Saudi financial support for the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine campaigns to overthrow the Soviet-backed regimes in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. Among the beneficiaries of this secret largesse was Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi entrepreneur who helped recruit Islamic zealots to serve with the Afghan rebels.

-Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil

I'm concerned about the level of frankly subversive activity that the Iranians are carrying on in a number of places in Latin America particularly South America and Central America…They're opening a lot of offices and a lot of fronts behind which they interfere in what is going on in some of these countries.

-Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense

I’m listening to the newness in the news.

Not long ago, in April, 2008, the “Taliban” tried to assassinate the Afghan President Hamid Karzai. This incident should have been a HUGE warning to Karzai. A few days earlier, he condemned the U.S. and Britain for the way they have “conducted the war.” According to the New York Times, Karzai claimed that the American-led coalition was conducting the war on terrorism in “Afghan villages” while “the real terrorist threat,” the “sanctuaries of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan” remains untouched.

Well, President Karzai, you don’t point to the obvious when you are dealing with the American Empire. Big mistake! It is not good for living a long and prosperous life!

President Karzai, you must remember how you became president! People like you, puppet rulers, are appointed by the U.S. and Britain. You should know the history of puppet rulers and what happens to them when you have seen enough destruction and death among their people, when money from the U.S. and Britain no longer eases your conscience and you speak up and call the world’s attention to the corruption in which you have bloody hands.

You are guilty too. You had to be open to the values of greedy. You had to know the history of puppet regimes. You had to know what happened to Saddam, and you had to know that “accidents” in the U.S. happen to people who are whistleblowers.

President Barack Obama plans to “adopt a tougher line” toward you, says a senior administration official. “As part of a new American approach to Afghanistan,” there will be “more emphasis on waging war” rather than “development.” No joke! You will not have an American-looking country, Karzai.

You are now “seen as a potential impediment to American goals in Afghanistan.”

And there’s more!

“Corruption has become rampant” in your government” and it is “contributing to a flourishing drug trade and the resurgence of the Taliban.” CORRUPTION is rampant and the DRUG TRADE is flourishing! This is the kind of language, Karzai that the American public reads in the New York Times, coming from a senior administration official that sounds serious and truthful. End of story! Corruption and a flourishing drug trade is something democratic governments like the U.S. and Britain don’t tolerate for a second! Heaven forbid your government’s endeavors in corruption become a model for nation states usurping democracy or your drugs spread to these democracies and the U.S. - the U.S.! - becomes the largest drug dealer in the world!

President Karzai - you’re in BIG trouble. Everything is your fault. Your government (even if limited to Kabul) is corrupt! Corruption has been discovered in your government and in your government alone (even if the former King, King George), spoke with you on a regular bases and gave you the “good job, Brownie” seal of approval. The fact that the drug trade had been virtually eliminated in Afghanistan before the U.S. declared war on your country is not a fact worth noting now.

Back in the day, the U.S. supported and supplied weapons to the Taliban (no friends of feminists around the world and the people who killed your father) against the Soviet Union. The evildoers (the Soviets) are gone, but the Taliban, like you, have decided to determine their own destiny.

You don’t determine your own destiny in this world - unless approved by the U.S. And, some of us in the U.S. can tell you - that isn’t happening!

You are an impediment to the American goals! And that means you must be removed!

Watch out for mountains when you fly and have your vehicles checked for car bombs. You look good; well dressed. Regal. Elegant in a sea of those Western black business suits. But the clothing won’t save you or your brother, knee-deep in the drug trade. The American government has its goals.

More war. More pictures and stories of bombed out structures where women and children will die. There will be a mug shot or two of a Taliban with the caption, “Key Leader Captured.” “Key Leader Killed.”

Change - it’s coming - roaring overhead or rumbling down a road where troops in the familiar dessert camouflage gear will disembark and begin to seek out terrorist and drug lords. 30, 000 more U.S, troops in Afghanistan!

So you and the Afghani people should prepare for CHANGE!

Now for that other bit of news. Iran has officially become the new Soviet Union. Communist are out. Iranian terrorism is the new world menace - and the American Empire, once again, will save the world from this evil threat! This comes from the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, old King George’s chief warmonger after Donald Rumsfled.

The American Empire suspects Iran of supplying weaponry to Hezbollah and Hamas! That’s “a lot of nerve!” some of us would say. Gutsy arrogance! Here’s a nation-state (other than the U.S.) supplying weaponry for the massacre of women and children (I know) terrorists without the “good job, Brownie” seal of approval from the U.S. who supplies Israel with over 3 billion annually for weaponry! Iran, remember the devastation of Lebanon and recently Gaza with F-16 jets and Apache helicopter gun ships funded by the U.S.? Of course, you do. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but more important, and the way it works in this world lead by U.S. corporatists, there’s only ONE right way of doing business in this world and it all emanates from within the U.S.  

So Gates under the Obama administration now (that slight change happened on January 20, 2009, in case you missed it) said your nation is practicing “subversive activity” in Latin America! Here in the U.S., some of us know what happens when you are branded with conducting “subversive activity.” Anything that undermines capitalism and the racial hierarchy is labeled “subversive activity.” The Reuters UK report said, Gates believes Iran is.

Opening a lot of offices and a lot of fronts behind which they interfere in what is going on in some of these countries” in Latin America. Fronts? I think of casinos, the running of cigar and alcohol between Havana, Cuba and the U.S. until Fidel chased the money changers (or, as they thought of themselves, businessmen) out of Cuba.

These “left wing” countries are the problem and never mind, again, the fact that in Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia have governments the people elected (as opposed to the U.S. where the people endured 8 years of an unelected King!). These governments are for the people and by the people who have for so long been the wretched of the earth under dictators, puppet regimes, controlled and funded by Washington D.C. How many death squads were trained by the U.S. to kill the populations in these countries?

But it’s a new day!

These nations, according to Gates, have become allies of Iran! A gutsy display of arrogance again!

Radio Time’s Marty Moss-Coane and her guests, Trita Parsi and Barbara Slavin, discuss Iran. Does it possess nuclear capabilities? Is it a “terrorist” nation? Does Iran have desires to be an empire?

Iran is a bad child!

A caller, who identified himself as an Iranian American, suggested to the host that the guests discuss 1953. The Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80 was not an isolated situation. The host and guests spoke all at once: “We” must get past the past! “We” must move on! “We” must look to the future!

30 seconds and it was over. 1953 was never mentioned. The CIA operation under President Eisenhower to remove the democratically elected Iranian president Mohammed Mossadeqh and replace him with U.S. puppet Shah Pahlavi was never mentioned. Host and guests returned to Iran, the “bad” child. Could Iran be appeased with a “cultural exchange” approach?

Caller - why would you have expected an intelligent and, above all, truthful discussion on Iran here in the U.S.? Listen to the taunting tone of the Head of State: Tehran has to talk. The “bad” child “we” have singled out has to genuflect while saying the words the American Empire wants to hear.

For the U.S., the audacity of President Karzai and Tehran represents a world out of control? While the U.S. is trying to solve a glitch in the capitalist machinery, little peon presidents and are talking back, acting as if they are operating autonomous nation-states far and away from U.S. F-16 missiles!

We hear the war-rattles from Washington D.C. - do you, Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia? So many of you wayward nation states engaging in “subversive activity.” The economy is really bad here, and Americans don’t read the fine print or any print - by design. No one is talking about ending an economic system that depends on war and poverty.

So look out for CHANGE - coming to you!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer, for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.