FW: [Peace-discuss] Afghan war

[Stuart Levy]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 01:36:04PM -0600, LAURIE SOLOMON wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Would it not be truly strange if this was not really a war for oil, against
> terrorism, in support of empire building; but instead was a Malthusian
> attempt at population control perpetrated by the industrial nations and
> their WASP leadership aimed at decreasing the third world population and the
> underclass populations at home.

Strange, well, maybe.

If mass killing were the main intent, we could be far
more effective than these wars have been.

Let's hope we don't go in for industrial eugenics again
as the Germans did, after studying with admiration what
American eugenicists/racists had been doing on a smaller
scale for decades.   (An eye-opening and very readable
book on this is Edwin Black's "War Against the Weak /
Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race".)


> What we have is a modern day version of the
> 100 years war; it is after all the only thing we have going to keep what we
> call our economy from being flushed down the toilet although it has not
> helped to keep us out of the toilet.

Wars make lousy jobs programs too.  We can make 'way better
jobs programs for much less money and vastly less misery.

> If we allow enough of your militarist
> sons and daughters to be killed in this dirty little protracted war, we
> might actually wind up making the world safe for the peaceful - after a
> couple of hundred years.  
 
Ugh.
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
> [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C. G.
> Estabrook
> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 11:00 AM
> To: Peace-discuss
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Afghan war
> 
> [A not unarguable account of the Afghan theater (as Obama says) of the SW
> Asian war, from a paleo-conservative source, a principled opponent of the
> war.  This account is nevertheless surely better than the one offered by Bush
> and Obama, viz., that the assault on Afghanistan is part of the "war on
> terrorism." --CGE]
> 
> 
> 	Obama's War
> 
> Just two months after the twin towers fell, the armies of the Northern
> Alliance 
> marched into Kabul. The Taliban fled.
> 
> The triumph was total in the "splendid little war" that had cost one U.S. 
> casualty. Or so it seemed. Yet, last month, the war against the Taliban
> entered 
> its eighth year, the second longest war in our history, and America and NATO
> 
> have never been nearer to strategic defeat.
> 
> So critical is the situation that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in
> Kandahar 
> last week, promised rapid deployment, before any Taliban spring offensive,
> of 
> two and perhaps three combat brigades of the 20,000 troops requested by Gen.
> 
> David McKiernan. The first 4,000, from the 10th Mountain, are expected in
> January.
> 
> With 34,000 U.S. soldiers already in country, half under NATO command, the 
> 20,000 will increase U.S. forces there to 54,000, a 60 percent ratcheting
> up. 
> Shades of LBJ, 1964-65. Afghanistan is going to be Obama's War. And upon its
> 
> outcome will hang the fate of his presidency. Has he thought this through?
> 
> How do we win this war, if by winning we mean establishing a pro-Western 
> democratic government in control of the country that has the support of the 
> people and loyalty of an Afghan army strong enough to defend the nation from
> a 
> resurgent Taliban?
> 
> We are further from that goal going into 2009 than we were five years ago.
> 
> What are the long-term prospects for any such success?
> 
> Each year, the supply of opium out of Afghanistan, from which most of the 
> world's heroin comes, sets a new record. Payoffs by narcotics traffickers
> are 
> corrupting the government. The fanatically devout Taliban had eradicated the
> 
> drug trade, but is now abetting the drug lords in return for money for
> weapons 
> to kill the Americans.
> 
> Militarily, the Taliban forces are stronger than they have been since 2001, 
> moving out of the south and east and infesting half the country. They have 
> sanctuaries in Pakistan and virtually ring Kabul.
> 
> U.S. air strikes have killed so many Afghan civilians that President Karzai,
> who 
> controls little more than Kabul, has begun to condemn the U.S. attacks.
> Predator 
> attacks on Taliban and al-Qaida in Pakistan have inflamed the population
> there.
> 
> And can pinprick air strikes win a war of this magnitude?
> 
> The supply line for our troops in Afghanistan, which runs from Karachi up to
> 
> Peshawar through the Khyber Pass to Kabul, is now a perilous passage. Four
> times 
> this month, U.S. transport depots in Pakistan have been attacked, with
> hundred 
> of vehicles destroyed.
> 
> Before arriving in Kandahar, Gates spoke grimly of a "sustained commitment
> for 
> some protracted period of time. How many years that is, and how many troops
> that 
> is ... nobody knows."
> 
> Gen. McKiernan says it will be at least three or four years before the
> Afghan 
> army and police can handle the Taliban.
> 
> But why does it take a dozen years to get an Afghan army up to where it can 
> defend the people and regime against a Taliban return? Why do our Afghans
> seem 
> less disposed to fight and die for democracy than the Taliban are to fight
> and 
> die for theocracy? Does their God, Allah, command a deeper love and loyalty
> than 
> our god, democracy?
> 
> McKiernan says the situation may get worse before it gets better. Gates
> compares 
> Afghanistan to the Cold War. "(W)e are in many respects in an ideological 
> conflict with violent extremists. ... The last ideological conflict we were
> in 
> lasted about 45 years."
> 
> That would truly be, in Donald Rumsfeld's phrase, "a long, hard slog."
> 
> America, without debate, is about to invest blood and treasure,
> indefinitely, in 
> a war to which no end seems remotely in sight, if the commanding general is 
> talking about four years at least and the now-and-future war minister is
> talking 
> about four decades.
> 
> What is there to win in Afghanistan to justify doubling down our investment?
> If 
> our vital interest is to deny a sanctuary there to al-Qaida, do we have to
> build 
> a new Afghanistan to accomplish that? Did not al-Qaida depart years ago for
> a 
> new sanctuary in Pakistan?
> 
> What hope is there of creating in this tribal land a democracy committed to 
> freedom, equality and human rights that Afghans have never known? What is
> the 
> expectation that 54,000 or 75,000 U.S. troops can crush an insurgency that 
> enjoys a privileged sanctuary to which it can return, to rest, recuperate
> and 
> recruit for next year's offensive? Of all the lands of the earth,
> Afghanistan 
> has been among the least hospitable to foreigners who come to rule, or to
> teach 
> them how they should rule themselves.
> 
> Would Dwight D. Eisenhower -- who settled for the status quo ante in Korea,
> an 
> armistice at the line of scrimmage -- commit his country to such an
> open-ended 
> war? Would Richard Nixon? Would Ronald Reagan?
> 
> Hard to believe. George W. Bush would. But did not America vote against
> Bush? 
> Why is America getting seamless continuity when it voted for significant
> change?
> 
> 	--by Patrick J. Buchanan
> 	Posted 12/19/2008 ET
> 
> Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, 
> Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West
> Lost 
> the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not
> an 
> Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."
> 
> Copyright C 2008 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
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