by Justin Raimondo, October 30, 2009
"The parallels between our stinging defeat in Vietnam and our coming defeat in Afghanistan get eerier by the moment. Just as Matthew Hoh, a top-ranking US official and Marine officer in Zabul province resigns in protest over the war – writing that it "reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our Nation’s own internal peace" – it looks like Karzai is getting the Diem treatment from his American patrons. Or, rather, Diem-lite – since they (probably) have no intention of offing him, but just want to get rid of him as quickly and painlessly as possible. And the way to do that is to "out" him as a CIA asset – which they have done, courtesy of the New York Times.......
What the Americans seek, above all, is a "legitimate" puppet government, one they can sell to Congress and the American people over the next decade or so as they engage in a gigantic "nation-building" counterinsurgency sure to spill over the border into Pakistan. This project will dwarf the invasion of Iraq in terms of its sheer scale and utter impossibility: the cost in lives, and taxpayer dollars, is going to be enormous. With an ineffectual and unreliable puppet and his drug-dealing brother at the helm of the Afghan "government," Washington despairs of ever making its case to the American people – and so, one way or another, Karzai’s career is on the wane. Perhaps, like Diem, he’ll experience an "accident" from which he may not recover, or maybe he’ll flee to the US, where his friends in the fashion industry might deign to help him start a second career as the Afghan Versace.
In any case, let this serve as a lesson to aspiring would-be American sock puppets everywhere, who see a lucrative future in fronting for Washington:
when you stumble, they’ll just kick you away and find another ambitious quisling to take your place faster than you can say "Ngo Dinh Diem." "
No comments:
Post a Comment