THE leaked 90,000 US Afghan war documents once again show – as did the My Lai mass killings of the Vietnamese people – the real, unchanging nature of imperialism and its wars, with its massacres of civilians kept secret, with US death squads targeting those that were thought to be the leading members or supporters of the enemy, and the mobilisation of the maximum firepower against the very limited armoury of the determined and heroic opponents of imperialism.
In Vietnam the revolutionary people faced a fiery death from Napalm bombing, or from chemical agents such as Agent Orange that the country was drowned in, and which leaves its mark, even today.
If the Vietnamese people escaped this fate they were faced with the Phoenix Programme.
This was a military, intelligence, and internal security programme designed by the CIA and coordinated and executed by the Republic of Vietnam’s (South Vietnam) security apparatus and US Special Operations Forces, such as the Navy SEALs, United States Army Special Forces and MACV-SOG (now Special Operations Group in the CIA’s Special Activities Division).
The programme was designed to identify and ‘neutralise’ (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, or assassination) the civilian infrastructure supporting the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) insurgency.
As the leaked documents prove, today in Afghanistan tens of thousands of civilians die as the overwhelming firepower of the imperialists is used to rain bombs down from the air on wedding parties, or on villages.
Heavy artillery and missiles are used to flatten compounds in attempts to lessen casualties by killing all of the Afghan occupants before the imperialist soldiers try to make an entry.
They are bombed by drones directed to their targets from thousands of miles away in the US.
Then there are the US army and navy special forces that target Afghans thought to be dangerous supporters or leaders of the Taleban.
It is the same imperialist mixture of massacre, mass murder and assassination, and as in Vietnam it is heading for defeat.
The additional complication for the American and UK imperialists is that they created many of those who they are seeking to kill today.
Many of the Taleban fighters, and all of the Mujahideen, were first mobilised and organised by the US and the UK, including Osama Bin Laden, to fight the Russian-backed government of Najibollah.
When the Russians were forced out, they fell to fighting amongst themselves in a continuous and bloody civil war.
It was then that the Pakistani intelligence helped to organise the Taleban to bring order to the country which they definitely did.
This is why they have never given up their links with the Taleban, and have acted to protect them. They do not want US imperialism completely dominating Central Asia, so that Pakistan is completely stifled and smothered.
Meanwhile this US programme for dominating Central Asia and its oil and gas resources is meeting opposition from every side, to the point where even President Obama is looking for moderate Taleban to form a coalition government, alongside their President Karzai, on the basis that such a new regime could protect US interests in the area.
But there are no Taleban collaborators to be found since they know, just as the Vietnamese did, that they are winning the war.
The least that they will settle for is an imperialist withdrawal and Mullah Omar as co-leader of a coalition. Such is the dead-end that Afghanistan is proving to be that many a Tory and Lib-Dem coalition member will be prepared to settle for that.
So the leaking of the 90,000 documents is proof in its own way that the game is up, and that the imperialists will soon be run out of Afghanistan, a prospect that the News Line and every socialist will welcome.
