"It
is pointless to bury soldiers who fall on the battlefield with all national honors;
the fact remains that they will have died for nothing. That is the most
terrible of defeats: to come home from war and know that the soldiers
sacrificed and died for nothing."
Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban minister and one of President Hamid Karzai's go-betweens with the Taliban: He and his colleagues believe the Taliban are willing to soften their hard line and its leaders are laying the ground for peace talks.
No war is good, because they
transform human beings into professional killers. The one now taking place far
out of sight, in Afghanistan, is no exception to this rule.
That is especially true since,
although this war was supposed to drive barbarians from power - the Taliban, who
had established a regime worthy of the Middle Ages - it was launched under the
banner of vengeance. The barbarians had just struck the twin towers of the World
Trade Center, the very heart of Western capitalism, and they had to be shown
that there would be no sanctuary for such impunity. And with a cowboy in the
White House, the occasion was too perfect to hold ourselves back.
Now a decade later, therefore, the initial
goal being forgotten, the war is bogged down. Worse,
it appears that once Western coalition troops depart, the barbarians will
return to power. It is a sad
lesson of history. You don't impose your values on others with goosedown pillows you left behind. The
United States and its allies, led by France, should know that. Yet since their
crushing defeat across the whole of Indochina, the world's greatest armies can do nothing against people who don't want them. Even
in Iraq, where it helped oust a much-hated tyrant, the Western coalition was
forced to withdraw with its tail between its legs, assisting the transition to
power of Islamists who couldn't care a whit for values from elsewhere.
The Post War All Mapped Out
It will be the same in Afghanistan. Already, discussions
are being held between the barbarians of yesterday and the occupants of today
about post-war arrangements. It is a post-war arrangement that is likely to
lead to a return to Kabul by those who were driven out ten years ago. And one
might ask oneself why things are in such a mess.
So much for the post-war
period. Meanwhile, the war goes on. And the barbarism seems to be contagious, according
to the horrific images of GIs urinating on the corpses of enemy combatants
lying before them.
The war continues and will
continue; consequently, the so do the deaths. Like any other war. And they are anonymous
deaths as long as it the dead are from the other side. But when they are our troops
that are ambushed, fall or are shot by enemies who infiltrate a friendly army, we
take offense, pretend to be incredulous or cry out against betrayal. And then we
organize state funerals.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
It takes a great deal of
hypocrisy to do this. Military commanders know not to send their troops out to a
picnic or a tour in Afghanistan. They know the enemy is fierce and
unpredictable - and what's worse, that it is largely backed by the population.
It is at this level that we
find the most damaging failure of military intervention in Afghanistan. Early
on, the Occidental armada lost the battle to win the sympathy of the people. It
despised the population. It failed to draw up plans for the future. And it has
protected the superbly corrupt leaders in Kabul. It has committed one blunder after
another. So now, behind every Afghan, Western troops sense a threat and no
longer know who to trust.
Why then prolong
the torment? Each passing day brings its own share of misery and death. It is pointless
to bury soldiers who fall on the battlefield with all national honors; the fact
remains that they will have died for nothing. That is the most terrible of defeats:
to come home from war and know that the soldiers sacrificed and died for
nothing.
