A former advisor to the United States government on foreign policy delivered a damning criticism of his country’s involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
Edward Kane, long time president of the American Club (1983-1993), said at a recent Club luncheon in Lisbon that the United States’ involvement in two separate wars was “impoverishing the nation”.
Foreign policy advisor to the Democrat Jimmy Carter administration in the late 1970s, Ed Kane called the Iraq war “a total disaster” for both Iraq, the US and its allies.”
“The Bush administration led us into the war with two lies: first that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction and second that Saddam Hussein was linked to Osama bin Laden. Both of these assertions were completely baseless,” he said.
The war had cost the US 900 billion dollars, resulted in the deaths of 4,400 US soldiers and 32,000 wounded.
“For what? I lived in Iraq, spoke their dialect and have strong opinions on what is likely to happen now,” he said, warning that the country would be torn apart by civil wars.
“When we lived in Iraq, people all over the country identified themselves as “Iraqis”, not as Sunni, Shi’i or Kurds. Now the ethnic animosities will eventually end, I believe, in the dissolution of the country as it is and we will have to deal with three more small unstable Middle Eastern states,” he added.
Edward Kane said that Afghanistan was “as much of a disaster, if not more, than Iraq” since it was not a country as most people understood the meaning of the concept. Rather it was a conglomeration of “fiercely competitive tribes and warlords”.
“No foreign military force has ever managed to conquer Afghanistan,” he explained adding that the British too had suffered some of their worst defeats there in the 19th century.
The US was currently spending 100 billion US dollars annually in Afghanistan trying to bring it under control, which was the equivalent of 40 per cent of Portugal’s GDP. “We must get out of Afghanistan with a remnant of dignity,” he said.
China had recently replaced Japan as the second most important economic power in the world. The US still stood at Number 1 but Edward Kane asked “for how long?”
He said that China had enormous fiscal reserves, was literally buying up Africa, was not split by ethnic diversities and rivalries and did not engage in wasteful wars like the United States had been doing.
Edward Kane also believed it was important for the European Union to stop stalling over EU membership for Turkey which could only drive that country away from the West and towards more fundamental Islamic views.
Chris Graeme
