Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Friend Richard McHugh sent me a sad article about a young American Navy woman who was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria on January 16, Shannon Kent. What a waste. What was she even doing there? What is the United States doing there except inflaming the situation and making it worse? And when it's all over, what will this woman have died for? Freedom? Democracy? If you believe that, it's only because you are a product of government schools.  

I am long time reader of the Taliban website, and that's because I like to stay informed about what is happening there, and there is very little reporting about the war in Afghanistan in the U.S. press.  You see, I think they learned a lesson from the Vietnam War, that the daily reports about the fighting and the deaths is what incited the American public to demand an end to the war.  Night after night, Walter Cronkite could be heard saying things like, "Seven Americans were killed today in fierce fighting on the Mekong Delta." But, most Americans today are hardly aware that we are at war.  They refer to this as "peacetime." 

But, a strange thing has happened. About 10 days ago, the Taliban website went down. It disappeared. This is all you get now:

I have to suspect the U.S. government is blocking access to their site in the U.S. And I am asking for someone in Europe or Australia or elsewhere to go to this website and see what you get:

https://alemarah-english.com/

We know that Red China blocks access to unapproved websites all the time in China. It's a daily occurrence. So, if they can do it in China, then our government must certainly have the ability to do it here. 

Are you aware that the U.S. government has been pursuing peace with the Taliban? We initiated peace talks with them. It is our desire to end the war, but only on our terms. There have been several meetings between us and the Taliban in Qatar. However, the Taliban cancelled the recent one. The reason they cancelled it is the lack of progress. You see, the U.S. proposes that the Taliban essentially join the existing government, to blend in with it, where Taliban members will be allowed to seek elected office, etc.. But, the Taliban won't hear of it because they consider the existing government to be a puppet government, like the Vichy government in Nazi-occupied France during WW2.  So, they want the existing government to go away; to dissolve. And they want the United States, and all foreign occupiers, to get completely out of Afghanistan.  

Both sides are adamant, and there has been no progress and no resolution in sight.

But, at this point in time, after 17 years of war, what exactly are we fighting for in Afghanistan? If we are willing to integrate the Taliban into the government, then it means we recognize them as a legitimate element of Afghan society, in which case, what did we attack them for? The answer, of course, is that we accused them of harboring Osama bin laden, whom we said planned the 9/11 attacks, and accepting terror training camps in their country. But, if those things are true, then how can we negotiate with them now? Isn't it hypocritical? 

Of course, it's hypocritical, but we don't care about that because we assume most Americans won't think about it, and the U.S. media certainly isn't going to tell them. At this point in time, SAVING FACE is all we care about. We just want to get out of there without having to admit that we lost. But, the very fact that after 17 years of war, the Taliban is still going strong and occupying as much of the country as they did in 2001, tells you that we lost. But, it's all about perceptions, and that's why we have been pursuing our peace deal.

But, the Taliban is never going to go for it. They want us completely and totally out of Afghanistan, and that includes American private mercenary groups. And they want the current government to dissolve. Hey, they're not insisting on killing them.  They're offering them amnesty if they walk away peacefully. It's better than Vichy officials got, which was immediate death as soon as the Nazis fell. The same thing happened to Quisling in Norway, and the Taliban has referred to the Kabul officials working with us as quislings.  

So where does it leave the situation? At a complete and total stalemate. 

The latest salvo was the Taliban cancelling the latest round of scheduled peace talks in Qatar. And it was right after that that the Taliban website went down in the U.S. 

One thing the Taliban did repeatedly on their website is deny ever targeting civilians. They described vicious attacks on government forces and occasionally on U.S. or other "coalition" forces. But, they denied ever attacking civilians and denounced it as unIslamic. On the contrary, they claim it is the U.S. who has wantonly killed civilians in Afghanistan, and it's pretty hard to argue with that, considering that we have killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans, including bombing wedding parties. How smart do you have to be to know that women and children attend weddings? So, when you bomb a wedding party, aren't you deliberately killing women and children? 

The bottom line is that, unfortunately, there is NO prospect for peace in Afghanistan. America's longest war, which was based on lies, has no end in sight. Will it ultimately end like the Vietnam War where we declared victory and left? In that case, it took the North Vietnamese two years to completely overrun South Vietnam and reunite the country. I don't think the current Afghan government would endure nearly that long. I suspect it would collapse pretty much as soon as we got out. But, how much longer are we going to stay just to save face? If we stay 10 more years, it will just mean 10 more years of fighting and killing and dying before the inevitable outcome of Afghanistan returning to self-rule. So, what would be the point of it? Wasn't it John Kerry who asked what is the point of being the last man to die for a lost cause? Although, it's more like going to be a woman or child dying in Afghanistan. 

So, with regret and disdain, I predict that the U.S. is going to keep the Afghanistan War going- just to save face; until deteriorating economic conditions here at home force our leaders to get us out of there. How long will that be? I don't claim to know, but a lot of people seem to think that it's coming soon.