Afghans believe US is funding Taliban

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My comment on this piece.

Great piece Daniella. Unlike most of the ivory tower stuff printed in The Guardian by paid up wonks and experts, this rings true and Daniella has done the footwork. We get reams of stuff from the corporate consensus about fighting terrorism when the real story since 911 and before is America's need for enemies in order to justify its ever expanding military machine and its expanding archipelago of bases and client regimes around the world. It's about power, energy, defence budgets and the military industrial complex. The US was built on a frontier colonial mindset that always sees enemies. Indeed, it has had enemies over the years but it was President Eisenhower who pointed out the dangers of the military industrial complex, and the founding fathers who warned against the dangers of a standing army. The Afghans are not wrong.

Since 2000 US military spending has increased 9% a year! According to some measures, US military spending today, at approximately $1 trillion per annum, is higher in real terms than it was during World War 2. This in an era when America no longer has any significant military enemies.

Islamism, like Saddam Hussein, is a US client force, created first to bring down the Soviet Union, then used as proxies in the central Asian cold war between the West, Russia and China. (Saddam was used against Iran and then got out of hand, just like the Islamists). Pakistan created the Taliban, Pakistan receives billions in aid from the US, and the US pays off various Afghan warlords who in turn pay off the Taliban.

The whole war on terror in its us-and-them simplicity is a phantom created by the Neocons to justify their plans for world domination. If people want to deny the existence of PNAC that's fine. And of course none of the following happened:

Head of Pakistani intelligence met all senior US political and military leaders in a visit to US just prior to and during 911. He went away with a new US alliance with Pakistan.
French and Indian news reports show ISI colonel paid Mohammed Atta $100,000 in to his bank account days before 911.
3 out of the 4 terrorist pilots trained at Venice air base in Florida, the CIA's favourite base for drug running and black ops going back to the 1950s.

Instead of declaring war on Pakistan after 911, America embraced it and turned on Afghanistan and Iraq. Osama Bin Laden is not even on the wanted list for 911 because, as the FBI has stated, there is no evidence linking him to the attacks.

America accounts for half of the world's military spending. At least a third of US taxpayer dollars goes on the military. I would not pay those taxes. When will Americans wake up to the fact that they are a juggernaut heading for a cliff and that they are being duped into a permanent war, as Dick Cheney stated clearly after 911? It will bankrupt them.