"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced" - James Baldwin
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Friday, 27 August 2021
Afghanistan - Operation Cyclone
In
1978, a liberation movement led by the People’s Democratic Party of
Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the dictatorship of Mohammad Dawd. A
year later the U.S. Embassy in Kabul reported that “the United
States’ larger interests… would be served by the removal of the
government, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future
social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.” The USA then launched
“Operation Cyclone” to bribe and arm religious zealots,
known as the Mujaheedin.
Washington
Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that the CIA spent $70 million on
bribes alone. He describes a meeting between a CIA agent known as
“Gary” and a warlord called Amniat-Melli: “Gary placed a bundle
of cash on the table: $500,000 in one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He
believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the
best way to say we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we
know you need it.”
There then followed years of war, occupation, bombings and killings.
We
were told it was Osama bin Laden. But he escaped into Pakistan - on
horseback - soon after the U.S. started dropping bombs. The war then
became a "feminist” mission, but with the Taliban beaten the
mission changed again to reconstruction— President Bush introduced
us to, "an Afghanistan that is free from evil and a better place
to live." This translates as a better place for the Pentagon,
Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, Raytheon, multiple defense
contractors, mercenaries and Afghan warlords who, over the years
pocketed $2.6 trillion.
Andrew
Cockburn wrote that. "if we understand that the [military
industrial complex] exists purely to sustain itself and grow, it
becomes easier to make sense of the corruption, mismanagement and
war.”
Where
will be the next bonanza for the war profiteers and the next
catastrophe for the civilians and soldiers who pay the ultimate price
for campaigns launched in the names of "security" and
"freedom"?
Those
who have caused this chaos are having their noses powdered in TV
studios. Those politicians who have tried to tell us the truth have been villified and removed. An even worse fate for truth-telling journalists. They have been forced into exile or imprisoned.
