According to a think piece in a recent edition of Newsweek, President Barack Obama is a post-imperial leader who seeks to bring balance to foreign affairs and a kind of disciplined realism to interactions with other nations. Of the similarities between the dreaded example of Vietnam and Afghanistan, the analogy fails because, unlike the fateful Guillem [sp?] brothers, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai was elected and has significant support. The analogy is about as weak as wet toilet tissue. To say Karzai was elected is to do great violence to that word. A recent piece in The Washington Post describes the Taliban as a virtual shadow government throughout most of the country, meaning local governors, police chiefs, taxes, and governments. Indeed, in the Post report, Taliban control “broad swaths of the country, especially Afghanistan’s vast rural areas.” That’s because in these districts the U.S. supported Karzai regime has no presence.
Back to the point, a corrupt foreign-supported government, which is widely seen as a puppet regime – sound familiar? Do we have another Vietnam? Perhaps. The imperial press painted Vietnam in rosy colors until the walls came tumbling down. They almost universally praised the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as righteous retribution. Why should they stop now? As for post-imperial, this is a label about as ridiculous as post-racial. To invade countries that did nothing to it, to bomb and kill 10s of 1000s, to occupy and install puppets is the very stuff of empire, and to add 30,000 troops in support is surely a part. Post-imperial? Hardly. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
