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U.S. In No-Win Situations
By Sam Hamod
12/05/07 "ICH
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No doubt about it, the U.S. is in a no-win situation in
Afghanistan, much like the Russians of a few decades back.
It's too bad America didn't learn its lesson from the Russians
in Afghanistan and the French in Viet Nam, but we didn't; we
went ahead as if we were the "good guys" who wore the white hats
and could not lose because God was on our side. As it turns out,
God is not on our side, and we have gone into a country that is
not accustomed to allowing others, or their puppets as is Karzai,
to take over their country. The Afghans know the mountains of
their country, they know all the terrain, the caves, the
resources and they have the will-power to withstand the winters
and the invasion forces of any and all enemies, as the Russians,
the British and now the Americans have found out.
For Bush to think that Musharraf could contain Al Qaida, destroy
the Taliban and save Afghanistan for Karzai and America shows
how naive he and his buddies in Washington and New York
are--they all share the blame, from the White House to the
Senate, to the Congress to the NY Times. They all believed the
same folly about Afghanistan that they were later fed about
Iraq, that we would be welcomed as "saviors," by the people and
that they would dance in the streets and support us. As I have
long stated in my hundreds of articles, it would not, and did
not, happen, and will not happen in any of these countries we
are sticking our nose into thinking that it will not be
bloodied, whether it is these two countries or Somalia, the
Phillipines or Pakistan (if we are foolish to send more troops
in there, as we have done on some short sorties within the past
year).
Not only have we lost our military personnel, we have killed
hundreds of thousands of innocent people, poisoned more with DUI
(depleted uranium which has a half-life of over a million years)
including our own service personnel, and children in Iraq and
Afghanistan for years to come. These people will never forgive
us for these sins, and they should not--as we would not forgive
them if they came here and did this to us.
It is now apparent that Bush has wanted to take over Iraq, just
as I pointed out years ago in Counterpunch.com and in
Informationclaringhouse.info, he wanted it to
be "his own little country,"; now, his new treaty, that we shall
remain in Iraq forever, makes clear that that was always his
plan, not Iraqi "freedom" or Iraqi "democracy," or even taking
out Saddam (based on Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz,
Powell and Lieberman lies about WMDs and more).
Now, we have lost thousands of our people to death, hundreds of
thousands to wounds, both physical and psychological,and
hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Iraqis dead and or
wounded--for naught except the extension of power that may last
on a temporary basis, but not over a decade at the most because
in the end, the Iraqis and whatever groups of allies they will
find, will finally attack so long that we will have to leave, as
did the Mongols, the Turks, the British and finally us. The same
is true in Afghanistan. But to make the problem worse for us in
Afghanistan, the billions of dollars that will be made with the
largest opium poppy crop in decades will help the Taliban and
the warlords buy weapons on the international market that will
make them even more powerful enemies who will use these weapons
against our regime in Afghanistan and perhaps even in the U.S.
So, our wars have not paid, but they may come back to haunt us
even more than any of our planners have foreseen.
Add to this, that our economy has been hammered by the expenses
of these two wars, wars without ends in sight, and with no
return of anything except enemies and sorrows, and you can see
how finally some day, the American people will wake up to the
destruction we have wrought on others and on ourselves, because
every dollar spent on destroying Iraq and Afghanistan is money
that could have been used to rebuild the infrastructure of
America, to help the poor, the homeless, the elderly and to
create jobs for our people because the money would have been
recirculation in our economy--instead, it is going to waste in
the deserts of Iraq or into the pockets of Halliburton and
Bechtel and Blackwater or their cohorts, or into the mountains
of Afghanistan, or into the bribes that have not been effective
in bringing these wars to a close.
No, it is a no-win situation that is bad and can only get worse,
a vicious cycle of destruction, sorrow and defeat brought about
by men who know nothing of war and who knew nothing of war, but
decided they knew how to run a war based on lies that they were
sure would make them go down in history as great men. How
foolish they were, how foolish they and their allies in both
political parties, from Bush to Lieberman, to Hillary Clinton to
Nancy Pelosi and the whole lot--all have betrayed the people of
America, these are all people who do not value the lives of the
American troops or the Iraqi or Afghani people, and who do not,
and did not, value the future of our children and their own
grandchildren because of what they have done to help the war and
what some have not done to stop these wars and the funding of
them.
Tis sad, very sad, but now, we must all pay the piper, even
those who were against these wars. This reminds me of the good
German, Japanese and Iraqi people who were against Hitler, Tojo
and Saddam, who did what they could, but who could not stop the
war machines because those in power had all the weapons and the
armies to do as they wished and told the people, just as our
leaders have told us, to "Go to Hell."
So, now we are in hell, and who knows if and when we'll ever get
out of it.
Sam Hamod may be reached at
samhamod@sbcglobal
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