Enjoy the article (from my mailbox) below.

I guess the writer forgot about Iraq in the instances he gave.

Illegally invading a sovereign nation based on manufactured lies by another nation is criminal and wrong.

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A War Fought in Ignorance
William Pfaff

Paris, February 24, 2009 – In past columns I have asked
without success for an explanation of why the United States
should be at war with the Taliban, a modestly-sized,
violent sectarian Muslim reform movement in Afghanistan
and Pakistan, about which the vast majority of Americans
know next to nothing.

The ignorance is reciprocal, since there probably are even
fewer Taliban who can provide a coherent explanation of
what they have done to the United States that Washington
should now have some 40 thousand troops in Afghanistan,
accompanied by allied forces from Canada, Britain, the
Netherlands and other countries, with another 17 thousand
Marine Corps replacements waiting to ship out from the
United States this spring.

Last weekend the NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Krakow
made the search for replacements to rotate these troops in
Afghanistan and Palestine a major item of discussion, with
little to show for it.

There were a few tentative offers of temporary reinforce-
ments during August, when Afghan national elections are
scheduled, but that was the best they managed to do.

The usual Washington reaction is that this is the result
of European pacifism, good living, and loss of appetite
for war, but they miss the real reason. The allies too
are looking for an explanation as to why Americans and
the NATO governments should be doing this to themselves.

What have the Talibin done to the westerners that the
United States and its allies should now have twice (first
in 2001-2 and again today) sent major air forces to destroy
them, their villages and their forces. In 2002 it was B-52
heavy bombers operating from very high altitude (out of
fear that the Taliban might have Russian ground-air
missiles). Now it is USAF, RAF and other Allied fighter-
bombers reinforced by aircraft carriers in the Arabian
Sea.

The American command knows that, tactically and
politically, aerial bombing is the worst way to do
precision attacks on small ground units, since they
produce high levels of what military-euphemism- speak
calls collateral damage. But they are what the allies
have in the absence of more NATO and U.S. infantry.

However back to the fundamental question. Why are we
doing this? There are two answers, the first of which
is blunt, brutal, and in the Cheney-Pentagon tradition.
They are "bad folks" and "evil."


They provided traditional hospitality to Osama bin Ladin
and al-Qaeda after the Sudan government had put the latter
out of its country under pressure from Saudi Arabia and
Egypt.

The Taliban refused to hand over bin Ladin to the U.S.
as a matter of honor (although there also are reports
that they provided American emissaries with opportunities
to take bin Ladin, which the U.S. failed to do because
it was culturally blind to the signals being given).

Actually there are three answers: the one that westerners
instinctively give is that the Taliban must be made to
let their daughters go to school and marry as they wish,
abandon medieval criminal punishments, and set people
free to say what they think. But no one is forcing the
Afghans and Pakistanis to adopt their deplorable practices.
They are making the choice.

The most important reason for the American war on the
Taliban is that Washington under the Bush administration,
and with the enthusiastic support of certain leaders of
the neo-conservative gang among the Washington think-tank
intellectuals, had decided that America had to destroy what
it named "Islamo-fascism, " and the Taliban were the only
radical Islamic fundamentalist group they knew about. They
were seriously unaware of the difficulties of invading
other countries to stamp out objectionable forms of
religious and cultural practices.

Moreover, the Taliban had resisted the U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan, sent with orders to capture Osama bin-Laden,
but until now unable to do so. So this is a grudge fight,
which President Obama inherits from President Bush.

(In the months leading up to the presidential election last
November, Bush was quoted by a supposed witness as demand-
ing of all his armed forces and intelligence chiefs: "By
November 1st, bring me bin-Ladin's head on a platter!
Whatever the price!" It reads like a Jacobin scene: the
king rending his garments, foam flecking his lips, crying
out: "ten thousand ducats shall be yours, and a Texas
kingdom of your own, my youngest daughter as your queen!".

My own belief is that what is going on is folly.
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and India should be asked to a
conference on regional stability, in which the U.S. puts
on the table an offer of complete non-interference in the
internal affairs, including the religious affairs, of any
or all of these countries, unless there is a further
attack on the United States for which any one of them is
responsible.

None have anything to gain from making the United States
its enemy. The U.S. has no wish to have any as an enemy.
The internal political affairs of all, including those of
Pakistan and Afghanistan, and India-Kashmir- Pakistan, are
to be settled (or left unsettled) by themselves, possibly
with international mediation of their own choice.  The
new American administration will deal generously with
every government at peace with its neighbors, believing
that peace is better than war.

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and the author forgot Syria, Russia, Iraq?

George Bush will be remembered in history as the president who invaded a sovereign nation to steal oil.

sleek_p:

George Bush will be remembered in history as the president who invaded a sovereign nation to steal oil.

And no one is even trying him for crimes against humanity, imagine!

how gullible the world can be atimes, some are more equal than others, so the pigs said