JJ wonders why we're in Afghanistan
The material below is from MoonofAlabama.org. It's very interesting analysis, but it leaves me more confused than ever about the fundamental question: What is the American interest in Afghanistan? I had thought it was to pacify the country for the proposed Unocal pipeline. But I see no rational connection between war and getting that result. On the contrary, I'd expect war to ensure the unattainability of such a goal, by getting the Afghans more antagonized and sabotage-minded with each passing day.
Are we really there, then, in search of one man, Osama bin Laden? Or to suppress the Taliban or al Qaeda? I suspect bin Laden is long since dead, and I'd think war would be the perfect recruiting tool for such entities. Are we there to outflank Iran? That hardly fits with what follows. To outflank Pakistan and its nukes? That doesn't seem to make sense either, especially given the history of our involvement.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to what we're trying to do.
In the meantime, as I say, what follows is interesting stuff. Note the figures for the comparative costs of maintaining an army in Afghanistan and maintaining one in Iraq
***
Ronald responds to JJ:
Thanks for asking. I’m afraid my views are unconventional but – like others – I find that the evidence I choose to look at is not inconsistent with my theories.
Yes, quite the right question. What is the American interest in Afghanistan?.
First thing of course is that the Obama administration is following the Bush administration’s policy.
What was that policy? Just as it was in Iraq, to further their permanent war agenda and to cause as much pain and suffering and turmoil and tension and oppression as possible.
I submit that in Iraq it’s very easy to point to indictable evidence: namely the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the firing of virtually all the able bureaucrats –de-bathification.
Have you seen the documentary No End in Sight? (actually I’m blanking on the title. That might be a lucky guess.)
Either those two policies were mistakes or purposeful actions intended to ensure that there would be a pretext – an insurgency and the emergence of al-Qaeda in Iraq -- to keep the war going indefinitely. Take your choice. Alternately you can ask yourself if Cheney is the type to make such mistakes.
Needless to say there’s a mountain more evidence. High on the list are policies to ensure that there would be no reconstruction of the country. Talk about evidence not inconsistent: Have you seen Ragiv Chandrasekaran’s book on the Green Zone?
The same with Afghanistan. Their purpose is to destroy the country. The interesting irony there is that Taliban rule is what they wanted (there and here and everywhere) and they were unhappy to overthrow it. But as we have seen, it was done in such a way as to ensure the return of the Taliban after a few years. Karzai sort of gave the game away in a December ’08 interview to the Washington Post: He asked: How can a little group of ragtag fanatics be causing so much trouble. He was pointing to U.S. aid to the Taliban by means of the Pakistani ISI. Yup, we’re paying billions so that they can kill U.S. soldiers and thousands upon thousands of Afghanis.
We might have hoped that the Obama administration would change policy. I used to joke after Nov 4 and before Jan 20 that we had hope. It’s not such a joke anymore. It’s not the Obama administration. It’s the Rahm Emanuel –Obama administration with the latter the figurehead.
You can see why my views aren’t popular. Most people figure that there’s got to be something ---$$$$ -- in it for the policymakers. But to me it’s a question of evidence. Your astute questions are more evidence.
Ronald
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Friday, December 26, 2008
Sara Roy: Manufacturing Genocide in Gaza + false flags, Afghanistan, more + Rick Warren via Left I on the News
Sara Roy’s important article should not be missed for its clear summary of the humanitarian crisis that U.S/Israeli policy is imposing on a million and a half or more people in Gaza. Here’s the first paragraph.
If Gaza Falls . . .; by Sara Roy
I
Read more:
Published December 23, 2008 by London Review of Books
*
As Roy suggests in her first sentence, the mechanism driving the Hamas rocket attacks is clear. To insure that rockets keep coming from Hamas, Israel provokes them by murdering Palestinian activists and civilians. And if one Israeli attack isn’t sufficient, the Israeli attacks just keep coming. When the Hamas rockets finally fall the Israelis have an excuse to close the borders. (I noticed on Link TV that one such rocket displayed by an Israeli official had Hebrew markings.)
Roy’s article also suggests an answer to how the Palestinians obtain at least some of their rockets -- by means of the tunnels to Egypt, the last and unofficial lifeline the Israelis allow and which the Israelis could cut off at any time.
Israel can’t abide Hamas because Hamas has still retained its nationalism, and won’t bow to many of Israel’s demands. That’s why Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PNA, gets an easier ride: because like Arafat before him, he’s a collaborationist. As they did for decades with Arafat, Israel permits or encourages his corruption in return for following their orders.
In a quibble, we could take issue with Roy’s suggestion that Israel’s purpose is to foist Gaza on Egypt. Hardly. Although a Gaza free of Palestinians which they could take over for themselves may be slightly over the horizon, the Israeli leadership requires the continued immiseration of Gaza and the continuation of the rocket attacks for domestic political reasons. While the rockets fall, Palestinian rockets continue to unify and strengthen the Israeli Jewish community behind the dominant and ever increasingly right wing leadership. The rocket attacks push aside domestic demands for reform. All the air is sucked out of any other positive agenda.
If Israel wanted an end to the Hamas rockets, all they’d have to do is suspend their attacks on Palestine. An agreement could be worked out in less than 24 hours. So we have a clear example of manufactured “terrorism.”
The same manufactured terror is largely true with regard to the Bush-Cheney “war on terror” especially in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. For the most part, all the high profile terror attacks starting from the Clinton years, and the fall of the Soviet Union when such attacks had to be manufactured as a substitute to sustain Cold War ideology and U.S. military and intelligence budgets, were the product of Western and Israeli intelligence services. The terror events of 9/11 sit at the pinnacle of such false flag attacks.
The point is there’s no threat to Israel or to the West outside of those they create in order to sustain their military pathology.
One thing that will change with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis when Obama takes over is that Elliot Abrams, the most vicious of the vicious will no longer be in charge of U.S. Middle East policy. But the pressures on Obama will be intense not to take steps to relieve the current genocidal level of starvation and immiseration in Gaza. Any attempt at amelioration by an Obama administration will likely be attacked by the usual Lobby suspects, doubtless with Dershowitz in the lead as giving in to Hamas terror.
Thinking of the Rick Warren debacle (see just below for blogger Left I’s economical screed on the subject), with about 25 days left before inauguration, is it too early to conclude that Obama is constitutionally unable to show any moral courage or leadership? But to realize how scary it’s going to be after Jan 20 all you have to do is say one word: Afghanistan. Everybody knows: current Obama plans for Afghanistan = a failed Obama presidency.
Afghanistan is going to be a failure in part because Obama and his team don’t want to know and are shielding themselves from the knowledge that the U.S. is funding the Taliban to kill NATO soldiers, civilians, Indian engineers, road-builders, schoolteachers, schoolgirls and more through the Pakistani ISI. It’s one of those anomalies that we know and simultaneously don’t know. For example, in a November 25, 2008 interview for NPR's popular Fresh Air program, Terry Gross asked Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid point blank: Isn’t the U.S. funding the Pakistani ISI? It was interesting to hear Rashid try to squirm out of that one.
It can’t be squirmed out of. The U.S. controls not only the major operations of the ISI like the funding and the care and upkeep of the Taliban, and chooses ISI leaders, and directs much of Pakistani policy, but the U.S. also undoubtedly controls also their false flag operations like the Mumbai terror attacks (see Michel Chossudovsky, "India's 9/11. Who was Behind the Mumbai Attacks? Washington is Fostering Political Divisions between India and Pakistan" 2008-11-29, http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11217 )
We know and we don’t want to know. And as we have learned over the decades this is just as true of the Left, as it is the Right.
Why should we expect any better from Obama?
PS. In a bibliographical note, the phrase “Manufactured Terrorism” is the title of a breakthrough article by Gerard Holmgren explaining what really happened on 9/11/01. (See “Manufactured Terrorism – The Truth About Sept 11," (2004, revised 2006).
Holmgren’s title apparently echoes Noam Chomsky’s and Edward Herman’s important Manufactured Consent (1988).
Ronald
***
Blogger Left I on the News on the Rick Warren affair wrote:
12.17 08
Will Rick Warren wake up the liberals?
If Gaza Falls . . .; by Sara Roy
I
srael's siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then. Israel's siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population.
Read more:
Published December 23, 2008 by London Review of Books
*
As Roy suggests in her first sentence, the mechanism driving the Hamas rocket attacks is clear. To insure that rockets keep coming from Hamas, Israel provokes them by murdering Palestinian activists and civilians. And if one Israeli attack isn’t sufficient, the Israeli attacks just keep coming. When the Hamas rockets finally fall the Israelis have an excuse to close the borders. (I noticed on Link TV that one such rocket displayed by an Israeli official had Hebrew markings.)
Roy’s article also suggests an answer to how the Palestinians obtain at least some of their rockets -- by means of the tunnels to Egypt, the last and unofficial lifeline the Israelis allow and which the Israelis could cut off at any time.
Israel can’t abide Hamas because Hamas has still retained its nationalism, and won’t bow to many of Israel’s demands. That’s why Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PNA, gets an easier ride: because like Arafat before him, he’s a collaborationist. As they did for decades with Arafat, Israel permits or encourages his corruption in return for following their orders.
In a quibble, we could take issue with Roy’s suggestion that Israel’s purpose is to foist Gaza on Egypt. Hardly. Although a Gaza free of Palestinians which they could take over for themselves may be slightly over the horizon, the Israeli leadership requires the continued immiseration of Gaza and the continuation of the rocket attacks for domestic political reasons. While the rockets fall, Palestinian rockets continue to unify and strengthen the Israeli Jewish community behind the dominant and ever increasingly right wing leadership. The rocket attacks push aside domestic demands for reform. All the air is sucked out of any other positive agenda.
If Israel wanted an end to the Hamas rockets, all they’d have to do is suspend their attacks on Palestine. An agreement could be worked out in less than 24 hours. So we have a clear example of manufactured “terrorism.”
The same manufactured terror is largely true with regard to the Bush-Cheney “war on terror” especially in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. For the most part, all the high profile terror attacks starting from the Clinton years, and the fall of the Soviet Union when such attacks had to be manufactured as a substitute to sustain Cold War ideology and U.S. military and intelligence budgets, were the product of Western and Israeli intelligence services. The terror events of 9/11 sit at the pinnacle of such false flag attacks.
The point is there’s no threat to Israel or to the West outside of those they create in order to sustain their military pathology.
One thing that will change with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis when Obama takes over is that Elliot Abrams, the most vicious of the vicious will no longer be in charge of U.S. Middle East policy. But the pressures on Obama will be intense not to take steps to relieve the current genocidal level of starvation and immiseration in Gaza. Any attempt at amelioration by an Obama administration will likely be attacked by the usual Lobby suspects, doubtless with Dershowitz in the lead as giving in to Hamas terror.
Thinking of the Rick Warren debacle (see just below for blogger Left I’s economical screed on the subject), with about 25 days left before inauguration, is it too early to conclude that Obama is constitutionally unable to show any moral courage or leadership? But to realize how scary it’s going to be after Jan 20 all you have to do is say one word: Afghanistan. Everybody knows: current Obama plans for Afghanistan = a failed Obama presidency.
Afghanistan is going to be a failure in part because Obama and his team don’t want to know and are shielding themselves from the knowledge that the U.S. is funding the Taliban to kill NATO soldiers, civilians, Indian engineers, road-builders, schoolteachers, schoolgirls and more through the Pakistani ISI. It’s one of those anomalies that we know and simultaneously don’t know. For example, in a November 25, 2008 interview for NPR's popular Fresh Air program, Terry Gross asked Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid point blank: Isn’t the U.S. funding the Pakistani ISI? It was interesting to hear Rashid try to squirm out of that one.
It can’t be squirmed out of. The U.S. controls not only the major operations of the ISI like the funding and the care and upkeep of the Taliban, and chooses ISI leaders, and directs much of Pakistani policy, but the U.S. also undoubtedly controls also their false flag operations like the Mumbai terror attacks (see Michel Chossudovsky, "India's 9/11. Who was Behind the Mumbai Attacks? Washington is Fostering Political Divisions between India and Pakistan" 2008-11-29, http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11217 )
We know and we don’t want to know. And as we have learned over the decades this is just as true of the Left, as it is the Right.
Why should we expect any better from Obama?
PS. In a bibliographical note, the phrase “Manufactured Terrorism” is the title of a breakthrough article by Gerard Holmgren explaining what really happened on 9/11/01. (See “Manufactured Terrorism – The Truth About Sept 11," (2004, revised 2006).
Holmgren’s title apparently echoes Noam Chomsky’s and Edward Herman’s important Manufactured Consent (1988).
Ronald
***
Blogger Left I on the News on the Rick Warren affair wrote:
12.17 08
Will Rick Warren wake up the liberals?
With every appointment of a war-loving Hillary Clinton/Robert Gates/James Jones or a nuclear power-loving Steven Chu or a Monsanto-loving Tom Vilsack and on and on, liberals keep telling themselves that it's ok, it's just that old "Team of Rivals" thing, and that Barack Obama the supposed antiwar liberal is really the one calling the shots and the others will just be implementing his vision.
And what will they say to the announcement that anti-abortion homophobe Rick Warren will be delivering the invocation at Obama's inauguration? True, it is just "symbolism." One large symbolic slap in the face of every supporter of women's rights and LGBT rights who supported Obama in this election.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Left I and Paul Watson on Terror and Massacre in Afghanistan
Can't help quoting Left I on the News's very good, always on target blog. (Although I'm not quite as disillusioned with Obama as he is, but I'm getting there. This weekend I cut out the NYT reprint of a cartoon showing Obama running for Bush's first term as opposed to McCain for B's 3rd term.)
Left I's blog is on the latest US massacre in Afghanistan which was mentioned on Democracy Now's headlines.
The quibble I have with Left I is that he doesn't seem to acknowledge that the US is purposefully behind virtually all the major violence, either themselves or through their support of the Taliban through the Pakistani ISI.
Unlike Left I, Paul Joseph Watson, from Prison Planet, in the 2nd blog I'm highlighting today, cites the terrible bombing in Kabul this week and indicates that the signs point to the hand of the US via the ISI via the Taliban in another false flag attack. It was David Ray Griffin, the guru of the 911 Truth movement, in the still very important The New Pearl Harbor, who clued me into the US/ISI/Taliban connection.
Now why would the Cheney Bush administration want more chaos, anarchy, war in Afghanistan where their own soldiers are dying (and killing Afghanis)? Here's Paul Watson's theory.
Paul Watson wrote:
Could the Kabul bombing be a joint ISI-CIA false flag for the purposes of creating a pretext for the continued presence of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, control of the booming opium drugs trade and the construction of permanent military bases?
Ronald
***
Afghanistan: Another day, another 23 dead
by Left I on the News.
http://lefti.blogspot.com/
Left I wrote:
This one another wedding party (this report says 27 dead). There are rather conflicting reports of the incident, to put it mildly.
From the U.S. military:
"We have had no reports of any non-combatants killed or injured in this incident," said 1st Lt. Nathan Perry. "This may just be normal, typical militant propaganda."
The U.S. military issued a statement, saying "intelligence revealed a large group of militants operating in Deh Bala district. Coalition forces identified the militants in a mountainous region and used precision air strikes to kill them."
And from the local governor:
Haji Amishah Gul, governor of Deh Bala, told the Times just two of the dead were men. The rest, he said, were women and children.
"The bride is among the dead," he said.
Gosh, who to believe? Other than relying on decades of lies from the U.S. military to guide you as to their credibility, it's unlikely you'll be able to decide by reading the U.S. corporate press, since after tomorrow, your chances of reading about the story, beyond yet another story about Afghan President Karzai "ordering an investigation" into the incident, are slim to none. Partly that's because the chance that the Democrats will seek to turn it into a political issue are also slim to none, since their own criticism of U.S. policy in Afghanistan is that we should have been doing it sooner.
Paul Joseph Watson
Afghanistan Accuses “Foreign Intelligence Agency” Of Deadly Embassy Bombing
Prison Planet | July 7, 2008
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=2241
Paul Watson wrote:
Afghanistan’s interior ministry has accused a “foreign intelligence agency” of being behind today’s deadly suicide bombing that ripped apart the country’s Indian embassy in Kabul, killing 41 people. Could the event represent another “false flag” run by American intelligence as a means of maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan and control of the country’s lucrative opium trade?
A further 141 were injured when the bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into two diplomatic vehicles entering the embassy and the blast also devastated nearby shops and buildings.
“The interior ministry believes this attack was carried out in coordination and consultation with an active intelligence service in the region,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Afghanistan has previously accused Pakistani agents of being behind a number of attacks on its soil,” according to a London Guardian report, referring to the notorious Pakistani ISI intelligence agency.
As Jane’s Information Group notes, “The CIA has well-established links with the ISI, having trained it in the 1980s to ‘run’ Afghan mujahideen (holy Muslim warriors), Islamic fundamentalists from Pakistan as well as Arab volunteers by providing them with arms and logistic support to evict the Soviet occupation of Kabul.”
“Opium cultivation and heroin production in Pakistan’s northern tribal belt and neighbouring Afghanistan was also a vital offshoot of the ISI-CIA co-operation. It succeeded not only in turning Soviet troops into addicts, but also in boosting heroin sales in Europe and the US through an elaborate web of well-documented deceptions, transport networks, couriers and payoffs. This, in turn, offset the cost of the decade-long anti-Soviet ‘unholy war’ in Afghanistan.”
Could the Kabul bombing be a joint ISI-CIA false flag for the purposes of creating a pretext for the continued presence of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, control of the booming opium drugs trade and the construction of permanent military bases?
As we reported last month, Middle East sources indicated that U.S. forces gave the green light for the Taliban to attack a government prison in Kandahar on June 13th, and stood idly by while Taliban fighters violently freed more than 1000 inmates.
According to some observers, the recent apparent resurgence of the Taliban has been encouraged by NATO and the U.S. as a bulwark against political pressure and calls for troops to leave the country.
Without an enemy to fight, there would be no justification for a continued U.S. and NATO presence in Afghanistan. There would be no more weapons sales contracts and no more rebuilding contracts for Halliburton. Opium cultivation would fall back into the hands of warlords and the Taliban, who banned production before the U.S. invasion in 2001, after which heroin flooded the streets of the U.S. and UK in record numbers as cultivation soared 50 per cent year on year. Afghanistan now exports upwards of 92 per cent of the world’s supply of opium, which is used to make heroin.
As Professor Michel Chossudovsky writes, “U.S. military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade.”
“Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban’s drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.”
“Based on wholesale and retail prices in Western markets, the earnings generated by the Afghan drug trade are colossal. In July 2006, street prices in Britain for heroin were of the order of Pound Sterling 54, or $102 a gram,” Chossudovsky notes.
The necessity for continued violence in Afghanistan exists just like it does in Iraq, for the pretext of justifying an endless military occupation and the opportunity to build military bases that will be used as launch pads for future wars, as is now being discussed for Iraq.
As we have highlighted in the past, links between Taliban leadership and the U.S. military-industrial complex are documented.
As Seymour Hersh reported in January 2002, at the height of the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of Taliban fighters “accidentally” ended up on U.S. organized special safety corridor airlifts right before the fall of Kunduz.
The Taliban itself was a creation of the CIA having been set up and bankrolled by the U.S. in tandem with Pakistan’s ISI.
“In the 1980s, the CIA provided some $5 billion in military aid for Islamic fundamentalist rebels fighting the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, but scaled down operations after Moscow pulled out in 1989. However, Selig Harrison of the DC-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars recently told a conference in London that the CIA created the Taliban “monster” by providing some $3 billion for the ultra-fundamentalist militia in their 1994-6 drive to power,” reported the Times of India.
Left I's blog is on the latest US massacre in Afghanistan which was mentioned on Democracy Now's headlines.
The quibble I have with Left I is that he doesn't seem to acknowledge that the US is purposefully behind virtually all the major violence, either themselves or through their support of the Taliban through the Pakistani ISI.
Unlike Left I, Paul Joseph Watson, from Prison Planet, in the 2nd blog I'm highlighting today, cites the terrible bombing in Kabul this week and indicates that the signs point to the hand of the US via the ISI via the Taliban in another false flag attack. It was David Ray Griffin, the guru of the 911 Truth movement, in the still very important The New Pearl Harbor, who clued me into the US/ISI/Taliban connection.
Now why would the Cheney Bush administration want more chaos, anarchy, war in Afghanistan where their own soldiers are dying (and killing Afghanis)? Here's Paul Watson's theory.
Paul Watson wrote:
Could the Kabul bombing be a joint ISI-CIA false flag for the purposes of creating a pretext for the continued presence of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, control of the booming opium drugs trade and the construction of permanent military bases?
Ronald
***
Afghanistan: Another day, another 23 dead
by Left I on the News.
http://lefti.blogspot.com/
Left I wrote:
This one another wedding party (this report says 27 dead). There are rather conflicting reports of the incident, to put it mildly.
From the U.S. military:
"We have had no reports of any non-combatants killed or injured in this incident," said 1st Lt. Nathan Perry. "This may just be normal, typical militant propaganda."
The U.S. military issued a statement, saying "intelligence revealed a large group of militants operating in Deh Bala district. Coalition forces identified the militants in a mountainous region and used precision air strikes to kill them."
And from the local governor:
Haji Amishah Gul, governor of Deh Bala, told the Times just two of the dead were men. The rest, he said, were women and children.
"The bride is among the dead," he said.
Gosh, who to believe? Other than relying on decades of lies from the U.S. military to guide you as to their credibility, it's unlikely you'll be able to decide by reading the U.S. corporate press, since after tomorrow, your chances of reading about the story, beyond yet another story about Afghan President Karzai "ordering an investigation" into the incident, are slim to none. Partly that's because the chance that the Democrats will seek to turn it into a political issue are also slim to none, since their own criticism of U.S. policy in Afghanistan is that we should have been doing it sooner.
Paul Joseph Watson
Afghanistan Accuses “Foreign Intelligence Agency” Of Deadly Embassy Bombing
Prison Planet | July 7, 2008
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=2241
Paul Watson wrote:
Afghanistan’s interior ministry has accused a “foreign intelligence agency” of being behind today’s deadly suicide bombing that ripped apart the country’s Indian embassy in Kabul, killing 41 people. Could the event represent another “false flag” run by American intelligence as a means of maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan and control of the country’s lucrative opium trade?
A further 141 were injured when the bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into two diplomatic vehicles entering the embassy and the blast also devastated nearby shops and buildings.
“The interior ministry believes this attack was carried out in coordination and consultation with an active intelligence service in the region,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Afghanistan has previously accused Pakistani agents of being behind a number of attacks on its soil,” according to a London Guardian report, referring to the notorious Pakistani ISI intelligence agency.
As Jane’s Information Group notes, “The CIA has well-established links with the ISI, having trained it in the 1980s to ‘run’ Afghan mujahideen (holy Muslim warriors), Islamic fundamentalists from Pakistan as well as Arab volunteers by providing them with arms and logistic support to evict the Soviet occupation of Kabul.”
“Opium cultivation and heroin production in Pakistan’s northern tribal belt and neighbouring Afghanistan was also a vital offshoot of the ISI-CIA co-operation. It succeeded not only in turning Soviet troops into addicts, but also in boosting heroin sales in Europe and the US through an elaborate web of well-documented deceptions, transport networks, couriers and payoffs. This, in turn, offset the cost of the decade-long anti-Soviet ‘unholy war’ in Afghanistan.”
Could the Kabul bombing be a joint ISI-CIA false flag for the purposes of creating a pretext for the continued presence of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, control of the booming opium drugs trade and the construction of permanent military bases?
As we reported last month, Middle East sources indicated that U.S. forces gave the green light for the Taliban to attack a government prison in Kandahar on June 13th, and stood idly by while Taliban fighters violently freed more than 1000 inmates.
According to some observers, the recent apparent resurgence of the Taliban has been encouraged by NATO and the U.S. as a bulwark against political pressure and calls for troops to leave the country.
Without an enemy to fight, there would be no justification for a continued U.S. and NATO presence in Afghanistan. There would be no more weapons sales contracts and no more rebuilding contracts for Halliburton. Opium cultivation would fall back into the hands of warlords and the Taliban, who banned production before the U.S. invasion in 2001, after which heroin flooded the streets of the U.S. and UK in record numbers as cultivation soared 50 per cent year on year. Afghanistan now exports upwards of 92 per cent of the world’s supply of opium, which is used to make heroin.
As Professor Michel Chossudovsky writes, “U.S. military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade.”
“Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban’s drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.”
“Based on wholesale and retail prices in Western markets, the earnings generated by the Afghan drug trade are colossal. In July 2006, street prices in Britain for heroin were of the order of Pound Sterling 54, or $102 a gram,” Chossudovsky notes.
The necessity for continued violence in Afghanistan exists just like it does in Iraq, for the pretext of justifying an endless military occupation and the opportunity to build military bases that will be used as launch pads for future wars, as is now being discussed for Iraq.
As we have highlighted in the past, links between Taliban leadership and the U.S. military-industrial complex are documented.
As Seymour Hersh reported in January 2002, at the height of the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of Taliban fighters “accidentally” ended up on U.S. organized special safety corridor airlifts right before the fall of Kunduz.
The Taliban itself was a creation of the CIA having been set up and bankrolled by the U.S. in tandem with Pakistan’s ISI.
“In the 1980s, the CIA provided some $5 billion in military aid for Islamic fundamentalist rebels fighting the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, but scaled down operations after Moscow pulled out in 1989. However, Selig Harrison of the DC-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars recently told a conference in London that the CIA created the Taliban “monster” by providing some $3 billion for the ultra-fundamentalist militia in their 1994-6 drive to power,” reported the Times of India.
Friday, August 10, 2007
NYT: Destroying Afghanistan: Brits criticize US Air Attacks in Afghanistan
At the very end of this front page article, the Times quotes an Afghan telling it like it is. They are here to destroy Afghanistan.
“So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between men and women, children and animals, but they are just killing everyone.”
I suppose that the Times thought that such a quote is so outlandish that they didn't need to cut it.
Let's assume that the Afghani is correct. Why would Bush and Cheney want to destroy Afghanistan? Why would they want to return women and the people of Afganistan to the effective rule of the Taliban? And who is supporting the Taliban? It's no secret. It's the Pakistani ISI. And who gives the ISI its marching orders? Yes, that's right. It's the CIA.
Once again, why would the US want to ensure that Afghanistan remains in the dark ages with a maximum of suffering?
Can we make any connections between what's going on there with what the US has overseen in Iraq since 2003?
Is it oil? Is it Imperialism? Is it Empire? Or is it some darker need to destroy, create chaos and suffering and endless war?
Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
The New York Times
August 9, 2007
British Criticize Air Attacks in Afghan Region
By CARLOTTA GALL
SANGIN, Afghanistan — A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.
Other British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area. They also expressed concerns that the Americans’ extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban.
An American military spokesman denied that the request for American forces to leave was ever made, either formally or otherwise, or that they had caused most of the casualties. But the episode underlines differences of opinion among NATO and American military forces in Afghanistan on tactics for fighting Taliban insurgents, and concerns among soldiers about the consequences of the high level of civilians being killed in fighting.
A precise tally of civilian deaths is difficult to pin down, but one reliable count puts the number killed in Helmand this year at close to 300 civilians, the vast majority of them caused by foreign and Afghan forces, rather than the Taliban.
“Everyone is concerned about civilian casualties,” the senior British commander said. “Of course it is counterproductive if civilians get injured, but we’ve got to pick up the pack of cards that we have got. Other people have been operating in our area before us.”
After months of heavy fighting that began in early 2006, the British commanders say they are finally making headway in securing important areas such as this town, and are now in the difficult position of trying to win back support among local people whose lives have been devastated by aerial bombing.
American Special Forces have been active in Helmand since United States forces first entered Afghanistan in late 2001, and for several years they maintained a small base outside the town of Gereshk. But the foreign troop presence was never more than a few hundred men.
British forces arrived in the spring of 2006 and now have command of the province with some 6,000 troops deployed, with small units of Estonians and Danish troops. American Special Forces have continued to assist in fighting insurgents, operating as advisers to Afghan national security forces.
It is these American teams that are coming under criticism. They tend to work in small units that rely heavily on air cover because they are vulnerable to large groups of insurgents. Such Special Forces teams have often called in airstrikes in Helmand and other places where civilians have subsequently been found to have suffered casualties.
In just two cases, airstrikes killed 31 nomads west of Kandahar in November last year and another 57 villagers, half of them women and children, in western Afghanistan in April. In both cases, United States Special Forces were responsible for calling in the airstrikes.
The chief British press officer in Helmand, Col. Charles Mayo, defended the American Special Forces and said they were essential to NATO’s efforts to clear out heavily entrenched Taliban insurgents.
An American military spokesman said United States Special Forces would continue to operate in Helmand for the foreseeable future. He denied that their tactics had caused greater civilian deaths and blamed the Taliban for fighting from civilian compounds.
“U.S. Special Forces have a tremendous reputation not only in combat operations but also in training and advising the Afghan National Security Forces,” Lt. Col. David Accetta, a spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan, said in an e-mail response from Bagram air base.
United States Special Forces had also provided development and medical assistance, which, with the combat missions, “can be said to have ‘turned the tide’ in Helmand,” he said.
But the senior British commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity during an interview in July, said that in Sangin, which has been calm recently, there was no longer a need for United States Special Forces. “There aren’t large bodies of Taliban to fight anymore; we are dealing with small groups and we are trying to kick-start reconstruction and development,” he said.
Orders had just come down from the NATO force’s headquarters in Kabul, which is led by Gen. Dan K. McNeill of the United States, re-emphasizing the need to avoid civilian deaths, he said.
“The phrase is: ‘It may be legal but is it appropriate?’ No one is saying it is illegal to use air power, but is there any other way of doing it if there is a risk of collateral damage?” he said.
For months, frequent reports of civilian casualties have trickled out of Helmand, scene of some of the fiercest battles of the recent war. But there has rarely been independent confirmation of the reports because the province has been too dangerous for journalists to visit.
Yet there is no doubt there have been civilian casualties, and British and Afghan officials acknowledged that they had seen some of them.
Villagers brought the bodies of 21 civilians killed in airstrikes May 8 on the village of Sarwan Qala to show the authorities in Sangin, they said. United States Special Forces were battling the Taliban on that occasion and called in the strikes, the United States military said in a statement at the time.
Three days later the nearby village of Sra Ghar was hit. British soldiers at a base called Robinson just south of Sangin said they had received 18 civilians around that time who were wounded in an American operation and flew them out to NATO hospitals for treatment.
On a rare visit to Helmand in mid-July, a journalist encountered children who were still suffering wounds sustained in that bombing raid or another around that time. Their father, Mohammadullah, brought them to the gate of the British Army base seeking help.
His son, Bashir Ahmed, 2, listless and stick thin, seemed close to death. The boy and his sister Muzlifa, 7, bore terrible shrapnel scars. NATO doctors had removed shrapnel from the boy’s abdomen at the time of the raid and had warned his father that he might not survive, but two months later he was still hanging on.
The father said the bombing raid killed six members of the family and wounded five. His wife lost an arm, and the children’s grandmother was killed, he said.
Altogether, he said, 20 people were killed in the airstrikes after Taliban fighters came through the village. He figured that the planes had bombed them mistakenly, because the Taliban were fighting United States forces well below the village at the time.
He said that he opposed the Taliban, but that after the bombing raid the villagers were so angered that most of the men who survived went off to join the insurgents. Whether people would support the foreign troops “depends on the behavior of ISAF,” Mohammadullah said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “If they treat the civilians well, they will win.”
It is in fact the possibility of the population turning against them, or the unpopularity of the campaign back home, that most concerns the military, one NATO military official said. “We know we can beat the Taliban on the ground,” the official said. “The issue is the population.”
A civilian NATO from Kabul added, “The problem is Afghans are waking up and thinking: ‘Why are they doing this?’ ”
Maj. Dominic Biddick, commander of a company of British soldiers in Sangin, is making a big effort to ease the anger and pain as his men patrol the villages. He has a $5,000 good-will fund and hands out cash to victims he comes across, like the farmer whose two sons were shot in the fields during a recent operation. And he has $10,000 a month to spend on community assistance programs. “If you are genuinely caring, you can win friends,” he said.
Capt. Catherine Fisher, a civil affairs officer in Sangin, said that over six weeks ending in July she had received requests from 75 families who had lost relatives or property in recent fighting.
But while some of the victims and local people blame the Taliban for bringing violence to Helmand, hostility and bitterness toward the foreign forces remains.
“The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person,” said Mahmadullah, 24, referring to Osama bin Laden. “So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between men and women, children and animals, but they are just killing everyone.”
A trained mullah from the village of Kutaizi, half an hour from Sangin, Mahmadullah reacted with sarcasm to the idea that reconstruction and assistance could change the minds of the people.
“First they kill me, and then they rebuild my house?” he said. “What is the point when I am dead and my son is dead? This is not of any worth to us.”
“So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between men and women, children and animals, but they are just killing everyone.”
I suppose that the Times thought that such a quote is so outlandish that they didn't need to cut it.
Let's assume that the Afghani is correct. Why would Bush and Cheney want to destroy Afghanistan? Why would they want to return women and the people of Afganistan to the effective rule of the Taliban? And who is supporting the Taliban? It's no secret. It's the Pakistani ISI. And who gives the ISI its marching orders? Yes, that's right. It's the CIA.
Once again, why would the US want to ensure that Afghanistan remains in the dark ages with a maximum of suffering?
Can we make any connections between what's going on there with what the US has overseen in Iraq since 2003?
Is it oil? Is it Imperialism? Is it Empire? Or is it some darker need to destroy, create chaos and suffering and endless war?
Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
The New York Times
August 9, 2007
British Criticize Air Attacks in Afghan Region
By CARLOTTA GALL
SANGIN, Afghanistan — A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.
Other British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area. They also expressed concerns that the Americans’ extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban.
An American military spokesman denied that the request for American forces to leave was ever made, either formally or otherwise, or that they had caused most of the casualties. But the episode underlines differences of opinion among NATO and American military forces in Afghanistan on tactics for fighting Taliban insurgents, and concerns among soldiers about the consequences of the high level of civilians being killed in fighting.
A precise tally of civilian deaths is difficult to pin down, but one reliable count puts the number killed in Helmand this year at close to 300 civilians, the vast majority of them caused by foreign and Afghan forces, rather than the Taliban.
“Everyone is concerned about civilian casualties,” the senior British commander said. “Of course it is counterproductive if civilians get injured, but we’ve got to pick up the pack of cards that we have got. Other people have been operating in our area before us.”
After months of heavy fighting that began in early 2006, the British commanders say they are finally making headway in securing important areas such as this town, and are now in the difficult position of trying to win back support among local people whose lives have been devastated by aerial bombing.
American Special Forces have been active in Helmand since United States forces first entered Afghanistan in late 2001, and for several years they maintained a small base outside the town of Gereshk. But the foreign troop presence was never more than a few hundred men.
British forces arrived in the spring of 2006 and now have command of the province with some 6,000 troops deployed, with small units of Estonians and Danish troops. American Special Forces have continued to assist in fighting insurgents, operating as advisers to Afghan national security forces.
It is these American teams that are coming under criticism. They tend to work in small units that rely heavily on air cover because they are vulnerable to large groups of insurgents. Such Special Forces teams have often called in airstrikes in Helmand and other places where civilians have subsequently been found to have suffered casualties.
In just two cases, airstrikes killed 31 nomads west of Kandahar in November last year and another 57 villagers, half of them women and children, in western Afghanistan in April. In both cases, United States Special Forces were responsible for calling in the airstrikes.
The chief British press officer in Helmand, Col. Charles Mayo, defended the American Special Forces and said they were essential to NATO’s efforts to clear out heavily entrenched Taliban insurgents.
An American military spokesman said United States Special Forces would continue to operate in Helmand for the foreseeable future. He denied that their tactics had caused greater civilian deaths and blamed the Taliban for fighting from civilian compounds.
“U.S. Special Forces have a tremendous reputation not only in combat operations but also in training and advising the Afghan National Security Forces,” Lt. Col. David Accetta, a spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan, said in an e-mail response from Bagram air base.
United States Special Forces had also provided development and medical assistance, which, with the combat missions, “can be said to have ‘turned the tide’ in Helmand,” he said.
But the senior British commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity during an interview in July, said that in Sangin, which has been calm recently, there was no longer a need for United States Special Forces. “There aren’t large bodies of Taliban to fight anymore; we are dealing with small groups and we are trying to kick-start reconstruction and development,” he said.
Orders had just come down from the NATO force’s headquarters in Kabul, which is led by Gen. Dan K. McNeill of the United States, re-emphasizing the need to avoid civilian deaths, he said.
“The phrase is: ‘It may be legal but is it appropriate?’ No one is saying it is illegal to use air power, but is there any other way of doing it if there is a risk of collateral damage?” he said.
For months, frequent reports of civilian casualties have trickled out of Helmand, scene of some of the fiercest battles of the recent war. But there has rarely been independent confirmation of the reports because the province has been too dangerous for journalists to visit.
Yet there is no doubt there have been civilian casualties, and British and Afghan officials acknowledged that they had seen some of them.
Villagers brought the bodies of 21 civilians killed in airstrikes May 8 on the village of Sarwan Qala to show the authorities in Sangin, they said. United States Special Forces were battling the Taliban on that occasion and called in the strikes, the United States military said in a statement at the time.
Three days later the nearby village of Sra Ghar was hit. British soldiers at a base called Robinson just south of Sangin said they had received 18 civilians around that time who were wounded in an American operation and flew them out to NATO hospitals for treatment.
On a rare visit to Helmand in mid-July, a journalist encountered children who were still suffering wounds sustained in that bombing raid or another around that time. Their father, Mohammadullah, brought them to the gate of the British Army base seeking help.
His son, Bashir Ahmed, 2, listless and stick thin, seemed close to death. The boy and his sister Muzlifa, 7, bore terrible shrapnel scars. NATO doctors had removed shrapnel from the boy’s abdomen at the time of the raid and had warned his father that he might not survive, but two months later he was still hanging on.
The father said the bombing raid killed six members of the family and wounded five. His wife lost an arm, and the children’s grandmother was killed, he said.
Altogether, he said, 20 people were killed in the airstrikes after Taliban fighters came through the village. He figured that the planes had bombed them mistakenly, because the Taliban were fighting United States forces well below the village at the time.
He said that he opposed the Taliban, but that after the bombing raid the villagers were so angered that most of the men who survived went off to join the insurgents. Whether people would support the foreign troops “depends on the behavior of ISAF,” Mohammadullah said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “If they treat the civilians well, they will win.”
It is in fact the possibility of the population turning against them, or the unpopularity of the campaign back home, that most concerns the military, one NATO military official said. “We know we can beat the Taliban on the ground,” the official said. “The issue is the population.”
A civilian NATO from Kabul added, “The problem is Afghans are waking up and thinking: ‘Why are they doing this?’ ”
Maj. Dominic Biddick, commander of a company of British soldiers in Sangin, is making a big effort to ease the anger and pain as his men patrol the villages. He has a $5,000 good-will fund and hands out cash to victims he comes across, like the farmer whose two sons were shot in the fields during a recent operation. And he has $10,000 a month to spend on community assistance programs. “If you are genuinely caring, you can win friends,” he said.
Capt. Catherine Fisher, a civil affairs officer in Sangin, said that over six weeks ending in July she had received requests from 75 families who had lost relatives or property in recent fighting.
But while some of the victims and local people blame the Taliban for bringing violence to Helmand, hostility and bitterness toward the foreign forces remains.
“The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person,” said Mahmadullah, 24, referring to Osama bin Laden. “So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between men and women, children and animals, but they are just killing everyone.”
A trained mullah from the village of Kutaizi, half an hour from Sangin, Mahmadullah reacted with sarcasm to the idea that reconstruction and assistance could change the minds of the people.
“First they kill me, and then they rebuild my house?” he said. “What is the point when I am dead and my son is dead? This is not of any worth to us.”
Friday, February 23, 2007
WSWS: Prodi pushes Italy to pro American Right
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Italy
Italian prime minister resigns after losing foreign policy vote
By Stefan Steinberg and Barry Grey
23 February 2007
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/ital-f23_prn.shtml
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi tendered his resignation Wednesday night after losing a Senate vote on his center-left coalition government’s foreign policy. The collapse of the nine-month-old Unione government came amidst growing popular opposition to its right-wing policies, both domestic and foreign.
Just four days before the Senate vote and Prodi’s subsequent resignation, more than 100,000 demonstrated in the northern Italian city of Vincenza to protest Prodi’s support for the expansion of a US military base there and plans to increase the deployment of Italian troops as part of the NATO-led occupation of Afghanistan. Demonstrators also denounced the war in Iraq and demanded that the government end its collaboration with the Bush administration’s militarist policies.
Prodi and Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema, a leader of the ex-Stalinist Democratic Left Party and a former prime minister, had called for the vote in order to obtain a public show of unity behind the government’s imperialist and pro-US foreign policy from the nine parties that comprised the governing coalition, targeting, in particular, Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation), a Stalinist remnant of the old Italian Communist Party that postures as a socialist and anti-imperialist party.
The main speaker on behalf of the government in the Senate debate was D’Alema, who articulated the duplicity of the official Italian left by asserting in one breath that the Unione coalition “have not supported the neo-conservative politics of the American administration and we have not sent soldiers to Iraq,” and in the next defending Italian military deployments in Afghanistan and Lebanon and declaring that to oppose US plans to expand its base at Vincenza “would be a hostile act against the United States.”
The decision to put the government’s foreign policy up for a vote expressed its view that backing for the expanded US military base and Italy’s military role in Afghanistan were crucial issues upon which it would not compromise, regardless the growing opposition of the Italian people. In taking this stand, it was acting under pressure both from the United States and the most powerful forces within the Italian ruling elite.
In effect, Prodi and D’Alema were delivering a political ultimatum to the Rifondazione leadership to rein in dissident factions that have sought to appease growing opposition among the party’s voters and supporters to its participation in a government committed to economic austerity at home and expanding military interventions abroad.
Rifondazione Comunista had indicated it would back the government in the Senate vote and all but one of its senators followed the party line. However, the abstention of one Rifondazione senator, Franco Turigliatto, together with the abstentions of a Green Party senator and Senator-for-Life Giulio Andreotti, a former Christian Democratic prime minister and long-time power broker in Italian politics, caused the government to fall short by two votes of the 160 it needed to prevail.
Although the motion was not presented as a vote of confidence in the government, Prodi quickly made the decision to tender his resignation, precipitating a full-scale political crisis and upping the pressure on Rifondazione Comunista to discipline its own ranks.
After tendering his resignation, Prodi declared he was prepared to continue as head of government only under conditions where he had a “rock solid majority” and “more room to manoeuvre.” Prodi aides have declared that he is “ready to carry on as prime minister if, and only if, he is guaranteed the full support of all the parties in the majority from now on.”
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano accepted Prodi’s resignation but asked him to continue the affairs of government and participate in negotiations aimed at finding a solution to the crisis. The two principal available options are new elections or a re-jigging of the Prodi cabinet to achieve some sort of sustainable majority. In either case, the inevitable result will be a government of an even more right-wing cast.
Prodi has declared his readiness to talk with conservative Christian Democrats who have broken away from former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s umbrella organization Forza Italia. The presence of more conservatives would increase Prodi’s leverage over the nominal left in a refashioned center-left coalition.
Although senators from the parties of the official right—principally Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Gianfranco Fini’s National Alliance—called for a new election following the Senate vote, to this point Berlusconi has not issued such a demand. Berlusconi was voted out of office last May as a result of popular opposition combined with disaffection within major sections of the ruling elite itself over his performance as prime minister.
The London-based Financial Times indicated the general preference of international finance capital in an editorial posted Thursday on its web site, entitled “Prodding Italy’s Centre Towards a Coalition.” The newspaper praised Prodi for acting “to reduce the budget deficit” and said his government’s “agenda of reform” had “done much to boost confidence.”
It denounced Berlusconi’s government for having “lacked fiscal discipline and failed to make reforms to the Italian economy,” and urged “Italy’s centrist parties” to “try to form some kind of coalition.”
This vote of confidence in Prodi from the international bourgeoisie was echoed by the supposedly anti-capitalist Rifondazione Comunista. In 1998, the party withdrew its parliamentary support for a center-left coalition headed by Prodi, precipitating the fall of the government. This time around Rifondazione was eager to assure Prodi of its continued support.
According to La Republica, party secretary Franco Giordano declared, “The government must survive,” adding that it “will have the full support und the unconditional confidence of Rifondazione Comunista”.
The Rifondazione web site posted a prominent statement declaring its loyalty to the Prodi government. In the same statement, the party attacked the stance taken in the Senate debate by the defector Turigliatto as “undemocratic.” Turigliatto has in the meantime announced that he is yielding up his post as senator.
The Democratic Left likewise pledged its support for a new edition of the Prodi government. Marina Sereni demanded that “all members of Unione not only vote ‘Yes,’ but also undertake to support future actions by the government such as the deployment of Italian troops to Afghanistan.”
At this point it is not possible to predict the immediate outcome of the collapse of the center-left government. However, its record as an instrument of Italian big business in attacking working class living standards at home while pursuing imperialist policies abroad is a further demonstration of the bankruptcy of the so-called parties of the left: the Democratic Left and Rifondazione Comunista. Neither of these organizations has any genuine independence from the bourgeoisie. Both function to throttle popular discontent and maintain the political subordination of the working masses to Italian capital.
Their participation in Prodi’s right-wing regime and their efforts to resuscitate it following its ignominious collapse demonstrate conclusively that the struggle against war and social reaction requires a break with these parties and the building of a genuinely independent and socialist political movement of the working class.
End of article.
I could do without the last ideological paragraph. But nowhere else I've seen shows how determined Prodi is to push Italy to as pro Bush policy as possible. There are hints in the article that there are domestic pressures on Prodi forcing him to act in concert with the US. And one can imagine the pressures from the US.
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Italy
Italian prime minister resigns after losing foreign policy vote
By Stefan Steinberg and Barry Grey
23 February 2007
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/ital-f23_prn.shtml
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi tendered his resignation Wednesday night after losing a Senate vote on his center-left coalition government’s foreign policy. The collapse of the nine-month-old Unione government came amidst growing popular opposition to its right-wing policies, both domestic and foreign.
Just four days before the Senate vote and Prodi’s subsequent resignation, more than 100,000 demonstrated in the northern Italian city of Vincenza to protest Prodi’s support for the expansion of a US military base there and plans to increase the deployment of Italian troops as part of the NATO-led occupation of Afghanistan. Demonstrators also denounced the war in Iraq and demanded that the government end its collaboration with the Bush administration’s militarist policies.
Prodi and Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema, a leader of the ex-Stalinist Democratic Left Party and a former prime minister, had called for the vote in order to obtain a public show of unity behind the government’s imperialist and pro-US foreign policy from the nine parties that comprised the governing coalition, targeting, in particular, Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation), a Stalinist remnant of the old Italian Communist Party that postures as a socialist and anti-imperialist party.
The main speaker on behalf of the government in the Senate debate was D’Alema, who articulated the duplicity of the official Italian left by asserting in one breath that the Unione coalition “have not supported the neo-conservative politics of the American administration and we have not sent soldiers to Iraq,” and in the next defending Italian military deployments in Afghanistan and Lebanon and declaring that to oppose US plans to expand its base at Vincenza “would be a hostile act against the United States.”
The decision to put the government’s foreign policy up for a vote expressed its view that backing for the expanded US military base and Italy’s military role in Afghanistan were crucial issues upon which it would not compromise, regardless the growing opposition of the Italian people. In taking this stand, it was acting under pressure both from the United States and the most powerful forces within the Italian ruling elite.
In effect, Prodi and D’Alema were delivering a political ultimatum to the Rifondazione leadership to rein in dissident factions that have sought to appease growing opposition among the party’s voters and supporters to its participation in a government committed to economic austerity at home and expanding military interventions abroad.
Rifondazione Comunista had indicated it would back the government in the Senate vote and all but one of its senators followed the party line. However, the abstention of one Rifondazione senator, Franco Turigliatto, together with the abstentions of a Green Party senator and Senator-for-Life Giulio Andreotti, a former Christian Democratic prime minister and long-time power broker in Italian politics, caused the government to fall short by two votes of the 160 it needed to prevail.
Although the motion was not presented as a vote of confidence in the government, Prodi quickly made the decision to tender his resignation, precipitating a full-scale political crisis and upping the pressure on Rifondazione Comunista to discipline its own ranks.
After tendering his resignation, Prodi declared he was prepared to continue as head of government only under conditions where he had a “rock solid majority” and “more room to manoeuvre.” Prodi aides have declared that he is “ready to carry on as prime minister if, and only if, he is guaranteed the full support of all the parties in the majority from now on.”
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano accepted Prodi’s resignation but asked him to continue the affairs of government and participate in negotiations aimed at finding a solution to the crisis. The two principal available options are new elections or a re-jigging of the Prodi cabinet to achieve some sort of sustainable majority. In either case, the inevitable result will be a government of an even more right-wing cast.
Prodi has declared his readiness to talk with conservative Christian Democrats who have broken away from former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s umbrella organization Forza Italia. The presence of more conservatives would increase Prodi’s leverage over the nominal left in a refashioned center-left coalition.
Although senators from the parties of the official right—principally Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Gianfranco Fini’s National Alliance—called for a new election following the Senate vote, to this point Berlusconi has not issued such a demand. Berlusconi was voted out of office last May as a result of popular opposition combined with disaffection within major sections of the ruling elite itself over his performance as prime minister.
The London-based Financial Times indicated the general preference of international finance capital in an editorial posted Thursday on its web site, entitled “Prodding Italy’s Centre Towards a Coalition.” The newspaper praised Prodi for acting “to reduce the budget deficit” and said his government’s “agenda of reform” had “done much to boost confidence.”
It denounced Berlusconi’s government for having “lacked fiscal discipline and failed to make reforms to the Italian economy,” and urged “Italy’s centrist parties” to “try to form some kind of coalition.”
This vote of confidence in Prodi from the international bourgeoisie was echoed by the supposedly anti-capitalist Rifondazione Comunista. In 1998, the party withdrew its parliamentary support for a center-left coalition headed by Prodi, precipitating the fall of the government. This time around Rifondazione was eager to assure Prodi of its continued support.
According to La Republica, party secretary Franco Giordano declared, “The government must survive,” adding that it “will have the full support und the unconditional confidence of Rifondazione Comunista”.
The Rifondazione web site posted a prominent statement declaring its loyalty to the Prodi government. In the same statement, the party attacked the stance taken in the Senate debate by the defector Turigliatto as “undemocratic.” Turigliatto has in the meantime announced that he is yielding up his post as senator.
The Democratic Left likewise pledged its support for a new edition of the Prodi government. Marina Sereni demanded that “all members of Unione not only vote ‘Yes,’ but also undertake to support future actions by the government such as the deployment of Italian troops to Afghanistan.”
At this point it is not possible to predict the immediate outcome of the collapse of the center-left government. However, its record as an instrument of Italian big business in attacking working class living standards at home while pursuing imperialist policies abroad is a further demonstration of the bankruptcy of the so-called parties of the left: the Democratic Left and Rifondazione Comunista. Neither of these organizations has any genuine independence from the bourgeoisie. Both function to throttle popular discontent and maintain the political subordination of the working masses to Italian capital.
Their participation in Prodi’s right-wing regime and their efforts to resuscitate it following its ignominious collapse demonstrate conclusively that the struggle against war and social reaction requires a break with these parties and the building of a genuinely independent and socialist political movement of the working class.
End of article.
I could do without the last ideological paragraph. But nowhere else I've seen shows how determined Prodi is to push Italy to as pro Bush policy as possible. There are hints in the article that there are domestic pressures on Prodi forcing him to act in concert with the US. And one can imagine the pressures from the US.
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