Michael Moore, Don't You Know What We're Fighting For?

Really, I'm surprised at the level of naivete on display in Michael Moore's recent anti-war plea to President Obama. Let's start with the first paragraph:

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

Of course it's so! Where were you during the campaign? Who exactly are these "multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign" that share your attention deficit?
Moore continues with this delusion throughout his open letter. Many times he projects his own desires onto Obama's psyche. ("You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking.") Desperately he searches for the reason why the President might want to take such a course of action ("One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans") even as the real reason is staring him right in the face: it's the economy, stupid! He posted the link right in the fourth paragraph! Check it out:

There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.
Click where it says his brother in the heroin trade and read the title. Do you see what I see?

Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.

Gee, what a coincidence! The President of the country on whose behalf we are escalating a war with an additional 30,000 troops has a brother who is in the heroin trade and is paid by the CIA! Not that the New York Times would ever suggest that the CIA is profiting from the global drug trade or anything like that! Besides, that was then. This is now:


http://www.opednews.com/articles/Americans-Are-Deeply-Invol-by-Glen-Ford-091129-86.html

Americans Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade

By Glen Ford
The U.S. set the stage for the Afghan (and Pakistan) war eight years ago, when it handed out drug dealing franchises to warlords on Washington's payroll. Now the Americans, acting as Boss of All Bosses, have drawn up hit lists of rival, “Taliban” drug lords. “It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol.”

U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists.”

If you're looking for the chief kingpin in the Afghanistan heroin trade, it's the United States. The American mission has devolved to a Mafiosi-style arrangement that poisons every military and political alliance entered into by the U.S. and its puppet government in Kabul. It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists, marked for death or capture. As a result, Afghanistan has been transformed into an opium plantation that supplies 90 percent of the world's heroin.
An article in the current issue of Harper's magazine explores the inner workings of the drug-infested U.S. occupation, it's near-total dependence on alliances forged with players in the heroin trade. The story centers on the town of Spin Boldak, on the southeastern border with Pakistan, gateway to the opium fields of Kandahar and Helmand provinces. The chief Afghan drug lord is also the head of the border patrol and the local militia. The author is an undercover U.S.-based journalist who was befriended by the drug lord's top operatives and met with the U.S. and Canadian officers that collaborate with the drug dealer on a daily basis.
The alliance was forged by American forces during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and has endured and grown ever since. The drug lord, and others like him throughout the country, is not only immune to serious American interference, he has been empowered through U.S. money and arms to consolidate his drug business at the expense of drug-dealing rivals in other tribes, forcing some of them into alliance with the Taliban. On the ground in Pashtun-speaking Afghanistan, the war is largely between armies run by heroin merchants, some aligned with the Americans, others with the Taliban. The Taliban appear to be gaining the upper hand in this Mafiosa gang war, the origins of which are directly rooted in U.S. policy.
“It is a war whose order of battle is largely defined by the drug trade.”
Is it any wonder, then, that the United States so often launches air strikes against civilian wedding parties, wiping out the greater part of bride and groom's extended families? America's drug-dealing allies have been dropping dimes on rival clans and tribes, using the Americans as high-tech muscle in their deadly feuds. Now the Americans and their European occupation partners have institutionalized the rules of gangster warfare with official hit lists of drug dealers to be killed or captured on sight – lists drawn up by other drug lords affiliated with the occupation forces.
This is the “war of necessity” that President Barack Obama has embraced as his own. It is a war whose order of battle is largely defined by the drug trade. Obama's generals call for tens of thousands of new U.S. troops in hopes of lessening their dependency on the militias and police forces currently controlled by American-allied drug dealers. But of course, that will only push America's Afghan partners in the drug trade into the arms of the Taliban, who will cut a better deal. Then the generals were argue that they need even more U.S. troops.
The Americans created this drug-saturated hell, and their occupation is now doomed by it. Unfortunately, they have also doomed millions of Afghans in the process.

I wonder if Michael Moore really understands that with the economy in the crapper, pulling the security detail off a $500 billion windfall profit is the last thing any President maintaining an empire would want to do. Because that's the dirty little secret: as of 2006, 90 percent of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan. That's how you maintain an empire; well, that and oil. So if Afghanistan is truly the "Graveyard of Empires", that's where we get our final fix.
Sorry, am I coming off like a pack of "disillusioned cynics", Mr. Moore?