'Sea Grasses
Fighting Beach Erosion'
Near Galveston, Texas,
2001.
Governmentalism is not an ideology. It is a method of taking control of money, people, resources, and existing forms of government.
The US has been in Afghanistan for decades now. Recent news articles suggest US efforts may have been more costly and less influential than the US had hoped.
In 'The Washington Post', Sunday, March 6, 2011, Rajiv Chandrasekaran's 'As US war priorities shift, focus on Afghan women's rights dims' describes 'fluid, rapidly changing' conditions for US Agency for International Development contract plans for a $140 million Land Reform Program. The original program specified ways in which women were to be included in the new Afghan nation. The Land Reform Program called for a 50% increase in the number of deeds granted to women, allowing women to inherit and keep the land in their families or to obtain land. Another clause required the inclusion of women's rights high school and college materials.
There was no specified government in Afghan for about 9 years after the Soviets left Afghanistan and the US military presence predominated. There has been a succession of changing tribal alliances. While Afghanistan appears more stable under President Hamid Karzai as the US presence diminishes, alliances continue to shift.
Election voting fraud has been a problem. So has government finance. In September, 2010 'The New York Times' and other US newspapers carried numerous stories about the consolidation of banks and money by Karzai and his political allies and complaints of exclusion and fraud by other factions.
What began as 'nation-building' has become rebuilding. Much like the old Afghanistan, the women's rights initiatives are loosing momentum. The article describes the Afghan attitude toward women as only belonging 'in the house or in the ground'. Observers in Afghanistan mention that the Karzai government has agreed to return to fundamentalist conservative Taliban anti-woman views on women to bring the Taliban into his coalition. For example, government policy now includes denying women safe-housing in private shelters, and returning women from the 14 national shelters to conditions from which they have attempted to flee.
US AID now is working on a $600 million for the municipal government building project in Afghanistan instead of many of the women's rights issues. $600 million is a large amount of money to send to a country which does not recognize the civil rights of half of its citizens.
Recall that the Taliban is the conservative fundamentalist Islamist religious network which has opposed the secular 'western-influenced' governments supported by the US, UK, and Europeans to stabilize the North Africa-Middle Eastern regions. Al-Qaida, the radical action arm of the Taliban, was formed by Saudi Arabian Osama bin-Laden and others, to fight off the Soviets after asking for Soviet help in Afghanistan against rival tribes and religious sects.
Then bin-Laden used the The 'Cold War' rivalry between the USSR and the US to draw US military and money into Afghanistan. Similar conflicts have spread across the whole region since then, worsening in Tunisia in North Africa and Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and other nations in the Middle East. Of course most recently US involvement has increased dramatically in Libya. In what has been described as a muti-lateral action, a French plane purportedly bombed Libya, then the US released 136 $1 million missles. The term 'no-fly zone' has been confusing. Prevously news reports described such zones as areas off-limits to military plane surveillance. Now the term appears to mean a blockade of weapons to Libya or flights out of Libya to targets.
Bin-Laden is achieving the long-term Al-Qaida goal of working for collapse of the US economy by involving the US in multiple, serial military actions in different parts of the Muslim-occupied regions. Conflicts in North African and Middle Eastern regions are draining the US of military equipment, soldiers, and money. These comflicts have created unrest in the US, by pulling the US into Islamic religious government vs. secular government power struggles throughout these regions.
Remember that Osama bin-Laden is the 53rd son of a wealthy Saudi Arabian construction industry family who reportedly lives on a $7 million dollar annual family allowance. Bin-Laden is not a poor boy out on the hillside calling out for freedom and democracy.
Perhaps bin-Laden envisioned the endpoint of the regional Al-Qaida wars as construction project income for his family's businesses in the post-war Arab zones which fundamentalist Sunni Saudi Arabian Muslims would then control.
Somehow, the Muslim fundamentalists in North Africa and the Middle-East have led the US and allies on a whirlwind of military activity and expense. Recently Obama has shown that the US is helping to pull-down the very secular governments which the US supported or permitted in the region to lessen the Arab-Israeli conflict and stabilize the region.
There has been a failure to maintain regional stability, whether by diplomatic error or lack of historical knowledge or understanding. For centuries there have been wars between radical Islamic religious sects who fight to control people, money, and resources. Sharia law and government are religion-based. There is no historical separation of church and state.
Obama's dictates to Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to step down may reflect some shared opinion about the slow progress toward democracy in Egypt, historically the land of Pharoahs, dictators. The native pro-democracy protestors may themselves have de-stabilized the area. It is possible the protestors are joining with the Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalists and other goups to return Egypt to Islam. The protestors could be part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which could appear to be an oppressed group in Egypt, outlawed by Hosni Mubarak as a revolutionary Islamic anti-secular government network. And it is reminiscent of George Bush's demands that Saddam Hussein step down in Iraq over his refusal to allow inspection of nuclear power facilities.
The US does not have unlimited funds or soldiers to clean up the mess after dictating domestic terms of government to foreign governments. The issue arises again with Obama's demand that Colonel Moammar Khaddafy of Libya step down. Khaddafy does have a very bad record on human rights, recently threatening to kill his own countrymen and killing them in an early civil war. But we are somehow more involved because of George W. Bush's opening of the diplomatic door to Khaddafy to do business in the oil/gasoline and other industries wth Libya.
The task for the US here is to answer at least four questions:
1. What it is about the US Presidency that brings on these bouts of telling foreign leaders what to do?
2. How does this lead so quickly to expensive military conflict and could this be averted?
3. Why do so many in the US think we can do business with leaders and nations with whom we so fundamentally disagree, especially in military sales of planes, ships, guns, other weapons, nuclear power, and other governmental products and services?
4. Why doesn't the US rely more on the United Nations, NATO, and other groups of nations at these times?
Conflict in the North African and Middle Eastern regions has persisted since the 6th Century. The US cannot change what the Arab Sects have not been able to resolve over all these centuries.
In the case of Afghanistan, it is not clear where the US AID contract money is coming from. If from the US, government or private sector--many might no longer want to be involved if the funds are used to re-install a repressive, fundamentalist Taliban which denies civil rights to women, members of other tribes or religious affiliations.
If the funds are from Karzai government created banks, why involve the US any further in a conflict-ridden area which can support itself, especially one that is somehow destabilizing our society by exposure to repressive, restriction of the wealth of society to a select group?
If these governments can create their own banks and money, why should the US and Europe feel a need to be involved financially or otherwise. It would not be possible to recoup or 'recover' the amount of American money and lives lost in a region now returning to its fundamentalist strife without exposing the US to fundamentalist, including anti-woman, sentiments and other forms of repression.
If there is a concern about loss of military jobs and budgets, there are alternatives. US military could be employed along US borders to solve immigration problems, provide assistance in emergency/rescue missions, and other activities with clearer goals and endpoints.
Email mkrause381@gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com to comment or request copies of this or other blogs posted by mary for monthlynotesstaff on http://monthlynotes21.blogspot.com (http://monthlynotes.blogspot.com to '21') on www.google.com. See http://monthlynotes18.blogspot.com or '19' for bloglists of titles and URLs.
Graphic: 'Sea Grasses Fighting Beach Erosion, Near Galveston, Texas, 2001', copyright, mkrause381@gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com.
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