Left: Karzai, "Baby please don't go, you can have half the security contracts. How about that?"With the decline of the colonial powers, US capitalism entered the void in search of riches, removing all who stood in its way and forging pacts with all sorts of thugs and despots that were willing to cooperate for a share of the spoils. Fouad Ajami, the conservative Hoover Institution academic, writes in today’s Wall Street Journal of the shifts in global relations that have accompanied the declining influence of US imperialism on the global stage. Not so much the relations between the giants like the US and China, but between the US and the thugs it props up or directly installs as guardians of its interests.
Ajami is speaking specifically about Hamid, Karzai, the US’s man in Afghanistan. It appears Karzai is just too honest for his own good, and for the good of US capitalism. “In its wanderings through the Third World from Korea and Vietnam to Iran and Egypt, it was America’s fate to ride with all sorts of clients”, writes Ajami, “We betrayed some of them, and they betrayed us in return……they snookered us at times, but there was always a pretense of a common purpose.”
That common purpose was thievery, but, as they say, there is no honor among thieves. Karzai is a master thief but an honest one, too honest for his US handlers. “The remarkable thing about Mr. Karzai has been his perverse honesty” Ajami adds. He refers in part to Karzai “brazenly” letting it be known that he has been accepting bags of money from the Iranians. “They do give us money”, Ajami quotes Karzai as saying, " ..we are grateful to the Iranians for this.”
Karzai wants the US there all right, but on his terms. He does not care for the “pretense of common purpose” as Ajami explains. Karzai is not playing the game. He knows that US capitalism is not in his country, or perhaps it is more accurate to say, didn’t install him in office in Afghanistan and send troops and resources to protect his regime, with such lofty ideals as democracy in mind. Ajami is absolutely correct when he writes that Karzai and his circle of thugs “assume” that the US “covets their territory for a never-ending war on terror and for military bases to be used against surrounding powers.”
They assume it and their assumptions are correct. Ajami knows that too of course but its more politically advantageous to claim that the Karzai regime alone assumes it is so. After, all, we don’t want the US working class questioning our motives do we; especially in a period of high unemployment and economic turmoil at home.
Karzai’s brazenness has no limits. The 8 flights a day that leave Kabul for Dubai with bags of cash are no longer a secret but a widely known fact. Karzai has “gone rogue” writes Ajami. Karzai has publicly described the private security companies that guard embassies and other private institutions as “killer squads on par with the Taliban”. “The money dealing with the private security companies starts in the hallways of the US government Then they send the money for killing here” says Karzai. It’s hard to say who has a lower opinion of the US Congress, Karzai or the US population; the only difference being that Americans figure they’re “our” killers at least. Karzai's right of course. He’s no fool; he wants that business for him and his partners in Kabul. He wants more domestic control over the plunder.
Ajami, expressing the concern of the US capitalist class whose interests he represents is hurt, “ Our ally on the scene has gone rogue, taking the coin of our enemies and scoffing at our purposes.” Ajami longs for the old days, when US imperialism remained supreme, “Unlike the clients of old, this one does not even bother to pay us the tribute of double speak and hypocrisy, he is a different type of client.”, he writes. It is a change in the objective situation, that's what it is.
It is seeing the rise of left governments in Latin America, an area it considers its own back yard. Its role in the Middle East is being undermined by Iran forcing it to sell $60 billion in arms to the Saudi thugs in the hope of leveling the playing field. Its proxy in the area, Israel, is a nation increasingly isolating itself from the rest of the world. The US is mired in economic crisis domestically and at some point, a crisis in the military will break in to the open as well. Who knows the level of demoralization among the troops? As I wrote in an earlier blog, I am convinced that the US government murdered Pat Tillman, the US Army Ranger who supposedly died from "friendly fire" in Afghanistan.
Karzai’s behavior as a manifestation of the US’s waning global power is much more disconcerting than that of Sadaam Hussein who really had gone rogue. Ajami recognizes this reality when he concludes that Karzai may be a different kind of client, “..but, then, too, our authority today is but a shadow of what it once was.”
A wounded animal is a dangerous one though. US capitalism is waging a ferocious war on its own working class as well, but it is still militarily the dominant global power.
Karzai had better be careful. Check all the fuel lines on that helicopter.
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