John Batchelor is connecting some odd dots this week. It might be deliberate misinformation, it might be too much Alex Jones, it might be a fiction writer creating a plot in his mind, or it might be really disturbing.
The motivation seems to be Woodward’s book, the lack of denial from the White House, another botched/stolen election and the military looking for a way out of President Obama’s “Intelligent” war.
The dots John is connecting – at least by his line of questions – is that the current president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai was involved in the 9/11 attack. The thought was that before the attack could go forward, Ahmed Shah Massoud had to be killed. He was the leader of the Northern Alliance who was working to get the Taliban out of power. He was murdered on September 9, 2001.
Here is an article written on the one year anniversary asking a similar question
Saint Petersburg (FL) Times 9/9/2002
The big question this doesn’t answer is “who?”
I think this Opera is about to reach the finale, with fingers pointing right at Pakistan.
Sweet God Almighty, I hope for the sake of the nation that this one turns out to be the nattering of a deranged mind.
Afghanistan is a perfect example of slippery alliances, as it has been since at least the proxy war we fought against the Soviet Union. If memory serves, Massoud invited bin Laden to Afghanistan in the 90’s. Karzai is looking to broker a peace with the Taliban, his opinion toward our efforts is turning cold, and we have no exit strategy.
Once this finally ends, this will be declared “victory for all.” In other words, we will have lost.
Why did we forget how to use our Air Force?
Can I be more blunt? When did we forget how to engage in war? The lesson from Vietnam (for some people) was “Don’t get involved in a war you aren’t prepared to win”…
John makes it clear in a number of ways that he has CIA contacts (or at least wants you to believe that). The failure of another election, Woodward’s book and the fact that the President is going to start bringing the troops home soon (and the U.S. election) are all aligning for change. John’s narrative is based on things learned by talking with Massoud’s brother from London. All of this sounds more than anything like the forming of a pretext by the military and/or CIA to remove Karzai from power.
When we go in, take over, then hand out candy and soccer balls, rebuild schools, make the electricity work and build roads – that does not discourage future bad behavior. Afghanistan never went through a serious punishment phase. Of course, that’s hard to do since there is so little to destroy.
Afghanistan is ethnically different countries that the English smushed together as they tended to do in their colonialist past – it seems like we keep stepping into cleaning up their messes (and France’s).
The southern part of Afghanistan are Pashtun. They are the same people who inhabit the “Pakistani tribal lands”. That’s where the problem is. Kabul and the Tajiks and Uzbeks have almost nothing in common with the Pashtun other than a national identity forced on them by the West. (Karzai is Pashtun)
Perhaps the U.S. and Pakistan should agree to creation of a new Pashtun homeland combining southern Afghanistan and the tribal areas – and then find a reason to jointly declare war on it and pound the place into small pebbles of sand. Let the northern part of Afghanistan either form a smaller country without the Pashtun or just be absorbed by their neighbors (mostly Tajikistan and Uzbekistan)
The big drums are beating. In breaking news, a NATO helicopter has killed 3 Pakistan soldiers, and Pakistan has closed NATO’s supply route into Afghanistan