Why we will never win
I was doing penance yesterday and listening to Laura Ingram. A form of punishment that I put myself through daily. In Atlanta during daytime business hours the am raido is full of nothing but right wing bloviators with no opposing voice on any other channel. You can go to am 640, 750 and now 920 to hear the likes of Mike Gallagher, Neil Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Laura Ingraham and a host of fill ins. The three channels are virtually in synch with each other in regard their talking points. Occasionally they diverge into self generated rants, usaually against liberals, gays, minorities and anyone that doesn’t drink their brand of Kool Aid in regard war, economics, social issues and so forth.
Yesterday Laura Ingraham was going on about how Obama and the liberals will never admit that a “victory” can be attained in Iraq. It seemed to be a big point to her that she could show how….I don’t know, defeatest perhaps, that Obama was. However, I do not think that I have ever heard Obama say that there could never be a “victory” in Iraq, but I am saying it. The same in Afghanistan. The same in the so-called ” War on Terror.” In regard Iraq, you can not fabricate reasons to go to war, invade unprovoked, destroy their country, kill or caused to be killed hundreds of thousands of people, create the situtation where sectarian cleansing causes massive refugees, completely fail in managing the occupation and call anything that comes afterwards a “victory.”
In Afghanistan, seven years on, we have done nothing in the way of approaching somehting recognizable as “victory.” In fact it appears that we are going backwards. A collapsing government in Kabul, massive and record opium production in the warlord controled regions, a regrouped Taliban and civil and human rights just words. Musharraf is gone from Pakistan, and by the way the Pakistanis had a democratic election and have a new president. He did not come to power in a coup so the chances are that he will not be held in high esteem by our government. The entire time that Musharraf was our “biggest ally” in the war on terror Pakistan was base to fundamentalist Muslims, the rest and recration spot for the Taliban and the base for al Qaeda. Now that he is out of the picture we are attacking Pakistani border villages with a vengence and wreaking death and destruction on whoever happens to be there.
Yesterday we sent unmanned aircraft into Pakistan and bombed a religious school there killing a reported 23 people. Women and children were killed and who knows who the others were in regard their being “insurgents” or “terrorists” or what have you. We have our military’s take on things but their record for accuracy is historically shown to be virtually pathetic. We are left to sifting through foreign news sources for information because our media is just a propaganda arm of the pentagon and our government.
We have stepped up aerial bombings in the region, often on the basis of faulty intelligence. We are causing significant amount of “collateral damage” which means we are killing women, children and noncombatants. The idea is that it is safer for our troops to bomb indiscriminately rather than send troops in. However, since bombs don’t differentiate between innocent and guilty and the fact that our intelligence is so poor in the region, we are killing many people who are just trying to live their lives and take care of their families or go to what schools there are. We blame it on the fact that the “enemy” use population centers as shields and therefore those casualties are unavoidable. Human Rights Watch has come out with a report about this:
Rights Group Condemns Us, NATO Air Strikes In Afghanistan
U.S. and NATO air bombings in Afghanistan have killed more than 500 civilians since 2006, fueling a public backlash against the coalition’s war effort, a prominent human rights group said Monday.
Human Rights Watch, an international organization based in New York, blamed some of the civilian deaths on Taliban and al Qaida insurgents who create “human shields” by blending into populated areas.
But the group also criticized mainly U.S. commanders for launching bombing raids under looser military “rules of engagement” than those followed by other NATO nations with troops in Afghanistan.
It appears HRW’s take on this is the same as mine:
“The United States needs to end the mistakes that are killing so many civilians,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “While Taliban shielding is a factor in some civilian deaths, the United States shouldn’t use this as an excuse when it could have taken better precautions.”
The piece goes on to say that over half of the civilians killed in Afghanistan since the invasion have been at the hands of the US and our allies. Here is a piece with video proof of our lies about casualties. It was taken by a doctor on site with his cell phone. Sadly, I believe him over our own military PR disinformation. On site witnesses said we killed 92 civilians and our government said there were only seven civilians killed. The pentagon is now back peddling in light of the evidence and going to “investigate” the situation. Which leads me to ask where do they get the figures they are reporting in the first place?
Here is what we are sending to the people of Afghanistan:
Here is what they do:
And this is why we will not “win” in either Iraq or Afghanistan. This is why we will never win the hearts and minds of the people. If this was done to my children I would be an “insurgent” as well. Who wouldn’t? So if the product of these tens…hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent people is what we will eventually write about in our history books as victory, well it won’t be worth the paper they used to print it. And chicken hawk right wing bloviators that impugne the character of those that say that there can be no real “victory” from these conflicts are not only wrong but they are part of the problem. They work their “fans” up into furies and fill them with lies, disinformation and propaganda. They occupy virtually the entire spectrum of radio talk shows and have an uncontested message that they hammer every…single….day.
Your country is killing people that have done nothing to us. Your country is bombing people and destroying their homes and their lives. The economy is the “most important” thing on voters minds this year it is reported. The “War on Terror” though is a huge part of what is wrong with the economy. And I would gladly pay $4 a gallon at the pump if I knew that we were not killing women and children and occupying countries for the sake of…of what? To battle a tactic? Freedom and democracy? For nothing but ideology and corrupt reasoning is more like it. Striking at the leaves and upper branches will not destroy the roots. When will we address them?
So…please take a moment to think about what we are doing in our “War on Terror” and how it undrmines us as a people and a nation and completely smashes any moral platform we may preach from. It’s your government. It’s my government. I can’t fix it by myself.
