Afganistan
Mar. 17th, 2013 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI woke up this morning thinking about the reasoning, propaganda, and popular perception of our waging war on the people of Afganistan. It is not the first time I've wondered why we, the most technologically sophisticated nations on Earth have taken it upon ourselves to invade, bomb, and attempt to impose military rule upon an impoverished tribal culture.
I'm puzzled. I can come up with an assortment of rationales (few of which make sense when examined for more than a couple of seconds), but in the end all I can come up with is that we see ourselves as better than everybody else and that we want what Afganistan has and we will kill anybody who stands in the way of our infantile tantrum-throwing desire.
So, what does Afganistan have that we would kill goat-herders for?
The sleezoids who love tactics and control obviously see its position between Pakistan and Iran as a way to isolate the two, but it is hard to see that as a good rationale for pouring billions of dollars and countless lives into such a venture. It seems pretty pointless to create new generations of people who hate us enough to become devoted to our downfall, just for some theoretical political advantage... even granted that the people who dream up such looney concepts as the "Domino Effect" that dragged us into the Vietnam War have their heads stuffed so firmly up their own asses that they don't have any concept of reality. Surely even they should see the futility.
The only other possibility that has occurred to me is the fact that Afganistan is sitting on top of possibly 3 trillion dollars worth of mineral resources. We've already used greed for resources as a rationale when went into merry war with Iraq "to find weapons of mass destruction", when it was an open secret that we really went to steal their oil. However it seems odd to me that we would kill the Afganis for minerals though, when it would be much easier to swindle them for it. It is a technique used to great effect so often in the past, as when Australia stole East Timor's oilfields by illegally redefining the territorial boundaries.
Of course there is the point that USA, Britain, and France are the the three biggest arms suppliers in the world, and running a war that costs billions (which end up in the pockets of arms manufacturers) seems very convenient. The trouble is, it is pretend money. All that wealth used to make weapons gets either stockpiled or blown up. It doesn't achieve anything positive in the world, it takes food out of the mouths of the people that it doesn't actually kill, and it damages our economies to waste resources like that. Imagine if we devoted all that money and all those resources to something productive! ...like eliminating poverty. We could be heroes instead of despised. And we would be richer for it as well.
The warmongers don't speak for us. We can't keep killing innocent people and just shrug it off. We are alienating generations of people who quite rightly hate us for it.
How do we stop this stupid war? Time to stop!!
I'm puzzled. I can come up with an assortment of rationales (few of which make sense when examined for more than a couple of seconds), but in the end all I can come up with is that we see ourselves as better than everybody else and that we want what Afganistan has and we will kill anybody who stands in the way of our infantile tantrum-throwing desire.
So, what does Afganistan have that we would kill goat-herders for?
The sleezoids who love tactics and control obviously see its position between Pakistan and Iran as a way to isolate the two, but it is hard to see that as a good rationale for pouring billions of dollars and countless lives into such a venture. It seems pretty pointless to create new generations of people who hate us enough to become devoted to our downfall, just for some theoretical political advantage... even granted that the people who dream up such looney concepts as the "Domino Effect" that dragged us into the Vietnam War have their heads stuffed so firmly up their own asses that they don't have any concept of reality. Surely even they should see the futility.
The only other possibility that has occurred to me is the fact that Afganistan is sitting on top of possibly 3 trillion dollars worth of mineral resources. We've already used greed for resources as a rationale when went into merry war with Iraq "to find weapons of mass destruction", when it was an open secret that we really went to steal their oil. However it seems odd to me that we would kill the Afganis for minerals though, when it would be much easier to swindle them for it. It is a technique used to great effect so often in the past, as when Australia stole East Timor's oilfields by illegally redefining the territorial boundaries.
Of course there is the point that USA, Britain, and France are the the three biggest arms suppliers in the world, and running a war that costs billions (which end up in the pockets of arms manufacturers) seems very convenient. The trouble is, it is pretend money. All that wealth used to make weapons gets either stockpiled or blown up. It doesn't achieve anything positive in the world, it takes food out of the mouths of the people that it doesn't actually kill, and it damages our economies to waste resources like that. Imagine if we devoted all that money and all those resources to something productive! ...like eliminating poverty. We could be heroes instead of despised. And we would be richer for it as well.
The warmongers don't speak for us. We can't keep killing innocent people and just shrug it off. We are alienating generations of people who quite rightly hate us for it.
How do we stop this stupid war? Time to stop!!