A BOOK REVIEW
ZATAAR DAYS, HENNA NIGHTS
by Malik Isasis



Eight years ago, just after September 11, 2001 a friend Farah Nousheen, a Muslim, felt moved to make a documentary, Nazrah: A Muslim Woman’s Perspective. Farah wanted to contextualize Muslim women’s experiences, since most Americans began an abrupt and often miseducation of Muslims and Arabs after the September 11th attacks. I came on board as a producer, cinematographer and editor to help guide Farah through her first foray into independent filmmaking, and it was during filming that I met a petite, introverted, and articulate young woman named Maliha Masood, born in Pakistan, and raised in Seattle. She was an interviewee, whose segment in the documentary dealt with her travels across the Middle East, just a year before September 11th.

Inspired by the doldrums of the hamster-wheel existence in which many of us live, Maliha dropped everything—a well-paying job, and a long-term relationship and bought a one-way ticket to the Middle East, escaping the angst of the rat race in America for a more ethereal angst of finding one’s self in a foreign land.

On the set of the documentary Maliha told me that she was a writer and was writing a memoir of her experience, traveling as a single woman across Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and a few other places in between, but after the documentary, she disappeared—I would later learn to Boston for graduate school.

Two weeks before I was to leave for New York City (2007) I randomly bumped into Maliha at a small arts event after several years of a communication blackout. She promptly handed me a post card with graphics of her freshly published book, Zataar Days, Henna Nights and asked me to attend her book reading. I recall not being able to attend, but arranging to meet for coffee.

It was during the coffee date she handed me a copy of the book, as a going away gift. After getting her to sign the book, I put it away in my backpack where it stayed for months. It wasn’t until several of my female friends encouraged me to read Eat, Pray, Love (a runaway blockbuster travelogue) that I decided out of respect, to dig into my packed boxes to find Maliha Masood’s travelogue, Zataar Days, Henna Nights and read. I cracked it opened and read her lovely scribbles:

“To my friend Malik. It’s all about the process. Keep on traveling. Love Maliha. 3/16/07”

ADVENTURES, DREAMS, and DESTINATIONS

I’ve only read two travelogues, or memoirs—Eat, Pray, Love and Zataar Days, Henna Nights, and both share a basic premise or setup, a personal crisis of some sort, sending the protagonist reeling into self-doubt and in search of self, thus beginning a personal pilgrimage across foreign lands in search of an antidote for whatever emotional ailments. What is starkly different in my mind is that Elizabeth Gilbert's (Eat, Prey, Love) voice is mostly internal, constantly giving the score on her emotions at nearly every turn, whereas Maliha Masood’s voice is external, keeping her secrets and feelings closely guarded even when she finds herself in the most absurd of situations.

The first chapter, A Leap in the Dark, where we find our protagonist sitting in the backseat of a car while her parents drive her to the airport is one of the few times the reader gets a peak behind Ms Masood’s emotional curtains, as she describes a quiet panic of doubt, questioning her decision to uproot her life. The comfort, and encouragement she receives in the airport before departing from her parents reveals the deep connection she has with them, and conjures up the childhood feelings of being left behind by your parents on your first day of kindergarten.

Masood’s prose style is surgical, not giving any more details than necessary, for which there are advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that she mostly avoids the self-indulgence of writing a memoir, that is, the heighten self-involvement that seems absurd when juxtaposed with people lives in an under developed country. The disadvantage is having the author’s voice be at times detached, and having to read between the lines of what she is feeling. There were a couple of young Arab men in Zataar Days with whom Ms Masood bonded. They were her Sherpa, helping her navigate through the cultural terrain of local customs and traditions. She clearly developed emotional attachments throughout her journey, but both platonic romances seemed to build up, only to end abruptly and without closure. You'll have to read between the lines, or triangulate the behavior of a free spirit Australian, who joins her early in her trek.

Masood’s spirit and writing comes alive as she recounts the meeting and traveling with an adventurous, Australian named Bea, whom she met while in Europe. Bea joined her on a significant leg of her journey across the Middle East. Bea is at the opposite end of the spectrum, gregarious and sexually expressive, and she seems to be the one who gets the two women in the most bizarre of situations. Through Masood’s eyes, there are hints of admiration as she watches Bea hypnotize men with her looks and wit. Masood tastefully sizes herself up to Bea, but allows Bea’s actions to speak for itself.

Masood’s non-judgmental writing style feels like a documentary, allowing the Egyptians, Syrians, and Lebanese people she came across to speak for themselves, without romanticizing their poverty, politics or overly nobelizing the natives as Westerners tend to do. Zataar Days, Henna Nights is a well-written personable tome, involving, and at times, moving.

It is clear to the author as well as the reader by the end of her journey that traveling was only the beginning of dealing with the aches and pains of life, and that running off to Egypt, or Syria was only cosmetic, and that real growth occurs from within, no passports needed.

PIMP THIS |

THE HEALTHCARE ISSUE: VOLUME 104, ISSUE 125
Played, Betrayed, Health Care Delayed: House Passes Bailout For Private Insurance Companies
by Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report



Now we know what the Obama administration means by “health care reform”. They mean guaranteeing the rights of insurance and drug companies to their profits. They mean making health insurance like car insurance, with everyone compelled by law to purchase it from a private vendor, except for the very poorest among us, who will be offered a “public option” so limited and expensive as to discredit the word “public” when used in association with health care at all.

There's no polite way to put it. If you're one of millions who voted Democrats into Congress and the White House last year to enact universal health care, you've been played and betrayed.

The legislation squeezed out by the House on Saturday was a giant step away from ensuring the kind of quality, affordable, everybody in, nobody out health care that polling shows most Americans favor. Apologists for the White House and its party of course insist that while imperfect, it's a giant step forward, providing health insurance coverage to millions who didn't have it before, and that in any case it was the best they could do under the political circumstances. It's hard to see how anyone can believe this.

Instead of recognizing a human right to health care, the White House and congressional Democrats have enshrined into law a corporate right to profit on the delivery or the non-delivery of health care. Health insurance will be mandatory, like car insurance, and government subsidies will enable everyone to purchase the shoddy, deceptive and defective products of the private insurance industry, which already rakes off fully one out of every three health care dollars in tolls for nothing more than standing between patients and their health care.

Many of the millions of new customers the insurance companies will get due to the individual mandate, as it's called, are the young and healthy who pay premiums and seldom need much in the way of care --- the very most profitable customers of private insurers.

Drug companies will be shielded against competition from generics in the fastest growing categories of drugs, the so-called biologics, which include just about all vaccines.

The public option which progressives insisted all summer would be the line in the sand beyond which they would not retreat, had been gutted by early spring. Members of congress knew it, but fed us hype all summer and fall about its imaginary wonders, how it would keep costs down, provide choice and effectively compete with private insurers. Even Howard Dean told us the public option was “best thought of as Medicare.” He lied, and so did many Democrats.

And the ban on pre-existing conditions is undercut by provisions in the law that encourage insurance companies to institute “wellness” incentives, a backdoor means of achieving the same kind of segmentation that discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions served.

Insurance companies are not only prohibited to offer abortion services in any policy paid for in part with government funds, they are not even required to offer pelvic examinations or family planning services of any kinds. Doubtless then, some will not.

Medicare will be slashed, depending on which version you prefer, from $300 to $500 billion and the medical benefits of those who have them now taxed to fund the “public option” and low-end private insurance offerings, enabling racist Republicans a peg to tell their constituencies that their hard working tax dollars are paying for the meds of undeserving, lazy black people and so-called “illegals.”

And although millions more will receive some kind of health insurance, just about all those who do so between now and 2013 will do so through the expansion of Medicaid, rather than the private insurance exchanges, which are not scheduled to be fully operational till 2013 at the earliest.

Why President Obama's attempt to reform health care should take 3 or more years when Medicare back in the 1960s was fully operational in under a year is a question almost never asked.

2013 is a long way off. It's two election cycles down, past the 2010 mid-terms and beyond the 2012 presidential contest. Hope is a heady drug, but it's hard to imagine how the crack pipe can be kept hot that long. Between now and the time the illusion of Obamacare, if we can call it that, unravels, thousands more will die because they cannot get medical care, and hundreds of thousands will go bankrupt. The differences between the promises and the facts are multiplying, and could cost the Democrats control of Congress as soon as next year.

But real change rarely if ever comes from above. Real change comes from below. The wave of sit-ins and civil actions in favor of single payer health care, the only plausible solution to the crisis, shows no signs of stopping. Like the housing and general economic crises, which the administrations and media tell us every day have turned around, the health care crisis will drag on for the foreseeable future.

PIMP THIS |

THE REAL POLITIK ISSUE: VOLUME 103, ISSUE 124
How Catholic Bishops Threw the Health Care Debate into Turmoil with Anti-Abortion Maneuver
by Adele M. Stan, Alter.net




It took a virulently anti-choice measure to pass the House's health care reform legislation. Progressives are strategizing how to keep it from the final bill.

It was a bold power play -- one that caught progressive members of the Democratic caucus off-guard, and one that has sown distrust and dissension among House Democrats.

With a major assist from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, two members of Congress -- both members, as well, of a secretive, right-wing religious group -- made it impossible for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to pass an historic health care reform bill without the attachment of anti-abortion amendment that, if signed into law, could set women's rights back decades.

While few think the amendment's draconian language will find its way into a final bill, its passage last weekend as part of the Affordable Health Care For Americans Act set the stage for a battle that could determine whether health care reform legislation ever makes it to the Senate floor for a vote.

The amendment, spearheaded by Bart Stupak, D-Mich., goes far beyond the standard prohibition on the use of federal dollars for abortion services known as the Hyde Amendment; Stupak's would prohibit the purchase, through the health insurance exchange the bill would create, of even private health insurance plans that cover abortion -- even for women who were not eligible for government-subsidized premiums.

The cumulative effect of the Stupak amendment is it would likely kill abortion coverage in nearly all health insurance plans, whether purchased through the exchanges or not, since the exchanges will come to constitute the bulk of the market for policies purchased by individuals.

It would also affect the coverage offered employees of the federal government -- one of the nation's largest employers -- who already choose from among a range of insurance packages offered in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan.

"This is a very serious development here," said Kate Michelman, the former president of NARAL. "Women across the country -- Democratic women in particular -- but women, I would argue, all across the country, as they are learning about this, are really, really upset. And this isn't only the result of the bishops; this is the party, as well, not really standing up for women and allowing a group of conservative Democrats, who they recruited and helped elect, rule the day in the House." (Michelman has an essay on this topic, co-authored with Frances Kissling, on the op-ed page of today's New York Times.)

Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., the co-sponsor of his amendment, are members of The Family, the stealthy religious group exposed by journalist Jeff Sharlet in his book of the same name. In both houses of Congress, members of The Family have been working for months to defeat health care reform. Although the anti-choice views of both men are said to be rooted in their religion, it's hard not to suspect their amendment of being a poison pill intended to kill health care reform entirely. After all, the bill already contained language restricting the use of federal money for abortion.

How Stupak Happened

As members prepared last weekend for the vote on landmark health care reform legislation, House leaders thought they had forged a compromise, after days of negotiation with anti-choice members of Congress, that would assure conservaDems that no public monies would be disbursed through the federally administered health insurance program the bill would create.

Then, at the 11th hour, the compromise fell apart. The Catholic bishops weren't buying in, and that was enough to scuttle the deal. Stupak said he wouldn't vote for the health care bill unless his amendment saw a vote, and Pelosi needed his vote and the votes of members he claimed to represent.

But in order for Stupak to get a vote for his amendment, Pelosi would need Republican votes for the rule that would allow the amendment to move to the floor. That's when the language of the amendment turned ugly, according to Politico.

Members from heavily Catholic districts wouldn't sign on until the bishops gave their blessing on the language, Republicans wouldn't vote for the rule until the National Right to Life Committee signed off. Pelosi assessed her risk, apparently calculating that the Stupak language would be stripped out of the bill that is eventually sent to the president's desk.

Few were more dismayed by the Stupak amendment than Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a key member of the "whip team" that Pelosi put together as a kind, arm-twisting, cajoling, Dem-whispering corps charged with bringing in the votes of any reluctant colleagues.

At first, DeLauro explained, House leaders thought they might have won a compromise weeks ago with a change to the bill's language offered in the Energy and Commerce Committee by Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., that made it more explicit how public monies would be separated from private dollars used to purchase health coverage through the exchange. >>CONTINUE>>

PIMP THIS |

THE REAL POLITIK ISSUE: VOLUME 102, ISSUE 124
Blaming the 'Dithering' Obama
by Robert Parry, Consortium News



Despite House passage of the health-care overhaul bill on Saturday night, the word “dithering” is getting attached to President Barack Obama, much as “hubris” was tagged to George W. Bush and “undisciplined” applied to Bill Clinton.

But is that fair? After all, Obama has been in office less than 10 months and had to confront a multitude of disasters left behind by Bush. Those included the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a yawning budget deficit, tattered international relations and two open-ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Plus, some of those complaining most about Obama’s failure to act decisively, the Republicans and the neoconservatives, were party to many of Bush’s policy decisions that have proved so destructive. And Obama has taken on some very tough issues, most notably health-care reform, which has bedeviled presidents for nearly a century.

That said, however, there does appear to be some merit to the “dithering” accusation. Or put differently, Obama has shown a tendency to let himself be diddled.

On health care, for instance, Obama let deadlines slip as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, led months of fruitless negotiations with three Republicans. Finally, Baucus was forced to produce his own bill, whose key features – like health co-ops to replace a public option – have since been jettisoned by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The surviving health legislation itself is a faded image of what Obama promised during the presidential campaign. Though the “public option” survives in the current House and Senate versions, it is anything but “robust,” now just a pale shadow of the cost-saving notion that liberals had expected.

Though the health insurance industry now opposes the legislation, private insurers earlier won concession after concession from the Democrats and no longer fear that 119 million Americans might shift from the industry’s plans to the public option, as one industry-backed group warned last spring.

The surviving House-Senate versions of the public option would be off limits for big companies, whose employee policies make up the largest and most lucrative part of the market, and the public option wouldn’t have rates linked to Medicare, a major cost-saving provision.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that only six million Americans would sign up for the House version of the public option and – since they are likely to include a high percentage of sick people – the rates for the public option might even be higher than rates offered by private industry.

One of the few progressive features left in the two surviving pieces of legislation is the House provision to extract more than half of the new health care costs from a surtax on the rich (individuals earning $500,000 and couples making $1 million), raising about $558 million over the next decade.

That provision at least would put the richest Americans who have benefited disproportionately from Bush’s tax cuts in position to subsidize a national health insurance program. But the Senate version contains no such surtax and its prospects remain doubtful.

So, the American people have watched the messy health-care debate play out this year with Obama seeming to have little control over the process and with even members of his own party rebelling. Thirty-nine House Democrats joined with all but one Republican to vote against the health bill that won by the narrow margin, 220-215.

Health-Care Fallout

This drawn-out health care battle also has undermined Obama’s ability to show decisiveness in other areas.

Because he has struggled to keep his top legislative priority (health care) on track for so long – and must worry about losing any Democratic votes in the Senate – he has not been able to confront other problems very aggressively.

For instance, Obama’s goal of a Middle East peace breakthrough as the central element in resetting U.S. relations with the Muslim world has been sidetracked, in part, by recognition that any ramped-up pressure on Israel to make concessions could anger powerful neoconservatives, both in Congress and the Washington press corps.

Already, neocon Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut has warned that he will support a Republican filibuster to kill health-care reform if any public option survives, and the Washington Post’s neocon editorial page has lashed out at important features of the House bill, such as the surtax on the rich.

In the convoluted politics of Washington, even seemingly disconnected issues – like health care and Middle East peace – can be joined by a desire to weaken a political foe. The neocons well understand that if Obama can be broken on health care, he would lack the political clout to pressure Israel into making significant peace concessions.

At minimum, by hobbling Obama politically, the neocons would guarantee continuation of the status quo in the Middle East, with Israel continuing to consolidate its settlements in the West Bank and keeping alive prospects for a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program.

A weakened Obama also could open the way for restoration of neocon control of U.S. foreign policy if the Republicans can retake Congress and the White House over the next three years. That, in turn, could revive neocon dreams of having the United States wage war against Israel’s enemies in the region, most notably Iran and Syria.

While some of this neocon dreaming may seem farfetched today, it should not be forgotten that just a few years ago, this agenda of “regime change” was at the heart of U.S. government policy and had the staunch support of powerful institutions, like the Washington Post. Plus, despite the Bush disasters, the neocons retain extraordinary influence in key Washington power centers.

The neocons, after all, got their first real taste of Washington power under Ronald Reagan after working to undermine President Jimmy Carter’s policies, both domestic and foreign, when Carter was pressuring Israel to achieve peace with the Palestinians. [See Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Slipping Away

As Obama struggles with health care and is unable to focus on Middle East peace, he is watching other opportunities for change slip away. Angered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to halt expansion of settlements on the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared that he will not stand for reelection in January.

That could open the door to either a unified Palestinian leadership under the more radical Hamas or a power vacuum. Either way, negotiations could be off for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the Muslim world increasingly is viewing Obama’s outreach, such as his much-acclaimed Cairo speech, as all talk, no action.

The Israeli-Palestinian stalemate has other consequences. By failing to reverse the anti-American hostility that surged across the Muslim world during Bush’s presidency, Obama confronts diminished prospects for winding down the Iraq War in a way favorable to U.S. interests and tamping down violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Those international problems then reverberate back to the U.S. political scene by creating more concerns about troop levels in the war zones and prospects for future terrorism.

Already, Obama has delayed a decision on Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan, on top of the 68,000 Americans already there. While Obama says he wants a thorough policy review, he has come under criticism, on one side, from Republicans for “dithering” and, on the other, from the Democratic base eager to end an eight-year-old war that many analysts doubt can be won at this late stage.

If Obama opts for some middle ground – like sending a lesser number of new troops – he is sure to anger both sides.

Similar halfway measures on the economy – backing away from nationalizing some too-big-too-fail banks last winter and agreeing to a scaled-down $787 billion economic stimulus plan rather than an amount over one trillion dollars that some economists said was necessary – have left Obama in another fix, getting hammered by Republicans for both spending profligacy and ineffectiveness on the jobs front.

Though the Obama administration says its emergency steps pulled the country back from the brink of a depression and saved jobs, the current 10.2 percent unemployment rate is being blamed on Obama and the Democrats, further eroding their political strength.

Challenges Ahead

So what can Obama do?

The President might want to learn something from a scene in the movie “Bull Durham” when the minor-league manager shakes up his “lollygagging” baseball team by confronting the players in the shower and hurling bats at their feet.

Obama must grasp that more lollygagging on health-care reform won’t help. He has little choice but to pressure the Senate to take up the health bill right away. In doing so, he would need to show some anger and engage in serious arm-twisting. Inspirational speeches only get you so far with Congress.

If Senate Majority Leader Reid can’t muster the 60 votes to stop a Republican filibuster, then Reid must turn to alternatives, like passing as much of the bill as he can under the majority-rules provisions of “reconciliation.”

Clearing away the long and dragged-out health-care battle would open the legislative calendar to deal with other pressing concerns, such as financial regulation and unemployment, as well as the environment and global warming.

In all these matters, Obama must find a far more assertive – and more populist – voice than he has shown to date. So far, he appears to have made a calculation that his only hope is to finesse the jaded and right-leaning Washington Establishment, rather than to confront it.

Yet the problem is not just Obama or even the Democrats.

While many on the Left decry Obama for his wimpy behavior and denounce congressional Democrats as sell-outs, the American progressives also must look in the mirror. The truth is that the political/media crisis facing the United States is systemic, and progressives share in the blame.

Over the past three decades, the American progressives have largely forsaken the need to build national media institutions and think tanks, ceding that strategic ground to the neocons and the Right. That misjudgment, in turn, has left national politicians (and mainstream journalists) vulnerable to pressure from well-funded right-wing attack groups.

The Left’s response usually is to sit in the stands and shout complaints -- or to veer off into unrealistic strategies, like supporting third parties “to teach the Democrats a lesson,” as happened in 2000 when supporters of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader claimed they couldn’t detect “a dime’s worth of difference” between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

The Left’s institutional weaknesses in this “war of ideas” have left many progressives pinning their hopes on some knight-in-shining-armor politician who rides off to slay all the dragons. However, this unrealistic concept invariably disappoints. When the knight-politician falls short or cuts deals, the progressives are left muttering about betrayal.

The other way to go would be for progressives to commit serious resources, time and talent to build media institutions and think tanks (especially near the front lines of Washington, rather than on the West Coast).

These institutions would engage in a daily conversation with the American people about what the facts are and what can be done, while also creating defensive shields for national politicians and journalists when they actually do the right thing.

Arguably, the biggest problem with the health-care debate has been the Left’s lack of a reliable message machine to counter the Right’s predictable denunciations of “big government.” That “government is the problem” theme has worked since the days of Ronald Reagan in large part because the American people haven’t heard a consistent counter-argument.

Not only has that “big government” attack line excluded a serious debate about a single-payer health-insurance system but it has devastated congressional support for a “robust” public option. Politicians, especially in states dominated by right-wing talk radio and pro-Republican newspapers, are terrified to argue that government sometimes can offer the best answer.

If the American Left is to serve any role other than as grumbling critics in the stands, it must go beyond excoriating politicians and the mainstream media. It must get into the game – and stop “dithering.”

PIMP THIS |

THE MAKING WAR ISSUE: VOLUME 101, ISSUE 123
McChrystal Doesn’t Get It—Does Obama?
by Scott Ritter, Truth Dig




There is a curious phenomenon taking place in the American media at the moment: the lionization of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan. Although he has taken a few lumps for playing politics with the White House, McChrystal has generally been sold to the American public as a “Zen warrior,” a counterinsurgency genius who, if simply left to his own devices, will be able to radically transform the ongoing debacle that is Afghanistan into a noble victory that will rank as one of the greatest political and military triumphs of modern history. McChrystal’s resume and persona (a former commander of America’s special operations forces, a tireless athlete and a scholar) have been breathlessly celebrated in several interviews and articles. Reporters depict him as an ascetic soldier who spouts words of wisdom to rival Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent Gen. McChrystal to “fix” the war in Afghanistan in the way that his boss, that earlier military prophet Gen. David Petraeus, “fixed” Iraq. Whether by accident or design, McChrystal’s mission became a cause célèbre of sorts for an American media starved for good news, even if entirely fabricated, coming out of Afghanistan. One must remember that the general has accomplished little of note during his short tenure to date as the military commander in Afghanistan. His entire reputation is built around the potential to turn things around in Afghanistan. And to do this, McChrystal has said he needs time, and 40,000-plus additional American troops. There are currently around 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s request would raise that number to around 110,000 troops – the same number as the Soviets had deployed in Afghanistan at the height of their failed military adventure some 20 years ago.

McChrystal, or more accurately, his staff, has authored a not-so-secret report that outlines the reasoning behind this massive increase in American military involvement in Afghanistan. Rightly noting that the American-led effort is currently failing, McChrystal argues that only a massive infusion of U.S. troops, and a corresponding “surge” of American civilians, can achieve the stability necessary to transform Afghanistan from the failed state it is today. A viable nation capable of self-government, the new Afghanistan could maintain internal security so that terrorist organizations like al-Qaida will not be able to take root, flourish and once again threaten American security from the sanctuary of a lawless land. This concept certainly looks good on paper and plays well in the editorial section. And why shouldn’t it? It touches on all the romantic notions of America as liberator and defender of the oppressed. The problem is that the assumptions made in the McChrystal report are so far removed from reality as to be ludicrous.

McChrystal operates under the illusion that American military power can provide a shield from behind which Afghanistan can remake itself into a viable modern society. He has deluded himself and others into believing that the people of Afghanistan want to be part of such a grand social experiment, and furthermore that they will tolerate the United States being in charge. The reality of Afghan history, culture and society argue otherwise. The Taliban, once a defeated entity in the months following the initial American military incursion into Afghanistan, are resurgent and growing stronger every day. The principle source of the Taliban’s popularity is the resentment of the Afghan people toward the American occupation and the corrupt proxy government of Hamid Karzai. There is nothing an additional 40,000 American troops will be able to do to change that basic equation. The Soviets tried and failed. They deployed 110,000 troops, operating on less restrictive lines of communication and logistical supply than the United States. They built an Afghan army of some 45,000 troops. They operated without the constraints of American rules of engagement. They slaughtered around a million Afghans. And they lost, for the simple reason that the people of Afghanistan did not want them, or their Afghan proxies.

Some pundits and observers make note of the fact that the Afghan people were able to prevail over the Soviets only because of billions of dollars of U.S. aid, which together with similar funding from Saudi Arabia and the logistical support of Pakistan, allowed the Afghan resistance to coalesce, grow and ultimately defeat the Soviets and their Afghan allies. They note that there is no equivalent source of empowerment for the Taliban in Afghanistan today. But they are wrong. The Taliban receive millions of dollars from sympathetic sources in the Middle East, in particular from Saudi Arabia, and they operate not only from within Afghanistan, but also out of safe havens inside Pakistan.

Indeed, one of the unique aspects of the Afghan conflict is the degree to which it has expanded into Pakistan, making any military solution in one theater contingent on military victory in the other. But the reality is that the more one employs military force in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, the more one strengthens the cause and resources of the Islamic insurgents in both places. Pashtunistan, once a fanciful notion built around the concept of a united Pashtun people (the population in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan are primarily drawn from Pashtun tribes), has become a de facto reality. The decision by the British in 1897 to separate the Pashtun through the artificial device of the so-called Durand Line (which today constitutes the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan) has been exposed today as a futile effort to undermine tribal links. No amount of military force can reverse this.

Thus the solution itself becomes the problem, thereby creating a never-ending circular conflict which has the United States expending more and more resources to resolve a situation that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground in Afghanistan, and everything to do with crafting a politically viable salve for what is in essence a massive self-inflicted wound. It is the proverbial dog chasing after its own tail, a frustrating experience made even more so by the fact that any massive commitment of troops brings with it the fatal attachment of national pride, individual hubris and, worst of all, the scourge of domestic American politics, so that by the time this dog bites its tail, it will be so blinded by artificialities that rather than recognize its mistake, it will instead proceed to consume itself. In the case of Afghanistan, our consumption will be measured in the lives of American servicemen and women, national treasure, national honor, and, of course the lives of countless Afghan dead and wounded. >> CONTINTUE<<

PIMP THIS |