Back to the Future

Canada promised 300 million dollars to Afghanistan a while ago. Last week they pledged another 227 million to aid in the transformation of the country when the Americans pull out. Of course, the Canadians said it was on the condition that the millions were used in the peaceful transition and not to go to the Taliban.
Whoever made that announcement was not asked by our controlled media what exactly our government would do IF it was seen as money going into the enemy coffers. Does Canada expect they will give it back if it disappears into the corrupt Karzai government? Most countries in the so called coalition have also dedicated millions.

Karzai was in exile once, and when the US decided to go into Afghanistan to 'get bin Laden' they brought back Karzai and installed him as a US friendly leader. It has not worked at all. And many expect Karzai to get the hell out of there with the last troops, probably with his pockets stuffed with Western dollars.


After all these years of seeing brave Canadian, British and US soldiers lose their lives in their prime, fighting a lost cause, nothing has been accomplished. The West is barely able to defend itself in the secure zones of the main town of Kabul! The Taliban rules the rest of the country. When there is a concentrated effort against them, they simply retreat, and go somewhere else for awhile. They are not going away and are simply waiting to get their country back. And most analysts, unless they are spinning the preferred line, agree.

Afghanistan is still the world's supplier of heroin. It is estimated that 90% of the drug on Britain`s streets is Afghan. The poppy crops are larger than ever. Despite ten years of 'occupation' by Western troops. Production of the class-A drug by Afghan farmers rose between 2001 and 2011 from just 185 tons to a staggering 5,800 tons. It increased by 61 per cent last year alone! Fueling speculation that it is the CIA that has become the world's largest drug dealer.

Does anyone believe that the women and girls of Afghanistan will continue their emancipation into a fair and democratic society?  Doing all the things other women in the world are able to do? Will young girls in that country continue an education that so threatens the Taliban that they don't hesitate to blow up the primitive schools (built by Canadians) with all those children still in them? 

And just a day ago, a 22 year old woman was publicly executed on the street for adultery amid cheers from bystanders! Keep in mind that adultery in a Taliban world is just talking to or walking with another man. Even rape is adultery. Sharia law is the rule. The future looks bleak in Afghanistan. Some believe that the only reason the US has troops left there at all is to nurture the drug trade. 
Karzai of course, ordered a manhunt for the killer. As if.

So throwing money into the pit of vipers who will use it to attack anyone within their realm is just wrong. So far there is something like 20 billion dollars dedicated to aid Afghanistan. The question of what exactly is aid, goes unanswered.

The only thing that seems sure is that the future of Afghanistan will again be 100 years back.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/taliban-execute-woman-to-send-afghans-a-grim-warning-of-life-without-the-west-7923566.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102158/Heroin-production-Afghanistan-RISEN-61.html#ixzz208ZKjsZA

Time to leave?

The US plans on withdrawing all troops from Iraq at the end of this year. Leaving the Iraqis to run their own country.
Today there were bombings all over the troubled nation. In a dozen cities using a combination of parked car bombs, roadside bombs and a suicide bombers driving vehicles. It seems there are no secure areas in the whole country. The scope of the violence is only increasing in spite of the Iraqi and US forces. Even within the so-called Green Zone, of Bagdad suicide bombers are able to move about, coordinate their people and kill when they want.

As the American effort winds down the question looms larger than ever; Can Iraq govern itself? It is like the religious groups are just waiting to begin their civil war. Only this time Iraq will not have a strong Saddam Hussein directing an army to control the insurgents. What will happen to all the building and infrastructure implemented by the US? It looks to many as if Iran will play a large role in cooperation with Syria to allow control of this huge and valuable part of the Middle East. Iraq has a huge portion of the known oil reserves.
In this 'George Bush War' as some call it, the question also haunts the West whether leaving Saddam alone and dealing with him would have been the realistic and sane answer. Indeed, the best strategy for peace. Alas, it seems GW Bush was intent on vengeance over sanity.

In Afghanistan, a similar scenario awaits. The Taliban are stronger than ever. Al Qaeda operates freely. The control of the country centers in only a small part of Kabul. Everywhere else is intensely dangerous. The poppy crop is burgeoning and opium production is higher then ever before, some even suspect the CIA of encouraging it. While they use armed spy drones near Pakistan to try to limit the expansion of the insurgents.

President Hamid Karzai, the inserted ruler, has little control, is often refered to as the Mayor of Kabul because his influence is so limited, and is also suspected of actually working against the US. But he fled the country once before and is totally likely to follow the US troops out whenever that happens again. Leaving what?

Of course Afghanistan will descend quickly into tribal conflict with warlords, drug cartels, Taliban and al Qaeda all tearing it apart once more. The country will go back 200 years overnight.

And what will be the legacy of these costly adventures in muslim countries? Perhaps only a newly inflamed hatred of the West, and especially the United States.
It seems that the correct and safe strategy in Afghanistan would be to let them sort it out themselves, no matter how hard it will be to watch from afar, and then deal with the winner, who no doubt will be a strong brutal leader, and who has democracy furthest from his intentions.

In Iraq, the new hope to deflect the efforts of Syria and Iran would seem to be a new Sunni leader, like Saddam, someone who can keep the Shiites at bay and Iraq's two volatile neighbors inside their own borders.

It remains to be seen if the shadowy cadre of insiders in the US government will allow anyone but the Saudis to control the oil flow into the US and anyone but their choice of who supplies the bulk of heroin into America. And it is all above and beyond the input of a US President, that control is already gone.

However it works out, the sad conclusion drawn by many is that these American adventure wars which cost so much in brave young lives may have been all in vain.

It IS time to leave.

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