After that Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan, killing 38 people (yes, 30 of them Americans, but Brian Williams would you please say 38, not 30, those Afghans, including an interpreter, were killed because of us) Daniel Zwerdling of NPR went to the naval museum in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and spoke to Navy enthusiasts (at minute 3:30 or so):
Here's the astonishing thing. Out of the 10 people I've talked to in the last hour, every single one of them said those men in Afghanistan are heroes, and-- it is time to bring all the troops home. One person after another, the elderly, young people, men, women, they all said-- this is not a war the United States is winning, we have not accomplished our goals, and it's time to get out. And I just talked to one woman whose husband is in the service, and she said, we are just simply losing too many wonderful young men and women who are wasting their lives over there.
It’s a shame that it’s only our death toll that shakes people’s belief in the merits of this war, or any other for that matter. Never mind the humanitarian toll of the war in general, never mind the civilians, the women and children, the communities torn apart. All of this is inconsequential, because ‘they’ are ‘them,’ dehumanized, and ‘we’ are ‘us.’
It basically boils down to this mentality:
“Today, 34 Afghan civilians were killed in a US airstrike which military officials call a ‘regrettable event,’ meanwhile, in other news, tragedy in the Middle East. USMC PFC Jones was killed today while conducting combat operations in [US occupied] Afghanistan. Stay tuned for a special segment on the life and sacrifice of one of America’s brave defenders.”
All so depressing. And yes for close to a decade now little to no coverage of deaths, injuries, displaced in Iraq , Afghanistan. Depressing
This article is so disappointing! Everybody was so enthusiastic about kicking Afghan ass just a few years ago. And now that things are getting a wee bit tough, they want to give up. Obama promised us he would stop the Bush’s wars, but I guess he realised that with a military genius like him in charge, victory was just a few “Friedman units” away. The American soldier ain’t what he used to be when he lets little things like this get him down.
Mooser, that is mild…mild. The injuries suffered by soldiers now are much more horrific than in earlier conflicts. Due to equipments, soldiers survive mines and blasts that they never would have just 15 or 20 years ago. But the injuries are unspeakable.
If you are really interested research the Combat Wound Initiative at Walter Reed. Be careful of the images you would find. Congress should read and see those reports from Army Surgeons and then think about sending their children to these insane conflicts.
“Mooser, that is mild…mild.”
“Mild”? The picture of the triple amputee was enough for me.
How many more live now than during Vietnam. Go on out to a VA and see and talk with Vets for yourselves. I have had the honor to talk with many of them as I take my WWII father to the VA in Dayton Ohio for check ups, other issues not being dealt with by the nursing home he is in.
go talk with Vets
I’m sorry Kathleen, I’m not sure what you are advising me to do. Are you saying that if I talk to vets, the personal advantages, growth and training they receive in the military will change my mind about the War on Iraq or the War on Afghanistan?
Fact is, Obama promised that he would double down in Afghanistan. He said that throughout his campaign. The only war he said he would wind up was Iraq. At best, a half-truth.
But to say Obama promised to end Bush’s wars isn’t supported by the record.
For me, it’s very hard to untangle what Obama says about anything.
I have a young nephew who has made two tours in Afghanistan (and is now in Iraq). When he first went as a fresh 1st Lt. he was in a “just gotta do my job” kind of mind set. This formerly quiet non-political young man is now bitter, disgusted and vocal and often depressed. A different person.
The waste, the stealing, the mindless throwing of resources into an enterprise that is enriching a military industry at home and a the bands/tribes/warlords (whatever we want to call those in power in Afghanistan) in Afghanistan. They are in bed together.
Funny, he calls the puppets in Congress and their masters the “Warlords.” And they are not working for Americans, or American security. I could not have imagined him even having such thoughts just a few years ago.
Spending more money to go to this enterprise only makes the US weaker, and that the US Congress is filled with thieves, he recently wrote.
>> Out of the 10 people I’ve talked to in the last hour, every single one of them said those men in Afghanistan are heroes …
“Hero” is a painfully trite and, too often, a distastefully jingoistic word.
To this day, Arland D. Williams, Jr. remains, in my mind, the very definition of a hero.
Yes, it has become a trite and jingoistic word. And often painful to hear when it comes out of the mouths of talking heads and propaganda machines.
When I hear someone arguing to continue the wars, and describing the maimings and killings and the debts piled up in these wars by referring to how America spent “blood and treasure,” I just want to punch that person in the nose.
“I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.”
Romain Rolland, that rare Westerner whom Gandhi visited, wrote that in his diary in the first weeks of World War I, before the carnage reached a crescendo in places like Verdun and Somme.
“This formerly quiet non-political young man is now bitter, disgusted and vocal and often depressed. A different person.”
Quite a few of the young men from Athens who have been are sitting in bars up town depressed and getting in fights. One of the young men who went to Iraq on four tours starting in early 2004 said early on “we need to get out and should have never gone in the first place”
Mostly rich white men sending these naive young folk off to a war based on a “pack of lies” Same story different war. So fucked up…criminal.
Bush and team belong in front of the International criminal court
>> Mostly rich white men sending these naive young folk off to a war based on a “pack of lies” Same story different war.
Yup. I’m currently reading “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” (Paul Kennedy). That so many soliders should have to die in so many wars for the ambitions of kings, politicians and greedy industrialists is shocking, disgusting, enraging and thoroughly depressing.
And it won’t ever end as long as there are men of amibition and the power to execute their ambitions. And false “humanists” to excuse the carnage.
And men willing to go, and others complicit in getting them to go.
Mooser, I teach at a small public college in Iowa in a rural area.
I have had as students many former military men and women who have served in the Mideastern wars .
You seem by your statement to be setting up some equivalency between those who have fought in those wars with those who sent them there. If that’s what you are saying, and perhaps I read you wrong, I would just say that I would trust the judgment and morality of those young students far, far more than the elites who sent them there.
I’m sorry, I don’t know what you are trying to say.
Since most military come from the poor, uneducated and/or rural classes, I have a hard time accepting that they have any greater awareness or ethic than the warlords who send them.
i agree. i think mooser is consistently obtuse on this point. in my experience most people enlist in the military out of idealism, while the policy makers are pathological. their idealism is often misguided, but you cannot make a moral equivalency between an 18-year who sincerely believes that he may have to sacrifice his life in defense of his homeland, with the machinations of the bush-cheney-rumsfeld cabal.
Whoa! Hold up there. My only contention is that some decent pre-recruitment counseling might enable a lot more young adults to make better decisions.
It’s absolutely astounding to me. I grew up (well, of course that’s debatable) in the fifties and sixties. I never dreamed I would see succeeding generations of young people who didn’t know the facts about the military. What just blows my mind (of course, my mind won’t really be blown, like the blow that’ll get ya when you see your picture on the cover of….sorry, sorry) is that they still grow up without knowing the biological facts of life. But that’s not another subject, they are, as far as I have seen (from here to myopia!) intimately intertwined.
My only contention is . . ..
why oh why do you hate america, mooser?
Those folks are far from the dummies you portray them as. I have taught them and will vouch for their ethics and awareness.
I don’t think your elitism is particularly helpful.
I think I was clear. Imho, you set up a (im)moral equivalence between those who fight the wars with those who sent them.
Do you know anyone who has served in those wars?
Thank you marc b.
piney, you said I would trust the judgment and morality of those young students far, far more than the elites who sent them there.
this sort of confuses me. why would anyone follow orders from someone who’s judgement they did not trust? from what you are saying it sounds to me like these students either don’t have the same assessment that you do wrt their leaders or they follow leaders who’s judgement they don’t trust.
so which is it?
“I don’t think your elitism is particularly helpful.”
You think that pre-recruitment counseling and sex education is elitism?
And if you are saying they don’t need any counseling from a non-military source before joining, you are saying that they already know all they need to know, in which case, yes, they are just as culpable.
All I am saying is that before a person joins the military, they should talk to somebody besides the recruiter. How is that elitism?
“Do you know anyone who has served in those wars?”
And if I said, yes I do, and they brag about the Iraqi civilians they shot? Cause they do.
“Thank you marc b.”
Gosh, and I though I detected irony in marc b’s comment.
For instance, I was full of idealism, all ready to join up, but fortunately an honest veteran got hold of my and gave me the facts: “Are you crazy”, he shouted, ” do you have any idea what time they get you up? And did you know your girlfriend cannot come live in barracks with you? They won’t let you keep your water-pipe on your bed-stand, either or fill your foot-locker with primo bud. And BTW, Mr. Warrior, ‘go pound sand’ is not an acceptable reply to a direct order”
And so I knew the military was no place for me! Todays kids should have the same information available to them. I was this close to joining!
BTW, piney, old horse, real Americans despise standing armies.
“your elitism”
My elitism? Listen pal, I don’t make anybody call me “sir”. Nor do I expect anybody to follow my orders.
Of the absurdity of someone who likes the military kvetching about elitism, the less said the better.
And again, I don’t see what “idealism” has to do with knowing to what degree you recruitment contract will be honored, how easily you can get out when your hitch is up and you want to go Stop loss, anyone? I don’t see what “idealism” has to do with knowing the facts about the complete breakdown of religious freedom in the military, or how you will be treated if you receive a brain injury or emotional or mental injury.
I don’t see what “idealism” has to do with a kid sitting down with somebody and considering, seriously and not just in the light of the TV and movies thay have seen, what happens to you when you kill, what happens to you in a “friendly fire” incident. What your options are realistically if you are given an illegal order.
You consider considering those things before joining “elitism”? Oh, there’s some elitism here, but I suspect it’s your’s, that is your complete acceptance of what the elite military tells potential recruits, and handles their soldiers. You, Piney, are looking at the soldiers from an elitist point of view.
“Those folks are far from the dummies you portray them as.”
Now, I am thinking of them as people, not cannon fodder.
“in my experience most people enlist in the military out of idealism, while the policy makers are pathological.”
And of course, a broke 18 year old with a pregnant girlfriend is experienced enough to know this?
What you can’t seem to grasp, in your worship of the military, is that it’s not the kids I am talking about. I don’t think they are dumb, or smart.
It is our failure to give them the facts they need to make better decisions I am talking about.
And the things they need to know about have nothing whatsoever to do with my politics, they can be deduced from the facts about what has happened to other soldiers, and what is likely to happen to them, and how they can make decisions about it.
“Do you know anyone who has served in those wars?”
I live in a military town, an area which has been almost entirely, since the extractive industries (fishing, lumber) ran out, by the military.
I see the kids before they join, we have lot’s o active personnel and their families here, and I see ‘em after they get back, and try to go to work for the contracters.
I don’t just see the ones who are lucky enough to get out whole enough in body and mind to go to college.
I don’t know how you got any elitism out of my comment.
These are simply the facts…and have been the facts throughout recorded history in virtually all militaries.
Are you speaking to me?
Yes.
Part of my service was in a training company during late 60′s, early 70′s. I helped train a lot of young men to _______ and_____ and____. In another capacity, I have trained men who served and died in Iraq.
What you can’t seem to grasp, in your worship of the military
i assume that is directed at me given the italicized quote. i don’t ‘worship’ the military. in fact i think that the militarization of US society is a decidedly bad thing; a drain on the economy, the prime mover in a national security state where the state is entitled to ‘secrecy’ while its citizens are deprived of privacy, not to mention the senseless loss of life. my point is that you appeared to be equating the decision-making process of people enlisting in the military, with the policy makers. and i don’t disagree with you about the recruiting process, which in my experience is directly analogous to an experienced used car salesman taking advantage of an adolescent buying his or her first car.
(my ‘hate america’ comment was meant to be ironic, but not the prior comment.)
I’ll tell you one thing – No friggin way was that helicopter shot down by some unguided RPG. I have a very very very hard time believing that. They more than likely got killed with an American made weapon.
dan, one thing nobody really talks about is the possibility of an ambush (revenge) on seal team 6. the same team that killed osama. allegedly killed him only now there are less witnesses to whatever it was that happened. and when it happened all i could think of was ‘why now?’. what was a center theme of that action aside from the name recognition and bringing the country together over the death of the enemy? for me it was the ‘theme’ of the government of pakistan ‘not doing enough’. ever since pakistan signed the oil line deal w/china instead of india/US we started shifting away from pakistan. we set up the ISI and we facilitated the nukes and nobody wants to tell the american public they are the target and the geopolitical hotspot is gawdar and baluchistan 1/2 of which is in pakistan. so this raid was a signal to the american public pakistan was not on our side, it was a rational. there was also that top cia guy who killed members of the ISI in the streets a few months ago and big protests in the streets there.
anyway..there are a lot of actors here but the walked into a well planned trap. it was payback and likely included the ISI imho. read the link.
check this out, from nyt july 26th.
Annie,
Thanks for the research, you are tireless, and we all on mondo owe you thanks.
Retribution? Yea, that is a possibility. But, like I said before, an unguided rocket? C’mon. RPG’s have such a limited range. If this is true, than the same guys who killed Bin Laden were too inept to perform perimeter security on the Helo – I have a hard time believing that. And no way in the world was it in flight and got shot down by a RPG…..
Of course, the deep dark conspiracy theorist in me thinks that the US killed those guys. they saw a lot of intel when they were in Abbottabad, maybe some stuff “the man” couldnt risk ever becoming public…..who knows
Dan,
These 22 SEALs from Team 6 were not involved in the mission in Abbottabad. SEAL Team 6 has roughly 300 members in the unit, only a handful took part in the raid on OBL’s home.
These 22 SEALs from Team 6 were not involved in the mission in Abbottabad.
or so they say. we do not know which members did or did not participate as that was classified information. we are being told they weren’t the same people. in fact, as i recall that is about all we were told very early on. the very first reports. apparently w/the biggest loss of life from one single accident since our invasion of afghanistan the information deemed most important to convey to the american public (meaning ‘propaganda’) was
WAPO repeats AP:These 22 SEALs from Team 6 were not involved in the mission in Abbottabad. (that is the headline, your text verbatim)
and how does one confirm this? no way. we were never given the names of the guys who took out osama. it’s a crap shoot. but why would they be telling us this? because they do not want the american public to think it was retribution. but i think it was.
and one more thing. notice how they called it a ‘crash’. it wasn’t a friggin crash. 38 people die, 22 navy seals and what’s the story? what is supposed to be seared into the american mind while hearing this? read the headline again, doesn’t mean it’s true.
I didnt know that – that these guys werent involved. I did know that there are alot of “members” in the teams – as I shared berthing areas on the Abe Lincoln with many of them.
- Fmr US Marine Cpl Dan Crowther
And either way, no way a RPG shot that chinook down
gee dan, that is sweet of you to say.
ok, wrt ‘unguided rocket’. these are heat censored.
i am not saying these things came via libya. just like i’m not saying the thousands upon thousands of ‘lost’ weapons in iraq (google petraeus lost weapons cache) were intended to go to the ‘insurgents’ prior to the summer of death, otherwise known as ‘operation forward together’. i’m just always thrilled about reading explanations of weapons “slipped from the hands “ prior to big events like this. whatever.
anyway. back to Manpads via wiki
Annie,
right, exactly. heat censored means “guided” – some are actually on a “wire” like American TOW missiles – and some have heat censor technology in the ordinance.
A RPG is what Doc and Marty were up against in back to the future. “ITS THE LIBYANS MARTY!!!!” —primitive weapon.
Ever since the start of the War on Iraq I’ve been incensed by this! We send our best young men, officers, and billions of dollars worth of equipment, and the enemy won’t fight unless we supply them, too?
Outrageous! Why can’t they get their own freakin’ weapons? I’m telling you, they got no sense of decency and fair play over there. Just shows how much they hate our freedoms!
And there, BTW, is the best justification for the War on Iraq and the War on Afghanistan. We’ have to get our weapons and ex[plosives back, not leave them in the hands of terrorists! It’s simply “regusting”
i couldn’t agree more, regusting!
hahahaha!! Fckin Mooser for the Win!!!
Andf on top of it, they’re lazy! Do you remember how long we had to bomb, invade, occupy, imprison and torture Iraqis before any serious resistance started? Only when we left depots full of high explosives wide open would they bestir themselves to go plant a few IEDs get the RPGs working.
It’s no wonder Americans come back dispirited.
Very important point, Annie. You are correct, there is no way at this time to ascertain which SEALs were involved in the OBL mission. I’m just seeing a bit of a reactionary approach, people jumping to conclusions and assuming that these members of SEAL Team 6 are one and the same as those who were in Abbottabad.
Dan,
Well, as Annie points out, it’s only the official story that these guys were not involved in the OBL raid. Who knows what the truth is?
DC, you’re absolutely on the right track. But open your mind just a bit more . . .
link to prisonplanet.com
How do we know these Navy SEALS were NOT the entire team that witnessed or participated in the alleged “raid” of bin Laden? Because your government tells you so? How strange that the “official” story of the “raid” is published in the New Yorker only a few days before. link to newyorker.com
Schmidle admitted that he didn’t speak to a single Navy SEAL in constructing this exciting, ready-for-Hollywood narrative that is now the “official” story. He got it from anonymous military sources, and he’s getting roundly criticized from all corners. link to theatlanticwire.com
If this was the entire Seal Team 6 that were present when bin Laden was allegedly killed, and all of them were herded onto the doomed Chinook, then you could fairly say that there just might possibly be a cover-up that the bin Laden story is actually a fable. (For years, many global intelligence officials believe that bin Laden has been dead from kidney failure since December 2001 and that Obama rolled out a fake narrative to deflect attention from the birth certificate controversy.) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212851/Has-Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-seven-years–U-S-Britain-covering-continue-war-terror.html
Read Paul Craig Roberts (former Reagan Treasury official and editor of the Wall Street Journal), pull all the pieces together and see if all might not be exactly as it seems. link to lewrockwell.com
people jumping to conclusions and assuming that these members of SEAL Team 6 are one and the same as those who were in Abbottabad.
i am not saying they are, i’m just saying i have no reason to believe they are not. there were over twenty of them. it rather begs the question why wouldn’t at least one of the been on the alleged bin laden team?
there’s simply no compelling reason for me to believe anything ‘on the record’ about a secretive team that always works ‘off the record’. nothing, no body, no witnesses, just a photo of a downed helicopter and a story of a boat out on the ocean that could have dropped any ol body. too neat and pat. they didn’t have to place his dead head on the internet like w/saddam’s sons but a couple actual civilian witnesses might have been helpful.
Annie,
I absolutely agree. I expressed serious doubts about the story when it first was brought to the public’s attention. Little of it makes sense, and as Oscar points out above, there is credible reason to believe that OBL has been dead for years.
I didn’t mean to come off as combative with you, just cautious about making pointed allegations.
Cheers!
Yes, Mooser. If I recall correctly there was some semi-scandal a few years back about Petraeus and a few tens of thousands of missing M-16′s.
in case anyone is interested there’s a new story on what ‘really’ happened when bin laden was killed here, according to ‘reliable sources’. just in time!
“few tens of thousands of missing M-16′s.”
Not to mention that high explosives depot. Not to mention all the corruption of the contractors in supplying the military. Would not surpise me if are paying to arm both sides and a few sides more.
cheers back exile. i didn’t think you were being combative. hope my response didn’t come off as harsh as it wasn’t intended as such.
just realized my ‘new bin laden story’ link doesn’t work so i am posting it again here: Hillhouse Bin Laden Story Confirmed
good question annie.
i’m with DC on this. i believe that some of the wiki documents seemed to confirm that many of the ‘accidents’ and other publicized statements as to prior downings of helicopters are BS, and the real culprit is the stinger or other guided devices. the rationale for the obfuscation is 1. it wouldn’t do to have amercians being killed by weapons previously provided to afghan forces by americans to be used against the soviets; 2. the effective use of guided technology to take out soviet air power is seen as a turning point in the soviet-afghan war.
The time to bring them home is way over due. IMO, this isn’t a ‘war’ that was designed to be ‘won’ anyways, the American public was duped into believing it. It was being planned by NATO before 9/11 and both 9/11 and Bin Laden were merely excuses used to build a better case and have the public accept it.
This war has cost a lot of lives period, not just American lives. All the wars have cost our economy. Bring the Americans home. They got duped into volunteering to fight a war for NATO that had nothing to do with ‘fighting for their country’ and everything to do with being a poorly-paid hired mercenary forced to take orders to kill. I’m not about to jump on the ‘hero’ bandwagon and I don’t mean that in a cruel way nor do I believe it is anti-American to say such a thing.
I’m not about to jump on the ‘hero’ bandwagon and I don’t mean that in a cruel way nor do I believe it is anti-American to say such a thing.
I agree. It’s become a reflexive response to call every soldier a ‘hero’ and our puerile public swallows this [hook] line [and sinker] that American soldiers are somehow fighting for freedom, values, and country. They’re simply not despite what many of them might choose to believe.
the last MSMer to spend a good amount of time was Chris Matthews back in 2005 or so when he broadcast from inside Walter Reed Hospital I believe for 3 or four days. Not much coverage after that.
What did our military and government officials learn from Vietnam. Own the MSM, don’t show the pictures to the American public and don’t count their dead, injured, displaced.
That is all they learned
“What did our military and government officials learn from Vietnam.”
How to turn as many functions as possible over to contracting companies.
Once war becomes a profity center it’s all over. Also, it keeps the military number of personnel smaller, since logistics is all contracted out. To people who are devoted to nothing except profit and their own skins, another burden for the soldiers.
amoz oz, in his The Israeli Street” (oped, today’s LA Times) says -
“first, the billions invested in the settlements, which are the greatest mistake in the state’s history, as well as its greatest injustice”
not so, mr. oz
israel’s biggest mistake and injustice?
the one about a land without a people for a people without a land
believing it?
acting on it
& redemption?
renouncing it
Funny how Amos Oz was himself neck deep in the deception of the ’67 war coining arresting phrases such as “Shooting and Crying”:
Hey, we can’t be worried about any stupid death toll of American or non-Americans.
Gilead Shalit is still a POW!
Those are the priorities we need to worry over.
When there are no jobs for young people, you can’t fault them for joining the military. Everyone wants to be self-supporting and feeling as if they are contributing. They join the army, feeling so proud that they are contributing to society.
It is beyond sad.
when the soldiers realise they’ve been had, that they’re serving the status quo or worse, nothing else?-
just as i thought
it’s all about the rich getting richer, the poor, poorer
what about my country right or wrong?
no mas
According to this posting on Moon of Alabama, Trapping The Night Raids, those SEALs were lured into an ambush.
the thirty-eight afghan & U.S. troops shot down by the taliban did not die in vain
they died that there be no war no more, nowhere, never, not even one
plus peace on earth and goodwill to all living beings
justice for palestine?
that’ll do it!
once again, do it how?
irrevocably
& then what sort of world?
won’t it be up to us?
The CIA supply of Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen was apparently of major significance if not dispositive in causing the Russian debacle in Afghanistan.
A fraction of those number of anti-aircraft missles in the hands of the Taliban would probably end the war in months for casuality-adverse Americans.
Americans not only love to fly around in their helicopters and jets they absolutely need to in Afghanistan – can anyone imagine we would stay there at our leisure if an American aircraft was going down on a weekly basis?
Same thing if the Palestinians ever get a hold of anti-aircraft missiles with which to defend themselves from Israeli overflights.
I still can’t believe the Lebanese have not been able to buy enough anti-aircraft missiles to deny the Israelis the airspace – I think it’s most likely because the US simply hasn’t been selling them any despite other American military aid over the last decade. No doubt at the demand of Israel.
Things are changing and I doubt Israel will ever again enjoy the kind of impunity and air dominance with which she has been able to operate in the past.
Funny thing is that after Russians withdraw from Afganistan, CIA tried to get stingers back with money. Mujahedins reply that we are keeping these thank you very muchos.
WHY ARE WE ACTUALLY STILL THERE??
is it the $1 trillion in minerals which has supposedly been found ?
is it to make the contractors happy with their contract$ ?
i can’t actually see who benefits other than the military contractors and the islamists …
honestly, why are we there still?
The US is there because of Israel. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are for Israel. The present intervention in the Libyan civil war is also designed to install a more American and Israeli friendly government. Ousted Tunisian President Ben Ali’s driver has revealed that his boss was a Mossad spy, helping them assasinate Palestinians. The same is probably true for Mubarak in Egypt, and other Arab leaders as well.
Those invasions of Afganistan and Iraq would not have happened without 9/11. 9/11 would not have happened if israel did not exist. (In the overall context of a brutalized and warlike American society, it would have been much more difficult and controversial for Obama to take on the Libyan campaign if US troops were not so heavily deployed in Asia). Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Osama Bin Laden, Mohammed Atta, etc, all identified with the Palestinian people. New York is as much the center of Jewish pro-Israeli America as anywhere else, and the mass murders which happened on 9/11, though deplorable and disgusting, were a predictable response to America’s unqualified support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Arab oil is a factor in the wars as well; US military presence in the Middle East is designed to make another Arab oil embargo unthinkable. But there would never have been the prospect of an embargo if not for US support for Israel.
The 9/11 commission heard evidence from the FBI that the attacks on America were caused by the ‘Palestinian problem.’ This ‘problem’ existed before WW2, when Zionists and everyone else referred to it as the ‘Jewish problem’ or the ‘Jewish question.’ Zionists like Ben Gurion decided the answer to the ‘Jewish problem’ was ‘compulsory transfer.’ We are still living with the same problem today. The only thing that has changed is that a place that was universally referred to as Palestine is now called Israel, and the conflict there is no longer called the ‘Jewish problem’ but the ‘Palestinian problem.’ This ‘problem’ is the major issue in world politics, replacing the ‘communist problem’ before 1989 and the ‘German problem’ before 1945.
You can only answer the question of what the hell US troops are doing in places like Kandahar and Helmand if you see it in this context. US foreign and military policy is completely subservient to Israeli interests.
Hear! Hear!
…and after so many years of u.s. support for the zionist entity israel, considering the extent of the crimes that u. s. governments have partnered with said entity?
the lies that our government has been feeding us in its effort to justify this u.s.-israeli special relationship?
unless our government changes course, the doomsday scenario that’s ahead?
except our so-called leaders won’t, can’t change course -
fear of what an infuriated populace might do, once the word gets out that in the i/p conflict our government has been on the wrong side?
mass uprisings here in america?
& then what sort of world?
won’t it be up to us*?
*us, as in you are i, i am you, we are one