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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Back in Bush Quagmire I

8 U.S. troops die in Afghan copter crash. Plus 14 wounded. The war in Afghanistan was and is just as pointless and criminal as the one in Iraq, and the results have been no better. The reasons given for that ongoing brutal attack were no better than could have been given for attacking several other countries:
  • Osama was there? Well maybe. Then again, maybe he was in Pakistan. Or dead.
  • The Afghan government, the Taliban, supported al Qaeda? So did Pakistan and Saudi Arabia--and they supported the Taliban as well, as had the US until a few years before.
  • It was a breeding ground for terrorists? Yes, because the CIA armed and funded the Mujahadeen in the 1980's, many of whom ended up a part of al Qaeda. We've done the same thing in Iraq by funding, training and arming Iraqi "security forces."
  • It harbored terrorists? The 19 alleged 9/11 terrorists had spent very little (if any) time in Afghanistan. Natives mostly of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, they had lived for years in Germany, Spain and Indonesia, and most recently in the United States. Bush had more justification for bombing Florida than he did for bombing Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was on the attack plan; Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and Florida were not. September 11 gave Bush the opening to do what he wanted to do. The attack was neither justified nor necessary, and has not made us or Afghanistan safer. And tell any US politician who claims that the brutal ongoing attack on Afghanistan was justified to go Cheney himself.