Category: Rethink Afghanistan

Rethink Afghanistan posting with a duel idealism again. It comes down to the same ideas of veterans from the Vietnam War. That we are ether a victim or a killer of innocents. Something that seems to be surviving the years.

With Bin Laden dead and al Qaeda driven from Afghanistan, there’s no justification for keeping a massive military campaign going in that country. But the U.S. continues to do so, and more civilians have paid the price. According to Reuters,

“Foreign troops killed an Afghan child and wounded four others when responding to insurgent fire in volatile eastern Kunar province, the provincial Governor said on Monday, the third accidental killing of young civilians in less than a week.”

These deaths, like the war itself, are senseless. Help us get the word out that it’s time to end the war and stop putting civilians at risk. Sign our petition at http://rethinkafghanistan.com/ and get the troops home.

Senseless, given the recent suicide attacks and that fact that the Taliban threat is still real. Oh the Taliban is actively recruiting kids for suicide bombers as a alternative to harsh sharia law for crime such as losing a hand for stealing.

The Taliban gave Noor Mohammad a simple choice – either they would cut off his hand for stealing or he could redeem himself and bring glory on his family by becoming a suicide bomber.

Held in Taliban custody in a different village from his parents, after allegedly stealing mobile phones during a wedding party in his village, the 14-year-old boy went for the second option.

He was soon being given basic lessons in how to use a handgun, which he would use to shoot the guards at a nearby US military base in Ghazni, a province in south-east Afghanistan which is considered the most violent in the country.

He was also fitted with a suicide vest that covered his torso with explosives. He was told that when inside the base he should touch two trailing wires together, killing himself and as many US and Afghan soldiers as possible.

The article goes into some of the kids being told that only American would die when the bombs go off. Consider that this is not the first time that information like this has been found, how do you handle in treating children like non-combative s when the enemy only sees them as walking bombs.

But thinking that the Taliban and similar groups do actions like this and trying to deal with this threat is viewed as senseless. Oh it’s your fault be it directly or indirectly that child soldiers/suicide bombers are killing people.

But considering the above the message is not getting through.

if I roast my neighbor’s six year old son with a welding unit, people would be shocked, outraged and angry and call for my execution-but if I organize a drone bombing raid, or drop an incendiary bomb from 30,00 feet and kill the same child, then I’m a loyal and dutiful soldier-from the time I was small( 1940’s), I could never square this circle and after a lifetime of thinking about it, I still can’t. that’s why after four years of guarding Minuteman ICBMs, I became a pacifist for life..

The profit motive is more important than people. That is the state of humanity, folks. When will we evolve out of this barbaric state? It won’t happen by itself. What will catalyze the paradigm shift? The USA going completely bankrupt? We’re already there, actually. The war profiteers don’t give a shit. We’re all just cannon fodder.

With the report from USA Today that the group Rethink Afghanistan was quick to jump on this. But I think that it should be noted that reasoning behind the group Rethink Afghanistan has nothing to do with Afghanistan.

It should be interesting to know that is from a conversation that started almost two years ago with Derrick Crowe.

U.S. Military Learning to Get Soldiers to Kill on Reflex, Drop Moral Reasoning

Sounds like something recently published. But here is the the money shot.

I reject one of your premises here: that firing a weapon could ever be a “right choice,” for any reason.

But then it goes deep into religion and ideals. But this is a case of ideals conflicting with reality. Which in this case the field of play being Afghanistan.

If you want to dispute the idea that Christians should be willing to die rather than kill an insurgent, I feel you have to do one of the following:

1) Challenge my interpretation of the Good Friday narrative and of the Gospel stories in general and what they tell us about Jesus. If you’re not going to do that, I think you’ll have to

2a) Challenge whether Jesus intended his followers to base their ethics on his teachings and example, or

2b) Assert that Jesus was wrong, and that Christians in Iraq and Afghanistan should not be following his teachings or example. (Maybe this is your intent?)

But it really comes down to the fact that this conflict of ideals will not allow for a military option to be viewed as successful , regardless of if it is or not. That is the purpose of Rethink Afghanistan.

Sporkmaster sent us this video from The Ed Show in which, Jeremy Schahill from the Nation makes the case for withdrawing from Afghanistan because “you will never be able to destroy terrorism around the world”.

Yeah, it won’t be defeated as long as the hippies broadcast to the world that we don’t have the will to defeat terrorism.

At the Huffington Post, Derrick Crowe of Brave New Foundation (another cover group for “Rethink Afghanistan”) calls for our withdrawal from Afghanistan because of bin Laden’s death;

This is the first week after Bin Laden’s death, and during this week we’ll spend more than $2 billion on Afghanistan War. Every week we continue to do so is a week when bin Laden is laughing at us from the grave.

He’s dead. We should go home now.

How naive and simplistic can one person be? Is Crowe saying that our only reason for spending billions in Afghanistan was to kill one man? Out of the expression of one emotional response – that emotional response being revenge? During the Bush Administration, the left was fond of telling us that that the death of bin Laden wouldn’t change anything in the war against terror, now they’re telling us that it changes everything.

So which is it?