The so-called "war on terrorism" is being used to mask a far grander imperial design: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This will allow the US to gain control of Iraq's huge oil reserves, which are second only to Saudi Arabia's, and secure American control of the giant Caspian Oil Basin. The new US bases just happen to follow the route of the planned American pipelines that will bring Central Asia's oil and gas riches – the "new Silk Road" – south through Pakistan. Each day, the US is plunging deeper and deeper into South and Central Asia – which I call the Mideast East. American soldiers could end up fighting there 50 years hence. In fact, the Bush administration seems to be emulating the old British Empire.

     What was known in Vietnam as "mission creep" is already at work. A brief US incursion into Afghanistan is now growing into permanent commitment – the very "nation-building" that Bush vowed to avoid. The client regime of US-appointed Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, is kept in power in Kabul by British and US bayonets – just as former Afghan communist regimes were maintained by the Soviet Red Army. The affable Karzai has become the darling of the US media, which gushes over him and his green cloak with the same misplaced rapture it showed for another CIA "asset," Egypt's late leader, Anwar Sadat, who was adored in New York but hated in Cairo.

     The US relied on the Russian-controlled Northern Alliance, run by the reinvigorated Afghan Communist party, to overthrow the Taliban. Russia sent $4 billion worth of arms to the Alliance, the real power behind Karzai's let's pretend regime. The Alliance is bankrolled by the drug trade, which it restored after the Taliban was overthrown. Because Pashtun mercenaries hired by the US are unreliable, the US now plans to build an 80,000-man Afghan national army trained by American advisers (shades of Vietnam). The Soviets did exactly the same thing after they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The Afghan communist Army proved as poor and disloyal as most of South Vietnam's Army.

     Old Afghan hands, this writer included, have repeatedly warned the US not to get involved in Afghan tribal and ethnic politics, not to set up permanent bases, not to drive north into Central Asia, and not to force Pakistan into becoming another obedient US client state, like Egypt or Turkey. To get in and then out of Afghanistan as fast as possible. But Bush administration crusaders, gripped by a lust for blood and oil, are charging forward. In a truly shameful act, the administration is even sending troops to Georgia to battle Chechen independence fighters in the Caucasus mountains.

     America has been scourged by terrorist attacks because of its often heavy-handed interventions abroad, not because Muslims hate democracy or McDonald's. The Saudis who staged kamikaze attacks on the US did so because of the agony of Palestine and Iraq, and American domination of Saudi Arabia. Deeper US involvement in Asia will likely mean more, not less, risk of terrorist attacks.

Eric Margolis is Contributing Foreign Editor to the Toronto SUN newspaper. Column also seen on Lew Rockwell's website http://www.lewrockwell.com (March 10/02)