Editorial
McKay
Attempts to Whip Up Support for Endless War in
Afghanistan
Conservative
Defence Minister Peter McKay spent most of last week appealing to NATO members
to step up their military commitment in Afghanistan. After meeting with his counterparts
in the Netherlands, Britain and Norway in the first half of the week, he paid a
visit to U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday to report on his
discussions with the Europeans. "If the job is not done in Afghanistan, if countries like
Canada leave, the Taliban can follow them,'' MacKay told Canadian reporters in
Washington. “By that I mean these threats are not going to stay isolated. We
know that Afghanistan was an incubator and an exporter of terror.” He further
stated: “There
is a pressing need for other partners to step forward and share that burden.”
Of course, these claims by McKay are just a scare tactic and few
Canadians, let alone Europeans, believe him. The Taliban was established and
the warlords of the Northern Alliance were organized by the U.S., with the
assistance of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, to wrest control of Afghanistan
away from the Soviet Union. While the U.S. and its allies recruited, trained
and armed tens of thousands of foreign jihadists to enter Afghanistan to fight
against the Soviet army, there is little evidence that the Taliban, or any
other Afghan group for that matter, has ever sent fighters abroad.
On the other hand, Mr. McKay’s friends in Washington have a long
history of training terrorists both at home and abroad and using those
terrorists against their enemies. Furthermore, since the Second World War the
U.S. has unleashed more terror on the world’s people, in the form of bombs and
missiles and at the hands of its troops, than any other country in the history
of the world. It is rather ironic, therefore, that Mr.
McKay would warn the people of North America and Europe about the incubators
and exporters of terror from the very capital of the world’s foremost terrorist
nation.
Polls conducted in Canada indicate decreasing support for Canada’s
mission in Afghanistan, while in Europe there is virtually no support for the
war, which is seen as an American adventure with no hope of success. This view
is shared by many European leaders, which means that McKay’s appeal will almost
certainly fall on deaf ears. The Netherlands is currently debating its
continuing participation in the mission and there is widespread speculation
that a withdrawal by the Dutch would lead to the unravelling of the 40-country “alliance
of the willing” cobbled together by the Bush administration in the wake of the
September 11 attacks..
Just like his U.S. masters, McKay likes to pretend that victory is
just around the corner and that a short, concerted “surge” of military force by
the major NATO partners will bring peace and security to Afghanistan. However,
he is ignoring over two millennia of history – from Alexander the Great to the
vaunted Red Army – that proves that there is no military solution in
Afghanistan. Most of the European NATO members have actually studied history
and recognize that a political solution involving the Taliban is the only way
to end the conflict. However, there is increasing evidence that the U.S. and
its closest allies, including Canada, do not really want to bring the conflict
to an end, despite its toll in human life and the billions of dollars it is
costing. As long as the U.S. and allied forces are in Afghanistan, they pose a
threat to its neighbours – Iran on the west and Pakistan to the east – and can
be used to influence the policies of those countries.
Other powerful economic interests are also involved in prolonging
the conflict. Of course, the arms manufacturers are one such interest. However,
it has recently been revealed that the major international pharmaceutical
companies vetoed a proposal to put an end to the illicit opium trade in
Afghanistan by buying all the opium produced by Afghan farmers and using it to
produce legal pain-killers. At present, the cost of opium-based narcotic pain-killers
is extremely high and they are available only to the world’s wealthiest nations
and people. The sheer volume of Afghan opium production would have flooded the
pharmaceutical markets with cheap narcotics and driven down the profits of the
legalized drug cartels, so they demanded that the Bush administration block any
efforts to legalize Afghan opium.
The eradication campaign favoured by the U.S. military not only
maintains premium prices for legal narcotics, but also drives up prices for
illicit drugs, thereby increasing the profits of the illicit drug cartels,
which likewise have innumerable links to the U.S. state, as well as many other
states. In fact, many of the key members of the Karzai
government in Afghanistan make their money from the opium trade, with the full
knowledge of the U.S. and Canadian governments. With such powerful economic and
political interests benefitting from a state of war in Afghanistan, it is
clearly fraudulent to suggest that the governments backing those interests –
such as the U.S. and Canada – have any desire to end the war or the occupation.
Therefore, no matter how often Peter McKay declares that victory
is just around the corner or that failure will bring terrorism to our own
doorsteps, in reality the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan has little to do with
either peace or ending terrorism and there is no end in sight. The military
occupation of Afghanistan provides the U.S. with a geo-political advantage over
its imperialist rivals and a state of endless war brings super profits to both
the arms and drug cartels – legal and illegal. It is no accident that the U.S.
has been adamantly opposed to “nation-building” in Afghanistan from the
beginning or that the Harper Conservatives have also abandoned such a role for
Canadian forces. In the words of former Bush advisor Richard Perle, the war on terror is a “war without end” and that is
the real mission that McKay is trying to sell to Canadians.