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New Taliban-Appeasing Afghan Leader has Extensive Ties to Dems
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On March 28, 2015 @ 10:39 am In The Point | No Comments
The new leader of Afghanistan wants to apologize to the Taliban.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Wednesday that some members of the Taliban had legitimate grievances given the torture and ill treatment they had suffered and it was necessary to find a way to apologise and heal national wounds.
Speaking during a visit to Washington, Ghani said South Africa and Rwanda, which set up truth and reconciliation commissions to come clean about past abuses but not necessarily to punish them, had been most effective in “devising collective forms of therapy” for traumatized nations.
Ghani said peace with the insurgents was “essential” and that some Taliban members had legitimate grievances.
“People were falsely imprisoned, people were tortured. They were tortured in private homes or private prisons,” he said.
“How do you tell these people that you are sorry?”
Speaking at the U.S. Institute of Peace think tank, Ghani praised a report by a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Dianne Feinstein that said the CIA acted more brutally and pervasively than it acknowledged in its torture of detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks, including in Afghanistan.
Ghani pointed to local Afghan systems of justice based around the tribal jirga, or council, and contrasted these with “Western justice” which responded to killing with killing.
His plan for Afghanistan involves the US spending blood and treasure to protect Chinese investments.
But despite US investment in the country’s security, Ghani didn’t mention the US as an economic partner. India, the Gulf countries, Azerbaijan, even its prickly neighbor Pakistan were all floated as potential investors. China was highlighted most of all. Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary who interviewed Ghani, pointedly asked if most of Afghanistan’s foreign investment would come from China. “We take a consortium approach to building infrastructure,” the president replied.
You know what else takes a consortium approach to building infrastructure? The new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a China-led international financial institution. The AIIB has been opposed by the US from the get-go, since it dilutes US influence at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, but even staunch US allies in Europe like France, the United Kingdom and Germany, and now South Korea, have signed on to participate in the new institution. Japan probably isn’t too far behind. Its membership happens to include numerous countries bordering Afghanistan.
The US failure to join the bank, compounded by its failed effort to lobby traditional allies out of it, has been a black eye for US financial diplomacy. “The US has been totally isolated and wound up in a very foolish and awkward position,” C. Fred Bergsten, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and a former US official, said. “The US will have to find a way to save face and reverse course to join the thing.”
Until then, the US could find itself spending millions to create a secure investment environment for its Asian rivals.
Millions? Try billions.
With all this, Ghani’s origins and associations shouldn’t surprise you. He used Bill Clinton’s man James Carville as a campaign adviser. His lobbyists are Obama people.
Mr. Ghani’s government hired the Podesta Group for $50,000 a month to lobby on behalf of Afghanistan and help with public relations, according to filings with the Justice Department. One of the founders of the firm is John D. Podesta, who served as counselor to Mr. Obama and represented the administration at Mr. Ghani’s inauguration. Mr. Podesta is no longer involved with the firm.
Mr. Podesta, in fact, was one of the 14 dinner guests on Tuesday to whom Mr. Ghani referred by name in his remarks. As a result of the groundwork laid by many of those guests, the Obama administration was largely in sync with Mr. Ghani even before this week’s visit.
Unlike a certain Jewish country in the Middle East.
He referred to Madeleine K. Albright, seated beside him, as his “mentor.” He called Secretary of State John Kerry, the host, “a remarkable friend of Afghanistan.”
“Everybody was willing to help with the trip. Senators, congressmen, generals, secretaries of state,” said an American official involved in planning the visit. The official asked not to be identified because the Obama administration does not want Mr. Ghani portrayed as being too close to the United States, an image that plays badly in Afghanistan.
Mr. Ghani and many of his advisers also know the United States well, and they decided to thank soldiers for their sacrifices, and taxpayers for the billions spent to aid Afghanistan in every speech Mr. Ghani gave in Washington, officials from both countries said.
American officials helped the Afghans choreograph some of the more poignant touches, such as inviting the widow of an American general killed in Kabul last year by an Afghan soldier to a speech Mr. Ghani delivered on Monday at the Pentagon, allowing the Afghan leader to thank her publicly for her family’s sacrifice.
But of course all that is a scam. Americans are being killed fighting the people Ghani wants to apologize to. He claims the Taliban have political legitimacy. And he’s working with Obama to release Gitmo Jihadists.
The United States has released four Afghan detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who were returned to Afghanistan — the latest in a series of releases of inmates in recent weeks.
The four were released at the request of Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani,
“There is no requirement that the Afghan government further detain the men, identified as Mohammed Zahir, Shawali Khan, Abdul Ghani and Khi Ali Gul.”
Mohammed Zahir was a top Taliban figure caught with nuclear materials.
Zahir was not just another captured Jihadist. He was the Secretary General of the Taliban’s Intelligence Directorate and was in contact with top leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. His possessions included a fax with questions intended for Osama bin Laden and he had been arrested on suspicion of possessing Stinger missiles.
According to the classified report, the uranium had been identified by Zahir “in his memorandum as being intended for the production of an “atom bomb.”
Among the items was a notebook containing references to large sugar shipments to Washington D.C. Investigators believed that sugar was used as a code word for heroin. The Black Sea stops mentioned in the notebook are major hubs for smuggling heroin and for nuclear smuggling as well.
At this point, why are we still in Afghanistan? Al Qaeda was beaten in Afghanistan under Bush, despite Obama’s lies. The new Afghan government wants to get into bed with the Taliban. At our expense. We need to refocus on fighting active terrorist groups instead of trying to play peacekeepers. Obama’s Afghan surge was a disastrous mistake. It took our attention away from Iraq leading to the rise of ISIS and cost a lot of American lives because we could no longer trust the Afghan government.
Now we really can’t trust it.
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