Ungrateful Afghan civilians resent dying for freedom

[Gregorian]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/26/171313/251/832/575801

snip

Recently, with the glorious success of the American liberation of Iraq now undeniable, the liberated Iraqis, headed by the most ungrateful puppet prime minister, have begun making loud demands for a definite withdrawal of American troops.

snip

Afghanistan, on the other hand, has always been the good child. That war has been an unbroken series of successes for 7 years now, and it has brought the whole world together in a joyful mission of peace. More and more, however, the Afghans too are becoming complacent amid their liberation, and are complaining ever more loudly about legitimate and humane Western actions taken in protection of their freedom.




This Daily Kos diary speaks for me. And it's a problem I have with our nominees, as fantastic as they are. Do we really need to trash entire countries, killing civilians? Even if it's in an effort to nab one or two really bad guys. I think we need to rethink how we're spending our money, and how we're treating our fellow human beings.

Besides, this diary is written in ironic tense.

Let's rethink these wars. Please? Do unto others...?

[JohnyCanuck]

1. What's the matter with these people?

Can't they figure out they are being bombed, shot at, maimed and killed for their own good? :sarcasm:

US air strike massacres civilians in western Afghanistan
By James Cogan
26 August 2008

In one of the worst atrocities of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, as many as 90 civilians were massacred by an American air strike last Friday in the western province of Herat. At least 60 of those killed were children under the age of 15, according to Afghan government and military sources.

The slaughter was carried out by what is, for defenceless people on the ground, one of the most terrifying warplanes in the US arsenal, the AC-130 “Spooky” gunship. Equipped with a rapid-fire five-barrel 25mm Gatling gun, a 40mm cannon and a 105mm howitzer, it is designed to lay waste to exposed targets with a torrent of bullets and artillery shells.

The victims were part of a large crowd that had gathered in the village of Azizabad—a community near the government airfield at Shindand, some 120 kilometres south of the city of Herat—for a customary commemoration of the 40th day after the death of a local leader. Many of the men in the village work as security guards at the airfield.

SNIP

On Friday evening, the Afghan interior ministry issued a statement declaring that “76 people, all civilians and most of them women and children were martyred... 19 women, 7 men and the rest children all under 15 years of age”. Karzai, who has repeatedly protested against indiscriminate US air strikes, issued his own statement, condemning the occupation forces for “martyring at least 70 people, most of them women and children”.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/afgh-a26.shtml

[ConsAreLiars]

2. These kids. Does any sane person actually think sending 30,000 more murderers there will help?

Or do anything but create more suffering, more hatred, and more pain? Sorry to tell you Obama/McCain supporters, the answer is no. (For the record, I support Obama, but this is one case where the lesser evil is hard to tell from th4e greater one.)



(edit typo and ad a parenthetic comment)

[JohnyCanuck]

3. The Wild Weapons of DARPA

I think we need to rethink how we're spending our money, and how we're treating our fellow human beings.

But developing and making war machines is so profitable, and if you make them you gotta use them so you can justify making more of them.

The Wild Weapons of DARPA
By Nick Turse

SNIP

Leonard J. Buckley, a program manager in materials chemistry at DARPA's Defense Science Office, has said, in regard to insect-inspired optics research, "Inspiration from nature… will allow more life-like qualities in the system." And, says DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker, "We're interested in investigating biological organisms because they have evolved over many, many years to be particularly good at surviving in the environment… and we hope to learn from some of those strategies that Mother Nature has developed."

Poor Mother Nature! What hope has she when faced with an over $400 billion dollar defense budget? What can she do when the most powerful impetus for free-thinking scientists to consider her lies in the urge to weaponize her offspring? Under DARPA, the life sciences have become a fertile area to further the science of death and destruction in an effort, in the words of the DARPA Defense Sciences Office, to overcome the "Frailties of Life" to achieve "Super Physiological Performance." How wonderfully Nietzschean!

Such is the state of government-sponsored innovation in our land. If you're a researcher in crucial fields and want the time, funding, and latitude to be creative, your work must benefit the Pentagon in its race to make sure that the next Saddam can be, in the words of Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, "caught like a rat" by Capt. Ben Willard of the Army's rat patrol.

Other than finding new ways of circumventing international law (e.g. bypassing violations of national airspace with space-launched weapons), which the U.S. already does quite well with current technology, or the mountain climber's mantra "because it's there," it's hard to fathom why the government is still locked in a Cold War-style arms race in a single hyperpower world. The only explanation available lies in the driving will of the ever-expanding military-industrial complex, first named by President Eisenhower back in 1961. This would certainly help explain why we have no educational or environmental DARPAs. For today's researchers, DARPA is, both intellectually and financially, a fabulous and alluring gravy train, the only agency that puts real money into and rewards creative and maverick thinking. The freedom to dream and create, DARPA's mandate, is seductive and exceptional and, as such, so dangerous that we have to ask ourselves whether war-making isn't now America's most advanced product.

Regardless of who the next president is, I have a feeling these soulless bastards will not rest until planet earth is a lifeless, smoking rock floating in space.

Edited to add link for Nick Turse article on DARPA: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174969/nick_turse_the_future_of_death_at_the_pentagon