Obama’s speech on Afghanistan: A compendium of lies
3 December 2009In his December 1 speech at West Point announcing the deployment of 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan, President Barack Obama attempted to justify a major escalation of a deeply unpopular war on the basis of lies and distortions. That he had to resort to such falsifications reflects both the reactionary character of his policy and the fact that it is being imposed in violation of the popular will.
To justify the escalation, Obama recycled the Bush administration’s myths about the “war on terror.” He cynically presented the US as an altruistic power, forced into a global war for democracy by the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
As he sought to frame US imperialist policy within the template of the “war on terror,” however, his speech descended into utter incoherence.
Obama’s account of the US’ recent wars contradicted his own assertion that Washington was single-mindedly pursuing Al Qaeda. In 2001, he said, the US attacked Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda—though most of the September 11 hijackers were, in fact, from Saudi Arabia, the US’ major Arab ally in the Middle East.
The US invasion was legitimate, he argued, because Afghanistan was Al Qaeda’s base of operations and the Taliban regime harbored and protected the terrorist group.
Obama brushed over the failure of the US invasion to dismantle Al Qaeda by saying that “after escaping across the border into Pakistan in 2001 and 2002, Al Qaeda’s leadership established a safe haven there.”
Thus, from 2002 to 2009, the US pursued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan supposedly directed against Al Qaeda, while the latter was based in another country altogether—Pakistan, a long-standing US ally.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/pers-d03.shtml
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