by tonyeh » Mon Jul 13, 2009 10:19 am
The Afghan and Iraq operations have been on the American political shelf for decades. It just so happened that a major event, such as September 11th proved to be the right propaganda coup needed to convince (some) people that an invasion was necessary.
It's incredibly hypocritical of the US administration to be spouting on about both the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Baath party in Iraq, because they helped put them into power and helped keep them there. If America is so appalled by the Taliban, then they shouldn't have propped up the Mujahideen in the early 80's. The same can be said for their support for Saddam. There were no secrets to what these people were like. It's especially suspect, that many of the movers and shakers of the Reagan administration that supported these regimes in the 80's, were the people pulling George Bush's strings in the 2000's.
The simple fact is, that these regimes were supported for the express intention to topple them in some future exercise. 9/11 helped with convincing the public (or a body thereof) that that toppling should happen when they did.
Unfortunately, for Britain, Blair saw this as an opportunity to consolidate his own country's future resource needs, with a victorious America. Not that another British government would have done anything else mind you, let's be clear on that. However, Tony didn't reckon on the objection by the British people (and people in general) to wars in foreign countries based on lies and both wars are based largely on mendacity, especially Iraq. Tony also didn't count on Bush abandoning Afghanistan half way through, in order to put into effect America's long planned take over of Iraq and Bush's string pullers played that one beautifully, essentially leaving Britain holding the bag in Afghanistan.
Now, it seems, that the war in Afghanistan is set to go on for some tme and more people will end up dead.
But, in the end, America will control who gains access to Iraqi oil and who gets to build their pipelines across Afghanistan...and meanwhile we'll all have to listen to the most unbelievable propaganda bullshit about people we actually know nothing about from people already proven to be liars of the worst kind.
The worst is yet to come.