The Afghan parliament today finally approved the troops deal which will keep US occupation forces on the ground “through 2024 and beyond.” The vote was 152-5, and loudly backed by President Ashraf Ghani.
The plan was to keep the troops there purely in a training and advisory role, which was the official US policy at the time. It also made several very specific limits on things US troops couldn’t do inside Afghanistan.
Undiscussed in the Afghan parliament was the fact that the Obama Administration openly plans to violate that pact on multiple fronts now, and has the apparent blessing of Ghani, elected earlier this year and a fraud-laden run-off vote.
On Friday, it was revealed President Obama had already signed a “secret order” that would ignore the training and advisory limit, and ensure that US ground troops remain in direct combat throughout at least 2015, the first year of the deal.
Today, reports are that Ghani has quietly agreed to lift another of the limitations, the ban on night raids against civilian homes in Afghanistan, beginning in 2015.
Night raids were hugely unpopular in rural Afghanistan, both because of the hostility toward occupation forces breaking down peoples’ doors in the middle of the night, and because of major civilian casualties in some such incidents.
This threatens to be an even more unpopular move than the US extending combat roles inside Afghanistan, and that the fact didn’t emerge until immediately after parliament rubber-stamped the troop deal suggests an effort to keep important facts out of the vote.
Secret agreements, but secret from whom? If both governments are in on the deals, then who do they need to keep them secret from? From the Afghan and American people maybe? Is that what the new Afghan democracy is about, hording information from its people? Two governments made up of nincompoop mentalities that deceive their people. Hey, should Americans feel proud about their country´s history in Afghanistan? The reason they need to stay is because they didn´t accomplish anything over the past 13 years, and here they are making secret deals. My, my.
"…hording information from its people?"
It's the only way they stay in power. Just as is done here in America, keeping the electorate ignorant and apathetic is the prime directive to getting and staying elected. It is the primary purpose of networks like Fox News and they follow the directives to the letter. The Afghanis are no different – in fact, it's easier to fool them since a majority of the people are not as digitally connected as are the Americans. But the Afghanis are probably as ignorant as the typical American voter, as intended.
The second American-selected puppet to rule Afghanistan will do as instructed.
Could be, but does the gov in Afghanistan speak for the majority of the people? And come to think of it, does the gov speak for the majority of Americans?
luv from Canada, (where we are starting to have the same problem)
Being non-combatant, our soldiers should need only Khaki shorts, sandals, a pith helment, sunglasses… and a clipboard….that should save us millions in equipping our troops.
and suntan lotion and their regulation military duck floaty tubes.
no ones leaving until the trillions of dollars worth of minerals are extracted out of those mountains