The "National Security" Lie Used to Justify War in Afghanistan.

The Guardian operates a website called "Comment is Free" But repeatedly when I mention in contradistinction to mainstream journalists by citing intelligent sources of expertise and that Afghanistan is really about, my comments are removed. How can advancing a debate in this way be classified as verboten ?

Anyway, Ivo Petkovski today gets it about right in Friday's The Guardian when in 'National security' Afghan justification doesn't hold. He asserts,

.......just last week, defence secretary Liam Fox declared that our engagement in Afghanistan is "a national security imperative", wheeling out once again the time-worn argument that military actions in Afghanistan can reduce the terrorist threat in the west. This issue is proving to be a gift-wrapped package for any politician in opposition – Bob Ainsworth had to hold the same line in the face of mounting Tory derision when he was defence secretary for Labour, and now it's Labour's turn to point and laugh at Fox when he's forced to do the same.

I can understand why Ainsworth felt the need to cleave to the idea that our domestic security depends on a stable Afghanistan, since it was his party leaders that committed us to the invasion. Any admission of doubt would have been politically disastrous for Labour. To a lesser degree, I can understand why Fox cleaves to it too – in for a penny, and all that. But it seems that there's only so far an argument can stand in complete opposition to an increasingly obvious reality, and this one is now stretched to breaking point.

The 'national security' issue is one of the most mendacious lie in Britain's culture in what Peter Oborne calls "The Rise of Political Lying" and its rise in Britain where the real facts pertaining to why the UK is actually in Afghanistan. To induce fear in Britons is an easy pretext to justify a resource war.

But why Petkovkski does not mention the TAPI pipeline is another form of unfreedom or censorship by omission For as John Foster made plain in the Toronto Star in 2009, Afghanistan is part of what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls The Grand Chessboard. Foster wrote,

Why is Afghanistan so important?

A glance at a map and a little knowledge of the region suggest that the real reasons for Western military involvement may be largely hidden.

Afghanistan is adjacent to Middle Eastern countries that are rich in oil and natural gas. And though Afghanistan may have little petroleum itself, it borders both Iran and Turkmenistan, countries with the second and third largest natural gas reserves in the world. (Russia is first.)

Turkmenistan is the country nobody talks about. Its huge reserves of natural gas can only get to market through pipelines. Until 1991, it was part of the Soviet Union and its gas flowed only north through Soviet pipelines. Now the Russians plan a new pipeline north. The Chinese are building a new pipeline east. The U.S. is pushing for "multiple oil and gas export routes." High-level Russian, Chinese and American delegations visit Turkmenistan frequently to discuss energy. The U.S. even has a special envoy for Eurasian energy diplomacy.

Rivalry for pipeline routes and energy resources reflects competition for power and control in the region. Pipelines are important today in the same way that railway building was important in the 19th century. They connect trading partners and influence the regional balance of power. Afghanistan is a strategic piece of real estate in the geopolitical struggle for power and dominance in the region.

Since the 1990s, Washington has promoted a natural gas pipeline south through Afghanistan. The route would pass through Kandahar province. In 2007, Richard Boucher, U.S. assistant secretary of state, said: "One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan," and to link South and Central Asia "so that energy can flow to the south." Oil and gas have motivated U.S. involvement in the Middle East for decades.

When these simple facts are mentioned there might be a chance that public intellectuals will start to discuss the hidden realities behind the Afghanistan War. As neither Liam Fox nor Cameron nor Gordon Brown can use "public diplomacy" to good effect by claiming that it is about "national security.

It is but it is about national energy security and no longer about Al Qaida which has long fled Afghanistan. The shifting pretexts alone ought to have made people interrogate and scrutinise what the real motives are, what the cost is to our security and whether this futile war is worth the sacrifice.

As for the idiocy of censoring my comments in what is supposedly liberal newspaper, this is despicable and pathetically craven. My comments on Sir Simon Jenkin's case against the Afghanistan war were removed for, presumably, being "off topic". But as I consistently keep saying commentary can not be advanced if such vital information is suppressed.

I am trying to advance the discussion on "Comment is Free" and to mention the unmentionable role of Turkmenistani oil and gas is doing so in liberal newspaper . It is not "off topic" but of seminal importance in making Afghanistan unstable as transit pipeline states are inherently insecure as we saw with Georgia in 2008.