Privatizing War: Hamid Karzai Meets Nguyen Van Thieu

“...armies that are bought never fight with the will or effect of armies that are under sovereign control.”
- John Keegan

“The U.S. government pays trucking firms to move supplies around Afghanistan to its rural and far flung outposts. These trucking companies then pay private security contracting firms, operated by drug lords, warlords, the Taliban and relatives of senior Afghan Administration officials, or consortiums of any or all of them, for safe passage to American installations. As one American trucking executive said, ‘The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money.’”
- Jon Soltz and Richard Allen Smith

“ War is a Racket.”
-  Major General Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps

Getting rid of Hamid Karzai won’t get rid of corruption in Afghanistan anymore than getting rid of Rod Balgojevich got rid of corruption in Illinois. Karzai and the Taliban are part of the landscape, like “deals” in Chicago.

Because he grew up amidst corruption in Chicago and Springfield, a lotus blossom in a swamp, Barack Obama was easily able to spot a stinker in Kabul, and only needed confirmation from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator John Kerry and others, to confirm his suspicions… as well of those of us who remember how much bloodshed American fighting men and women suffered in propping up a corrupt South Vietnamese government.

Blagojevich was dumped by the Illinois Legislature before he could privatize Illinois’ public employee benefits for the fun and profit of himself and his cronies. Unfortunately, U.S. public employees we know as soldiers, have risked and lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Bush/Cheney administration’s addiction to soldiers and civilians of fortune fatally blunted the objective of reducing Al-Qaeda.

Nevertheless, the United States of America “of giant corporations, by giant corporations, and for giant corporations,” is having a harder time of it these days. The main reason is that we now have a President who, like FDR, can’t be stampeded, bullied or easily buffaloed, and a Democratic Congress willing to stand up and be counted… every now and then. They may not win ‘em all, but they are fighting.

The real story about big pharma, for example, is not that they negotiated a deal with the White House, - it’s that they had to go there in the first place. Under Bush and Cheney, or Bill Clinton, they did as they pleased… out of media and public sight.

Congress takes on the health insurance cartel, not just because of Democratic majorities, but also because President Obama, national polling data, and a rejuvenated media continue to keep their feet to the fire.

Defense Secretary Gates gets approval to scrap new F-22s and this sharp and significant reversal of the usual military-industrial juggernaut, is barely noticed. As Senator J. William Fulbright pointed out long ago, the Pentagon located military bases or military manufacturing units in all 435 Congressional Districts, in order to discourage U.S. Representatives from voting against their whopping budgets.

The Pentagon’s and Congress’s cynical approach to letting politics and economics of military hardware supersede the interests of men and women obliged to use that hardware in mortal combat, has come home to roost in the merchandising of our troops’ lives for the sake of supporting corrupt regimes in South Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pat Tillman’s refusal in life to trade on National Football League celebrity, an act of civil courage to match his personal and combat courage, was not honored in death by General McChrystal in the fiasco of his being awarded a Silver Star for death by friendly fire. John Kerry likely knows that when he was headed for the Mekong Delta, the President who, no doubt, pressured General McChrystal to misuse Pat Tillman’s death, was headed in the opposite direction. So does Hamid Karzai, I’ll bet.

Whatever decision President Obama makes regarding the future of troop deployment in Afghanistan, his delay signals to Karzai, our NATO allies, Pakistan, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, that American leadership is no longer willing to pursue illusions, and call them “anti-terrorism.” Should anyone thereby doubt Obama’s willingness to use force against terrorists, they can reference the fate of the three Somali “Pirates.”

Our soldiers are no longer being viewed as “cannon fodder” for grandiose dreams of Empire in the Middle East, but as precious sons and daughters of the American Middle West, and from all other geographical and spiritual directions of the nation’s heartbroken and anxiety ridden citizenry.

It’s about time.

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