Peter Arnett’s report from the town of Ben Tre in Vietnam ran under the innocuous headline “Major Describes Move” in the New York Times on February 8, 1968.
“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,” a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong.
40 years later, in August 2008, the Third Armored Cavalry burned down a village near Balad Ruz, in Diyala, Iraq, “in order to deny safe haven to possible terrorists.”
In March, 2010, the beneficent US Occupation of Afghanistan likewise “saved” the town of Marjah.
And now Barack Obama and Stanley McChrystal are planning the same kind of party for Kandahar!
Kandahar Becomes Battlefield Before a U.S. Offensive
“The first thing Afghans fear is the coming of more foreign troops, and the second thing they fear is the empowering of the current leadership and administration,” said Shahabuddin Akhunzada, a tribal elder from Kandahar city.
“The Americans, the international community, all the military forces have lost the people’s trust,” he added.
But for the next few weeks or months, until the Americans arrive…
Kandahar is still a living city.
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…that most Americans refuse to look at. We are a brutal imperial regime who punishes subjects who dare oppose the might of the Empire. This is a constant in American history and goes back to Andrew Jackson. But I can understand the old imperial impulse — simple conquest, honest, straightforward. But this shit is bizarre. The reason for war is war. There is no interest being served here other than the interest of the various parties involved in the confluence of interests; among those are: important national interests (Pakistan v. India), various organized crime syndicates and the U.S. military industrial complex that needs war (any war) to survive.
It doesn’t have anything at all to do with “terrorism” which isn’t even an ism but a tactic used by all sides. Terrorism is just an Orwellian term meant to inspire mindless fear.
Afghanistan? Is there any kind of debate taking place? Do people really care enough to even think about it? I guess the Afghan people (like the Iraqis) are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could you imagine if they had killed Bin Laden soon after the invasion? It would have screwed up everything.
The plot would have been a little harder to develop than simply “you gotta get the bad guy”.
I’m confident that they have writers that could have fixed it pretty fast. As it is, after 10 years, they’re still trying to ad lib. Obama’s explanation a few months ago justifying the troop increase was nonsensicle double talk at its very finest. But the shit worked, cause nobody fcuking cares anyhow. They speak a different language and don’t even dress like us. And their God? It’s the friggin wrong one.
Obama Destroys
Afghanistanhealth care reform To Save ItWonder how long his list will get. He and Rahm are pretty ambitious men with a big appetites for winning at any cost.