(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Pres. Obama, tell me again, what are we fighting for?
And this from Rep. Alan Grayson, who astutely states what every historian and Afghanistan region analyst already knows.
I think that the basic premise that we can alter afghan society is greatly flawed. Afghanistan is simply the part of Asia that was never occupied by the Russians or the English in the Great Game. It’s not a country; it’s not even a place. It’s just an empty place on the map. It’s terra incognita. People who live there are a welter of different tribes, different language groups, different religious beliefs.
All over the country you find different people who have nothing to do with each other except for the fact that we call them Afghans, and they don’t even call themselves Afghans. They’re Tajiks or they’re Pashtuns, or they’re Hazzaras or someone else. The things that hold them together are simply the things that we try to create artificially.
Smart man, Mr. President, you need to listen to him more closely.
h/t digby
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Thanks a lot, Mr. President.
grade school/junior high when our geography classes had a gigantic swath of red across Eastern Europe, Eurasia, central Asia and Asia labeled simply “USSR” with no national borders at all. We never heard of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, etc. China was red too, but at least it was labeled. I can recall when Pakistan was on two different sides of India and not really considered much of a nation at all. But Afghanistan was there. No-Man’s Land…
Thank you Country Joe and the Fish.
Why is stating the obvious, stating actual FACTS, considered revolutionary?
The fucking media, in all 9 years of this war, could never tell us this plain simple fact about “Afghanistan”.
Oil.
The 22nd Stargate and secret Sumerian instruction manuals were in Iraq.
Israel told us to.
To get the poppy crop back online for CIA blackops.
To hasten the bankruptcy of the US.
a man who in the halls of Empire speaks the truth which is not considered good form or politically advantageous. Will he be written off as the enemy of the good as far as the supporters of ‘reality’ are concerned? Any war is a good war for the glory of Empire. Whose butt we kick and why does not matter what matters is WINNING. As you can see this morning I stumbled on two postings about the Romans. Obama’s speech at West Point was a classic empirical offering. Too bad we seem to have past the Republic stage and are now full blown Empire out to get the barbarians, who like always need legions to subdue them. I always rooted for the barbarians as my ancestors were one of the more successful barbarian tribes the Celts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Are we not Romans Michael Vlahos
‘So our president in his great speech takes on this geas for us. He is our collective voice, our guide and leader. He tells us what we must do:
‘Let me be clear: none of this will be easy. The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly … It will be an enduring test of our free society, and our leadership in the world … America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars … we are passing through a time of great trial. And the message that we send in the midst of these storms must be clear: that our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might.’
Et tu Obama? All hail the new emperor Maximus Changeous!
I then came upon this great diary at dkos buried among the clamor of ‘to war to war’ and all hail the emperor…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
Hadrian’s Forum: Rome’s Descent into Political Violence
‘With the tea baggers, birthers, deathers, ect, we have seen people agitating for outright violence. This in a country that (with a few exceptions) never has known political violence. This was also how Roman politics was during the first 400 years of the republic. After the violence began, it could not be stopped. It only ended with the destruction of the republic and the birth of the autocratic Roman Empire.’
Endless war, or on to the next one. Who cares about the case for peace and Republic… Even Godwin with his dumb Law could not call this comparison hyperbole when we call this ‘the good’.Where is our Pax Romana? It seems nowhere in sight. Were all neo cons now, even the plebs pay tribute to the glory of the myth, of American exceptionalism and empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P…
Sorry to use your essay as a place to write another but I felt somehow it fit here, as all my reading roads today led to TheMomCat. Thanks.
This needs to go viral in a big way.
It shows the complete impossibility of “winning” against the Taliban.
for the purpose they tell us it is: to stabilize and democratize Afghanistan. But that isn’t so. The war is being fought because it produces corporate profits and protects the interests of companies like Unocal. The US has become such sewer of lies and corruption that anyone trying to make an honest point about almost anything winds up missing the larger point and looking naive.
There’s nothing left to do. This isn’t a “war” it’s a comedy. The echoes of Vietnam are hilarious. Americans have kept all the insanity of that war to themselves it’s too fucking embarrassing. Apocalypse Now does give a sense of it.
I have zero respect for the NATO troops in Afghanistan no matter how they are praised to the skies by the mainstream media. They’re killing people for no fucking reason other than make money for people that will spit on them when they go home. How pathetic is that?
You know, young men and their eagerness! Then, they reach the actual destination and realize that their young lives are at stake — then, . . . . !
I feel sorrow for any troops sent to that country. Just trying to get a handle on the terrain has got to be awesome.
sheesh. Immediately made me think of VietNam, how so many of our US soldiers came back from there with …well… total dopers and also, just so completely disillusioned and woke up, in a different way. Thinking specifically of my sister’s ex-husband (who died a couple years ago of cancer) who used to talk about shit. They were there, living it (dying it) and they knew the score. Then they’d come home and watch Uncle Walter on the nightly news and just… they knew we were being lied to. I do think thats some of the PTSD, that brainwashing double think thats shoved down their throats, knowing its all a bunch of whooie and watching their buddies die right in front of them. For what.
It was different on many many levels, esp like my bro-in-law being an 18 y.o. draftee basically… but still.
Its their homeland, they’ll keep fighting forever, same as Nam. Vs. our soldiers… there just there to do a job and hope to get home alive.
Its just all so unbearably stupid.
For what? I keep asking.
FWIW
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
If they’re watching this, they ain’t shootin…..I hope 🙂