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

I haven't written about Afghanistan for a while, but I have continuued to follow it closely. It appears to be going the way of the Vietnam War, except that in that war, Kissinger bribed the North Vietnamese (with millions of dollars) to take their time in overrunning the South so that we could save face. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973, and Saigon did not fall until April 1975, so over two years. That isn't going to happen this time. No way is it going to take the Taliban two years to overrun Kabul. And I think everybody knows it. To say that it's hopeless for the Afghan government is an understatement. The morale of their fighting men is completely shot. They are yelling, "No mas, no mas" in droves, that is, however you say it in Pashto.

But, it's also the U.S. Military saying, "No mas, no mas" Does it mean we lost the war? Of course we did. We lost it outright. And I'm very glad they realize it. Of course, they are never going to admit it. They are going to spin it and say that since they got Osama bin laden in Pakistan in 2011, that the whole war was a success. But, the truth is that the war that we started was an abomination, an atrocity, and a crime. The number of innocents that we directly and knowingly killed, bombing wedding parties and whatnot, makes it one of the most heinous wars ever fought. We completely blackened our soul in that war, and we badly damaged the reputation of the United States. And, we badly and irrevocably damaged the reputation of the United States Military. After all, despite using dastardly tactics, and despite having a copious and monumental advantage in military resources, the ragtag Mujahideen beat us. They beat us even though they had no Air Force, no Navy, and no Army either because an Army has tanks and other equipment that they don't have.  And yet, with nothing but rifles and scarfs around the lower part of their faces, they beat us. 

Let's face it: the only thing the U.S. Military has going for it is the ability to do Shock and Awe. But, it's a very limited ability because once you bomb everything you can claim to be a military target,  you're done. You're finished,. If we couldn't beat the ragtag Taliban in Afghanistan, how the hell could we beat Iran? After we've done Shock and Awe to the limit, what are we going to do next? Send an Army in there? What do you think the outcome of that would be? And remember: you have Iraq and Afghanistan to use as examples.

Imagine it's 2001, and you can see the future. You can see the course of this God-awful war that George W. Bush was about to start. What advice would you give him? "Don't do it, George." Isn't that what you'd tell him? And what advice would you give to the thousands of American soldiers who were heading for their death in Afghanistan? "Don't go. Just say no." And risk being courtmartialed? So what? Dealing with that isn't worse than dying. And in this case, there were plenty of grounds to argue in court that it was an illegal war, and therefore, an illegal order. 

But, to Bush, and to all the military leaders who carried out his insane and diabolical war, and to Obama who surged it, and to all the politicians who supported it over the years and decades, I say: damn you all. The rot and slime that is the American military juggernaut is the greatest menace to plague the planet. And the sad thing is: nothing has been learned from this; not by the government; not by the media, and not by the military. The delusions, aberrations, and grandiosity that started it all and sustained it all are still ever-present, and we could very easily stumble and bumble our way into yet another war, as if Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan weren't enough. 

Harry Browne used to say that the U.S. Military is the Post Office in fatigues. Oh, but that is putting it nicely.