The news about US working behind the scenes with the Karzai regime to strike a deal with Taliban rebels comes as no surprise, given that such contacts have been ongoing for a long time while all along Afghanistan’s lucrative heroin trade that helps finance the rebels. The real news is that Obama, who just a few months ago was demanding NATO commit more resources to that war, wants out of Afghanistan and he is trying to find ways to mold public opinion right before the mid-term elections. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman the Senate Armed Services Committee, has just revealed that US inordinate dependence on private security has helped to strengthen the Taliban at the expense of US troops. In June 2010, a congressional investigation into private contractors discovered that private contractors had been paying tens of millions of dollars to local warlords for “convoy protection,” Carl Levin told reporters. “There is significant evidence that some security contractors even work against our coalition forces, creating the very threat that they are hired to combat.”
The Defense Department has built a heavy dependence on the 26,000 private security personnel operating in Afghanistan and the way out is difficult given that Obama made Afghanistan the core of his war on terror. There are reports that many in the US administration have known for sometime that “the US-led coalition is unlikely to defeat the Taliban militarily” and the concern today is how to deal with Pakistan which wants to be included in the “peace process” and wants a major role after the coalition troops leave. Of course, the American people and those following events around the world may be wondering if the US under Obama is not continuing to help strengthen “Islamic fanaticism” through various means, not just by having taxpayer dollars go to the Taliban. The best example of hypocrisy of US war on terrorism concerns the Libyan Pan Am bomber case, where the US demonstrated that when it comes to corporate interests, a deal with terrorists is acceptable. In July 2010 the press reveal that Libya had indeed reached a deal with UK with US complete agreement that convicted Libyan Pan Am (Lockerbie) Bomber bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi must be set free in order to clear the way for British Petroleum (BP) to proceed with offshore oil drilling. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee suddenly suspended hearings on the release last year of the Lockerbie bomber claiming that witnesses refused to testify. The real reason was to protect the Obama administration that had agreed to the prisoner’s release on the BP deal, and not for humanitarian reasons as the official version stated originally, given that al-Megrahi has not died of cancer, as UK and US claimed, more than a year after his release. What does the beleaguered administration do to prevent Republicans, especially Tea Party candidates like Sharon Angle who told an audience in Nevada that a “militant terrorist situation” has allowed Islamic religious law to take hold in some American cities. Given that hyperbolic rhetoric from Tea Party candidates is generating public interest by hammering Obama and the Democrats for their soft policy toward “terrorism,” and given that the US does not have much to show except immense debt and a chronically weak economy for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what can it do now?
When Obama was running for President, he distracted and placated the American people who ever since the early Cold War have been conditioned to live in fear of the outside world. The president assured the public that the “war on terror” is not over, merely shifting from Iraq to Afghanistan. Just before the elections of 2010, there is about to be another shift to take place from Afghanistan to Iran, a legitimate target because it is the most powerful Islamic country, Israel wants Iran hit as do some of the Arab countries, and nothing would deliver more votes to conservative Democrats and have the public rally around Obama than such a move.
In August Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has stated that the military option remains on the table and there is a plan to attack Iran, although a military strike has been described as a bad idea. Against the background of a weak US and EU economic recovery from a very deep recession, against the ominous currency wars, the US has the option of cutting its losses from the Middle East and pressuring Tel Aviv for genuine peace instead of allowing more West Bank settlements. However, like all empires, the US cannot live without an enemy, and it cannot find a better one than Muslims that have been a target since the Iranian Revolution. The bogus “war on terrorism” keeps the military industrial complex healthy and distracts the American people to focus on a foreign enemies instead of looking to their government to fix the decaying economy and declining middle class. Peace is not an option!
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