From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Fri May 15 2009 - 16:00:28 EDT
US to be buried in 'Graveyard of Empires'
Fri, 15 May 2009 17:22:03 GMT
US efforts to cut out a friendly Afghan administration could end up as
disastrous as the previous international approaches on the country, says
a former presidential assistant.
"The idea of trying to establish a central government.that is going to
be pro-American is foolish," said political analyst and former special
assistant to ex-US president Ronald Reagan, Douglas Bandow on Thursday.
He cited the unsuccessful British and Russian invasions of Afghanistan
which respectively pursued colonial and Marxist goals. "We've certainly
seen the Soviets run into that, as well as British before them. It's
called the 'Graveyard of Empires' for a reason," Bandow said in an
interview with Russia Today.
Afghanistan earned the notoriety following the 1842 massacre of the
British army during their retreat from the capital, Kabul and the
inconclusive 10-year Soviet presence there.
Of the 16,000 British soldiers, who had departed on the retreat, only
one survived the attackers who had swooped on the troops from the
encompassing mountains. The 1978-1988 Soviet confrontation with the
Mujahideen insurgents has also been likened to the US war on Vietnam in
its damaging and futile nature.
Bandow, however, doubted the objective of Americanization to be
Washington's prime target after the stated aim of counter-insurgency,
from which, it had deviated.
"The question is what is America doing? What is America's goal? It is
very hard to know."
The comments came while President Barack Obama has assigned 21,000
soldiers and a great number of civilian experts to the Afghan-based
contingents.
This is while the civilian deaths from the US attacks on suspected
militant sanctuaries continue to rise and conjure up anti-American
sentiment.
The Taliban insurgents have, as well, been fleeing from the attacks to
neighboring Pakistan where main towns and cities are now tainted with
militant influence - a pretext Washington has used to extend it military
presence to the country.
Washington has, meanwhile, been warning that the insurgents could get
hold of the Pakistani nuclear facilities any time -- an excuse, which
critics say, threatened to explain the US presence in Pakistan after
Afghanistan.
"I don't think that further militarization of this conflict is going to
be the answer. So I am afraid that if Obama does not seriously engage in
a new approach in terms of looking for diplomatic options and figuring
out what his objective really is, the US could find itself here for
another six years not achieving anything," the former official
concluded.
HN/MMN
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