Obama's Imperative in Afghanistan

Mr. President, you cannot continue this wretched, dishonest, disastrous war. If you do, your legacy will be poisoned by its obscene history.

George W. Bush was planning and mobilizing his attack on Afghanistan as early as March of 2001, some six months prior to the horrors of 9/11. The Afghan war, consequently, has nothing remotely to do with counter-terrorism. It is not an act even of preemptive self defense, but one of utterly unprovoked military aggression. Expressly prohibited by the charter of the United Nations, George Bush’s incursion into Afghanistan is an international crime.

Nor was the capture of Osama bin Laden of the least importance to the Bush White House—before or after 9/11.

Waiting on his desk when George Bush took office on January 20, 2001 was an offer from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden, an offer negotiated by the Clinton Administration after the al Qaeda attack on the U.S.S. Cole. But Mr. Bush turned it down. And twice more during the spring and summer of 2001 the Bush Administration refused the offer. Then on September 11 bin Laden struck again. Four days afterward the Taliban sweetened the offer: now they would also shut down bin Laden’s bases and training camps. Once again the White House refused the offer. Several weeks later the Taliban repeated the offer, again it was rejected, and on October 7, 2001, George Bush launched the war on Afghanistan he had been planning for months on end.

This is the war, President Obama, in which you apparently intend to “succeed.” With your dispatch of 21,000 additional American troops, you now command an American force in Afghanistan larger than the Russians deployed there. And General McChrystal is expected to ask for more troops—10,000-15,000 more will constitute a “high risk option,” 25,000 a “medium-risk option,” and 45,000 a “low-risk option.”

Mr. President, before you commit more young American lives to the tragedy, please confront the facts about George Bush’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Instead of expanding, you must choose to end immediately this hideous and illegal war—or be tarnished as a criminal accomplice.

It is a war of naked imperialism, undertaken for the geopolitical control of the immense hydrocarbon resources of the Caspian Basin: Afghanistan, lying directly between those resources and the world’s richest markets, uniquely offers pipeline routes of incalculable value.

By 1996 the Bridas Corporation of Argentina had a lock on the routes. With signed pipeline contracts from both General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, Bridas controlled the Caspian play.

To the Unocal Corporation of the U.S. (and subsequently to the Bush Administration) that was intolerable. To contest Bridas’ success, Unocal hired a number of consultants: Henry Kissinger, Hamid Karzai, Richard Armitage, and Zalmay Khalilzad. Armitage would later serve George W. Bush as Deputy Secretary of State, and Khalilzad would become a prominent diplomat. Both were enthusiastic members of the “PNAC,” the Project for a New American Century, a far-right group that asked President Clinton in January of 1998 to remove forcibly the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. (Clinton ignored the request.)

In the late ‘90’s Unocal hosted Taliban leaders at its headquarters in Texas and in Washington D.C., seeking to have the Bridas contract voided. The Taliban refused. Finally, on February 12, 1998, Mr. John J. Maresca, a Vice President of Unocal, testified to the House Committee on International Relations. He asked to have the Taliban removed from power in Afghanistan, and for a “stable government” to be installed in its place.

The Clinton Administration, having rejected a month earlier the PNAC request to invade Iraq, was not any more interested in overthrowing the Taliban: President Clinton understood and chose to abide by the United Nations Charter. In August of 1998, however, Clinton launched a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan, retaliating for al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And he signed an Executive Order prohibiting further trade negotiations with the Taliban.

Mr. Maresca was thus doubly disappointed. The Taliban would remain in power, and now Unocal could not even continue its private entreaties.

Unocal’s prospects declined even further on October 12, 2000. In yet another al Qaeda attack, the U.S.S. Cole was bombed, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 more.
Some people in the Clinton Administration wanted immediately to “bomb the hell out of Afghanistan.” A few more cruise missiles wouldn’t do. But the State Department first dispatched Mr. Kabir Mohabbat, a U.S. citizen but a native Afghani, to arrange a negotiating meeting with the Taliban.

The parties met November 2, 2000 in the Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt, Germany. Frantic to avoid the retaliatory bombing, the Taliban offered the surrender of Osama bin Laden.

As the details of the handover were being worked out, however, the stalemated election of 2000 was awarded to George W. Bush. The surrender of Osama bin Laden would be handled by the incoming Administration.

But the new Administration demurred. In letter to the Taliban the Bush White House asked to postpone the handover of bin Laden until February; the Administration was still “settling in.” Kabir Mohabbat, however, was retained as a consultant to the National Security Council.

Unocal's fortunes then improved dramatically. In direct repudiation of Clinton’s Executive Order, the Bush Administration itself resumed pipeline negotiations with the Taliban in February of 2001. (At one meeting, a Taliban official presented President Bush with an expensive Afghan carpet.)

The Administration offered a tempting package of foreign aid in exchange for secure and exclusive access to the Caspian Basin for American companies. (The Enron Corporation also was eyeing a pipeline, to feed its proposed power plant in India.) The Bridas contract might still be voided. The Administration met with Taliban officials three times: in Washington, Berlin, and Islamabad. Still the Taliban refused.

But the Bush Administration meant to prevail, by force if necessary. As early as March 15, 2001, when Jane’s, the British international security journal disclosed the fact, the Administration was engaged in a “concerted front against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.” Confirming the Administration’s intended violence, George Arney of BBC News wrote a story published September 18, 2001: “U.S. Planned Attack on Taliban.” In mid-July of 2001 a “senior American official” told Mr. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary that “...military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.”

Finally, on August 2 of 2001, the last pipeline negotiation with the Taliban ended with a terse statement by Christina Rocca of the State Department: “Accept our offer of a carpet of gold or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” Shortly afterward, President Bush informed India and Pakistan the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan “before the end of October.”

This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.

Twice during the spring and summer of 2001 Mr. Kabir Mohabbat was sent to discuss the still pending surrender of Osama bin Laden. At both meetings Mr. Mohabbat could only apologize. The Bush Administration was not yet ready to accept the handover.
Then on September 11 Osama bin Laden struck once more.

With the Trade Towers in rubble and the Pentagon smoking, the Bush Administration seized immediately on the stupendous opportunity to disguise its intended attack on Afghanistan. It would be recast as a “Global War on Terror,” and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice would be its initial, prime objective.

The Taliban asked quickly for another meeting. Once again Kabir Mohabbat was dispatched to arrange it. On September 15, Taliban officials were flown in Air Force C-130 aircraft to the Pakistani city of Quetta, to negotiate with the State Department. Once again desperate to avoid a catastrophic bombing, the Taliban sweetened the deal: now they would also shut down bin Laden's bases and training camps.

The offer was rejected by the White House. The geopolitical need to proceed with the invasion was intractable, but with bin Laden in custody, the argument for the “War on Terror” smokescreen would collapse. Osama bin Laden simply had to remain at large.

Several weeks later the Taliban's offer was repeated. And so was the White House rejection.

On October 7, 2001, the carpet of bombs was unleashed over Afghanistan.
Then, with the Taliban removed from power, Mr. Hamid Karzai, the former Unocal consultant, was installed by the U.S. as head of an interim government.

The first U.S. envoy to Afghanistan was Mr. John J. Maresca, a former Vice President of the Unocal Corporation.

The next Ambassador to Afghanistan was Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad, also a former Unocal consultant.

On February 8, 2002, four months after the carpet of bombs, Presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Perves Musharraf of Pakistan signed a new agreement for a pipeline. The Bridas contract was now moot. The way was open for American companies—Unocal and Enron—to proceed.

About a year later in the British trade journal Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections dated March 20, 2003, the truth about the Afghan war is laid bare. The article describes the readiness of three U.S. Federal agencies in the Bush Administration to fund the pipeline project: the U.S. Import/Export Bank, the Trade and Development Agency, and the Overseas Private Insurance Corporation. The article continues: “...some recent reports ...indicated ...the United States was willing to police the pipeline infrastructure through permanent stationing of its troops in the region.”

It didn’t take long for that to occur. At the website of GlobalSecurity.org, a report entitled “Operation Enduring Freedom Facilities” tells what happened:
“Since the 11 September 2001 attacks, the U.S. military has deployed to 13 locations in nine countries [in addition to] Afghanistan. More then 2,000 civil engineers deployed to the region building and maintaining bases. Including additional deployments in Bulgaria, Turkey, and Kuwait, by early 2002 over 60,000 U.S. troops were deployed at these forward bases, and hundreds of aircraft were flying from expeditionary airfields.”

Superimposing the base-locations over maps of the pipelines, the Bush Administration’s design is unmistakable. U.S. bases in Afghanistan proper—there are now 15 altogether—precisely straddle the prospective pipeline routes.

Much has changed since President Bush launched his premeditated war of energy imperialism. The warlords, the poppy growers, and the Taliban dominate Afghanistan once more. A “stable government” is nowhere to be seen. The Bridas Corporation was bought by British Petroleum, Unocal is now part of Chevron/Texaco, and the war in Afghanistan has a new Commander In Chief.

Yes, President Obama, this is your war now. This war of naked imperialism is yours. This international crime is yours.

The nation, the world, and the judgment of history await your next decision about the war: what can you justifiably do, for God’s sake, but end it?

By RICHARD W. BEHAN
(Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He has published on various websites over two dozen articles exposing and criticizing the criminal wars of the Bush Administration.)

The historic decline of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party

The landslide defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan’s election last month marks more than the end of the party’s protracted grip on political power. The rise of Japanese capitalism after World War II, and with it the fortunes of the Liberal Democrats, depended above all on the international strategic and economic framework built on the now waning global dominance of the US. The ignominious electoral collapse of the LDP amid the greatest global economic crisis since the 1930s is another sign that politics, not only in Japan but internationally, is entering uncharted and stormy waters.

The common myths about Japanese politics—the natural dominance of conservative parties in a regimented society with a placid, disciplined workforce—conveniently ignore the revolutionary upheavals following World War II when the fate of Japanese capitalism hung in the balance. Two million people, including many civilians, had died in the war, nearly half of the aggregate area of the cities had been destroyed and industry was at a standstill. Having suffered the horrors of war, economic deprivation and police-state repression, the working class was deeply hostile to the wartime militarist regime and determined to fight for its basic rights.

In conditions in which the major bourgeois parties were widely reviled, the post-war political stabilisation of Japan, like Europe, rested on the betrayals of Social Democracy and above all, Stalinism. The Japanese Socialist Party (JSP), the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and their associated trade unions grew explosively. Amid continuing hunger and poverty, strikes and protests were widespread and led to a broad radicalisation. A planned general strike in February 1947 was called off on the orders of the head of the US occupation, General Douglas MacArthur. For the Communists, the decision to abandon the strike was a logical outcome of their Stalinist two-stage theory, which interpreted the limited reforms of the US occupation as part of a so-called first democratic stage of the revolution.

In reality, by reining in working class militancy, the JCP gave the US occupation and the Japanese bourgeoisie a much-needed breathing space. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the US military had released political prisoners, including JCP leaders, and purged politicians and bureaucrats associated with the wartime regime. After 1947 and the outbreak of the Cold War, Washington reversed course, allowing right-wing figures back into political life and conducting a “red purge” of communists and their sympathisers in the state bureaucracy and, with the assistance of American union leaders, in the trade unions.

The Liberal Democratic Party, formed in 1955 as the amalgamation of the conservative Liberal and Democratic Parties, rested entirely on the framework established by the US occupation. The cornerstone of its foreign policy was the 1952 US-Japan Security Treaty that ended the occupation and established Japan as America’s chief Asian ally in the Cold War. Economically, the revival of industry depended heavily on preferential trading relations with the US. The Korean War from 1950-53 gave a massive economic boost to Japan, which served as a base of operations for US troops. Politically, the LDP tightened its grip on office through a rural gerrymander reinforced by tariff protection for farmers, as well as subsidies and pork barrel construction projects for rural areas.

In the 1960s, amid continued global expansion, Japan became the original Asian “economic miracle”. Japanese businesses, nurtured behind trade barriers by the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry, exploited the country’s cheap labour to make major inroads into the US and European markets. Over the decade, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 10 percent.

However, like the post-war boom internationally, the Japanese “miracle” was relatively short-lived. The first rupture came in 1971 when US President Richard Nixon ended the fixed gold-US dollar exchange rate that had underpinned the global economic framework. The following year, the Nixon administration deeply shocked the Japanese establishment by establishing diplomatic ties with China without bothering to consult its Cold War ally. The huge hikes in oil prices in the 1970s also hit Japan hard. While the economy recovered, rising wages compelled Japanese corporations to invest in other Asian countries where labour was cheaper. Moreover, the economic success that transformed Japan into the world’s second largest economy led to sharpening trade tensions with the US.

The political dominance of the LDP, which had ridden the economic upswing, started to unravel in the 1990s. Massive speculative bubbles in shares and real estate collapsed virtually overnight, inaugurating a decade of economic stagnation. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War raised difficult new dilemmas for the Japanese bourgeoisie. The political establishment was deeply disturbed at being excluded from the first Gulf War in 1990-91 by the pacifist clause of Japan’s constitution, but forced by the US to underwrite the cost of the imperialist adventure. Critics began to question the US military alliance and call for a more independent foreign policy. Moreover, the globalisation of production in the 1980s that had undermined the Soviet Union was also rendering the shut-in Japanese economy less internationally competitive.

The break-up of the Liberal Democrats began in 1993 with a series of defections by those pressing for a more aggressive pro-market agenda and foreign policy. The LDP lost office for 11 months in 1993-94 to an unstable coalition of small new conservative parties and the Socialists. The party returned to power in 1994 in a strange coalition with the Socialist Party with the Socialists’ leader Tomiichi Murayama as prime minister. The ruling Liberal Democrats and their loyal opposition, the Socialists, were the central political props of post-war Japanese capitalism. Their grand alliance profoundly alienated supporters of the Socialist Party, which subsequently splintered and collapsed as a significant political force. The LDP staggered on from one crisis to the next, forming a series of weak, short-lived governments riven by internal feuding and incapable of carrying out the economic restructuring demanded by big business.

Junichiro Koizumi’s term as prime minister from 2001 to 2006 appears to be an exception. But Koizumi’s political success rested entirely on his ability to posture as a “rebel” against the party hierarchy. The LDP only turned to Koizumi, who had always been regarded inside the party as an eccentric misfit, when it was staring political oblivion in the face. Koizumi exploited his populist image to push through a series of right-wing policies—the promotion of Japanese militarism, full support for the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” and further economic restructuring. After LDP members in the upper house scuttled his postal privatisation plans in 2005, he expelled the rebels and called a snap election—an unprecedented step in Japanese politics. By focussing on postal privatisation, he effectively sidelined other issues—including widespread opposition to the Iraq war.

The impact of Koizumi’s sweeping pro-market restructuring soon became apparent, however, giving rise to a public debate over economic “winners” and “losers”. When he stood aside in 2006, his popularity was already sliding. None of his successors as prime minister—Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda or Taro Aso—was able to repeat Koizumi’s political confidence trick. The global economic crisis over the past year brought to the surface deep-seated resentment and hostility, not only toward the Liberal Democrats, but to the entire Japanese political establishment over declining living standards, deepening social inequality and the revival of militarism.

The decline of the LDP opens up all of the unresolved political and social questions that erupted after World War II, but were then smothered by the straitjacket of post-war politics. The ruling class will now be compelled to use the Democratic Party, a makeshift amalgamation of former LDP and Socialist Party factions, to implement its agenda—a process that will inevitably bring the new government into collision with the working class. If history is any guide, these struggles will take on a revolutionary character sooner rather than later.