I'm now a warmonger, blood-drenched, chickenhawk, Likudist, anything else? No wonder the anti-war effort fails. Look at the quality of the proponents.

Let's talk about a real suicide bombing in Afghanistan. The Indian Embassy. 58 dead, 141 wounded. Targeted an Indian General. That would be India, that imperial power with its boot on the neck of the Afghan people (I'm not sure how to phrase this one, perhaps some of the non-interventionists could help. Maybe all 1 billion Indians are in the CIA? The Indian boot was taking over for the night shift?) The dead were mostly people lining up to get visas to go to, um, er, visit the jackbooted imperialist CIA minions who formed the Non-Aligned Nations Movement, I guess.

Suicide bombers are largely recruited in Pakistan. There's a reason for that, but probably nobody reads enough about the area to know what it is. And besides, it doesn't fit the "big picture" promulgated at the Temple of the Imperial Boot Theory.

Except when USAF Drones do it in support of Ondelette's big ideas.

Show me on the doll where the ISI touched you, mmkay?

When one big kid is beating the hell out of a small kid who had done no harm; the very first thing that should happen is that the big kid should stop beating hell out of the little kid.

In the case of Afghanistan, only a fool would say that we should stay and kill more women and children. It may not be one's intent to be an Empire loving, murdering asshat; but the outcome is just the same if you support ever more killing no matter what your "motivation" is.

Much like Vietnam, we are looking for the "light at the end of the tunnel" and hoping it ain't a train coming head on towards us. We should never have invaded Afghanistan, we should never have stayed all these years, we should never have initiated a "surge", we should never have snatched innocent men and tortured them in Gitmo; but we did. Now is the time to get the hell out of all the middle east.

We should leave Afghanistan to the Afghani. Will there be horror there if we leave? Yes. There will be even more if we stay.

How many more women and children will the Empire kill before Americans have had enough blood to drink?

Let me just add, because I seem to have so much time on my hands this morning, why I think the whole "nine eleven truth" debate is stupid.

And I mean debate. Not just the movement itself.

You say, "I was shocked and horrified by the nine eleven attacks, al Qaeda came out of nowhere and of course we had to react, we have no way of knowing what was next. We have to take the government's word for all of that."

Or you say, "I was shocked and horrified by the nine eleven attacks, they were clearly the work of the CIA, this 'al Qaeda' fiction came out of nowhere and of course everything about the incident was completely fabricated. We have to take conspiracy theorists' word for all of that."

But no matter what, all I hear is, "For some reason I was completely ignorant of the long and well-publicized history of al Qaeda and the American efforts to combat them throughout the 1990s, right up until September 11, 2001."

You are all exactly the same in the one way that is important. You, both groups of you, still refuse to acknowledge that you were stuck in self-indulgent complacent fantasies for 10 years, and will go to any rhetorical lengths to avoid acknowledging that there was some sort of actual reality that you just completely missed.

The truth that I personally still find uncomfortable to face is that everything about the 2001 attacks except the exact date was described in advance in the New York Times — quite meticulously, if obscurely, over the preceding years.

I hate that that's true. But you know what? I accept that things I don't like are true sometimes.

March 19, 2001

Taliban Explains Buddha Demolition

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/world/taliban-explains-buddha-demolition.html?scp=1&sq=Taliban%20Explains%20Buddha%20Demolition&st=cse&pagewanted=2&pagewanted=print

"[...] An adviser to the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, Mr. Rahmatullah gave for the first time here the Taliban's version of events: how a council of religious scholars ordered the statues destroyed in a fit of indignation.

The destruction, according to his account, was prompted last month when a visiting delegation of mostly European envoys and a representative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization offered money to protect the giant standing Buddhas at Bamiyan, where the Taliban was engaged in fighting an opposition alliance.

Other reports, however, have said the religious leaders were debating the move for months, and ultimately decided that the statues were idolatrous and should be obliterated. [...]"

But perhaps Michael could have taught to them to dance and I learned - if you are busy with dancing and singing you got very little time

blowing up things!

Okay, the image of Michael Jackson leading the Taliban in a Youtube remake of the "Beat It" video has me awed beyond the capacity for rational expression.

May your tribe increase!

I don't remember to be alive when the US declared war on Germany - but I have all these photos of my German grandfather in his German uniform and of my American one in his American uniform - and I guess both were kind of disappointed when I told them after I turned 14 that from now on I am going to be a 'Pazifist'. And to make a long story short - after Bushs election

I sometimes didn't feel that 'peaceful' anymore and a lot of times I was ready to declare some

kind of war on all kind of people - but finding UT - and reading all of your posts (especially Amities) - I'am now again peaceful as a lamb!

But no matter what, all I hear is, "For some reason I was completely ignorant of the long and well-publicized history of al Qaeda and the American efforts to combat them throughout the 1990s, right up until September 11, 2001."

Actually, some in the press accept some of the blame for this. I put this link up before, but Gretchen Peters, in this interview with Terry Gross, spends a minute or two talking about how terrible they (those reporting from Afghanistan and Pakistan) felt when September 11th happened, and they'd known about the training camps all along and felt like they never told the American public sufficiently about them. It's why she wrote this book, according to her.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103957098

Note: Those who think I'm a blood-drenched CIA vampire, please don't listen to it, I don't want to have to try to do the Cincinnati Stroke Scale over the intertubes.