Russia Today: Ex-ambassador claims UK capitalized on Afghan adventure

The UK's former ambassador to Kabul has slammed the British army commanders in Afghanistan, accusing them of sacrificing an effective war strategy to cost-cutting – a revelation that RT’s military analyst Evgeny Khrushchev says outshines WikiLeaks.

Khrushchev says Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles revealed that the British military used their NATO mission in Afghanistan as a “military safari to enhance and to expand their UK military budget.”

“What the ambassador failed to say is that it was the British military presence on the ground in Helmund province that jump-started and exponentially expanded the opium production from southern Afghanistan to all across the country, under the watchful guidance and protection of the brave British soldiers,” Khruschev adds.

UK diplomat admits: 'We went to war to keep the Army busy'.

Now we have it from a member of the corrupt old British establishment why the British army was so keen on going to Afghanistan. It feared cuts in manpower if it couldn't be used somewhere!!

"Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles said he had been told by the former head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, that if he did not re-deploy battlegroups coming free from Iraq he would lose them in a future defence review."

"In a written memorandum to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, he said the Afghan campaign had seen 'unprecedented' resources diverted to the Army, and that most soldiers appeared to be 'enjoying' it."

Predictably, Dannatt denied the allegation to which Cowper-Coles replied,'He is lying, I am afraid. I can recall him saying it, sitting in his office in the Ministry of Defence.'

Another reason given was that it was a face-saving exercise.

"Sir Sherard said British commanders also saw the mission in Afghanistan as an opportunity to redeem their reputation in the eyes of the Americans after the criticisms of their performance in Basra."

"The war in Afghanistan has given the British Army a raison d'etre it has lacked for many years, and new resources on an unprecedented scale,' he said."

Raison d'etre? Well, if you think about it, if the British army was not in Ulster, Iraq or Afghanistan where else could it go to shoot up the population? The streets of Birmingham, Manchester and London?

Biden: "We are not leaving in 2014"

Recent utterances by US Vice-President, Joe Biden, confirm that US occupation forces in Afghanistan have no intention of leaving in three years' time.

The release of large amounts of classified documents has shown how eager the administration is to tell the American public the exact opposite of what they are telling one another. It seems that the classification system isn’t even necessary for this, however, as Vice President Biden, fresh off of pledging to the American people that the US would be totally out of Afghanistan “come hell or high water, by 2014” has now told a completely different story to Afghan officials.

Biden was in Kabul last Tuesday when he promised Karzai a lasting American commitment to the country well beyond 2014, when NATO forces are scheduled to turn over security of the nation to Afghan forces.

So despite any pretence to their public by US or UK politicians it looks like the Evil Empire sees its current occupation of Afghanistan (as well as Iraq) as part of its long-term geopolitical strategy of global 'full spectrum dominance'.

We have already seen how NATO, the cat's-paw of US neo-colonialist foreign policy, was pulled into helping police a military occupation thousands of miles away from the north Atlantic, causing that organization to morph into a global military force as NATO International. Some of us remember the empty promise made by NATO, during the days of the Cold War, that when the Warsaw Pact dissolved itself so would NATO. Far from dissolving itself NATO has grown into a global military force.

Currently there are some 150,000 NATO troops, predominantly from the United States, and NATO estimates that there are 25,000 Taliban forces in the country, which is the exact same estimate they made a year ago. Despite claims of “progress” in the war, violence is still on the rise across the nation.

And while Asia is still the primary focus of attention the US is increasingly looking to Africa as the next big source of energy supplies necessary for its interests. More of that anon...

Taliban can fight Forever

Continuing the TRNN discussion between Paul Jay and Rahimullah Yusufzai why the Afghan 'war' is unwinnable ... and an occupation equally fraught with disaster.

Afghanistan: from Occupation to Permanent Occupation?

One has to ask why the US keeps shifting its goal-posts for troops withdrawal. While the spin put out to the public is that US/NATO still hopes to win this so-called war on terror the reality is that the presence of US/NATO in Afghanistan has geopolitical motives and, as such, is an Occupation and not a war. The fake War on Terror, launched after the 911 conspiracy, was simply the ideological rationale fabricated by the warmongers to hide their naked aggression in what is nothing more than 21st Century colonialism or Full Spectrum Dominance.

The US has over 700 military bases across the world.

It was never a question of whether the Evil Empire would 'win' in Afghanistan but simply one of how it could enter that country and establish its bases for a permanent military presence. The fake war on the Al Qaeda bogeyman gave them that excuse. And unless US/NATO is hammered into submission by the Afghan resistance we can expect to see them in that country for a very long time.

Meantime, our ruling elite will continue to shed crocodile tears over the blood sacrifice of countless innocent Afghan lives and those of our young men and women as they become cannon-fodder in the interests of the US Military-Industrial-Political Complex and business corporations. The evil pretence will go on and on and on...

Afghanistan's Untold Story


Blogger Michael Caddell on Radio Free Kansas interviews Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, co-authors of Invisible History, Afghanistan's Untold Story.

Those who want to understand the history of Afghanistan up to and including its occupation by US/NATO forces need to read this book and listen to this interview.

"Invisible History presents a fresh, comprehensive analysis of Afghanistan's political history that begins at the roots of tribal leadership and ultimately emphasizes our current political moment and the impact of ongoing US military intervention. Fitzgerald and Gould tell the real story of how the US came to be in Afghanistan..."

PDF Excerpts

INVISIBLE HISTORY BLOG

The Evil Empire, Drugs and Racism

The Anglo-American Empire's 'War on Drugs' is as credible as its 'War on Terror'. Both are a fake of the kind George Orwell warned us about. Once the pretend 'Red Menace' vanished into thin air with the demise of the Soviet Union, the Anglo-American axis was left with no bogeyman with which to frighten and bully its populations into doing as they were told, never mind a huge loss of their civil liberties on both sides of the Atlantic.

The carefully-fabricated 911 was the moment when that spurious 'War on Terror' was launched, the moment when both Bush II and his English sidekick, Tony Blair, steered their ships-of-state into the depths of totalitarianism, war criminality and government-sponsored evil. Just as the 'War on Terror' permitted the Anglo-American axis to perpetrate evil in the form of genocide, the 'War on Drugs' permits its secret services to profit hugely from the black market on drugs. Now we hear that "85% of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft." Why doesn't this surprise us?

After what the Axis has been responsible for in its respective pasts (including the British-sponsored opium trade in the nineteenth century) it should not surprise us that the behaviour of our rulers has really not changed. All that has changed is the spin and packaging required to convince us proles that we really do live in democracies where governments operate in our interests rather than their own.

The 'War on Terror' was quite cleverly devised, where the enemy was identified as both non-white and an historic enemy of the Christian west, Islam. So not only could the proles identify an historic non-white enemy but exercise a deep-seated racism that anyone who is not white is, by definition, not only inferior but shifty and dangerous. The whole thing was devised on shock and awe with the collapse of the Twin Towers and the emotional hype of Islamic 'terrorism' that followed and which continues to this day.

This writer has consistently argued that the much-vaunted 'special relationship' between Britain and the US is only a special relationship insofar as the interests of Anglo-American capital are concerned and where British governments continue to hang onto Uncle Sam's coat-tails for the military power it allows them to associate with.

Without it, Britain would stand exposed as a post-imperial nation, disunited and in demise. And the price required of us all by our ruling elite to continue the pretence is paid daily in the blood of our young men and women who are sent out to die fighting the Axis' military adventures and others who pay the price in becoming victims of the Empire's drugs black-market.

“War on terror” as a cover for US terrorism

It's ironic. It's hypocritical. It's a fraud. The "war on terrorism" branded by America is a propaganda cover for the worst terrorists in the world.

What was the invasion and occupation of Iraq but an act of terrorism? Everyone now knows that the faux war was born of a fraud ... If America wants to stop terrorism, it needs to stop terrorizing the world.

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Rethink Afghanistan

President Obama has decided to send more than 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, at a cost of more than $100 billion/year. But America cannot afford a war that does not make us safer, and Congress has the power to stop the escalation. Vote NO on any spending bill that would send more troops to Afghanistan.

SIGN THE PETITION TO CONGRESS

Obama's peace prize is a joke

Barack Obama accepts the Nobel Peace Prize as he plans to expand the war in Afghanistan and continue many of George W. Bush's policies. Radio host Alex Jones says that Obama's actions over the past 11 months have shown that he is a complete fraud and the Nobel committee has made a joke of the peace prize by giving it to Obama.

Obama Far Outdoes Bush in Escalating War -- The Numbers Will Surprise You

As Obama announced plans for escalating the war effort, it has become clear that the Obama Illusion has taken yet another horrifying turn. Before explaining how the Af-Pak surge is a direct attack on the US public, let’s peer through the illusion and look at the reality of the situation.

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The United States, its abandonment of law and worse

We have entered a period of government lawlessness, led by the United States, with inevitably serious consequences for everyone. Nuclear war is a possibility. With climate change threatening the planet itself, we do not need this as well. Europe must cease supporting this berserk state. It needs to recover the vision, the spirit of goodwill and humanity that laid the foundations of the European Union. In following America, Europe has lost its way.

American behaviour extends beyond inhumanity into viciousness. The character of Barack Obama, which in dealing with non-Americans is no different from that of George W. Bush, also shows the American characteristic of cruelty without limits.

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Brown can't even stick to his own nonsense on Afghanistan

Bit by bit, as happened with Iraq, the reasons for staying in Afghanistan slide into gibberish. So Gordon Brown's reasons for the war seem to change every week.

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Corrupt Bloggers Wanted By US Military To Propagandise for Karimov Dictatorship

Gulnara Karimova is offering all expenses paid luxury junkets to Tashkent, plus a thousand dollars cash in the pocket, to US bloggers willing to blog about Uzbekistan without mentioning torture, massacre, dictatorship, slavery or environmental destruction.

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Afghan Peace Activist Malalai Joya Speaks on Crisis and Resistance

Malalai Joya is one of Afghanistan’s leading democracy activists. In 2005, she became the youngest person ever elected to the Afghan parliament. She was suspended in 2007 for her denunciation of warlords and their cronies in government. She has just written her memoir, “A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Woman Who Dared to Speak Out.”

She spoke in New York at the Northeast Socialist Conference on October 23, 2009.

Shootings: A Symptom of how Afghanis view the Occupation

Many of us have probably viewed long coverage of the funerals of soldiers recently. The most recent deaths involved 5 British soldiers shot dead by an Afghan who they were apparently training as a Policeman.

With all the media pontificating about 'vetting procedures' and 'security', is there any analysis of the likely fact that this incident is a symptom of how the Afghans in general feel about our presence there? The BBC's report described the alleged attacker - an Afghan Policeman the British Forces were training, as an individual who had gone "Rogue". An odd description to make of an individual in his own country being trained as a collaborator of the occupation forces.

One thing must be made clear: occupying armies do not have any rights. They do not have the right to be safe from being killed by someone who they thought they had turned into a pet policeman to serve the interests of a US puppet government and they do not have the right to be called 'heroes'. They are paid enforcers for Imperialistic Aggression - there is nothing 'heroic' about our presence in Afghanistan.

The government and media would have us believe that the war we have started in this enormously ethnically diverse region is a black and white issue of good guys and bad guys: US/Nato Forces good, Taliban bad, Hamid Karzai and his armed forces & Police good, "al Qaeda" insurgents bad. The fact that we are propping up a puppet regime of some of the worst drug dealers and warlords in the region - every bit as unpleasant as the numerous factions of the Taliban - seems to be completely absent from media analysis, as is the salient fact that such a 'government' cannot possibly be described honestly as a 'democracy' - 'Dictatorship Lite" would be more appropriate.

The deaths themselves, and the subsequent funerals, all become the opposite of what they should be: a distorted, drawn out exercise in propaganda to further the war resulting in even more tragic deaths based on nothing but lies, instead of a motive for the media to honestly analyse this conflict and seek a withdrawal. The jingoistic baying for blood in the tabloid press will even further divide the population at home.

The idea that murdering Afghan tribesman and bombing villages, while trampling all over the rights and dignity of the indigenous people will reduce the threat of terrorism in the UK is absurd. The opposite is true. The longer we stay, the more the Afghan people will turn against us in body as well as in mind. It is no argument to say 'we need to stay to get the job done'. There is no 'job' - only the Hegemonic ambitions of the United States who seeks to control Central Asia and its important oil and gas reserves to fuel its continuing world power status and deny Russia and China those same resources.

Today, reports were coming in of the shooting dead of US soldiers in an army base on home soil by one Major Nidal Malik Hasan. What little has emerged indicates that this Muslim American of Middle Eastern origin, was suffering from racial abuse. Is it any wonder that such things happen when our soldiers are encouraged to dehumanise and kill muslims abroad? Is it any wonder that the victim of this abuse begins to see his 'fellow' soldiers as the enemy?

OrwellianUK

CIA: Afghanistan is Unwinnable

Six years ago, Michael Meacher MP, had his article, 'This War on Terrorism is Bogus', published in The Guardian. In it he argued convincingly that both military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were made for geopolitical reasons ... Gas and Oil: "The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies."

Arguing that this was what the fake War on Terror was all about he ended by questioning the wisdom of British foreign policy to pursue the myth:

"The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course."

In the following video several CIA experts question the ability of the US government to obtain any security through its present military occupation and intervention in Afghanistan.

Link

Harrowing report of massacre in Afghanistan by US bombers


On May 4 the US bombed the village of Granai in Farah province, Afghanistan, killing 140 civilians according to the Afghanistan government, including approximately 90 children.

It was the single largest loss of life caused by US/NATO forces since the 2001 invasion.

President Hamid Karzai denounced the air strikes as "unjustifiable and unacceptable," hundreds of people demonstrated in Kabul and in Farah city there was a riot outside the governor's office and traders closed their shops in protest.

The US military initially claimed the civilians had been killed by grenades hurled by Taliban fighters. These assertions were shown to be false by eyewitness accounts and were quickly withdrawn.

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Britain’s propaganda offensive on behalf of Afghan war

The speech by Foreign Secretary David Miliband at the NATO headquarters in Brussels makes clear that Britain intends to deepen its collaboration with the United States in Afghanistan.

There is growing public concern that Afghanistan is fast becoming a worse and more intractable debacle than Iraq, fueling opposition to the war and demands for an exit strategy. Despite Miliband’s statement that he accepted the public “wanted to know whether and how we can succeed” in Afghanistan, he demonstrated the government’s willingness to defy anti-war sentiment and press ahead with the neo-colonial war.

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How many more will die in vain before we withdraw?

By Seumas Milne, Guardian columnist speaking at a packed meeting on 13 July 2009, organised by Stop the War Coalition and Media Workers Against War, and titled The Good War? Afghanistan in the Media.



"The only way to end the war is the withdrawal of foreign troops as part of a wider political settlement negotiated with all significant Afghan forces on the ground, including the Taliban – and guaranteed by regional powers and neighbouring states: Pakistan, Iran, China and India.

Such a process is bound to take place eventually – whether or not the British government has the guts to follow the example of Canada and The Netherlands and announce plans to pull out earlier.

But the assumption must be that a strategic US decision to accept the inevitable, turn its back on the wreckage of the war on terror and withdraw from Afghanistan is going to be a slow and painful process. In the meantime, many more people – mostly Afghans – will shamefully die in vain."

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