When To End The War

The question of when to end the Afghan war is becoming a dilemma that then requires the U.S. to figure out how to end it.  While our soldiers display bravery and dedication that causes them to place their very existence on the line, the politicians leading this country cannot find the courage to admit, what everybody who understands military operations and their limitations knows, – the war is lost. 

We have spent a trillion dollars between Iraq and Afghanistan and both are exponentially worse off for it.  Both are so mired in destruction, malnutrition, disease, sectarian violence, death, and anti-Americanism that we will never be able to work constructively towards fixing what we destroyed.

The resources needed for grand projects that Bush promised the Afghans have all been spent on providing security for a nation whose infrastructure is in rubble.  Meanwhile, experts at Anti-War.com and Lewrockwell.com predicted all of this from day one.

These websites dissected and examined every single action made by the U.S. and stated why it would fail.  It was able to discern the absurdities and bring them to the forefront and explain the cause-and-effect and the WHY behind everything that occurred.  Often times their confidence in their predictions initially seemed too out of  sync with what the mainstream media was selling the American pubic, who was being targeted for a Pentagon disinformation campaign.  

Even while pundits all said, “See, look at the progress, look at the cooperation, look at the democracy!”, Justin Raimondo explained why it was all a facade that would soon crumble.  Then, Antiwar.com went on to explain the implications and how this would affect other social structures as the result of attempting to create a reality based on force, money, and arrogance and explain and diagnose diseases of imperial overreach and its second and and third order effects.

As the U.S. plowed money into Iraq and now Afghanistan, things keep getting worse as Americans inceasingly become the target of a surge in propaganda being executed by the Pentagon, the military/industrial complex, and neocon politicians.  This is why the Wikileaks leak is so devastating.  It is blowing a hole into the false reality created by a media subservient to power and empire and exposes the mainstream media as a propaganda arm of the Pentagon.  Honest dealers like Secretary of the Army Thomas White and General Shenseki, whose predictions and estimates are exposed as ridiculously understated, were fired for admitting that the initial assessment for manpower and material that Bush went with were so grossly understated by Rumsfeld, and the planning process so fraught with incompetence and delusion, and in so many areas completely non-existent, that it would guarantee U.S. failure and defeat. It also meant a slaughter of many tens of thousands of civilians.

The actual wording of the Nuremberg judgment against the Nazis exposes the most serious U.S. crime: “To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

The U.S. government is in violation of the UN Charter, which explicitly prohibits intervention in the domestic jurisdiction of a country. The war in Iraq violates U.N. and international law, many General Assembly resolutions, NATO’s own charter and the U.S. Constitution.

Douglass Cassel, director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University’s School of Law, wrote:  “At Nuremberg, leading Nazis were sentenced to death for crimes against peace, defined to mean waging a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties. Because NATO’s war violates the UN Charter–an international treaty–it is a crime against peace.”

Unrestricted air bombing is barred under international law. So is bombing the infrastructure of a country-the waterworks, electricity plants, bridges, factories and so on. Bombing chemical plants and using radioactive weapons also violate international conventions.

Under the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to “attack civilian targets or to destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.” The U.S./NATO bombers repeat these war crimes every day in Iraq and Afghanistan and now seek to attack Iran

These problems were examined in detail and Antiwar.com listened to and examined the reports of middle-level managers in their progress as they performed the task of trying to implement ideology.  Antiwar.com then published the reports the mainstream media was too fearful to print.  While nobody would listen to them, they served as the documenter of arrogance, hubris, and eventual failure.

Armies of 150,000 men who try to build a society based on their willingness to use violence in a foreign country of 20,000,000 soon find out that they have surrounded themselves with enemies.  Meanwhile, Americans kept thinking, “Were kicking their asses!”

I personally became the most hated person in my military unit as I explained to fellow soldiers the problems that history had shown could not be overcome with military force. I explained the contradictions and absurdities that would need to be overcome.  I exposed the lies and blindness caused by ideology, and I was hated for it.  There are no people more stupid than those who the government pays to be stupid.  There were high-ranking officers who were incredible brave, great leaders, and displayed exceptional organizational skills, who could not win a debate with me as a lowly major.  Reality just seemed to throw a monkey wrench into their entire worldview.

I had a superior, whose name was General Michael Dede, who stated we should not worry about deficits because we could just go on forever borrowing from China and keep paying them back with money we printed because they would have no choice but to accept it as repayment even though it is becoming increasingly worth less and less.  He said, “If they are stupid enough to accept worthless money, then what do we have to worry about?”  He never made it to the next step, which begs the question:  What happens when they wise up and decide to not give us everything for nothing or begin chasrging more interest on debt already owed?  I guess the effect of inflation on a retirement-aged couple is the last thing on a general’s mind. 

We have been too arrogant to realize that the rest of the world has become our enabler towards their own ends.  They know they will be the beneficiaries, and in some cases rightly so, of our demise.  As they anxiously await their inheritance, they continue to give all the whiskey sought by their Uncle Sam who has already been diagnosed with cirrosis of the liver and has been drinking all the wiskey at the store, using borrowed money. 

Osama bin Laden stated he would bankrupt us.  He has accomplished that goal.  Bin Laden has shown us the true nature of our leaders as they scrambled like rats when a small plane crashed in Washington D.C. a few years back.  Here was the Imperial City and its leaders, so willing to surrender our liberties to government, scattering like cockroaches because a Piper Cub crashed in D.C.  What a pitiful spectacle to see.

Tomorrow things will be worse in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan.  We will have killed more innocents and created more enemies, and it will be the same the following day.  As every day gets worse, it is realized teh day before was actually better.  So if every day is going to be exceedingly worse, why not get out on the best day possible? –Today.  Ron Paul said we used a bunch of lies to march into Iraq, so let’s just march out.  If we want to rebuild Iraq, let it be with reparations and not as part of operations by an occupier.

The MSM will continue to hate the people at Antiwar.com and Lewrockwell.com.  They will increasingly hate them more and more for being right, as Americans have their faces rubbed into reality and the false realities are demolished.  Americans should listen to the wise counsel of those who warned and were right.  Americans should listen to those statesman and intellectuals to see how they were right and why they were right.  In the end it will be Muslims, -Sunni, Shiites, Iranians and Iraqis, the Madhi Army, the Awakening Counsels, the Sons of Iraq, SCIRI/SIIC, the Badr Brigades, the Jundallah, the MEK, the Ayatollahs and imans, and Hezbollah and Hamas that will be the ones living in the Middle East.  He who owns the gene pool is the one who wins wars of attrition. 

A wise man once said, “No country ever had an army so powerful that it could prevent war in times of peace or guarantee victory in times of war.  We should look at the wise words of those who counseled against militarism.  While much has been written about the glory, bravery, and exploits of Napoleon, in the end he lost and the hundreds of thousands who died for him are forever forgotten.

If a politicians talks to you about fighting for your country, tell him you will follow him into battle. Dying for someone else’s beliefs, or for that matter your own beliefs, does not necessarily make those beliefs true.  If those beliefs are true, they usually stand on their own and do not need armies to prop them up.