Hopeless is a Generous Term for the Situation in Afghanistan

Is Afghanistan the "Real War on Terror" we now claim?

veteranstoday.com

(CINCINNITI, Ohio) - Casualties are mounting in Afghanistan while the situation is rapidly deteriorating from hopeless to a word the English language has yet to create. Everone under heaven has told us that fighting in Afghanistan is insane. Nothing can be won with terrain beyond our technological grasp, porous borders and a civilian population with hundreds of thousands willing to give their lives to convince us to leave.

With no public support at home or anywhere in the world, no support in Afghanistan, a country whose Army has actually gone backwards with billions in supplies and training and Karzai's open theft of an election, mirroring that of his neighbor in Iran, no situation could be worse.

Our allies are tiring, preparing to cut and run. They have suffered and sacrified as we have and deserve thanks, not the derision we pile on them. Why do we forget when their children die alongside ours?

Why are we at war? Is this really the "good war," the one Bush forgot to fight because of the invasion of Iraq, an attack that, according to international law, was an illegal war of aggression deserving of Nuremburg type trials? If you feel, in your heart, that it has all been a setup from the beginning, you aren't alone and are not a "conspiracy theorist."

With 2 wars started by the 9/11 attacks, is this a rationale for what we are doing now or were they an excuse for military adventure in partnership with oil companies, Israel and greedy arms manufacturers?

If we bought intel on Iraq we knew was false, is everything false? We know 9/11 was not what we were told. With the Commission report in tatters and unanswered questions, not theories, but real questions on why our military and intelligence community seemed to have simply taken a day off on 9/11, we can't trust this as a reason to kill thousands more Americans.

9/11 just doesn't hold water anymore. The official story is now the "conspiracy theory." The truth has now entered an area beyond the imagination of any of us. Did the Bush administration get in bed with terrorists and enemies as was done during Carter and Reagan? Why have we forgotten that we are fighting against people we trained. Al Queda and the Taliban were US allies against Russia in Afghanistan, organized, supplied and trained by the CIA with billions spent. When did those relationships end?

What does the evidence of 9/11 really show? We have airline hijackings, real hijackings but failed to respond to them. We saw buildings hit, everyone saw it but the films of the Pentagon attack are classified, all except one that raises more questions than are answered. I have sat thru videos showing a BBC reporter pointing at a building behind her, claiming it had collapsed and it looked undamaged.

It mysteriously collapsed minutes later? Was she a prophet? Perhaps. It seems, according to architects and engineers, only a god could have dropped the building the way it fell, god or demolition charges. Do I believe this? With no other rational explanation, ignoring this is insane.

Thus, we stand at the edge, ready to send thousands of troops, tens of thousands more, thousands to die, in a war we can never win based on a terror attack clouded by a massive and continuing coverup such as could only be part of something depressingly sinister.

Is not wanting to find the truth because we fear learning something so sickening we will live in shock for decades a reason to sacrifice the lives of thousands of our young men and women for nothing? Are we cowards?

Since the end of World War 2, the United States has dreamed of control of the Middle East. That policy has had little to do with defending Israel, now a great military power on its own. For years, we jockeyed with the Russians, us with Iran, Turkey and Israel and them with Egypt and Syria as military allies.

There was always one reason. The world has a limited supply of oil. There was no Islamic extremism, not in a serious way, until we needed it in Afghanistan for our "cold war" against Russia, a war fought there, fought in Korea, a war fought in Vietnam, a "cold war" fought by Americans and in a series of assassination, otherthrown governments and rigged elections around the world.

Are we still involved in the same games the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen started after World War 2, world domination for American commercial interests, even if no American survives to enjoy it?

Is Washington filled with great minds and idealists. Did we go to war to promote democracy or destroy Islam to bring about a Christian world or, perhaps, destroy one and bring about the "rapture" that so many Bushites droned on about when the audience was right?

Should we be judged by facts, what we have done and how it has worked out? If one were to look at a world financial market looted, drained dry while endless weath has piled up, is that an indicator? How did oil hit $140 a barrel with no real market to drive it? It won't hold half that price, even with speculation now.

What was different? Did a change of government cause that?

We spent tens of billions on armored vehicles to survive IEDs. We spent much of a decade working on technologies to find and disarm them and now none of those things exist, the vehicles, the technology, none of it works. Are we moving backwards too? With dozens of Pentagon reports, patting themselves on the back for protecting our troops, press notices, videos, was all of it lies? The death toll says so.

40 years ago, we could read a license plate from space and we can't find explosives 50 feet away?

If we are going to sacrifice a generation of our children in a war, a war we were originally told was to promote Christian democracy to people who would rather give their lives murdering us than live under it, are we making good decisions?

Do fat contracts and and huge profits and the millions poured into the pockets of our politicians cloud our judgement? Who does Washington listen to? Who is in charge now?

Is Afghanistan going to be a base for continued war against the United States, even if we pull our troops out? If so, wouldn't we have the right to erase them from the face of the Earth using capabilities we have long had, ones that exist for just such an occasion?

How insane is sending our children, trained, armed to the teeth, into a village of opium growing illiterates tasked with moving them forward 2000 years? No matter how much we spin this war or Iraq, it is still going to have a smell, a smell that started on 9/11.

To read more of Gordon's work, you can visit: veteranstoday.com

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Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and a regular contributor to Veterans Today. He specializes in political and social issues. You can see a large collection of Gordon's published articles at this link: VeteransToday.com.

He is an outspoken advocate for veterans and his powerful words have brought about change. Gordon is a lifelong PTSD sufferer from his war experiences and he is empathetic to the plight of today's veterans also suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to feature Gordon's timely and critical reports on Salem-News.com, a news organization staffed by a number of veterans, particularly former U.S. Marines.

You can send Gordon Duff an email at this address: Gpduf@aol.com