inconvenient facts

Obama's Vietnam?

 

"Our interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists bent on attacking us. That does not require the scale of military operations that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government." Bob Herbert, The New York Times, January 6, 2009

"I don't want to just end the [Iraq] war, but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place." Presidential candidate Barack Obama, January 31, 2008

“If we are strong, our character will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.”

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) 35th U.S. President

“No nation ever profited from a long war.” Sun Tzu, author of “The Art of War”

US Army Specialist Victor Agosto served a 13-month deployment in Iraq with the 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion. “What I did there, I know I contributed to death and human suffering,” Agosto told Truthout from Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas, in May, “It’s hard to quantify how much I caused, but I know I contributed to it.”

His experience in Iraq, coupled with educating himself about US foreign policy and international law, has led Agosto to refuse to deploy to Afghanistan. “It’s a matter of what I’m willing to live with,” he said of his recent decision, “I’m not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong.”

President Barack Obama has promised to send more troops to where the war on terrorism began as the focus seems to have now shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan. Some have went so far as to dub Afghanistan, Obama’s war. A troop surge could greatly improve security for Canadian soldiers, but it is unlikely to bring any type of lasting peace or stability to the region.

While the anti-war movement has primarily targeted the Iraq occupation in its protests and events, opposition to the Afghanistan occupation has always been understood as a shared point of agreement among the vast majority of participants. The Afghanistan occupation has been not as prominent in the minds of protesters because of fewer lives lost and less money wasted than in Iraq. Recent developments, however, indicate that this could be changing.

The United States Of ... Canada    

People around the world, including those in the Middle East, may have paid little attention to Canada's parliamentary elections on 14 October.

America ’s road to Kabul goes through Moscow

The new president is discovering that America ’s road to Kabul goes through Moscow ,

As Obama prepares to transfer troops from Iraq to Afghanistan , Al-Qaeda and other jihadists are also “transferring” there according to Afghan Defence Minister General Abdul Rahim Wardak, giving the country the dubious distinction of remaining the centre of the “war on terror”. Throwing down the gauntlet to Obama, the Taliban successfully closed the Khyber Pass yet again last week by blowing up a bridge, torching 10 supply trucks for good measure. The Pakistan army responded by bombing an insurgent base, killing 52 suspected militants. The Taliban have killed nearly two dozen suspected US spies in recent months, all of them in the border region where American drone aircraft have carried out a series of missile strikes.

While additional American troops are being deployed to Afghanistan, George W. Bush’s misdeeds continue to handicap combat effectiveness there. Past disrespect to the country must be reversed by an immediate apology to the Afghan people and new orders to field commanders to follow the Geneva Conventions on the battlefield.