.
It was a fool’s decision to abandon our war effort in Afghanistan and pursue the Neocon wet dream of a democratic Mesopatamië as a gateway to a peaceful Arab world. The moment itself was an opportunity presented to the Bush cabal by Osama Bin Laden’s attack on the US. The world united behind the people of the United States who suffered severely by the loss of innocent victims and the destruction of the WTC.
The campaign to invade Afghanistan and rid the country of the Taliban regime and it’s haven for Al Qaeda was a measure fully supported by all freedom loving nations. The problem was known in 2001: Afghanistan had no closed borders to its neighbors, especially to the neighbouring tribal areas of Waziristan in Pakistan. The escape of Osama and it’s elite from Tora Bora should have been a profound warning to the military elite in the Pentagon and its Commander in Chief in the White House.
There should have been lessons learned from the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan during the eighties.
The US relied on local war lords to change allegiance and support the US to get rid of the Taliban and the foreign fighters united under Osama and Al Zawahri who had established roots in not only Afghanistan, but also the tribal regions of Northern Pakistan. The United States never made a decision to go after the Taliban and Al Qaeda in their safe haven of Pakistan’s Musharaf.
More below the fold …
The decision of finally invading Iraq in March 2003 on false pretences immediately split the US from its major European allies. Spin doctors were needed to sell the war to the American public and the United Nations, thereby villifying European nations as weasles for not giving blind support to Bush/Cheney and his cabal.
Iraq has suffered immensely from the invasion and occupation with a loss of 200,000 of its citizens and a growing number of displaced persons in the millions. There is no end in sight for stabilisation, security, economic and social recovery. I presume that will take another 100 years before all damages can be left behind as part of history. We may well assume Iraq will not have become a Western style democracy Bush had envisioned, but just integrated in the model state of the the Islamic world it is a part of. Mesopotamië with its rich history of 4,000 years can wait a few decades to recover from the misgivings of the American invasion of 2003. Who will remember the forty-third president of the American empire by 2103?
Not only lack US military commanders and leaders in the Bush administration a strategic vision, apparently they have a poor memory for once again blaming their coalition partners for their woes in Afghanistan. A war started that never was won by Bush during his reign as America’s president. Bush and his Republican administration failed in the war on terror as a whole and specifically the Afghan and Iraq campaign to bring stabilisation and freedom to its people.
In the meantime, Bush and his gang destroyed American freedom at home, didn’t alleviate poverty or give health care support to the needy and brought on a grave financial crisis to a once wealthy nation. The future of America belongs to the youth and the future generation represented by our grandchildren. May their vote and choice for the new president of America be decisive and may their choice be Barack Obama. No one else has stepped up to the plate to change the direction of America. God bless Barack, God bless America without the Bush or Clinton gang in the coming next 8 years.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates accused some European NATO allies of failing to share burdens in addressing global threats, especially in Afghanistan and warned of a split in the alliance.
Gates sharply criticized European NATO partners for holding back from contributing combat troops to Afghanistan where a 43,000-strong NATO mission is battling Taliban insurgents in the country’s dangerous south.
“A few allies in NATO shouldn’t have the luxury to decide only for stabilization and civilian operations thereby forcing other allies to bear a disproportionate share of fighting and dying,” Gates told a group of high-profile diplomats at a key security conference.
U.S. has launched a diplomatic drive
to persuade Europeans to step up support
Afghanistan as Pretext for NATO Change: 2003 and Now ◊ by LithiumCola
In this post we look back at the NATO takeover of leadership of (International Security Assistance Force) ISAF-Afghanistan in 2003, to see what US officials were saying at the time. What we’re going to find is a continuing insistance from the US that the very viability of NATO depends on commitments to security in that non-NATO country. Again and again, we see evidence that the real point of this near-hysterical rhetoric is to solidify a US-urged change in NATO’s mandate, from Eurpoean defense to world-wide interventionism.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."