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

I have mentioned before that one benefit of the Covid pandemic (or plandemic, depending on how you see it), is that war fever has been quenched. It wasn't that long ago that we were on the brink of war with Iran, and night after night, the war-relishing mainstream media foamed at the mouth in their delight over the prospect of yet another war. And it culminated in January of this year with the brutal and savage killing of General Soleimani and 9 Iraqis who had gone to Baghdad Airport to meet him and escort him to the Prime Minister of Iraq for scheduled talks. Are you getting it? This wasn't just a message to Iran; it was a message to Iraq to dash any thoughts of getting chummy with Iran. It was a monstrous, terrorist act for which I will never forgive Trump.  Here we couldn't even beat the ragtag Taliban in Afghanistan, which has no Air Force, no Navy, and no Army either, not a single tank, rather just guerrilla fighters; yet, they still drove us to say "no mas, no mas." Yet, the reality of that defeat did nothing to quench our desire and bravado to go to war with Iran.

But, Covid has taken war off the table, it not being practical to wage a war wearing masks and practicing social distancing. You see: you can't have everything. If you want your pandemic, you can't have your war. Sorry.  

But, it is nice that the airways are currently free of Iran-bashing and war fever, and the only war we're hearing about now is the war against Covid. 

I said the other day that the Taliban website is down. 

 Actually, it isn't. It's just the home page that's down.

But today, August 9, a traditional grand assembly of Afghans known as the Loya Jirga, demanded that the rest of the Taliban prisoners be released by the Afghan government. and President Ghani responded immediately by signing the order to release them. Again, the Loya Jirga is a traditional, historic gathering that long precedes the existence of the Afghan government. Yet, the Afghan government is the one that called for it to assemble, and the Taliban responded with derision. Yet, despite that, the Loya Jirga called on the government to release the prisoners. In other words, for Ghani, calling up the Loya Jirga backfired. 

So now, the intra-Afghan talks are presumably going to happen. And I think it is going to be more of the same, crowned by the demand that Ghani, and other high officials in the Afghan government, step down. Will he do it? I don't know, but let's hope that he does. In the end, Afghanistan is going to have a non-Western government, with a strong religious bent, that is not a puppet to anyone. For the most part, it is going back to how it was 2001 before the war, but hopefully with some improved elements, such as girls being allowed to attend school. For us, it will go down as another Vietnam- a war that we lost.