Why Canada should leave Afghanistan

Coalition Forces gather on the Airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan, July 26, 2006 to pay their respects as the remains of Corporal Francisco Gomez, 44, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in Edmonton and Cpl Jason Patrick Warren, 29, a reservist with the Black Watch, Royal Highland Regiment of Canada in Montreal, are carried into a CC-130 Hercules for repatriation to Canada. Photo by MCpl Robert Bottrill, Canadian Forces Combat Camera.

by Val Gaffrey
Our Canadian military is fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda in the US-led “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan, we are told, before the terrorists can harm Canadians and to help Afghans develop a free, independent, democratic society. Even a cursory review of history, plus recent and current events, reveals a far different story to the one we are told by our government and media. History, plus recent and current events, shows that, contrary to the official stories we are told, US interventions in other countries are always motivated by US self interest and do not serve the interests of the country the US intervenes in.

COLD WAR ERA

The US Imports Radical Militant Islam into Afghanistan in order to depose the Afghan government of the day and lure the USSR into Afghanistan and its own Vietnam

Successive US administrations have supported radical Islamic Militants.(1) In President Carter’s time, the Islamic militant base was first created and used by the US to defeat the Marxist government of Noor Mohammad Taraki and to give the USSR its own Vietnam.(2)

Taraki’s government was brought to power by the Afghan people and the Afghan military on April 27, 1978. “—(I)t was a totally indigenous happening—not even the CIA blamed the USSR for this.”(3)

The Taraki government was a progressive and secular government with broad popular support. “It had enacted progressive reforms and gave equal rights to women. It was in the process of dragging the country into the 20th century.”(4)

Afghanistan was on its way to becoming a free, independent and democratic society. However there was a small element in Afghanistan, notably landlords, many of whom were mullahs (clerics) and their followers, plus moneylenders who opposed these reforms. They migrated to Pakistan as so called refugees.(5)

The Taraki reforms did not please the US either, because Taraki’s government was a so-called Marxist government. “At first unofficially but officially after July 3, 1979, with President Carter’s authorization, the CIA, along with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, began to provide military aid and training to the Muslim extremists who became known as the mujahideen and ‘freedom fighters’; in fact, Ronald Reagan stated that they were ‘the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers of America’”(6) This military aid, in the opinion of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security adviser, was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.(7)

As expected by the US, who wanted to give the USSR their own Vietnam, the USSR entered Afghanistan in late l979, “their purpose to ward off the thousands of well-armed mujahideen invaders, many being foreign mercenaries.(8) “What’s not widely known is that the USA through the CIA had been actively involved in Afghan affairs for at least a year, and it was in response to this that the Soviets arrived on the scene.”(9)

The Soviets succumbed to their Vietnam and withdrew their troops in February of 1989 but the war raged on for another three years. The Marxist government was finally defeated by the mujahideen in April, 1992.

“…(t)he victorious mujahideen, (today renamed the Northern Alliance,) who now form a major part of the current Afghan government, “launched a campaign of rape and pillage, and the torture and execution of government supporters, then turned their guns on one another. In the ensuing four-year fratricidal war, more than 50,000 people were killed and Kabul was reduced to the ruins of a Stalingrad—and it’s still largely in that condition.”(10)

The Taliban and the proposed UNICAL Gas Pipeline

1996 – 2001

“….the Taliban, appeared in 1994—they were a creation of madrasa religious schools in Pakistan, and their creation had the covert support of the USA.(11) In 1996, “The Taliban, ‘liberated’ the country (Afghanistan) from the mujahideen, (and the Taliban) established an atrocious reactionary regime. The landlords had come back immediately after the mujahideen victory, and when the Taliban took over, a virtual war was declared on women, which had no basis in Islamic law.”(12)

The Taliban, who are fundamentalist Sunnis, were supported financially by Saudi Arabia and they, the Taliban, provided a sanctuary for al Qaeda before 9/11.(13) (Saudi Arabia, a US ally, was and reportedly still is al Qaeda’s financial base; Pakistan, also a US ally, was and reportedly still is al Qaeda’s power base.)(14).

“Despite the atrocities of the (Taliban) regime, they initially had the support in the Clinton’s administration because it was thought that the Taliban would bring in ‘stability’ which would enable the construction of oil and natural gas pipelines through the country. Moreover, the current Bush administration provided $124 million in aid to Afghanistan and continued pipeline talks almost until the fateful day of September 11.”(15)

9/11

Even though 3000 people died on 9/11, and 9/11 was the most devastating attack the US has ever experienced on its own soil, there has never been an effective investigation into 9/11. The two 9/11 investigations that were held, the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, and the 9/11 commission investigation, had little power.

For example, the 9/11 Commission consisted of people who had a conflict of interest. “At least three of the ten commissioners (on the 9/11 Commission) serve(d) as directors of international financial or consulting firms, five work(ed) for law firms that represent airlines and three (had) ties to the U.S. military or defense contractors, according to personal financial disclosures they were required to submit.”(16) Philip Zelikow, a Bush insider, was appointed executive director of the 9/11 Commission.(17)

“Of all the possible conspiracy theories about 9/11 the most unbelievable of all is the official conspiracy theory about Osama bin Laden and 19 fanatic Muslim hijackers taking the government of the US completely by surprise and getting ‘lucky’.(18) Yet most people, even today, refuse to question the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. As a result governments worldwide, including Canadian, have harmonized their legislation with repressive US legislation enacted, as part of the US’ “war on terrorism”. Today, as a result, police states worldwide, including the Canadian state, are becoming more and more a reality, torture has been legitimized, the Mahar Arrar case, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, etc. Habeas Corpus for certain categories of people has been suspended as it was for Mahar Arrar, at Abu Ghraib, and at Guantanamo, etc. Canada’s Bill C36 now allows anyone accused of terrorism to be detained indefinitely in many cases.(19)

Fear not though, since in our post 9/11 world, our elected officials, such as Joy Smith, Progressive Conservative MP, have assured us, as she did recently in one of her pre-election mail outs, that we “… Canadians have the privilege of living in one of the most prosperous, safe and civilized countries in the world…”!

In our post 9/11 world, preemptive war is now acceptable, whereas, if my memory serves me rightly, post WWII during the Nuremberg trials, preemptive war was considered to be the greatest war crime, a crime against the peace.

In our post 9/11 world we now have two, seemingly endless hot wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus the huge increase in violence in the low intensity wars in Palestine, the Philippines and Haiti and elsewhere. Thousands of people have since died and are dying in these conflicts – many more than died on 9/11.

9/11 gave the Bush administration the opportunity to put into practice their global dominance strategies, which, without a catastrophic and cataclysmic event such as a new Pearl Harbor was going to take a very long time.(20)

To this day, this same Administration has controlled whatever official investigation there has been into 9/11. The Bush Administration’s has never effectively pursued those who may have assisted the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 cases have been dropped, as in Germany, or 9/11 suspects have been deported.

Zacarias Moussaoui is the only individual who has been tried and sentenced in a civil court in connection with 9/11. The need for an effective 9/11 investigation, as called for by NDP MP, Libby Davis, is long over due.

POST 9/11

The Illegitimacy of Bush’s War on Terrorism

“…The new US-led “war on terrorism” is based on military plans that were formulated long before 9/11, in order to target key strategic regions heavily laden with energy reserves such as the Caspian Basin.(21) It is estimated that the Caspian Basin has 6 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, and 40 percent of the natural gas reserves.(22)

Source: The Geopolitics of Oil Pipelines in Central Asia

If you look at a map you will see that Afghanistan is the gateway to the Caspian basin, hence the US has to control this country in order to build oil and natural gas pipelines to transport these resources from the Caspian Basin to Pakistan’s warm water ports via Afghanistan.

The following documents shed light on key US goals in Afghanistan and elsewhere:

Scotland’s Sunday Herald refers to “a secret blueprint for US global domination” revealing extensive military plans endorsed by “President Bush and his cabinet . . . even before he took power in January, 2001 . . .” This blueprint for the creation of a “global Pax Americana” was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice president), Donald Rumsfeld (former defense secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), George W Bush’s younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces and Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).(23)

The1997 Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) study, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, authored by longtime US geostrategist and former national security adviser under the Carter Administration, (and today, advisor to Barack Obama) Zbigniew Brzezinski, goes into great detail about US interests in “Eurasia” and the need for a “sustained and directed” US involvement in the Central Asian region to secure these interests.(24)

An earlier document, a 46-page Pentagon draft document leaked by Pentagon officials in March, 1992, clearly reflects the internal planning and strategies produced by the US military in the post-Cold War era. The Pentagon document states that the United States’ “first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival” who may threaten America’s domination of global resources in the post-Cold War era.(25)

However, Brzezinski’s document, The Grand Chessboard, goes on to make the crucial statement as follows: “Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.”(26)

In turn, the neoconservative authors of the PNAC document were aware, “…that carrying out their plans for global dominance “…would take a very long time, absent a catastrophic and cataclysmic event—a new Pearl Harbor.”(27)

The US has allowed the top leadership of the Taliban and al Qaeda to escape, from the Tora Bora mountains (28) and with Pakistani help from Kanduz.(29) Pakistan is a US ally and the US needs Pakistan’s assistance in order to occupy and pacify Afghanistan. The US needs Pakistan’s airspace and extensive assistance from Pakistan’s military intelligence, to conduct its post 9/11 war on Afghanistan. The result is that the US teamed up with a government tied institutionally to the very terrorist network it was supposed to be fighting in its “war on terrorism”.(30)

Fear not, say our elected officials, such as Progressive Conservative MP, Joy Smith, in a recent pre-election mailout, our Canadian Military is fighting in the US-led war in Afghanistan to “protect us, to stand up to tyranny and to fight for human rights.”!

Source: Colorado Campaign for Middles East Peace

“While the Bush administration implements a ‘war on terrorism’ the evidence (including mountains of official documents) amply confirms that successive US administrations have supported, abetted and harbored international terrorism.”

“This fact, in itself, must be suppressed because if it ever trickles down to the broader public, the legitimacy of the ‘war on terrorism’ collapses ‘like a deck of cards’. In the process, the legitimacy of the main actors behind this system is threatened, so they enact new laws to protect themselves:”(31)

In August, 2002, two American generals, General Tommy Franks, commander of US troops in Central Asia and General Richard Myers, Joint Chief of Staff Chairman, said they believe troops will have to remain in Afghanistan for a long time. General Tommy Franks likens the situation to South Korea, where the US has stationed troops for over 50 years.(32)

These generals should be in the know, and their scenario is unfortunately probably accurate, but kept quiet from the public. Perhaps these generals are thinking about the long time it will take US-led troops, which includes Canadian troops, to pacify Afghanistan. As well, these generals may be thinking about the need for troops to guard US oil and natural gas pipelines across Afghanistan after Afghanistan is pacified (if it ever is – Britain and Russia tried and failed). As mentioned already the US pipelines, if successfully built, will transport oil and natural gas across Afghanistan from the Caspian Basin to Pakistan’s warm water ports for transshipment to the US.

It seems to me, the only way we will get our Canadian troops out of Afghanistan, is to demonstrate to the Canadian public the illegitimacy of the US-led “war on terrorism” and hence the illegitimacy of the US-led war in Afghanistan.

To do this Peace Groups and the Canadian public need to inform themselves about 9/11, the events leading up to 9/11, the day of 9/11, and the days following 9/11, for 9/11 is the pretext for the war in Afghanistan.  (The war in Iraq and all the other horrors)  The official 9/11 conspiracy story of record is unbelievable and should not go unchallenged any longer by Peace Groups.

If enough Canadians become aware that successive US administrations have supported, abetted and harbored international terrorism there is a chance that the Canadian government will be forced to bring our Canadian troops home.

Val Gaffray is a long time member of Peace Alliance Winnipeg.

Notes

1. Michel Chossudovsky, America’s ‘War on Terrorism’, Second Edition, (paperback), Global Research, P. 126.
2. John Ryan, “Afghanistan: A Tale of never ending Tragedy”, globalresearch.ca, July 19, 2006, p. 3.
3. Ibid., p. 2.
4. Ibid., p. 2.
5. Ibid. p. 3.
6. Ibid. p. 3.
7. Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth, 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism, (paperback) Olive Branch Press, p. 7.
8. John Ryan, “Afghanistan: A Tale of never ending Tragedy”, globalresearch.ca, July 19, 2006, p.3.
9. Ibid. p. 3.
10. Ibid., p. 1.
11. Ibid. p. 1.
12. Ibid. p. 4.
13. Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth, 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism, (paperback) Olive Branch Press, p. 128.
14. Ibid. pp. 119 – 153.
15. John Ryan, “Afghanistan: A Tale of never ending Tragedy”, globalresearch.ca, July 19, 2006, p. 4.
16. Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline year by year, day by day, minute by minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11—and America’s response, (paperback) Harper Collins Publishers. P. 525. March 28, 2003: Independence of 9/11 Commission Called into Question.
17. Ibid., p.531. March 21, 2004: Victims’ Relatives Demand That 9/11 Commission Executive Director Resign.
18. Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth, 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism, (paperback), Olive Branch Press, inside cover, Critical Acclaim for Nafeez Ahmed’s The War on Truth. –Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.); former director of Advanced Space Programs Development (“Star Wars”), Air Force Space Division, Under President Ford and Carter.
19. See attached Appendix I.
20. See reference 26.
21. Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth, 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism, (paperback) Olive Branch Press, p. 342.
22. Ibid. p. 320.
23. Ibid. p. 343.
24. Ibid. p. 336.
25. Ibid. p. 333.
26. Ibid. p. 339.
27. Ibid. p. 345.
28. Barrie Zwicker, Towers of Deception The Media Cover-up of 9/11, New Society Publishers, p. 107.
29. Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed, The War on Truth, 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism, (paperback) Olive Branch Press, p. 149.
30. Ibid. p. 147. US-Pakistan Strategy Saves al-Qaeda.
31. Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War on Terrorism, Second Edition, (paperback), Global Research, p. 126.
32. Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline Year by year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11 –and America’s Response, p. 482. August 15, 2002: US General Believes Troops Will Remain in Afghanistan for Long Time.

APPENDIX: Note 19,  Canada’s Anti-Terrorist Legislation

“The two essential pillars of criminal law to establish guilt:  mens rea (intention to do a crime) and actus reus (the fact of doing the crime), are gone.  If the State decides a terrorist act was committed and you were in any way connected or associated with it, you are guilty whether or not you ‘intended to do the criminal act’ or whether or not you ‘did the act’.”  ‘The right to remain silent is gone.  The principle of confidentiality between lawyer and client is gone.  The principle of confidentiality between lawyer and client is gone (akin to forcing a priest to reveal the contents of the confessional).  The concept of a fair trial and the right to a full defense is gone.

“People or organizations accused of being ‘terrorist’ are put on a list.  Anyone who associates with a ‘listed’ person or organization can, by association, be defined as a terrorist.  Hence lawyers who defend people accused of being terrorists could find themselves being defined as terrorists.”

“Property and bank accounts can be frozen and confiscated simply on the accusation of being a terrorist.  Punishments are excessive and severe (life imprisonment in many cases).  These are some of the horrors of (Canada’s Anti-Terrorist Legislation under) Bill C-36.”

– Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism”, (paperback) Global Research, p. 12.