AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Friday, February 15, 2008

NEW AUSSIE GOVERNMENT BEGIN TO SEE AFGHAN WAR FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS – A DISASTER!

The new Australian Labor government under Kevin Rudd has finally woken up to the reality of what is happening in Afghanistan. The allies fighting the Taliban are in complete disarray. Australian Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, told Parliament yesterday that, "Alarmingly, I [have] found a lack of common objectives amongst the partners, no coherent strategy, confused chains of command and blurred lines of responsibility, a failing counter-narcotics strategy, the absence of benchmarks for progress, a crisis in burden sharing, with a number of NATO countries failing to meet or live up to their side of the bargain - and poor progress in advancing Afghan security forces towards the critical mass in skill required for them to be able to hold our military gains."

While the tone of the Minister’s comments do not suggest that the Australian government is about to pull Aussie troops out of Afghanistan, it does suggest that the Australian government may consider it if things don’t markedly improve in the near future. However, what’s really alarming is the Minister’s naivety about what is actually happening in Afghanistan. He, for example, criticises the ‘counter-narcotics strategy’. The simple plain truth is; there is no ‘counter-narcotics strategy’. The reality is that farmers in Afghanistan are being paid to grow narcotic crops – and they are being paid by the Americans. The other reality not faced is the fact that the only people who ever managed to eradicate the opium trade almost entirely in Afghanistan were the Taliban when they were the government.

Minister Fitzgibbon also has failed to understand that the reason why NATO countries are ‘failing to meet or live up to their side of the bargain’ is because the peoples of those countries do not support the war – which they see as America’s war – and are reluctant to put their soldiers into situations where they have a higher risk of getting killed.

Mr. Fitzgibbon went on to tell Parliament: “What a tragedy failure in Afghanistan would be for all of those who have given their lives for the cause or have been badly injured". Indeed! But how much more tragic would it be if troops continued to die and be badly injured and Afghanistan was ultimately ‘lost’ anyway? And besides, could not the same sentiment apply to the Taliban? Are their lives somehow cheaper because they are the enemy? Would they not consider that all of the lives lost to the invaders be a tragedy were they to fail in ridding their country of the invader?

Let’s be clear about this. In modern times no foreign invader has ever succeeded in dominating Afghanistan. The Russians threw a lot more at them when they invaded Afghanistan then the allies are now and still they were beaten back. And now it looks like the Afghan people will prevail again as more and more of them join the Taliban fighters.

It’s time for the foreign invaders to leave Afghanistan and allow the Afghan people to determine their own future. The allies can never win there.

2 comments:

Friedham I. Whont said...

not just a disaster ...

 .. it's a crime. A war crime, of the Nuremberg magnitude.

-=*=-

G'day Damian,

my 'headline' is no surprise to you; the 'big surprise' is that not everyone agrees - in fact, the even bigger surprise is that few know the real story; far, far too few.

Q: Why that?

A: Because no-one (i.e. the AusBC, SBS) tells 'em.

-=*=-

You'n I both know, for example, that lo-o-ong before '9/11,' the US offered the Taliban:

"either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" [1,2,3]

What was under discussion, was an oil pipeline:

Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.
[3, ibid.]

-=*=-

I'm becoming ever-more convinced; one'a the bi-i-g the reasons for the dreadful fix that we're in (details sickening, as is our once- jewel-like planet) is the criminal behaviour of MSM (i.e. main-stream media: TV, radio & print but mostly TV including big bits'a the AusBC & SBS), this hodge-podge of media, *TELLING US LIES*.

-=*=-

They all belong in gaol, especially the AusBC & SBS bits, they take our dough - then propagandise us!!?

-=*end=-

Ref(s):

[1] Pilger/Under a Carpet of Bombs

[2] atimes/US policy on Taliban influenced by oil - authors

[3] guardian/Meacher/This war on terrorism is bogus

Damian Lataan said...

Good links Phil, particularly the Meacher one. Pilger of course always hits the nail on the head.

We have to keep plugging away at demonstrating the difference between the geo-political reality of what's going on and the propganda and rhetoric that the mainstream media try to shove down our throats.