A War of Lies.

• Author: Mahajan, Rahul
• Position: War for Oil - War on Terrorism, 2001- - Afghanistan Conflict, 2001-

A war that is supposed to help feed the desperate people of Afghanistan will in fact help starve them.

A war supposedly brought on by Taliban intransigence was actually provoked by our own government.

A war that the majority of the American people believe is about their grief, anger and desire for revenge is really about the cold-blooded calculations of a small elite seeking to extend its power.

And a war that is supposed to make us safer has put us in far greater danger by increasing the likelihood of further terrorist attacks.

Let's take those points in order.

Our undeclared war on Afghanistan is the culmination of a decade of US aggression with a humanitarian facade.

Once the natural sympathies of the American people were touched by the plight of the longsuffering Afghan people, public opinion swung toward helping them. In response to this, the administration concocted the most shameless and cynical cover story for military strikes in recent memory.

The leaked idea went like this:

* The Afghan people are starving, so we need to do food drops. (Never mind that all those experienced in humanitarian aid programs are opposed to food drops because they are dangerous and wasteful, and, most important, preclude setting up the on-the-ground distribution networks necessary to making aid effective.)

* We need to destroy the Taliban's air defenses before doing food drops.

* The transport planes may be endangered by the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that the United States supplied the mujaheddin in the 1980s when they were fighting the Soviet Union, and some of which ended up in the Taliban's hands.

* Because so much of it is mobile, we have to bomb all over.

The bombing will seriously hinder existing aid efforts. The World Food Program operates a bakery in Kabul on which thousands of families depend, as well as many other programs. A number of United Nations organizations have been mounting a major new coordinated humanitarian campaign.

These efforts were not endangered by the Taliban before, but the chaos and violence created by this bombing--combined with a projected assault by the Northern Alliance--will likely force UN personnel to withdraw, with disastrous effects for the Afghan people.

To add insult to injury, in the first day the United States dropped only 37,500 packaged meals, far below the daily needs of even a single large refugee camp. With 7.5 million people on the brink of death and existing programs disrupted, this is a drop in the...