Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24
US House Prices Trend Forecast 2024 to 2026 - 11th Oct 24
US Housing Market Analysis - Immigration Drives House Prices Higher - 30th Sep 24
Stock Market October Correction - 30th Sep 24
The Folly of Tariffs and Trade Wars - 30th Sep 24
Gold: 5 principles to help you stay ahead of price turns - 30th Sep 24
The Everything Rally will Spark multi year Bull Market - 30th Sep 24
US FIXED MORTGAGES LIMITING SUPPLY - 23rd Sep 24
US Housing Market Free Equity - 23rd Sep 24
US Rate Cut FOMO In Stock Market Correction Window - 22nd Sep 24
US State Demographics - 22nd Sep 24
Gold and Silver Shine as the Fed Cuts Rates: What’s Next? - 22nd Sep 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks:Nothing Can Topple This Market - 22nd Sep 24
US Population Growth Rate - 17th Sep 24
Are Stocks Overheating? - 17th Sep 24
Sentiment Speaks: Silver Is At A Major Turning Point - 17th Sep 24
If The Stock Market Turn Quickly, How Bad Can Things Get? - 17th Sep 24
IMMIGRATION DRIVES HOUSE PRICES HIGHER - 12th Sep 24
Global Debt Bubble - 12th Sep 24
Gold’s Outlook CPI Data - 12th Sep 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

What If NATO Is Defeated In Afghanistan?

Politics / Afghanistan Nov 22, 2010 - 05:37 AM GMT

By: Submissions

Politics

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleEric S. Margolis writes: Amazing as it sounds, NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance, may be losing the only war the 61-year old pact every fought. All its soldiers, heavy bombers, tanks, helicopter gunships, armies of mercenaries, and electronic gear are being beaten by a bunch of lightly-armed Afghan farmers and mountain tribesmen.


This weekend in Lisbon, NATO’s 28 members face deepening differences over the Afghanistan War as public opinion in the United States, Canada and Europe continue to turn against the conflict.

President Barack Obama again painfully showed he is not fully in charge of US foreign policy. His pledge to begin withdrawing some US troops from Afghanistan next July has been brazenly – even scornfully - contradicted by US generals and strongly opposed by resurgent Congressional Republicans. Hardly anyone believes the president’s withdrawal date.

Obama is fresh from groveling before Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He pleaded with Israel’s leader to impose a short, token freeze on settlement building in exchange for a multi-billion dollar bribe from Washington of advanced US F-35 stealth warplanes, promises of UN vetoes, and raising the value of US arms stockpiled for Israel’s use to $1 billion. Rarely has a US president crawled so low.

Israel will likely take Obama’s bribe, with more sweeteners, but not before rubbing his face in the dirt to show who really runs US Mideast policy and as a warning not to mess with Israel. The last US president to challenge Israel’s colonization of the West Bank, George H. W. Bush, was ousted in 1992 after one term.

Obama appears to want out of the Afghan War. His final gamble of sending 30,000 more troops into the $7.5 billion monthly war has so far failed to produce the hoped-for decisive victory. But powerful pro-war groups, including the Pentagon, the arms industry and Republicans, are thwarting the weakened Obama’s attempts to wind down the war.

US, Canadian and European politicians who backed the Afghan War fear admitting the conflict was a huge waste of lives and treasure. Their political careers hang in the balance.

Canada’s prime minister, who is trying to assume the former role of Britain’s Tony Blair as Washington’s most obedient ally, just announced 900 Canadian soldiers will remain in Afghanistan after his own pullout date, ostensibly for "training."

That, of course, is the new euphemism for staying on as a permanent garrison to keep the Afghan client regime in power. "Training," as with US forces in Iraq, really means the old British Raj’s native troops under white officers.

Canadian journalists who opposed continuation of the Afghan War, or exposed many of the lies that justify it, have been purged from their newspapers under pressure from the Harper government – which claims, ironically, to be fighting in Afghanistan for "democracy."

While the US heads deeper into war and debt, its European allies are fed up with what was supposed to have been a limited "police action" to eliminate al-Qaida bases.

Instead, Europe got a full-scale war against Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes raising uneasy memories of its 19th-century colonial "pacifications."

France’s new defense minister, Alain Juppé, openly called the Afghan conflict a "trap" for NATO and called for an exit strategy. He is quite right.

By contrast, British Defense Chief Gen. Sir David Richards, warned, "NATO now needs to plan for a 30 or 40 year role." In short, permanent occupation. That may be the bottom line, at least for the imperial camp. Central Asia’s resources are the real reason.

The US-installed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is demanding the US scale back military operations and night raids that inflict heavy civilian casualties. Washington counters that Karzai is mentally unstable. He is marked to be overthrown once Washington can find a suitable Pashtun replacement.

America’s rational for invading Afghanistan was to destroy al-Qaida. But CIA chief Leon Panetta recently admitted there were no more than 50 al-Qaida operatives left in Afghanistan. The rest – no more than few hundred - fled to Pakistan years ago.

So what are 110,000 US troops and 40,000 NATO troops doing in Afghanistan? Certainly not nation-building. Most reports show Afghanistan is in worse poverty and distress than before the US invasion.

While the platitudes and synthetic optimism flowed thick at Lisbon, giant US Army bulldozers, demolition teams and artillery were busy leveling wide swathes of Afghan homes around the Pashtun stronghold, Kandahar. In 2006, US Marines conducted a similar ruthless campaign to crush the rebellious Iraqi city of Falluja.

The US is using the same punitive tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq as Israel employs on the occupied West Bank: targeted assassinations, death squads, demolishing buildings and whole neighborhoods to punish and open fields of fire. In fact, the US military has often been guided by Israeli advisors in such operations.

Destroying large parts of Kandahar is a sign of growing US frustration and a sense the war is being lost. It certainly won’t win hearts and minds of the locals, the stated goal of US proconsul Gen. David Petraeus.

Like the rest of the Pentagon, Petraeus is determined that the mighty US military must not be defeated by Afghan tribesmen. The humiliation would be intolerable. Defeat in Afghanistan would bring demands for major cuts in the bloated US military, a Leviathan that consumes 50% of world military spending.

Washington’s so-called national security establishment (in Britain they used to be called "imperialists") also fears failure in Afghanistan threatens to undermine the entire NATO alliance.

Europe is slowly re-emerging as a world power, however fitfully and painfully. NATO has been the primary tool of US geopolitical control of Western Europe since the late 1940’s. The Japan-US security pact has played the same role in north Asia.

The loss of the Afghan War by the US and its reluctant allies will call into question the reason for the alliance and likely hasten Europe building an integrated military independent of US control. America’s grip on Western Europe would be ended.

That is why Afghanistan so unnerves Washington’s right wingers. The defeat of Soviet armies in Afghanistan in 1989 began the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Could the same fate be in store for the American Raj?

http://www.ericmargolis.com

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2010.

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.


© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in