Anger

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Zalmay Khalilzad has been named by President Bush to take over from John Negroponte as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. Before this, the article mentions, he was the U.S. Special Envoy and Ambassador to his native Afghanistan. There is no mention in the article, however, of Khalilzad's past prior to 2001.

In 1998 Khalilzad, along with his Neoconservative colleagues at the Project for the New American Century (Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, Dick Armitage, John Bolton, Richard Perle and, of course, Paul Wolfowitz), signed a letter to President Clinton demanding military action against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, "to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies". Always with the WMDs, these guys. As I've discussed in a previous blog, the avowed aim of this group, which has now overwhelmed the leadership of the Republican party, is to intervene and remake the rest of the world in the image of the U.S., unilaterally and with military force if necessary. Which to me sounds more like Neocolonialism or Neoimperialism than traditional Conservatism.

During the Clinton presidency Khalilzad was a paid advisor to Unocal, the oil company that was trying to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. Remember the scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 that showed Unocal giving flown-in Taliban officials the VIP treatment in Texas? Khalilzad was part of the U.S. contingent trying to woo them with a two billion dollar pipeline deal. While human rights organizations were blasting the Afghani warlords for their repressive attitudes toward women and religious freedom, Khalilzad defended these gangsters and pushed for the U.S. to officially recognize their regime, something which no other country in the world would do save Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and The U.A.E. Khalilzad wrote of his new buddies: "The Taliban do not practice the anti-US style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran. We should ... be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to promote international economic reconstruction. It is time for the United States to re-engage." In December of 1998, after the U.S. embassy bombings, Unocal was forced to withdraw from the Afghan pipeline consortium. In other words, who cares how bad these guys are? As long as they don't bomb us, we'll give them millions of dollars and make them our business partners.

Prior to that, Khalilzad worked with Paul Wolfowitz at the State Department, where he "successfully pressed the Reagan administration to provide arms -- including shoulder-fired Stinger missiles -- to anti-Soviet resistance fighters in Afghanistan" (The Washington Post, 11/23/01). These resistance fighters were the mujahideen. The same mujahideen that eventually became, oh nothing, just a group of bitter assholes who called themselves the TALIBAN. Ever hear of 'three strikes and you're out', Zalmay? Now, some may argue that this aid was a necessary evil at the time, given the fact that the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan and we were in the middle of a cold war. The U.S. is not guilt-free in that affair, however. The Soviets always claimed they were fighting against a secret involvement in Afghan affairs by the U.S., a claim which was denied by the latter until Zbigniew Brzezinski, in a July 1998 interview with French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, rather proudly admitted that the CIA had been giving aid to the Afghans a full six months before the Soviet invasion: the U.S. was happy to play its part in giving the U.S.S.R. its own Vietnam.

What does all this add up to? It means that the Neoconservative element at the head of our government is shameless. It means that they will continue to promote from within no matter how wrong or stupid or dangerous or short-sighted the promotees are.

In case you couldn't tell, it also means that I'm angry.