MORE GRIEF IN AFGHANISTAN

Finally, A worthwhile message from Australia:

REF:Trigger Happy in Afghanistan byRichard NevilleCounterpunch.com 9.08.09

“The brain disease sweeping the West is virulent and vicious, like the golden Staph which haunts so many hospitals. Most at risk are Presidents, Prime Ministers, Generals and journalists. The ailment is not triggered by bacteria but by an ideology as old as history, which every so often resurfaces as a new strain, and this one hasn’t been named. It’s often fatal. Less so to the carriers than those caught in their sights. Let’s call it Kabul[bad word-----] – the propensity to ignore the years of violence inflicted on Afghanistan and to paint the invaders as heroes.

It sometimes seems that the greater the slaughter of civilians, the louder the praise for the mission. This may be due to guilt. Britain’s Gordon Brown: We are in Afghanistan to purge terrorism. Australia’s Kevin Rudd: Our soldiers are building schools. America’s Barack Obama: This is a war of necessity. The Sydney Morning Herald: The mission is to bolster Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and to support regional stability in Pakistan.

In October 2001, shortly after the US started its own invasion, the Taliban offered to surrender Osama bin Laden to a third country for trial, so long as the bombing was halted and they were shown evidence of his involvement in 9/11. George Bush’s reply: "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."(at at away to go Dubya!)

. . . eight years after the invasion, despite what Western Generals keep promising, US and NATO bombs continue to pulverise this unhappy land. It’s like a never ending blood sport.

(What is it about “Thou shall not kill” we don’t understand?)

Why can’t we pull out? Every politician has a different answer. Former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard pithily expressed the fear that lurks in the souls of warmongers: A premature withdrawal would be a blow to the prestige of the West. Remember Prince William a few years ago, calling in air strikes on “enemy positions”, the media thrilled. Hurrah for Western prestige. Never mind that our continued occupation involves aerial assassination on a massive scale, a kind of slow motion genocide. . .

(Maybe it’s the spouted nonsense , “We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”)

'This war has nothing to do with defending the American people', commented a New York Times feedback contributor,'Obama’s war is the war of the overgrown military industrial complex that needs a continuous flow of dollars in order to survive'.

Finally, a comment from Dr Abdullah, the leading [Afghanistan] opposition candidate: ‘We have insecurity in this country. We have bad government. We have corruption. We have narcotics. We have a war. We have an insurgency. On top of that, if a leadership is imposed on the people based on fraudulent elections, what will happen? What will happen to Afghanistan?’”

(The country’s problems sound appallingly like the USA.)

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN