"They Made A Desert, and Called It Peace"

That's Tacitus, by the way, discussing the Romans. But he might as well have been talking about the Americans.

Any lingering doubts that Obama is just another shithead war-mongering fuck should be dispelled by a careful review of his policy speech regarding Pakistan and Afghanistan. Here's a transcript:

http://www.truthout.org/032709R

Peel away all the flowery diplomatic language and you're left with a few highlights.

1. 17,000 more troops are going to Afghanistan. The purpose of the troops is to kill all the bad people, i.e., Taliban and al-Qaeda. These are the same people who were supposedly killed when Bush sent troops there in 2002. Instead, they got stronger and spread into Pakistan.

But this time will be different! Apparently. It is not clear why, but whatever.

Wasn't it Einstein who had the line about insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results? Smart guy, Einstein.

2. 4,000 US "trainers" will go to Afghanistan to train the army there. This is essentially a replay of Vietnam policy, which, as we all know, worked out so well. Because nobody understands the local situation as well as us 'Mericans, and nobody has that expert-eese as much as we do.

3. The US will pay $1.5bn per year to Pakistan over the next few years. This will serve to a.) buy the corrupt government's collusion, and b.) salve the consciences of the very tiny number of Americans who actually feel kind of bad about killing all those dumb niggers with our ongoing drone and rocket attacks. Oh and they can build schools or something too, when they aren't being bombed by the States. Maybe we'll send an few advisors for that too. Nice!

Now, infrastructure aid and so on can be perfectly helpful, and maybe a few roads actually will get built. But it sticks in the craw to hear him say that the money will go to create "opportunity zones in the border region to develop the economy and bring hope to places plagued by violence," when, after all, it is the US missile attacks in those regions (ongoing since 2004) that have killed more people than anything else.

4. By the way, the justification for all this--for renewing the war in Afghanistan and spreading it into Pakistan, when most people thought Obama was actually interested in reducing military action around the world--is that al-Qaeda carried out 9/11. Of course, the Taliban government offered, at the time, to turn over OBL to the US--if the US could provide any evidence of his involvement in the attacks. The US refused to do so, preferring intead to start another war. Obama thus carries on this fine tradition perpetuated by Bush, Bush II, and many others.

5. Laugh until you cry: "The return in force of al Qaeda terrorists who would accompany the core Taliban leadership would cast Afghanistan under the shadow of perpetual violence. "

What, exactly, has Afghanistan been living under for the past eight years (longer than that, if you include the US/Soviet proxy war dating back to 1980), you stupid fuck?

If this all sounds a lot like W.'s policy in the region, well... yeah. Except that he was smart enough to see a hopeless situation and bail (but not smart enough to avoid another hopeless situation, but that's another story).

Q. How do you say "Vietnam" in Arabic?
A. "Iraq."
Q. How do you say it in Pushto?
A. "Afghanistan."