“If the Americans think this is success, then outright failure must be pretty horrible to behold” — so ends Phil Reeve’s grim report in the British newspaper The Independent on Afghanistan today. (See below.) Midwinter Afghanistan, resourceless and stateless, is shifting poorly for itself and sleeping on the streets, while America’s nation-builders, look elsewhere for richer, more influential lands to liberate and democratize.
In Iraq, the bases we leave behind after our war will be more substantial and the administration we install in Baghdad undoubtedly better subsidized (all that oil, after all), but if Afghanistan is any example, the streets of postwar Iraq will have more than their share of sleeping bodies. And Reeve’s piece doesn’t even mention the return of opium — what else is there? — as Afghanistan’s cash crop. Does no one see an irony in the possibility that America’s little Afghan adventure may turn out to have been the war to make the world safe for drugs. (Can we all learn to just say yes in Pashto?)
So much for “successful” wars past, as for wars future, the Bush administration seems intent on dispatching forces right and left (or do I mean right and right?) these days. Just recently it announced that an expeditionary force of several thousand was soon to head for the Philippines not to train the military there but to fight a bandit band on one of its southern islands. (The 350 Green Berets in that force should send a shudder through anyone with a long memory for America’s Asian wars.) One small problem, as Gary LaMoshi tells us in an acid-tinged account in today’s Asia Times, the Philippine constitution prohibits this. The Pentagon, moving like the veritable bull in a Philippine shop, professes itself unfazed.
A piece in today’s Los Angeles Times, “U.S.-Philippine Mission Hits Snag” comments, “Even as the U.S. focuses on Iraq, it is eager to show it can fight suspected terrorists elsewhere. A refusal by the Philippines could embarrass the U.S. and highlight the reluctance of even close U.S. allies to grant permission for military intervention.” )
For a useful account of American aid to the Philippine military and of its track record on torture and human rights abuses, take a look at Frida Berrigan’s “Terror and Torture in the Philippines” at the Foreign Policy in Focus website. Her penultimate sentence: “Given the Filipino military’s track record on torture and human rights abuses, Washington cannot help President Arroyo quell insurgency movements, fight the war on terrorism, and uphold human rights all at the same.” But, of course, the liberation of Iraq aside, the Bush administration is quite intent on shutting down the age of human rights even as it opens one, two, three, many fronts in the war on terrorism.
There should perhaps be some more realistic phrase for all this activity — one, two, three, many Afghanistans? Tom
Living in poverty and fear of abandonment, the barely functioning state that trusted its saviours
By Phil Reeves
The Independent
February 24, 2003
A piece in today’s Los Angeles Times, “U.S.-Philippine Mission Hits Snag” comments, “Even as the U.S. focuses on Iraq, it is eager to show it can fight suspected terrorists elsewhere. A refusal by the Philippines could embarrass the U.S. and highlight the reluctance of even close U.S. allies to grant permission for military intervention.” )
February 24, 2003
The details are so compelling. The snowman, for instance, that someone built on a roundabout in the middle of this battered city.
This was clearly meant to represent Osama bin Laden, for his name was written on his midriff. He also had a long scraggy beard made of grass and a Taliban head-dress.
A little joke, a dash of black humour to take the mind off the oppressively cold weather and dismal poverty? Or was it an act of scorn at a defeated oppressor? Or an expression of support? And what about the blizzard of propaganda leaflets flung into the streets from a passing car the other night?
That was the first time the “night letters” – regularly distributed in provincial cities – have appeared in the capital, threatening jihad against the foreign soldiers and their allies.
To read more Reeves click here
Malice in Moroland
By Gary LaMoshi
Asia Times
February 24, 2003DENPASAR, Bali – Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and US President George W Bush share enough traits to be subjects of a Tales from the Crypt or Twilight Zone episode.
Each is the offspring of a former president of their respective countries. Each took Daddy’s old chair in the freest nation in their region on January 20, 2001, without benefit of a popular mandate. Their twin ascensions were enabled by dubious decisions of Supreme Courts packed with backers of the interests these presidents protect. Not surprisingly, each president seemingly regards the national constitution as an inconvenience to flout when it blocks a desired path.
Each of these two presidents in their mid-50s (she’s 55, he’s 56) is obsessive about physical fitness and wields his/her religious faith as a justification of his/her public policies, in contrast to their corpulent, morally lax predecessors.