Afghanistan: the Last Crusade?
May 9, 2009
by William P. Meyers

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Accidentally-on-purpose was a favorite phrase of mine as a child. My older brother would clobber me, or I him, accidentally-on-purpose.

United States policy, since our government launched an unprovoked war against the people and nation of Afghanistan, has included an accidental-on-purpose element of genocide. Those tribes that do not bend to the commands of the U.S. are to be destroyed. It is safest to do that from the air. To actually go in and shoot women and children with machine guns would require a lot more soldiers than our Leader is willing to commit. Not that our soldiers aren't fearsome fighters, with great weapons, and well trained. No, it is because almost every Afghan man has some sort of small arm and knows how to use it. Some of the older villagers were killing well-armed, well trained Russian soldiers back before many of the current crop of American gun fodder were even born.

Every few weeks the press, globally and even to some extent in the United States, makes an issue of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The U.S. military starts by denying civilian casualties, claiming everyone killed was a Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighter. If too much evidence is brought to bear, the military admits to as few casualties as possible. It says the Taliban are really to blame for fighting the U.S. troops near civilians. It says it is sorry. It says it will try harder to prevent civilian casualties in the future.

Then nothing changes. Nothing changed when Barack Obama became President. More U.S. troops are being sent to fight in Afghanistan than when George W. Bush was President. Not only have tactics and strategies not changed, but President Obama and leading Democratic Party members in Congress are providing political cover for the atrocities.

Think about the basic U.S. Army (and Air Force and Marine) strategy. It consists of sending armed patrols into villages where almost everyone already hates the U.S. and its puppet governor, Hamid Karzai. Some of the villagers, some of the time, shoot at the Americans. The U.S. army marks the village as hostile. Rather than send in more ground troops so they can kill the male villagers without killing the female and children villagers, they send in bombers. The enemy is killed accidentally-on-purpose.

We are given all kinds of reasons to hate the Afghanistan resistance. We are no longer supposed to hate them for merely subscribing to Islam. We are supposed to hate them because of the way they treat women. We know they treat women badly because U.S. propagandists tell us so. We are supposed to hate them because they are taught the Koran in school, rather than the Evolution of Species. We are supposed to hate them for growing the opium our junkies are so desperate to get their hands on.

Other nations and religions mistreat women, but we are not bombing them right now.

If the Islamic schools had not taught people to read, very few people would be able to read at all in Afghanistan. America helped the people of Afghanistan defeat the Russians, but that was for our (ruling class's) benefit, not theirs.

Summing this up, big picture: the United States of America is an imperialist nation beating up on the small nation of Afghanistan. Our very presence in Afghanistan is a war crime.

So what should be the political response of people who do not want to support the war crimes and crimes against humanity of this and past U.S. administrations?

Switching the party in control obviously did not work. Most thoughtful people knew it would not.

I think we have to make our position clear. Unfortunately, at present most Americans are too intellectually lazy to even read a short blog like this, much less think about it and change their behavior.

I think something loud, and clear, and polarizing needs to be said. Something Americans, and Afghanis, and people of other nations can think about while they are trying to decide what is true, what is false, and what action is appropriate to take.

And so I say:

Victory to the People of Afghanistan!