Afghanistan - Three Major Falsehoods Being Promoted

[MarkOttawa]

A letter sent to the Globe, April 6, and so far unpublished--like pbi's, which is a much more powerful and relevant statement:

'Dear Editor,

Lawrence Martin, in his column, "Are we being taken for a ride on Afghanistan, too?" (April 6), repeats claims by Eric Margolis "...that the government there is a U.S.-installed puppet regime, that the elections were rigged..."

Perhaps Mr Martin might have spent a little time investigating the facts before repeating Mr Margolis' nonsense.  I quote from a letter to the Ottawa Citizen, April 6, from David Harland, UN department of peacekeeping operations:

"...it was the UN that negotiated the Bonn Agreement [the 2001 agreement creating a provisional Afghan government], which Canada is helping to support. And it was the United Nations that shepherded the loya jirga (grand council), the constitution and two rounds of elections to a successful conclusion." 

Whatever else the UN department of peacekeeping operations may be, it is certainly not a propaganda front for the U.S.  The UN was responsible for installing the government, not the U.S.  And the UN did not run rigged elections. 

Mr Margolis is dead wrong and Mr Martin should have either known it in the first place or checked the facts.'

Mark
Ottawa

 

[pbi]

I hope that the outcome of the impending "Take Note" debate is the education of our political class and our population, to counter the disinformation and ignorance.

In the vein of Margolis' comments, I recall hearing an East Asian academic on UofT Radio spouting off in front of an appreciative and unquestioning audience of like minded people that the US presence in Afghanistan consisted of a "few thousand troops hiding in Kabul and occasionally rushing out into the countryside in armoured vehicles". These people rely on the ignorance of  the general public and the sympathy of the converted.

Cheers