Eric Margolis

SARKOZY’S REVOLUTION

PARIS – There is something very un-French about the hyperactivity of France’s new president, Nicholas Sarkozy at time when the nation is preparing for its sacred 4-5 week summer vacation, a time when all political and economic activity ceases.

But no rest for the recent winner of France’s most dramatic election in decades. Sarkozy quickly named a cabinet of young, proven ministers who were clearly chosen for their ability to do battle with France’s reactionary, entrenched interests. Sarko just outraged the cozy political establishment by calling for an extraordinary summer session of parliament. Mon dieu, has he no respect?

Having trounced Socialist Segolene Royal by 53-47%, Sarkozy has a clear mandate from dis-satisfied voters to begin implementing the sweeping changes to the economy and society he promised when running. A majority of French, particularly those over 30, believe France has become stagnant and is falling behind the rest of the world. They elected Sarko to shake things up.

Sarko’s mandate may be further reinforced by upcoming June parliamentary elections. French voters often hand control of parliament to the opposition, just to make sure the president does not get too big for his britches. French love leaders on white horses but, paradoxically, they also love tripping them up.

This time, however, polls show voters may hand another major victory to Sarkozy’s Conservatives. If so, this would mean a devastating defeat for both the Socialists and Jean-MarieLe Pen’s far right. Both are counting on parliamentary elections to return them from the political wilderness.

These are the last few peaceful days in charming springtime Paris before Sarkozy’s revolution gets under way. When it does, expect France’s many special interests to come ought fighting in the streets.

Sarko’s first target: the daft 35-hour work created by the Socialists, an egregious example of state-sponsored laziness that has hurt the economy and encouraged malingerers. Sarko and his able new prime minister, Francois Fillion cleverly plan to outflank and undermine this leftist bastion by eliminating taxes and social payments on money earned in excess of 35 hours work.

The Conservatives plan laws mandating minimum service levels for public transit. This move is extremely important. In the past, France’s overly-powerful leftists transport unions have been able to inflict national chaos and usually thwart necessary reforms by paralyzing trains, subways, trucks and air travel.

Other laws to be proposed in this summer’s emergency parliamentary session will be efforts to restrict immigration and crack down on youthful offenders who stage violent street riots. Welfare reform must be undertaken before the social system collapses from under-funding and abuses.

Immigration could make or break Sarko’s government. In-flows of Africans and Mideasters is out of control across western Europe.

At least 10% of France’s population has immigrant roots. Offspring of first and second generation immigrants have produced a mutant, violent tribal subculture that sports tattoos, speaks gutter French, and is totally alienated from French civilization.

Sarko’s job number one is to shut down illegal immigration from Africa and break up the anti-social gangs infesting France’s tough suburbs, known as `banlieue.’

But already the Left is gearing to fight Sarkozy on every reform he plans. Government employs almost half of all French workers. Street demonstrations and strikes, France’s favorite pastime after lunch and l’amour, can be expected to afflict the nation in coming months.

Violent farmer’s groups are arming to prevent Sarko from cutting their obscene subsidies. Teachers, civil servants, and all sorts of other government workers are ready to fight to the last rubber stamp to defend their paid retirement as 58-60, 5 week vacations, and leisurely working habits. They also will be out in` the streets raising hell. Street demonstrations brought down the last prime minister, Dominique deVillepain, and even the great Charles DeGaulle.

So, Sarkozy will need the strategic skill of Napoleon, the battlefield courage of Marshall Ney, and the political intrigues of Tallyrand to deal with France’s coming summer of protests.
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TIME TO SAVE PAKISTAN FROM ITS RULER

In 1961 I went to Spain to visit my godfather, Count Ilyas Toptani, who had married the Duchess of Valencia. This fierce, regal woman, was a leader of the Carlists, Spain’s royalist party. They were in residence at one of the Countess’ castles, this one in Avila, surrounded by an entourage of priests, duenas, liveried servants and assorted flunkies. It was all wonderfully medieval.

The duchess and fellow Carlists had attempted a coup against Spain’s dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco. They seized Madrid airport, and waited for Spain’s exiled king, Don Juan, to fly in from Portugal. But Don Juan got cold feet and returned to Lisbon, claiming bad weather.

The Duchess grabbed the air controller’s microphone, according to Count Toptani, and furiously yelled at the king, `Your majesty, a king should die for his country, not a country for its king!’ Soon after, she was imprisoned.

I mention this piquant story because today another military ruler, Pakistan’s President-General Pervez Musharraf, seems prepared to see his nation destroyed rather than lose his grip on power.

Pakistan has been convulsed for months by riots and demonstrations calling for the ouster of Musharraf and his cronies. Long simmering opposition to Musharraf’s dictatorship erupted into an explosion after his firing of Pakistan’s courageous Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, who was blocking the president’s efforts to get himself re-elected in violation of the constitution and investigation corruption in government circles and the disappearance of hundreds of people arrested on flimsy charges of terrorism.

Pakistanis are fed up with Musharraf’s war against Pashtun tribes in Pakistan’s supposedly autonomous tribal territories, and against rebellious tribes in Baluchistan. Both operations are believed to have been launched at the urging of the president’s patrons in Washington.

There is also widespread anger against Musharraf, who came to power in a 1999 coup, for bowing to US pressure and abandoning Pakistan’s strategic interests in Afghanistan and allowing the US to use Pakistan as a base for operations against Afghanistan. Most Pakistanis are enraged by what many call Musharraf’s betrayal of the struggle to free the Vale of Kashmir from Indian rule, long regarded as Pakistan’s most sacred cause.

Hailed by Washington as a `democratic statesman,’ Musharraf has arrested and jailed thousands of people without trial. Many have been tortured. Elections are crudely rigged, legislators and judges bribed, and most of the army and intelligence service’s most capable, patriotic officers, were replaced at Washington’s demand by compliant yes-men untainted by Islam. Now, Musharraf’s security forces are intimidating Pakistan’s free press, one of its few remaining active democratic institutions.

What an irony that while Washington claims to be waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan to bring democracy, it is stoutly upholding Pakistan’s military dictatorship.

Some Pakistani critics keep reminding me of my past support and admiration for former military ruler, Gen. Zia ul-Haq. True enough. I knew and indeed greatly admired Zia. After interviewing Musharraf in 1999, I walked away, shaking my head and saying to myself, `Musharraf, you are no Zia!’

President Zia ul-Haq was a great leader, a true Pakistani patriot who prevented a Soviet invasion of Pakistan, won the war in Afghanistan, and advanced his nation’s strategic interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia. He was courageous, tough as steel, and refused to be intimidated by anyone. He was wrong to execute Pakistan’s deposed leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but he still was a giant compared to Pervez Musharraf.

Musharraf outraged his countrymen by obsequiously kow-towing to foreign demands while neglecting Pakistan’s needs. Turning Pakistan into Washington’s sepoy(native soldier) in exchange for billions in overt and hundreds of millions more in secret CIA stipends used to rent loyalty to the military regime has shamed many Pakistanis and further enflamed anti-western groups in this important nation of 162.5 million.

Now, thanks in part to Musharraf’s wrongheaded policies over Afghanistan, the conflict there is starting to lap across Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier. Pakistan is facing one of the gravest national crises since its creation in 1947 as a beacon of honest, democratic government for the Muslim World. Sixty years later, Pakistan has become a poster child for self-serving, undemocratic government that often does not even represent the best interests of the nation.

The Bush Administration keeps patting Musharraf on the back as unrest worsens and Pakistan heads toward a potential explosion that could destabilize the entire region and leave US and NATO forces in southern Afghanistan cut off and vulnerable. The west cannot afford to let Pakistan melt-down.

Quickly restoring democratic government is the obvious answer. Pakistan’s banned opposition leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, must be allowed to return and wage free elections. While burdened by a lot of negative baggage from her previous stints as prime minister, Miss Bhutto still appears as the most effective antidote to the current military regime and deserves strong western support. One hopes that recent rumors of a Benazir-Musharraf deal are no more than idle bazaar chatter. If they are true, then she will become as discredited as Musharraf.

Washington needs to press Musharraf to retire as armed forces chief. Musharraf is dragging down Pakistan with his unpopular, isolated regime. If he is as popular as he claims, let him run for office in a fair, democratic politician.

Time is fast running out. A nuclear-armed Pakistan facing regional, tribal and ethnic unrest or conflict is a hugely dangerous threat demanding urgent action. Pakistan must not be sacrificed for the sake of its leader.

copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007

TONY BLAIR’S FATAL ATTRACTION

*Today’s column is dedicated to my late mother, Nexhmie Zaimi, on this, her birthday. She was an intrepid journalist who refused to be silenced and fought all her life to defend those oppressed peoples who had no voice.

***
The noted British parliamentarian Enoch Powell famously observed, `all political careers end in failure’. Never has Powell’s grim maxim been more poignantly demonstrated than in Tony Blair’s announcement last week that he will resign at the end of June as Britain’s prime minister.

Blair’s decade in office was marked by many successes and often demonstrated capable political stewardship. But, in the end, his meteoric political career has ended in defeat and scorn. Call it Saddam’s curse.

The silver-tongued Blair transformed the demoralized, Marxist dominated Labor movement he inherited into a forward-thinking, business-friendly, centrist party. Blair purged Labor of lingering Marxist-Socialist influences and replaced the sullen old guard with young technocrats and political moderates. He was fortunate to arrive on the scene when the Conservative Party had run out of steam, was steeped in scandal, and had lost public support.

Blair’s `New’ Labor’ benefited from a powerful economic upswing generated by the highly successful reforms initiated by former Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Blair took advantage of this windfall, transforming Britain into one of Europe’s most dynamic and envied economies. Equally important, Blair deserves credit, as he put it, for making Britain `at ease with globalization’ and `comfortable in the 21st Century.’

In the process, Blair raised Britain’s living standards and employment, making it a magnet for massive foreign investment and entrepreneurial Europeans. But there was a heavy price: the cost of living skyrocketed and income disparity between Britain’s booming south and its left-behind north grew wider. London became one of the world’s leading tax shelters, with preposterously inflated land values and Monaco-like rents to match.

On the international front, Blair’s government helped rescue Sierra Leone from anarchy, aided in saving the Albanians of Kosovo from Serb ethnic terrorism, and even seemingly resolved Northern Ireland’s troubles.

Many admiring North Americans wished their own inarticulate leader possessed even a dash of Blair’s charisma, earnestness, and eloquence. Many Britons, however, accused Blair of being mostly political spin. In Europe, the youthful Blair was feted as a modern statesman who was showing the humane `middle way’ to national prosperity while maintaining a network of social safeguards.


Such praise was somewhat deflated by the lamentable state of Britain’s crumbling health system, air, airports, and railroads. Blair failed to bring Britain any closer to Europe and dodged the question of adopting the Euro. He wanted to keep one foot in Europe, and one in the United States.

Had Tony Blair quit office on 10 September, 2001, he would today be remembered and feted as one of Britain’s finer modern prime ministers. But then came Blair’s undoing, his fatal attraction to President George Bush’s war policies.

Historians will endlessly debate what impelled the sensible, intelligent Blair to enlist as first mate on Bush’s political Titanic. Blair had none of the arrogance and ignorance that led Bush and his Conservative Republicans into war. Unlike Americans, who were gravely misled about the Mideast by their media and religious special interest groups, the worldly British knew precisely what was going on.

Yet Blair ended up as a leading promoter of the Bush Administration’s grotesque lies about Iraq. He facilitated the Bush/Cheney war by providing Washington with credibility, diplomatic cover, and the pretense of a `coalition.’

Britain, as America’s premier ally, naturally felt pressure to join the war. Blair wanted Britain to get a share of the swag from Bush’s occupation of oil-rich Iraq .

But a true friend warns when you are about to drive over a cliff. Blair did not. Instead, he encouraged Bush and Cheney’s worst crusading instincts, validated their misconceptions and prejudices, and threw British troops into failed neo-colonial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By joining these wars, Blair enflamed the Muslim World against Britain and aroused violent reactions among a tiny minority of Britain’s 1.6 million Muslim citizens. In response, Blair curtailed sacrosanct British civil liberties and brought its esteemed legal system into question.

Blair claimed he had joined Bush’s wars in order to exert restraining influence over US policy. But, in the end, Blair had almost no influence over the Bush Administration’s policies. He was cruelly derided everywhere as America’s `poodle’ and a sort of Jeeves the British butler in the imperial White House. Blair’s obsequious pandering to the White House shamed and annoyed the pride British.

Blair’s formerly brilliant political reputation was destroyed by Iraq. His integrity and honesty were ruined by his steady litany of lies over Iraq and Afghanistan. Admiration for Blair turned to disgust.

A majority of Britons opposed the Iraq war and resented being seen as dutiful spear-carriers for America’s nuclear knights. As Labor’s popularity plummeted, a party rebellion finally forced Blair to announce he would resign and make way for Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.

The Iraq debacle, and, to a lesser degree, Afghanistan, have become a curse for all politicians involved. Iraq is destroying Bush, Cheney and the Republican Party. It has ruined Blair, and may undo two other Bush protégés, Australia’s increasingly unpopular PM John Howard, and Canada’s conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper who, for inexplicable reasons, chose to emulate and eagerly support one of the world’s most unpopular leaders.

Blair could have backed away from the Iraq disaster, but refused to abandon ship and kept insisting to the bitter end his faith-based policies were still right. This master of oratory could not, it seems, summon up the simple phrase, `I was wrong.’

One must feel a certain sympathy for Tony Blair’s Icarus-like fall to earth. But his sorry end was of his own doing, and well deserved. Tony Blair met his Waterloo in Iraq. He will not be the last.


copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007

May 17, 2007

*It's amazing the White House managed to find a general who accepted the new kamikaze mission of being the `czar' who will run the lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lt. Gen. Doug Lute will clearly be the fall guy when the US cuts and runs. Jobs with big responsibility and high profile but without real power are a kiss of death. Sayonara Lute-san.

*During the Republican debates this week, the only candidate who had any cojones and dared to tell Americans the truth was Rep. Ron Paul. He had the temerity to break the nation's biggest taboo by saying that 9/11 was caused by America's policy in the Muslim World. Republicans are now trying to ban this courageous man from the presidential race. Shame on them.

*Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died this week, was a fat, loathsome windbag, bigot, and hypocrite whose presence will not be missed. Falwell exemplified almost everything outsiders find unattractive about America: ignorance, hatred of other religions and races, loud-mouthed jingoism, and hyper-charged religion. Falwell and his ilk are often called the Christian right. A better description would be neo-fascist Christians who advocate hatred of Muslims and Jews, US imperialism abroad, and a totalitarian theocracy at home.

* Adieu, monsieur le president, adieu. I will miss Jacques Chirac. True, he didn't accomplish a great deal, but he looked and acted every inch president of France, was wise enough to keep his nation out of Bush's Iraq folly, had a wonderful, orotund speaking style and always made me smile. This column wishes him well.

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TIME TO BURY ATATURK

Western politicians and media unvarying hail Turkey as a democratic and social role model for other Muslim nations. `Why can’t the Muslim World be more likely Turkey,’ goes the refrain in Washington.

The recent dramatic political events in Turkey should instruct us that behind its veneer of parliamentary democracy lie unelected, semi-totalitarian power structures that have directed this nation’s affairs since the 1920’s.

Exhibit A: attempts by Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (known as AK) to elect its able Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, as president. Under the current unrepresentative system, parliament, rather than voters, elects the powerful president.

Gul failed to win election due to a boycott of parliament by opposition parties and threats from the military. He withdrew his candidacy and called for the direct election of Turkey’s president. What Turks call their `deep government’ had once again used its iron fist.

AK, which runs Turkey’s most popular and successful government in living memory, is mildly Islamist. It advocates Islamic principles of social justice, better education, some wealth distribution, and fighting corruption. AK does not advocate imposition of Sharia law or major social restrictions, as in neighboring Iran.

In fact, the moderate, centrist AK is quite close in outlook to Europe’s Christian Democratic parties.
AK has enacted more beneficial reforms in human rights, education, public finance, health,and relations with old foe Greece than all of Turkey’s previous governments since 1945.

Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has achieved great strides in aligning Turkey with the European Union’s laws and conventions. Today, the EU is the world’s leader in human rights and advancement of democracy.

Turkey’s westernized elite mobilized to prevent Abdullah Gul from replacing the outgoing president, Ahmet Necdet, a hardline secularist installed by Turkey’s powerful military. Turkey’s ironically-named Constitutional Court, created by the armed forces after its last coup, denied Gul’s legitimate election. In response, AK called national elections for 22 July.

Political power in Turkey has long been contested between the elected parliament and the generals of the 515,000-man armed forces, NATO’s second largest. Turkey’s military, too-powerful security forces, courts, government bureaucracy, universities, and industrial oligarchy are widely known as the `deep government.’ This minority has held power since the 1920’s.

Turkey’s military and security organs closely control the nation’s religious life and clergy, who are paid by the government. All sermons are written by government officials and distributed to mosques for Friday services. Islam, in Turkey, is on a tight leash. In fact, Turkey’s state control of religion was likely directly inspired by Stalin’s takeover and management of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The `deep government’ has battled all attempts to alter the status quo or abandon Turkey’s state religion, the bizarre cult of 1930’s dictator Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who continues as an idol of veneration by Turkey’s hard right and westernized elite.

Turkey’s `deep government’ has not hesitated to use gangsters and neo-fascist nationalist groups against opponents or arrest political opponents. In Turkey’s chronically unstable political equation, the `deep government’ holds about 60% of real power and the elected parliament roughly 40%.

The election of Abdullah Gul to the presidency could have seriously altered this status quo. As president, he would have been able to appoint the military’s senior officers and bringing the armed forces, a state within the state, under control of the civilian government for the first time in Turkey’s modern history.

In recent weeks, Turkey’s glowering generals openly threatened to overthrow the AK-led government of Prime Minister Erdogan. Turkey’s military juntas have ousted four governments since the 1950’s, including the last Islamist-light government in 1997. While mayor of Istanbul, the highly popular Erdogan was actually jailed for reading a classic poem that the military deemed too Islamist.

Until recently, Turkey’s military junta received unlimited American backing. Turkey closely followed Washington’s lead and acted as its regional gendarme. Close political, military, intelligence, and commercial relations were established with Israel which, in return, opened all doors in Washington for Turkey and held America’s powerful Greek and Armenian lobbies at bay. But after recent brazen coup threats by Turkey’s brass, the US and the EU rightly warned them to stay out of politics.

Turkey’s `secularists,’ who have been staging large anti-AK demonstrations, fear AK will curtail the privileges they enjoy. The generals would cease being Turkey’s shadow government and benefiting from arms purchases. Industrialists could lose their monopolies and state contracts, government bureaucrats in Ankara their perks.

Many of Turkey’s westernized urban dwellers fear Islamists, even AK’s moderate ones, might impose Iranian-style Sharia law, including dress codes and bans on alcohol. AK supporters, many of whom have emigrated from rural to urban areas in recent decades, support a return to Turkey’s more Islamic culture, but hardly to an Islamic theocracy, as claim their secular enemies.

This is the traditional open-minded, easy-going Islamic culture that Attatuk ripped out by its roots in the 1930’s in his headlong effort to transform Turkey from a Muslim into a western European nation. Remarkably, almost eighty years later, the ghost of this deified dictator, who was deeply influenced by such contemporaries as Mussolini and Stalin, continues to hold Turkey in thrall. Ataturk’s ruthless anti-Islamic revolution also left Turkey with a permanent case of national schizophrenia, unsure to this day whether it is a western or Asian nation.

Americans and Europeans who cite Turkey as a model of Islamic good government have little understanding of what really transpires behind its façade of parliamentary democracy. Turkey cannot become a real democracy or modern nation until the power of its self-serving generals and industrial oligarchs is replaced by a truly independent government, and Turks are allowed to worship as they please.

Those nations who claim to be friends of Turkey, like the US and the EU, should keep telling Turkey’s generals to get out of politics and return to their barracks for good. It’s time to shine bright lights into Turkey’s `deep government’ and end its sinister, reactionary influence.

copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007


WRITER’S NOTEBOOK

*No surprise in France. Sarkozy won election by a big margins, confirming France’s desire to bring in tough, painful economic reforms. Problem is, those who want reform, want someone else to bear the pain. If anyone can effect substantial reform, it’s the human buzz-saw Sarko. But he will soon be at war with France’s violent farmers, transport and industrial unions, the bloated state and educational bureaucracy, and all those who live off the government. Get your riot gear ready. Another point, parliamentary elections will be held in June. French may hand parliament over to the opposition parties, to make sure Sarko and his conservatives do not go too far.


*Among the many smarmy neoconservatives that infested the Bush Administration, Paul Wolfowitz was probably the most loathsome( though Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez is a strong contender for this title.) Photographed licking his comb, or touring a mosque in socks with holes in both toes, this personally unclean academic was the main architect of the Iraq War and a leading American lobbyist for Israel’s rightwing Likud Party. Some in CIA called him a `fifth columnist.’ An arrant fool and serial liar, Wolfie and his even dimmer deputy, Douglas Feith, should have faced indictment on criminal charges for the fraudulent Iraq War. Instead, he was sent to the World Bank by Bush. Caught in a tawdry scandal over a girlfriend, Wolfowitz is struggling to hang on as chief. He is still being backed by Bush and Bush’s new, eager-bever sidekick, Canada’s Stephen Harper. Throw out this creature and send him back to richly deserved obscurity.

*Learning that poor, little Jamaica and wretched Haiti have become the world’s most crime-infested nations, and the whole Caribbean is now a major crime zone, is really tragic. I used to live in Jamaica and still keep its charm and beauty in my heart. Drugs have swamped the region. It has become an entrepot between South America and the US. I lost an old Haitian friend, Tijo Noustas, murdered by drug traders. Now Jamaica is sinking into criminality and gunplay. A powerful argument for de-criminalizing drugs. Bush’s so-called `war on drugs’ is doing even worse than his botched wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007

CANADA’S DIRTY HANDS

Eric S. Margolis - 4 May 2007


Canada is one of the world’s most respected, law-abiding nations. Yet recent shocking revelations show it has become a party to the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan and a violator of the Geneva Conventions?

The story begins in 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Soviet KGB created a mirror -image secret police for its Afghan puppet government, KhAD. Having been pursued by KhAD agents, I can speak with personal knowledge of this subject.

KhAD sought to eradicate all opposition to the Communists. It also ran the education system and religious establishment. KhAD quickly became notorious, even in a famously brutal society, for its cruelties.

All political prisoners – that is, anyone who opposed the Communists – were subjected to systematic tortures. These ranged from garden variety beatings, pulling of finger nails, near-drowning and electric shocks to more refined cruelties. Prisoners were flayed alive, thrown into vats of sulphuric acid, blinded, buried alive, burned with gasoline, or slowly frozen in refrigerated rooms.

Psychological tortures - sleep deprivation, long isolation in darkness, sound assault, mock executions and psychotropic drugs were also used by KhAD under KGB supervision. The same tortures, known as `enhanced interrogation,’ are routinely used today by the CIA.

The Communists killed 2 million Afghans. Canada turned its back and refused to aid the mujahidin battling Soviet occupation. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the newborn Taliban movement drove the remaining Afghan Communists – rebranded the Northern Alliance – into the far northeast.

In 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan, allied itself to the Northern Alliance, and overthrew Taliban. A figurehead, Hamid Karzai, was put in power. Real power, however, was held by the Communist-dominated Northern Alliance.

Once the Northern Alliance took Kabul, the KhAD, rechristened NDS, was quickly reestablished. The old Communist torturers and war criminals went back into business.

Today, an estimated 60% of NDS personnel are former KhAD agents. US and Canadian forces fighting to pacify southern Afghanistan have been routinely handing captives and suspects over to the NDS secret police– in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Canada’s conservative government, reeling from public outrage, feebly claimed to have assurances from the Afghan Communist secret police - which had murdered or maimed tens of thousands of victims - to treat prisoners humanely.

How did Canada get into this mess? Conservative politicians in Ottawa saw a chance to win new voters by whipping up false patriotism in a jolly little war against `evil’ Muslims that was supposed to be….a slam dunk. They sought to curry favor with their ideological mentor, the Bush Administration.

No one in Ottawa had any knowledge whatsoever about Afghanistan, its tribal politics, or history. Even so, they dispatched 2,500 combat troops and $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan.

Senior Canadian officers and politicians who claim not to have known they were handing over prisoners to the Afghan secret police for torture are either stunningly ignorant or lying. I guess they never read Rudyard Kipling’s famous admonition to British soldiers fallen wounded in Afghanistan, `save your last bullet for yourself.’

This writer, who has covered many guerilla wars in Asia, Africa and Central America repeatedly warned in recent years that the longer Canadian troops stayed in Afghanistan, the more they would become brutalized and involved in war crimes. Such is the nature of all guerilla wars.

Canadians who still believe the fairy tale their forces in Afghanistan are `nation building’ or doing social work should reflect on the grim fate of prisoners their soldiers handed over to the mercies of the Afghan secret police.

Ottawa’s deal this week with Kabul for inspection of NDS prisoners is a sham. The KhAD had the same empty `agreement’ with human rights groups in the 1980’s.

It’s bad enough Canadian and other NATO troops are defending Afghanistan’s warlords who run its booming heroin industry. Now Canada is hand in glove with the Communist Party’s veteran torturers.
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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007