clear that this is politically unpopular,” Obama told a small group of columnists [including the assume-liberal David Ignatius, from who's column this comes] “Not only is this not popular, but it's least popular in my own party. But that's not how I make decisions.”
So congratulations, Teabaggers, for being right for all the wrong reasons. Our Glorious Leader has just admitted, in public, that we do not live in a democracy. Go forth a shop, plebs. Christmas is here. Rose Bowl's coming up, with the Super Bowl afterward, and really, and who really cares about Afghanistan anyway? As Denis Maloney, one of six pro-war protestors who gathered across the street from the two hundred fifty-strong anti-war candle light vigil, said,
“If you consider the fact that that area of the world produced people who killed 3,000 Americans in America, maybe it's about time we went over there and stomped them out.”
