Thank God for That

The big lie is that the American military is protecting Afghan citizens.

Link

Marjah is regarded as a stronghold of both Taliban insurgents and drug trafficking networks which must be removed to "protect" the people who live there. But so far the warnings have only had the effect of encouraging civilians to flee.

And how are they protecting the Afghans? By leveling their homes with mortars and missiles.

The evacuation of most civilians from the town of Marjah and surrounding areas will give commanders greater leeway to use mortars-and-air-to ground missiles which have enraged Afghans in the past when responsible for civilian deaths.

So protecting Afghans can be summed up as first, driving them from their homes followed by destroying their homes. That’s social change of a sort. It’s difficult to understand why the Afghans are so upset since we are only helping them. But fear not for Stanley aims not to alienate them.

The counterinsurgency plan pushed by Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of all Nato forces in Afghanistan, aims not to alienate the population.

Thank god for that because if we were really waging war it’s hard to imagine what more we could do to these people. And of course the Afghans are truly appreciative of Stanley’s efforts on their behalf.

But a Marjah resident, an elder reached by phone, who was not prepared to give his name, said he had evacuated his family a week ago because he feared "the worst attack ever".

"Always when they storm a village the foreign troops never care about civilian casualties at all. And at the end of the day they report the deaths of women and children as the deaths of Taliban," he said.

A typical reaction to the above by a progressive would be “Oh I just don’t believe we would do those things or the guy is just a liar trying to make us look bad, probably a Taliban in disguise who likely just hates Obama."

Killing people is called murder and murdering people is wrong. I cannot begin to convey how important it is to understand this. I fully realize this sounds stupid yet progressives cannot wrap their minds about this simple and easy to understand concept.

The ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not about bringing social change to these nations and regions. These wars are driven by the military industrial complex and personal political gain. The “Hearts and Minds” plan is only something that the military came up with after they found themselves losing the war to a bunch of scrawny and ill-fed Afghans and quite frankly it is intended for American consumption more than anything else. See, we good. And” Helping” Haiti does not, I repeat, does not even begin to make up for the millions of deaths we are responsible for in our knee-jerk response to 9/11.

Personally, I don’t believe appealing to progressives by pointing out body counts does much good because that no longer matters to the neo-progressive. The neo-progressive is a reality based creature whose cynical outlook on life is unrivaled. Yes sir, the new progressives know what’s real and what isn’t and what is possible and what isn’t. I know this because that’s what they keep saying. I guess I must be dense because I just don’t see the difference between the neo-progressives and their twins the neo-cons.