While I was at Purdue University, for the space of one year, I had an American roommate, this chap called Anthony J Owens. I suppose you could call him a typical American – fiercely patriotic, idealistic, and woefully ignorant about anything beyond North America. We had a number of conversations about the world – not that I’m too knowledgeable myself, but compared to him, I was an encyclopaedia. One question, though, I harassed him with throughout the year – ‘Why do you think foreigners hate America so much?’ (There was a lot of post September 11th hysteria going around for a while – this was an offshoot of that).
He didn’t really know. All he knew about Osama, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest, was that they were the enemy; they were the bastards and murderers who had dared to attack his country, and cause thousands of deaths at one blow, and that they should be hunted down and destroyed wherever they were. Oh, and that Osama and Saddam were chaddhi-buddies, and Iraq was a staging ground for the 9/11 attacks, and that Saddam was sure to have weapons of mass destruction, nuclear bombs and the like, and that America was therefore under threat.
On a slightly different topic (but I promise that I’ll tie it together), Douglas Adams, in his book ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’, put forward the theory that the best way to learn something is to explain it to a complete idiot – you wind up having to simplify it so much that the basics of the matter get entrenched pretty firmly in your own head.
Tony wasn’t an idiot – not by a long shot – but one thing I’ve noticed about patriotic fervour, or any sort of fervour in general, is that it tends to bypass the brain, hotwiring your emotions directly. I therefore decided to explain the whole thing to him in detail – which meant that I had to do a lot of reading myself, so I could get the facts to somehow spark off some thoughts in his vacationing brain. The upshot of the matter was that I learned quite a bit about the Afghan Conflict myself, and as an added bonus, a lot of other stuff in general about the situation in the Middle East – an essential, if microscopic footnote to the whole Terrorists vs. America battle that we seem to find ourselves in these days.
I’m going to reproduce a large part of it here – it’s going to form the basis of what I unfortunately must warn you will be a very long post. Hey, don’t read it, if it bothers you that much. This is my space, so I can do what I want with it – and ironically (or rather, not, since I’ve engineered this bit of writing) that’s where the whole conflict starts from.
At the end of the Second World War, the two main players left on the world stage were the Soviet Union, and the United States of America. The two superpowers, convinced that they were in a battle for world domination, sought to do everything they could to establish spheres of influence around the other’s territory. America, for example, funneled aid to Pakistan, which led Afghanistan, the near neighbour, to turn to the Soviets for aid. In 1964, the then monarch of Afghanistan, Muhammad Zahir Shah convened a grand council to allow more participation in the decision making process – the beginning of a pseudo-democracy. A number of parties were established, notably among them the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, a Marxist-Leninist party that was formed in 1965. In 1967, this same party split into the Parcham, and the Khalq, representing different ethnic classes. In 1973, the Parcham faction along with the Daoud Shah, the cousin of Zahir Shah, engineered a revolt, which led to the overthrow and exile of Zahir. Daoud then tried to marginalize the Parcham faction, and shift himself away from Soviet influence – which led to the reunification of the PDPA and the overthrow of Daoud in turn. The PDPA, with Nur Mohammad Taraki as president, and Hafizullah Amin as the Prime Minister, then began a series of brutal reforms, which led to bloody civil war in Afghanistan. Unknown to the rest of the world, America was already on the scene, aiding the local mujahideen – as former CIA director Robert Gates admitted in his memoirs, CIA intervention had begun as early as June 1979, precisely with the goal of provoking a Soviet response – as a classified State Department report of August 1979 stated,
‘The United States' larger interest...would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan’
This was the Soviet cue to enter.
Apparently alarmed by the deteriorating situation on their southern border, and in particular the collapse of the Afghan army, the Soviets decided to take action – on the 24th of December, 1979, the Soviets airlifted thousands (the eventual count of Red troops on the ground numbered in excess of 100,000) of troops into Kabul, leading to the assassination of the Khalq president, Hafizullah Amin. The government was replaced by one installed by the Soviets, with a Parcham leader, Barbak Karmal, as president.
The next few years were perhaps the blackest in recent Afghani history. About one million men, women and children died in the government’s attempts to crush the uprisings that the Soviet occupation had caused. Some five million more became refugees, which was about one third of the total population of sixteen million.
The history of our sorry race is written in the blood of the millions of innocents who have been murdered, tortured, and reduced to the level of animals – all to serve the ‘larger interests’ of the strongest faction.
The day after Soviet troops crossed the Afghani border, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor is said to have written, in a note to President Carter, ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.’
America, seeing this as an opportunity to stop the Soviet expansion south, immediately began to use Pakistan as a conduit to support the resistance fighters opposing the puppet regime, and along with Saudi Arabia, funneled massive amounts of money and weapons into Afghanistan. This, of course, also brought Pakistan and America to a much closer relationship than before (which might account for why America is so quick to defend Pakistani excesses – blood brothers, and I trust you know what I mean by this, usually do defend one another). Pakistan found itself doubly gifted, for two reasons. One was the money and armaments flowing through it to training camps dotted along its borders. The other was the very presence of Islamic fighters training, recruiting and studying within its territory, or within Afghanistan. It is these same training camps that have spawned organizations such as the LeT, which frequently conduct raids and bombing missions in our own country – perhaps even including the recent attack on Bombay. If you think about it, how CAN America blame Pakistan for having terrorist camps? They were the ones who paid for the damned things in the first place.
These resistance fighters, based in Pakistan and Iran drew recruits from Islamic countries all over the world – notably from the Middle East, and North Africa. Along with these fighters came one who would eventually become the face of fear for western democracies – Osama Bin Laden. He appeared in the early 1980’s, and was responsible for establishing a number of terrorist training camps within Afghanistan.
Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujahideen rebels with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban sabotage, and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.
Between 1986 and 1989, the mujahideen were also provided with more than 1,000 state-of-the-art, shoulder-fired Stinger antiaircraft missiles. By 1987, the annual supply of arms had reached 65,000 tons, and a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon officials were visiting Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters in Rawalpindi and helping to plan mujahideen operations
In 1988, the Geneva Accords appeared to bring an end to all overt hostility, at least among the major protagonists – America and the Soviet Union. According to the document, the Soviets were to remove all uniformed officers from Afghanistan by February 1989 – and they did, although they managed to keep their puppet regime in place for another three years, till 1992. The United Nations, helpless as ever, was unable to negotiate a peace process that was suitable to all concerned parties, and therefore, chaos and anarchy ruled in Afghanistan. Also, the flow of humanitarian aid slowly withered, as donors became disillusioned at the lack of progress, and newer, more immediate crises arose in other parts of the world.
More importantly, with the Soviets out of Afghanistan – rather, with their uniformed armies out of Afghanistan, there was no real need for America to continue with its ‘clandestine’ support. So they didn’t. And promptly forgot that they ever had, too, if you believe the American media.
At this point, let’s pause for a second.
Since 1979, Afghanistan has been at war with itself. Russian factions, American factions, drug lords, warlords, mujahideen fighters, and Islamic nationalists, whoever – they’ve all been there, done that. Most of the arms, money, bombs, whatever, have been brought in by superpowers seeking to increase their spheres of influence - Afghanistan itself is a country brought about to be a buffer state during the years that Britain was ruling the roost. Imperialism, it seems, is not dead- it’s just had a facelift.
No matter which way you slice it, no matter who you credit first mover advantage to – America has had an extraordinary amount of influence on the way things in this part of the world have turned out. Osama himself claims to have been trained by CIA operatives. There is no escaping it – America is partially, if not heavily responsible for the mess this part of the world is in right now.
After the 11th of September, 2001, the world changed. America finally had an excuse to go adventuring. 3000 of their people were murdered, and a symbol of their national pride was thrown down before them. For a single day, the nation cowered in fear. And then began the darkest time in their history since they nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which, by the way, is quite interesting. The same country that preaches nuclear disarmament, that wants to restrict the use of these weapons, that is pretty much invulnerable even without that option, is the only one to have ever used it on other human beings).
In the past five years, America has proved to be as vicious and brutal as any of its opponents. It always has been – this is just the first time it’s ever come to light. Right after the attack, in their rage to avenge their murdered people, they attacked Afghanistan, and wiped out whatever pitiful civilization that had grown in the last twenty or so years of relative peace there. Afghanistan has no reason to hate Americans? The living hell each Afghani must endure has no other root cause. At least the British didn’t try to disguise their excesses by calling it ‘collateral damage’. That’s another interesting thing, by the way. If one American soldier dies on a foreign battlefield that he was sent to on false pretexts by his own government, it’s the death of a hero. If a family of five dies at their dinner table, because a malfunctioning rocket flew into their home rather than the weapons factory it was aimed at – by the Americans – then its collateral damage.
If that wasn’t enough, America wasn’t finished yet. It attacked Iraq on blatantly false pretexts, with the rest of the world watching, aghast. It showed the rest of the planet just what it was capable of – public opinion and world opinion are just words to the average American. It has pointed up the impotency of the United Nations in a way that could never have been, otherwise. Regardless of being shouted down in the Security Council, regardless of the rest of the world – the entire goddamned planet – telling them not to do it, they waltzed into another country, destroyed the infrastructure, bombed its cities to rubble, annihilated the lives of thousands and thousands of innocents – all to catch ONE man. And they got him, too – as President Bush so proudly announced.
America has suffered, there’s no doubt about it. To play the game of life in God-Mode for better than half a century, to have grown complacent and weak, and then to watch your advantages whittled away one by one – there is not one sphere in which the Americans have not fallen from their heyday. India and China are racing to catch up with their economy. Wealth that till recently was happy in sloshing about their markets is suddenly making a run for the east – so much so that the Fed has had to tighten interest rates repeatedly, just to stem the haemorrhage, leave alone bring it back. Their job market is in a downward spiral – price undercutting by developing economies, and the relative unimportance of location these days has cause most of the bigger companies to outsource their jobs. National pride is at a premium – the fact that America, like the rest of the world, is capable of massive cock-ups – The war on Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Haditha, Enron, and last but not least, George W. Bush…
There is no right and wrong in this matter – things just happen. Every country in the world has had its heyday, and not one of them has a record pristine enough to be displayed – hell, to be acknowledged, even. Rome butchered her way into Europe. Germany destroyed most of Western Europe during World War II. Genghis Khan led the Mongols on a looting and pillaging expedition across Asia. Japan colonized China for a good bit of time. America is a country soaked in blood – the natives, the American Indians don’t even exist as a culture anymore. Spain sailed into South America and promptly annihilated the Aztecs, stealing all their gold in the process. Africa is a country that pretty much every other country has had a go at – from it’s mineral resources, to it’s forests, to the land, to the humans living on it, to the animals that roamed it’s plains – they’ve all, at some point or another, been enslaved, raped, murdered, whatever.
All this is not in the slightest to justify what we’ve done. If the purpose of life is to do all that we can, then I think it’s time to shift our focus to slightly less destructive ones. Fuck living in worldwide harmony with each other, the hell with linking arms and curing the world of its ills. How about just taking a break from the madness?
One thing, above all, is essential. We must realize that we have almost no margin for error left to us. The weapons we use these days are in a different category from before – nuclear winter seems like a bleak certainty if we don’t rein back on our excesses.
I read something a couple of days ago that made me furiously angry – a statement by US functionary Richard Boucher on India’s statement that LeT was involved in the Bombay tragedy, and that Pakistan still hadn’t closed its borders to terrorism.
‘ “I know there's a lot of speculation out there now. That happens in these cases. But I think we need to be led by the evidence before we start trying to draw conclusions and make policy pronouncements on it,” US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher told foreign correspondents at a news conference on Monday.’
First of all, people who live in glass countries shouldn’t throw bombs. Remember Iraq? Or is this another instance of the famed American selective memory?
Secondly – much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. We as humans have a lot of growing up to do.
He didn’t really know. All he knew about Osama, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest, was that they were the enemy; they were the bastards and murderers who had dared to attack his country, and cause thousands of deaths at one blow, and that they should be hunted down and destroyed wherever they were. Oh, and that Osama and Saddam were chaddhi-buddies, and Iraq was a staging ground for the 9/11 attacks, and that Saddam was sure to have weapons of mass destruction, nuclear bombs and the like, and that America was therefore under threat.
On a slightly different topic (but I promise that I’ll tie it together), Douglas Adams, in his book ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’, put forward the theory that the best way to learn something is to explain it to a complete idiot – you wind up having to simplify it so much that the basics of the matter get entrenched pretty firmly in your own head.
Tony wasn’t an idiot – not by a long shot – but one thing I’ve noticed about patriotic fervour, or any sort of fervour in general, is that it tends to bypass the brain, hotwiring your emotions directly. I therefore decided to explain the whole thing to him in detail – which meant that I had to do a lot of reading myself, so I could get the facts to somehow spark off some thoughts in his vacationing brain. The upshot of the matter was that I learned quite a bit about the Afghan Conflict myself, and as an added bonus, a lot of other stuff in general about the situation in the Middle East – an essential, if microscopic footnote to the whole Terrorists vs. America battle that we seem to find ourselves in these days.
I’m going to reproduce a large part of it here – it’s going to form the basis of what I unfortunately must warn you will be a very long post. Hey, don’t read it, if it bothers you that much. This is my space, so I can do what I want with it – and ironically (or rather, not, since I’ve engineered this bit of writing) that’s where the whole conflict starts from.
At the end of the Second World War, the two main players left on the world stage were the Soviet Union, and the United States of America. The two superpowers, convinced that they were in a battle for world domination, sought to do everything they could to establish spheres of influence around the other’s territory. America, for example, funneled aid to Pakistan, which led Afghanistan, the near neighbour, to turn to the Soviets for aid. In 1964, the then monarch of Afghanistan, Muhammad Zahir Shah convened a grand council to allow more participation in the decision making process – the beginning of a pseudo-democracy. A number of parties were established, notably among them the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, a Marxist-Leninist party that was formed in 1965. In 1967, this same party split into the Parcham, and the Khalq, representing different ethnic classes. In 1973, the Parcham faction along with the Daoud Shah, the cousin of Zahir Shah, engineered a revolt, which led to the overthrow and exile of Zahir. Daoud then tried to marginalize the Parcham faction, and shift himself away from Soviet influence – which led to the reunification of the PDPA and the overthrow of Daoud in turn. The PDPA, with Nur Mohammad Taraki as president, and Hafizullah Amin as the Prime Minister, then began a series of brutal reforms, which led to bloody civil war in Afghanistan. Unknown to the rest of the world, America was already on the scene, aiding the local mujahideen – as former CIA director Robert Gates admitted in his memoirs, CIA intervention had begun as early as June 1979, precisely with the goal of provoking a Soviet response – as a classified State Department report of August 1979 stated,
‘The United States' larger interest...would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan’
This was the Soviet cue to enter.
Apparently alarmed by the deteriorating situation on their southern border, and in particular the collapse of the Afghan army, the Soviets decided to take action – on the 24th of December, 1979, the Soviets airlifted thousands (the eventual count of Red troops on the ground numbered in excess of 100,000) of troops into Kabul, leading to the assassination of the Khalq president, Hafizullah Amin. The government was replaced by one installed by the Soviets, with a Parcham leader, Barbak Karmal, as president.
The next few years were perhaps the blackest in recent Afghani history. About one million men, women and children died in the government’s attempts to crush the uprisings that the Soviet occupation had caused. Some five million more became refugees, which was about one third of the total population of sixteen million.
The history of our sorry race is written in the blood of the millions of innocents who have been murdered, tortured, and reduced to the level of animals – all to serve the ‘larger interests’ of the strongest faction.
The day after Soviet troops crossed the Afghani border, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor is said to have written, in a note to President Carter, ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.’
America, seeing this as an opportunity to stop the Soviet expansion south, immediately began to use Pakistan as a conduit to support the resistance fighters opposing the puppet regime, and along with Saudi Arabia, funneled massive amounts of money and weapons into Afghanistan. This, of course, also brought Pakistan and America to a much closer relationship than before (which might account for why America is so quick to defend Pakistani excesses – blood brothers, and I trust you know what I mean by this, usually do defend one another). Pakistan found itself doubly gifted, for two reasons. One was the money and armaments flowing through it to training camps dotted along its borders. The other was the very presence of Islamic fighters training, recruiting and studying within its territory, or within Afghanistan. It is these same training camps that have spawned organizations such as the LeT, which frequently conduct raids and bombing missions in our own country – perhaps even including the recent attack on Bombay. If you think about it, how CAN America blame Pakistan for having terrorist camps? They were the ones who paid for the damned things in the first place.
These resistance fighters, based in Pakistan and Iran drew recruits from Islamic countries all over the world – notably from the Middle East, and North Africa. Along with these fighters came one who would eventually become the face of fear for western democracies – Osama Bin Laden. He appeared in the early 1980’s, and was responsible for establishing a number of terrorist training camps within Afghanistan.
Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujahideen rebels with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban sabotage, and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.
Between 1986 and 1989, the mujahideen were also provided with more than 1,000 state-of-the-art, shoulder-fired Stinger antiaircraft missiles. By 1987, the annual supply of arms had reached 65,000 tons, and a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon officials were visiting Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters in Rawalpindi and helping to plan mujahideen operations
In 1988, the Geneva Accords appeared to bring an end to all overt hostility, at least among the major protagonists – America and the Soviet Union. According to the document, the Soviets were to remove all uniformed officers from Afghanistan by February 1989 – and they did, although they managed to keep their puppet regime in place for another three years, till 1992. The United Nations, helpless as ever, was unable to negotiate a peace process that was suitable to all concerned parties, and therefore, chaos and anarchy ruled in Afghanistan. Also, the flow of humanitarian aid slowly withered, as donors became disillusioned at the lack of progress, and newer, more immediate crises arose in other parts of the world.
More importantly, with the Soviets out of Afghanistan – rather, with their uniformed armies out of Afghanistan, there was no real need for America to continue with its ‘clandestine’ support. So they didn’t. And promptly forgot that they ever had, too, if you believe the American media.
At this point, let’s pause for a second.
Since 1979, Afghanistan has been at war with itself. Russian factions, American factions, drug lords, warlords, mujahideen fighters, and Islamic nationalists, whoever – they’ve all been there, done that. Most of the arms, money, bombs, whatever, have been brought in by superpowers seeking to increase their spheres of influence - Afghanistan itself is a country brought about to be a buffer state during the years that Britain was ruling the roost. Imperialism, it seems, is not dead- it’s just had a facelift.
No matter which way you slice it, no matter who you credit first mover advantage to – America has had an extraordinary amount of influence on the way things in this part of the world have turned out. Osama himself claims to have been trained by CIA operatives. There is no escaping it – America is partially, if not heavily responsible for the mess this part of the world is in right now.
After the 11th of September, 2001, the world changed. America finally had an excuse to go adventuring. 3000 of their people were murdered, and a symbol of their national pride was thrown down before them. For a single day, the nation cowered in fear. And then began the darkest time in their history since they nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which, by the way, is quite interesting. The same country that preaches nuclear disarmament, that wants to restrict the use of these weapons, that is pretty much invulnerable even without that option, is the only one to have ever used it on other human beings).
In the past five years, America has proved to be as vicious and brutal as any of its opponents. It always has been – this is just the first time it’s ever come to light. Right after the attack, in their rage to avenge their murdered people, they attacked Afghanistan, and wiped out whatever pitiful civilization that had grown in the last twenty or so years of relative peace there. Afghanistan has no reason to hate Americans? The living hell each Afghani must endure has no other root cause. At least the British didn’t try to disguise their excesses by calling it ‘collateral damage’. That’s another interesting thing, by the way. If one American soldier dies on a foreign battlefield that he was sent to on false pretexts by his own government, it’s the death of a hero. If a family of five dies at their dinner table, because a malfunctioning rocket flew into their home rather than the weapons factory it was aimed at – by the Americans – then its collateral damage.
If that wasn’t enough, America wasn’t finished yet. It attacked Iraq on blatantly false pretexts, with the rest of the world watching, aghast. It showed the rest of the planet just what it was capable of – public opinion and world opinion are just words to the average American. It has pointed up the impotency of the United Nations in a way that could never have been, otherwise. Regardless of being shouted down in the Security Council, regardless of the rest of the world – the entire goddamned planet – telling them not to do it, they waltzed into another country, destroyed the infrastructure, bombed its cities to rubble, annihilated the lives of thousands and thousands of innocents – all to catch ONE man. And they got him, too – as President Bush so proudly announced.
America has suffered, there’s no doubt about it. To play the game of life in God-Mode for better than half a century, to have grown complacent and weak, and then to watch your advantages whittled away one by one – there is not one sphere in which the Americans have not fallen from their heyday. India and China are racing to catch up with their economy. Wealth that till recently was happy in sloshing about their markets is suddenly making a run for the east – so much so that the Fed has had to tighten interest rates repeatedly, just to stem the haemorrhage, leave alone bring it back. Their job market is in a downward spiral – price undercutting by developing economies, and the relative unimportance of location these days has cause most of the bigger companies to outsource their jobs. National pride is at a premium – the fact that America, like the rest of the world, is capable of massive cock-ups – The war on Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Haditha, Enron, and last but not least, George W. Bush…
There is no right and wrong in this matter – things just happen. Every country in the world has had its heyday, and not one of them has a record pristine enough to be displayed – hell, to be acknowledged, even. Rome butchered her way into Europe. Germany destroyed most of Western Europe during World War II. Genghis Khan led the Mongols on a looting and pillaging expedition across Asia. Japan colonized China for a good bit of time. America is a country soaked in blood – the natives, the American Indians don’t even exist as a culture anymore. Spain sailed into South America and promptly annihilated the Aztecs, stealing all their gold in the process. Africa is a country that pretty much every other country has had a go at – from it’s mineral resources, to it’s forests, to the land, to the humans living on it, to the animals that roamed it’s plains – they’ve all, at some point or another, been enslaved, raped, murdered, whatever.
All this is not in the slightest to justify what we’ve done. If the purpose of life is to do all that we can, then I think it’s time to shift our focus to slightly less destructive ones. Fuck living in worldwide harmony with each other, the hell with linking arms and curing the world of its ills. How about just taking a break from the madness?
One thing, above all, is essential. We must realize that we have almost no margin for error left to us. The weapons we use these days are in a different category from before – nuclear winter seems like a bleak certainty if we don’t rein back on our excesses.
I read something a couple of days ago that made me furiously angry – a statement by US functionary Richard Boucher on India’s statement that LeT was involved in the Bombay tragedy, and that Pakistan still hadn’t closed its borders to terrorism.
‘ “I know there's a lot of speculation out there now. That happens in these cases. But I think we need to be led by the evidence before we start trying to draw conclusions and make policy pronouncements on it,” US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher told foreign correspondents at a news conference on Monday.’
First of all, people who live in glass countries shouldn’t throw bombs. Remember Iraq? Or is this another instance of the famed American selective memory?
Secondly – much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. We as humans have a lot of growing up to do.
3 comments:
Ur absolutely right…we should as humans grow up…but im gonna take a step back now and be childish…”if they could do it why cant we?”
Ever since the second world war the united states and the soviet union union like u pointed out were engaged in a pointless cold war…but note how they tried to gain the maximum possible advantage by minimizing their own risk…at any cost…Any…Afghanistan was just a pawn in the chess game being played in the 70’s and 80’s..today the Americans talk about stamping out terrorism from the world and to prevent the loss of civilian lives…who gave them the right to male such a statement wen they themselves..went straight into the country of Afghanistan and destroyed it from within..watever their reasons were for this,they just cannot be justified..Today they proclaim to be the world leaders in anti terrorism,but only a few years ago they sowed the seeds of terrorism itself. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely am “anti terrorist” ,but what America did to Afghanistan,and then iraq,no matter how many different faces u give to cover it up, the bottomline is it is no different from terrorism.
Fact of the matter is,who is going to stop America? Ever since the fall of the soviet union,no other nation can be termed as a “superpower”. The entire planet was against the American occupation and destruction of iraq, but did the Americans caese?..no !! and why should they??.. the united nations…”the world police”..they are not any different from ur regular traffic cop,pay him some money and u get away with anything.. the united nations main source of funding is the united states…they are one of the permanent members of the security council and have alliances wit the other members.. so nobody can stop them from doing as they please..yes they did catch saddam hussain,but look at the state of iraq now…there hasn’t been a day since the u.s. entered iraq that there haven’t been reports of bombings and deaths.. The major interst of the u.s. commercially in the middle east is OIL. Today oil prices have soared to over $80 a barrel..the u.s. dollar has also gone down..so now wat?? Are The Americans gonna take control of all the major oil deposits of the world?? You never know.. after all who is gonna stop them?
George Bush is one of the most powerful men in the world, and then again so is osama bin laden. They have both proven themselves,their abilities and their powers. Bush managed to get re-elected in office,and convinced a whole nation that there was only one way to do things in the world,the bush way. Osama appealed to thousands of people who were willing to do anything they believed in,anything. Bush went into iraq and captured saddam hussain. Osama sent 2 planes crashing into the heart of Americas pride.
Note the similarities in which they both function,yet one is a renowned world terrorist, and another a “purger” of mankind. Now why is that so? Just because an American said so? That’s BULLSHIT.
Coming to the latest scene, regarding to the bombings in Bombay. The Americans say that they need evidence before taking action? That didn’t seem to be the case when they entered iraq. In fact, hey did have evidence, evidence contradicting their information that sadddam had access to weapons of mass destruction.
Their has been worldwide speculation that Pakistan has been and still is a main centre for terrorist activity. All our countries intelligence leads say that Pakistan had a hand in the blasts. Yet the Americans are diplomatic in their statements. On the one hand if it is proven that their was a Pakistan influence in the attacks,and if it is not proved they can wash their hands of everythin as they are the major suppliers of arms to Pakistan and after all they must protect their commercial interests.
George Bush has set the tone for all American activity, and im sure that one day someone will make that Son of a Bitch pay.
Innocent people died in those train blasts, and of course the Americans said that they condemn the blasts, but whose to say that they just aren’t proving the old statement
“ BOLNE MEIN KYA JATA HAI??”
As much a I enjoyed the narrative .. (try and remember the 200 instead of 500 conversation we had) there is one thing I noticed... no where have you mentioned our country. It is impossible that as a country we don't have a few skeletons.It might not have been a conscious decision but you are also emotionally hot-wired when it comes to India - you ignore the role it has played in shaping the world the way it is today.
maya:
I'm saving the India bit. I'm in the middle of reading up a lot on India - history of the south is incredibly murky, when it comes down to it. I'm going to do a full length post on it - maybe when I'm dont I'll post it in bite sized chunks - might make it a little more reading friendly.
whuahu:
Yeah, I know what you mean - although the point I was trying to make was that every civilisation that's ever had the power to lord it over others has done this - it's nothing that's exclusive to the Americans, they're just the latest at it, that's all. Remember Ashoka at the battle of Kalinga?
Although, you've raised a number of interesting points - I'm at work right now, so can't reply, but will in a day or so.
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