topic by
real watcher
7/10/2002 (14:49) |
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'A tale told by an idiot'
Printed on Monday, July 08, 2002 @ 00:38:32 EDT
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=465
By John Chuckman
YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)
(YellowTimes.org) ˆ It's almost as though American policy in
Afghanistan had followed the script for a Hollywood summer
blockbuster. A potboiler-epic aimed at pleasing affluent, pimply
teenage boys, dreaming dreams of power and adventure, its script
mixing generous helpings of Cecil B. deMille, Steven Spielberg,
explosive special effects, bad dialogue, and a lack of intelligible
plot.
That may not be an exaggeration. Only reflect that America's second-
last, dangerously hare-brained president, Mr. Nixon, used to watch the
movie Patton over and over again, hoping to derive inspiration in
dealing with the catastrophe he himself created.
Unfortunately, this isn't a movie. Real lives and real villages are
being torn apart by a slightly-earlier generation of pimply American
boys at the controls of some of the world's most hellish weapons. Boys
like that eager fellow, reportedly nick-named 'Psycho' by some of his
comrades, who ignored procedures to get 'a kill,' his target being a
group of Canadian soldiers carrying out known exercises.
(Canadians, by the way, will be grateful that the county's modest
contribution to insanity in the mountains will end soon. America brow-
beat its allies into playing supporting roles, hoping to give
vengeance the color of a genuine international cause. It was easier
this time than it was for Vietnam owing to people's initial,
instinctive sympathy for those killed September 11. But one remembers
the story of how Lyndon Johnson grabbed Prime Minister Lester Pearson,
winner of the Nobel peace prize, by the lapels and tried intimidating
him into contributing troops for Vietnam. Thank God, Pearson stood his
ground against the Texas thug.)
In December of last year, U.S. planes mistakenly attacked a convoy of
tribal elders, killing 65 people. There were reports that this ugly
incident had an even uglier origin: Americans had been deliberately
tricked by one of the cut-throat factions now ruling the country into
eliminating some political opposition. Since then there have been many
lethal attacks on the wrong people.
Now we have the report of a wedding party in southern Afghanistan
blown to bits. The government in Afghanistan reports 40 killed,
including the bride and groom, and 100 injured, by some trigger-happy
fly-boy undoubtedly trying to clutch Psycho's fallen laurels.
(Actually this was the second wedding party attacked, the first was in
eastern Afghanistan in May with 10 killed.)
I suppose we can be grateful the Pentagon much earlier gave up its
disgusting stunt of dropping food-ration packets along with 500-pond
bombs. Imagine bags of freeze-dried rice dropped on the bodies of the
bride and groom?
Does anyone understand why American planes are still bombing
Afghanistan? Oh, yes, I forgot, to destroy any elusive al Qaeda who
might still be clambering the rocky slopes in sandals threatening New
York. And it makes such good sense to do this with bombs from the air
where you cannot distinguish a cleric from a warrior, a rifle from a
hoe. Perhaps al Qaeda members are supposed to wear transponders for
easy identification?
Recent stories from Britain reveal the utter contempt in which
American tactics are held by senior officials there - information
suppressed until now by the heavy hand of Prime Minister Tony Blair
who seems keen to play dwarf armor-polisher to America's idiot-prince.
The tactics in question include American special forces in Pakistan
and border areas of Afghanistan conducting searches for hidden al
Qaeda by breaking into village homes with weapons blazing away,
completely oblivious to the fact that this is not a part of the world
where arrogant, insulting behavior is easily forgiven.
Can you imagine what a hellish storm of vengeance and terror Northern
Ireland would have reaped had British troops behaved that way? In more
than a quarter century of civil unrest in Northern Ireland, bad as it
was, fewer people died on all sides than the number in Afghanistan
killed by Americans during just a few months. You might think
Americans had some valuable lessons to learn from Britain's long,
demanding experience in Northern Ireland, but the kind of Americans in
Bush's crowd already know everything, possessing wisdom magically
sprung from the head of Zeus.
Not that you'd know it from America's limp press, but it does appear
that the country's special forces, whose every member has more
expensive outfits and fancy equipment than the deluxe jet-set,
celebrity edition of Barbie comes with, have pretty much come up short
in every significant operation so far.
Except, of course, for the massacre at Mazar-I-Sharif. Scots filmmaker
Jamie Doran has shown parliamentarians in Europe the first portion of
his documentary on the disappearance of about three thousand prisoners
after their surrender. The film has terrible things to say of American
participation. Hundreds of Taliban prisoners were driven in vans out
into the desert by order of a local American commander, and those not
suffocated by the heat were shot dead by General Dostum's troops while
Americans casually watched.
A secret report released to the New York Times indicates that even
American authorities know what a failure the war has been. It has only
succeeded in dispersing anti-American terrorists throughout the Muslim
world.
The actual membership of al Qaeda was always very small, far smaller
than any Chicago street gang, and never bore any relation to the
addled claims of Mr. Bush. They might have been dealt with handily by
a set intelligent policies and diplomatic moves rather than a mindless
crusade costing tens of billions of dollars.
The recent, much-publicized loya jirga, a grand council of delegates
from all over Afghanistan, did little more than set up a temporary
figurehead government, a kind of national fig leaf for the nakedness
of the war lords who now rule most of the country. Astute readers will
rightly ask how delegates could possibly have been chosen in any
representative fashion from regions governed by warlords, places that
are no-go areas for foreign troops.
At least now the way is clear for America, in its usual end-of-bombing
fashion, to hightail it out after a decent interval. Ari Fleischer
will blubber claims of having brought democracy to Afghanistan. Who
knows, maybe Billy Graham will join in with prayers of thanksgiving
before a joint session of Congress for all the swarthy heathens
killed? Only the keen political sensibilities of George Orwell could
have fully appreciated America's second wave of destruction in
Afghanistan being celebrated as an achievement.
All these developments - Afghanistan left in turmoil, warlords in
control, stupid tactics creating many more angry young men seeking
vengeance, the dispersal of anti-American leaders - together with the
ugly new line on the Palestinians that the weak Mr. Bush has been
cornered into accepting, promise little peace or security for anyone.
It's almost as though Ariel Sharon had been named special advisor to
the president, and a stunning appointment it is: a man who has spent
his life killing innocent people as an envoy for peace.
I reflect back to the Pentagon general who announced not so very long
ago, as the forces of the Northern Alliance bravely swept across a
landscape first cleared by American carpet-bombing, that this promised
to be one of the most effective military actions in history. Here was
a case of 'pride goeth before the fall' if ever there was.
Of course, you must take account of the fact that he spoke from the
perspective of half a century of costly, unprincipled, and often inept
American colonial military action - the murderous shame of Vietnam,
the pointless destruction in Cambodia, the almost-laughable theater of
the absurd in Somalia, the marines providing live targets in Lebanon,
the Army's School of the Americas training the creatures of dictators
in the fine points of torture and killing, the destruction of an
Iranian civilian airliner with three-hundred souls aboard (an act
which also deserves rarely-given credit for the reprisal destruction
of the Pan-Am Lockerbie flight), the sinking of a Japanese civilian
ship, the vicious fly-boy pranks that hurled an Italian gondola full
of people down a mountain, the numerous rapes and assaults by troops
in Okinawa.
The general's breast swelled with the proud reflection that Americans
had been so stunningly-successful where the Russians had miserably
failed. Of course, he ignored the fact that Russia attempted something
quite different to what America has attempted. He also ignored the
fact that the Russians worked against a vast secret war waged by the
CIA, whose activities in Afghanistan are what made September 11
possible. But most of all, he arrogantly ignored the fact that the
play in Afghanistan has not gone beyond the first scene of the first
act.
A final note of irony: How sound is government now in Afghanistan? In
early July, just after this piece was written, the Minister for Public
Works, Abdul Qadir, who also served as one of three vice-presidents,
was assassinated in Kabul. Last April in Jalalabad, there was an
attempt to assassinate Mohammad Fahim, Interim Defense Minister. In
February, Abdul Rahman, Civil Aviation Minister, was assassinated at
the airport in Kabul, other ministers being implicated in his death.
Readers should note that Kabul, where two of these assassinations
occurred, is the most secure part of the country.
Despite their over-advertised nastiness, this is exactly the anarchy
the Taliban ended before American bombing ended the Taliban. So far as
we know, the Taliban had nothing to do with September 11, and they
were willing to extradite Osama bin Laden and others upon America's
producing evidence of their guilt, a universally-accepted practice in
legal extradition. But this was not acceptable to Mr. Bush, and, apart
from its many other costly failures, his crusade in Afghanistan has
not produced bin Laden.
[John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil
company. He has many interests and is a lifelong student of history.
He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason,
and concern for human decency. He is a member of no political party
and takes exception to what has been called America's 'culture of
complaint' with its habit of reducing every important issue to an
unproductive argument between two simplistically defined groups. John
regards it as a badge of honor to have left the United States as a
poor young man from the South Side of Chicago when the country
embarked on the pointless murder of something like three million
Vietnamese in their own land because they happened to embrace the
wrong economic loyalties. He lives in Canada, which he is fond of
c
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