Eric Margolis on Afghanistan, drugs and oil

[Minstrel Boy]

If you don't read Margolis, you really ought to. He's an excellent geopolitical analyst with considerable Middle East experience. His words cut cleanly through the Bushista bullshit. His commentary on CBC-TV during the, ahem, "major combat phase" of the Iraq war was terrific stuff.

I don't know if his columns are picked up in the States, but he can be read online at the Toronto Sun website.

Here are a few choice excerpts from his Sunday piece re: Canadian troops returning to Kabul:


We should understand these soldiers are not true peacekeepers, like Canadian troops in Cyprus, but rather auxiliaries of U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan whose strategic mission is to secure control of Central Asian oil.

...

Not only are the U.S. and its allies mired in an intensifying guerrilla war in a chaotic nation, they now find themselves in league with world-class drug dealers.

...

After Indochina and Central America, the U.S. once again finds itself in bed with major drug dealers. The Bush administration has reportedly ordered agents from its own Drug Enforcement Agency in Pakistan to turn a blind eye to the narcotics dealing of its Northern Alliance allies.

Well-meaning but ill-informed Canadians now join the endless Afghan war as part of the imperial garrison in Kabul. By helping protect Karzai and the Northern Alliance, Canada, like the U.S., has become an unwitting, but very real, accessory to the international heroin trade, and the partner of a criminal regime.

http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_aug17.html

[Spazito]

1. Wow and thanks for posting!

I have been neutral on the issue of Canadian troops going back to Afghanistan but, after reading this, no more! He sure nails it, putting it all together to make a very distressing but factual piece.