In the ensuing months, his analysis of the war and its combatants has been thoroughly shot through with distortion, exaggeration and lies. He went in convinced that a bombing campaign in Afghanistan would accomplish nothing, and he has since clung to that assumption and rejected any and all evidence to the contrary. He believes American military power cannot be used toward humanitarian ends, period. And he goes to great lengths to maintain faith in that belief.

Since 9-11 print and broadcast media in the United States have disseminated the Bush Administration line without question. On no subject has that been truer than on plans to run a pipeline across Afghanistan. Yet the role of energy resources in the U.S. "war on terror" has been anything but unreported. In Europe, mainstream media outlets like Reuters and the BBC have reported extensively on the subject. Wire services have distributed hard news about U.S.-led meetings, bank funding and related issues to every American newspaper, radio and television station in the United States.

American media has uniformly chosen to ignore these wire dispatches. Perhaps editors feel that their readers and viewers aren't ready to hear unpleasant truths about their government's actions in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. Perhaps they hope that other media--some other media, somewhere--will begin the coverage that would allow them to pick up the ball. Whatever the reason for the silence of the American media, it has contributed to the sense that those who mention oil, natural gas and Afghanistan in the same breath are "conspiracy theorists" on the political fringe.

Historically, it's no secret that war almost always goes hand in hand with economic motives, and economic incentives for American involvement often involves control of fossil fuels. U.S. intervention in Somalia, for instance, had less to do with feeding hungry Africans than controlling the strategic Gulf of Aden, through which oil tankers pass from the Indian Ocean en route to the Suez Canal via the Red Sea. While the Vietnam conflict is popularly believed to have stemmed from the Cold War-era "domino theory" obsession among U.S. officials, energy company interest in South Vietnamese natural gas reserves played at least as vital a role in American military intervention as anti-Communist ideology. And few doubt a relationship between the importance of Venezuela as the biggest producer of oil in the Western hemisphere and a botched Bush Administration coup attempt against its democratically-elected president, Hugo Chàvez. Given the enormous energy resources at stake in Central Asia, these cynics suggested, there was much more to American adventurism in Afghanistan than immediately met the eye.

The people of Afghanistan don't speak as one voice. Certainly some people are pleased--the bandits, robbers and rapists are having a field day. The Taliban were despicable, but the Northern Alliance turned out to be nothing more than the Taliban minus law and order--same stonings, burqas, women unable to go to school (due to lack of money since it was never against the law). Anyone who thinks Afghans are better off since the bombing campaign--with its countless deaths, carpet-bombing and massive increase in refugees--is a self-deluded fool. If Afghanistan is ever rebuilt, it will be despite, not because of, the U.S.

Originally posted by Bill Hicks:
You're telling me that the photographs of people dancing in the streets, women returning to work burqa-free, and the resumption of soccer matches were all fabricated?

Ted Rall's response:
Just like most of the war coverage, yes. For instance, the Northern Alliance charged $500 per artillery shell firing so that cameras would have something to show on the air each night--never mind that they were firing in empty fields. Women in Kabul are 99.999999% burquaed; outside of Kabul it's 100%. Yes, soccer has resumed. If soccer is liberation, all hail liberated Afghanistan under former Taliban Hamid Karzai!