Seven years of bloody failure

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Seven years of bloody failure

(Thursday 20 November 2008)

by PAUL HASTE at Downing Street




THE FACE OF FREEDOM: A young Afghan woman recovering in hospital after being attacked with acid in Kandahar last week.



PEACE campaigners delivered a stark message to Gordon Brown on Thursday - to "recognise the failure" of the Afghanistan occupation as the US-led war enters its eighth blood-soaked year.

The Stop the War Coalition called on the Prime Minister to "reassess Britain's foreign policy, respect public opinion and withdraw the troops from a war that even our ambassador to Afghanistan has said is unwinnable."


Campaigners Lord Ahmed, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and Plaid Cymru MP Elfyn Llwyd presented the demand in a letter to Mr Brown signed by several mothers of British soldiers serving in Afghanistan.


Stop the War activist Chris Nineham explained that Britain has more than 8,300 troops bolstering the US occupation.


"Some 125 of them have so far lost their lives, while the scale of death and destruction visited upon the Afghan people has, scandalously, scarcely been documented," he said.


No exact figures are known for the number of civilians killed since the US attacked the country in October 2001, but investigations by US Professor Marc Herold have uncovered almost 28,000 deaths caused either directly or indirectly by the occupation.


The latest massacre occurred on November 3, when US fighter planes fired missiles at a wedding celebration in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, slaughtering 37 people.


Mr Corbyn said that the occupation was "going nowhere.
"This supposed 'liberation' of Afghanistan has become an endless war with massive civilian casualties.


"Although I am optimistic that president-elect Obama might end the war in Iraq, I am less optimistic that he will change the US position on Afghanistan," he said.


"But, with this presentation to Downing Street, I am confident that we are contributing to a discussion of what Britain is doing in that country, because this war simply cannot be won."


Stop the War chairman Andrew Murray pointed out that Barack Obama's plan to send 7,000 more soldiers to back up the 32,000 US troops leading the occupation would put Mr Brown "between a rock and a hard place.


"Obama has called on other countries to step up their contribution and send more soldiers to help the US, but a huge 68 per cent of the British people now want our troops to leave," he said.


Exiled Afghan journalist Mohammed Naveen Asif stressed that "the Taliban are back and stronger than ever and the US has no choice but to negotiate with them.


"The best option for Obama is to leave Afghanistan to Afghans and put his own house in order because, if he is going to restore any credibility to the American reputation, he has to withdraw American troops.


"Afghanistan is not in need of soldiers and mercenaries. Afghanistan needs doctors and teachers," he declared.

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[Thinking Man's Idiot]

No benefit to anyone

(Thursday 20 November 2008)








SEVEN years of British involvement in the US-led illegal occupation of Afghanistan have brought no benefit to the people of either country.



Afghans have been slaughtered in their tens of thousands, for identifying with the "government" of Hamid Karzai, at the hands of the invaders or as a function of "collateral damage," as the slaughter of civilians is now euphemised.

People who have grown up in Britain may find guests firing rifles into the air to celebrate a wedding a little unusual.


The US air force regards such customs as virtually a declaration of war, which is why so many wedding parties have been targeted by a hail of rocket fire and assault by special forces, leading to enormous loss of life.


US military spokespeople have invariably maintained, even in the face of abundant evidence of slaughtered children, that they hit al-Qaida/Taliban safe houses or military camps.


No-one believes the yarns that are being spun, but too many people are prepared to accept the false prospectus under which military occupation was justified.


Although al-Qaida has historically had military training camps in Afghanistan, this was not necessarily with the consent of the Afghan people.


It was Washington and its close allies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that funded, equipped and organised these camps, first against the Soviet Red Army and then against the modernising secular government of President Najibullah.


The "crimes" committed by the Najibullah government were distributing land from feudal landlords to the landless and extending education to girls and young women.


And yet the White House and Downing Street try to win support for a supposed agenda of women's rights as part justification for their war against the Afghan people.


The conspiracy to attack the Twin Towers and other targets in the US was not hatched in Afghanistan but in Saudi Arabia, from where most of the conspirators hailed, and their motivation was the stationing of US military forces in Saudi Arabia during the first war against Iraq, following Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.


Neither can the invaders' attempts to claim to be taking effective action to curtail opium poppy production be taken seriously.


The Taliban government had virtually wiped out this crop before the 2001 invasion. In fact, it was US warlord allies in the self-styled Northern Alliance who were up to their necks in the international heroin trade.


There is not a single aspect of the seven-year-long occupation that can be put forward as a success.


Life expectancy has fallen to 43, one in five children die before their fifth birthday, women's rights are a figment of US spin doctors' imagination and the blood of the innocent continues to haemorrhage.


US president-elect Barack Obama's positive message on Iraq does not stretch to Afghanistan.


He has taken on board the fiction, as has Gordon Brown, that security for the US people depends on subjugating Afghanistan and building a form of Washington-approved democracy there.


It has not worked and it will not work. And all the time the lives of Afghans and occupation forces will be lost. There is no positive role for British troops there. This unwinnable war must be ended without delay.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

!

This is so very very sad.


Blair, Bush and all the other crooks need to be tried for Treason & Mass Murder.


On this issue we are united.