Part I: Sleep walking at the Globe and Mail:

It has been suggested on more than one occasion that the solution to the Afghan situation is a more peace oriented approach that puts the emphasis on aid and development. The heavy-handed militarism being practiced by Western forces, under the auspices of the US is actually making a bad situation worse and the present approach is no more than a recruiting poster for both the Taliban and Al Queda. Afghan president, Hamid Karzai(as reported in the Globe and Mail) has repeatedly urged his Western allies to pursue a more disciplined and peaceable approach to pacifying his country. Dion’s view does in fact reflect the wishes of the Afghan president and Gee, among others, might consider that if we took a more peaceable approach the Taliban might just follow suit. The suggestion has even been made that the Taliban could be included in the government. It is simply too facile to say NATO is supporting the democratically elected government. This conflict was started by the US, as part of the fatuous war on terror, abandoned by them and then rekindled when the Taliban became resurgent. NATO was pressed into service to clean up America’s mess as the US was, and still is, suffering a serious case of overreach. Only the gullible will believe that US interest in Afghanistan is to establish a democracy. As with Iraq its interest is strategic and the game is called neo-imperialism. The situation is further complicated by the fact that NATO suffers the same dilemma as the US- an inability to supply the number of troops and military hardware necessary to do the job – the same problem that dogged the US invasion of Iraq. NATO countries have come under considerable criticism for their reluctance to embrace this fiasco-for it is just that. It is a corruption of the original purpose of NATO and there can be no doubt many NATO members are reluctant to become further involved as they rightly see this mission for what it is- subverting NATO into an instrument of US foreign policy. Politicians and journalists such as Gee are unwilling to address the obvious: The Afghan mission , both undermanned and under equipped is an abandonment of our troops and a betrayal. It is no coincidence that Canadian forces have taken a disproportionate number of casualties. Furthermore, the NATO presence in Afghan is so short of where it should be in terms of manpower and equipment, that even if realistic levels were reached they would not be sustainable. The Iraq and Afghan missions result in a huge cash deficit for Western governments and where politicians speak ludicrously of decade long commitments, economists will advise the money just isn’t there. War is inflationary as it requires huge expenditures and promiscuous deficit spending. The US especially, is hard-pressed to sustain its present level of military spending and this is just why it is leaning on its allies to staff and finance its foreign adventurism. One of the lesser known reasons the Viet Nam war came to an end was that it was proving ruinous to the American economy. It is also epidemic among journalists to refuse to make linkages between Iraq and Afghanistan when obvious linkages exist. It is a myth the US military will be leaving Iraq. The US has established huge military and administrative facilities there. It is now an occupied country that has been gutted and its future as a nation will be rigorously circumscribed. So too, with Afghanistan. Once pacified it will be an occupied territory. As the Globe and Mail tries vainly to circumscribe the Afghan debate at the expense of its readers it must be reminded that in the age of the internet there are numerous authoritative online newspapers and web sites out there that leave Globe and Mail coverage stilted, and incomplete. At least in terms of communications the global village is thriving and publications that delimit their commentary and perspectives end up being churlish parochialisms. The Globe and Mail has an innate fear of publishing anything that might appear anti-American, even though this is not the issue. The issue is America’s belligerent unilateralism and this is the fundamental issue at the core of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Too many politicians, journalists, and indeed NATO military leaders, refuse to accept the obvious reality that the Afghanistan undertaking lacks credibility when the driving force behind it is the world’s singular superpower and this superpower is practicing a very aggressive unilateralism; its motives for focusing on Afghanistan are clearly suspect. If this mission were under the auspices of the UN it would be much more marketable: But of course the UN has its many detractors and is too often accused of being inept. Part of its ineptness it is that it is too often subverted by member nations, particularly its most powerful unilateralist member. The UN can only be as effective as member states allow it to be. To be effective member states must be committed to co-operative multilateralism- all too often conspicuously absent. What is happening in Afghanistan is only one chapter in larger machinations and the stench of self-serving unilateralism is palpable. Next: The scourge of unilateralism Robert Billyard (c) 2008

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Part I: Sleep Walking At The Globe And Mail:

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