Who we are backing; who our soldiers die to protect
Moreover, on the same day of Karzai's call to Clinton, he also held a private meeting with dozens of Afghan lawmakers where he "lashed out at his Western backers for the second time in three days, accusing the U.S. of interfering in Afghan affairs and saying the Taliban insurgency would become a legitimate resistance movement if the meddling doesn't stop," the Wall Street Journal reported.
During the speech, Karzai lashed out against the U.N. and the international community, accusing them of perpetrating a "vast fraud" in last year's presidential election as part of a conspiracy to deny him re-election or tarnish his victory. [AP]
Mr. Karzai, whose government is propped up by billions of dollars in Western aid and nearly 100,000 American troops fighting a deadly war against the Taliban, made the comments during a private meeting with about 60 or 70 Afghan lawmakers Saturday.Karzai's earlier remarks, during a speech on Thursday, heightened an ongoing political power struggle between Karzai and an increasingly independent-minded parliament, which has refused to confirm nearly half of his Cabinet nominees because they were allegedly incompetent, corrupt or too weak to resist pressure from powerful people.
At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the other side -- that is, the Taliban -- if the parliament did not back his controversial attempt to take control of the country's electoral watchdog from the United Nations, according to three of those who attended the meeting, including a close ally of the president.
During the speech, Karzai lashed out against the U.N. and the international community, accusing them of perpetrating a "vast fraud" in last year's presidential election as part of a conspiracy to deny him re-election or tarnish his victory. [AP]
posted by ricksahm @ 11:25 AM
2 Comments:
At 12:02 PM,
Anonymous said…
The American military has reached its current level -- greater than the combined military capability of all other nations combined -- solely for the purpose of ensuring that its favoured suppliers will continue to be highly profitable.
American military presence rarely, if ever, benefits the citizens of countries where it is deployed; most often, it kills and maims large numbers of them, while at the same time laying waste to critical infrastructure. Nor do foreign military ventures serve American "strategic interests"; most often, they promote anger and hatred of the United States, leading to increased levels of terrorism in many places.
And of course, the obscene amounts of taxpayers' money spent on American Military Power puts a huge strain on federal budgets, thereby simultaneously (a) ensuring that there will not be enough money to pay for programs aimed at eradicating poverty, promoting literacy, emancipating and uplifting women, controlling infectious diseases, combatting drug abuse, etc. etc.; and (b) guaranteeing that at some future point there will be a rampant and uncontrollable inflationary spiral that will wipe out the savings of literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
And yet -- there is virtually nobody in either major party who is willing to stake out a political position that military spending needs to be vastly curtailed, and that foreign military interventions need to end save in the extreme case of imminent threat of invasion of American soil.
Instead, the post-Vietnam derision of those who serve in the military [a very unfair thing for them, of course] has swung all the way to the other extreme: a culture of glorification of the military that utterly blurs the distinction between the courage and dedication of individual service men and women, and the corrupt and self-serving ends to which they are used by the Powerful. Thus it becomes political suicide, no matter what your party affiliation may be, to level any criticism whatsoever at the demonstrably, abysmally failed American Military Policy.
Where will it all end? And how soon?
At 3:38 PM,
ricksahm said…
"Thus it becomes political suicide, no matter what your party affiliation may be, to level any criticism whatsoever at the demonstrably, abysmally failed American Military Policy."
You said it. Thank you for writing.
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