Afghanistan: America's Longest War... and counting

US military has no business in Afghan civil war

Happy 7th Anni-war-sary!?

Break out the Champagne (or sparkling wine) to celebrate the capture of bin Laden, the dissolution of alQaeda and the defeat of the Taliban!

Ooops...

Sorry, not this year.

Not next year, either.

Or in any year after that according to NATO and British generals in Afghanistan and the British diplomatic corp.

So, maybe at this '7th-Year-Stretch' we should ask the question again: 'What is the American mission in Afghanistan?'

Revenge? Retribution? Justice? Freedom & Democracy?

Or is it a never-ending gravy-train for arms dealers and a never-ending murderous nightmare for the Afghan people?

They're At It Again!

Like murderous 2-year olds, you can't take your eyes off of them for a moment. They're making war with an ally, now!

The Bush and Cheney Gang - who else!? While the ridiculous spectacle of personality politics in the US distracts us, Bush/Cheney are attacking Pakistan.

Again and again!

Killing hundreds of men, women, children and - oh, by the way, the occasional member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

My, my. Do tell! There are Taliban and Al-Qaeda member in Eastern Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan? In the Tora Bora Mountains! There!?

This is not news. This is the same old info we’ve had since before the Russians bailed on their Afghani adventure. The CIA and the ISI recruited and hired those thugs to harass the Ruskies. The thugs did a pretty good job and they continue to do a pretty good job at harassing occupying forces. And they’re still in the same area of the world where the USA armed them.

Of course, with the Bush/Cheney eyes on a different prize, they were not so interested in finding some Arab with bad kidneys in a cave and bringing him to trial. (What would you imagine we could all learn from several days of Bin Laden’s testimony in a witness box?)

A third of world oil reserves! Makes your head spin! Bush could revive Arbusco Oil (and probably run it into the ground)and Cheney would probably get free virgins and a gazillion bucks a month in retainers from Halliburton just for his rolodex.

But I digress…

US forces are attacking our ‘key partner in the War on Terror’! What the f… is with that? I suppose Bush/Cheney and their round-table of socio-paths figured the Pakistanis wouldn’t mind if the US killed a few dozen people in the Tribal Areas for a ‘good cause’. Of course, they were advised against such an insane, immoral action by the Intelligence Community, but did they listen? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

You’ve got to give credit where it is due, though. This is a tried and true tactic for winning the war on terror; it’s proven successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a nutshell, here’s the plan: make every person in the region hate the US for brutally murdering a family member or loved one. Then everybody in the region, man, woman and child, will share a culturally rooted vow to affect terrible, bloody vengeance on the USA.

That will take care of ‘collateral damage’ for good; whoever’s on photo-op detail at the White House will simply read the teleprompter and sign the executive order making ‘them’ all terrorists.

Ipso facto…

Presto change-o! Nobody’s an innocent because they’ve all been defined as ‘evil terr’rists’ by Imperial decree.

Then we just nuke ‘em all and take the oil.

Dubya in Bucharest

Is this just more unbridled hubris, simply another case of sheer stupidity or both? Perhaps it’s just a grandstand move, like the recent Mid-East ‘Peace’ effort to try to balance the historic record of Dubya’s administration.

Bush went to the NATO summit in Romania to campaign for the admission of the former Soviet states, Ukraine and Georgia, into the ranks of NATO and to pressure allies to increase troop commitments in Afghanistan.

First of all, the war there should have been resolved years ago. With the full assistance of the UN and NATO and clear, concerted attention to the stated objective of capturing Bin Laden and neutralizing Al-Qaeda, it quite probably could have been.

The grand distraction of the illegal war in Iraq allowed the primary mission to fail as it was turned over to Pakistan to fulfill; Pakistan which had fully supported the Taliban before and after 9-11. That failure allowed the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to become resurgent by escaping, regrouping, rearming and reinforcing in the Tribal Areas along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border from which they launched a campaign to re-take Afghanistan. (Mullah Rashid Akhond, the overall military commander of the Taleban in Wardak, a central province bordering Kabul, claims to have 2,000 active fighters ready for a spring offense.) Hence, Bush is using what little clout is left him as an out-going president at his last NATO summit to insist on additional military assistance from NATO countries.

In his own little world of Biblical import, Bush also chose to take several punches at Putin, the out-going president of Russia by promoting missile bases and radar installation in Russia’s front yard and the pushing for the admission of two former Soviet states, Ukraine and Georgia, as NATO members.

Putin, obviously not understanding that Bush serves a higher power, counter-punched with a combination of logic and reason. He first questioned the reason for the very existence of NATO, saying the purpose of the alliance was to counter the perceived threat during the Cold War of a country which doesn’t exist anymore, the Soviet Union. He added, "This thesis is rather strange – if one is a member of NATO, there is democracy, and if not, no democracy. This is nonsense. NATO is not a democratizer," he said.

But Bush is the ‘Democratizer’ bunny who has never let reason or logic stand in his way and he wants the Ukraine and Georgia to join the ranks of the newly ‘democratized’ NATO countries which were formerly Warsaw Pac members. There are already ten such members and two more waiting in queue. Bush would like to ask them all to supply troops to the fight in Afghanistan.

Evidently, he and his advisors have forgotten what took place in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989. It is unlikely that the people of the Ukraine, Georgia, Romania and the other former members of the Soviet bloc which are now NATO members have forgotten.

Nearly 14,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were killed and nearly half a million suffered wounds, injury and debilitating illness before Moscow withdrew its forces in defeat. It is generally accepted that the collapse of the Soviet Union, at least in part, came as a result of that war.

I would doubt that any of the former Soviet Bloc would want to go through that again, especially given the dire situation in Iraq and the state of the US economy. The fact that the hat-in-hand request is coming from Dubya, the lame duck would be enough to give them pause. Time will tell.

NATO, responding to the strong objection from Moscow, rejected the admission of Ukraine and Georgia. More troops from Canada, Spain and France will be headed to Afghanistan, though, so the quagmire will mire on. That should make Dubya and the other remaining neo-cons happy; two never-ending wars spiraling out of control at the same time. That must be an historical first.

http://www.newssafety.com/hotspots/documents/AKEAfghanistan27.03.2008.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7327944.stm

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,544189,00.html

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080401/nato_afghanistan_080401/20080401/?hub=Specials

http://www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/410713

Irony

A prince of the House of Windsor enlists in the Army as a matter of duty to his country. He then insists that he see combat with his unit in a foreign war. After much ado, he is surreptitiously assigned to a front-line unit in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban.

A prince of the House of Bush, on the other hand, finagles a commission as a pilot in a back-water Air National Guard unit to avoid combat duty in Vietnam. He then spends most of his time in the Guard AWOL from his post.

Even More Ironic

‘W’, as Commander-in-chief, commits National Guardsmen to extended tours of combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.