“Top 10 Genius Reasons to Keep Troops in Afghanistan”; A Comment

“Top 10 Genius Reasons to Keep Troops in Afghanistan”
by David Swanson

“1. When you’re setting a record for the longest modern war, cutting it short just increases the chances of somebody breaking your record some day.

2. When Newt Gingrich, Cal Thomas, and Lindsey Graham turn against a war, keeping it going will really confuse Republicans.

3. If we pull U.S. troops out after they have shot children from helicopters, kicked in doors at night, waved Nazi flags, urinated on corpses, and burned Korans it will look like we’re sorry they did those things.

4. U.S. tax dollars have been funding our troops, and through payments for safe passage on roads have also been the top source of income for the Taliban.  Unilaterally withdrawing that funding from both sides of a war at the same time would be unprecedented and could devastate the booming Afghan economy.

5. The government we’ve installed in Afghanistan is making progress on its torture program and drug running and now supports wife beating.  But it has not yet mandated invasive ultrasounds. We cannot leave with a job half-finished, not on International Women’s Day.

6. We have an enormous prison full of prisoners in Afghanistan, and closing it down would distract us from our essential concentration on pretending to close Guantanamo.

7. Unless we keep “winning” in Afghanistan it will be very hard to generate enthusiasm for our wars in Syria and Iran.  And with suicide the top killer of our troops, we cannot allow our men and women to be killing themselves in vain.

8. If we ended the war that created the 2001 authorization to use military force, how would we justify our special forces operations in over 100 other countries, the elimination of habeas corpus, or the legalization of murdering U.S. citizens?  Besides, if we stay a few more years we might find an al Qaeda member.

9. A few hundred billion dollars a year is a small price to pay for weapons bases, a gas pipeline, huge profits for generous campaign funders, and a perfect testing ground for weapons that will be absolutely essential in our next pointless war.

10. Terror hasn’t conceded defeat yet.”

- http://www.washingtonsblog.com/

•

Leading anti-war activist David Swanson, author of “Day Break” and “War Is A Lie,” runs the websites DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org (formerly AfterDowningStreet.org)

•

A Comment: One more reason to stay there is visible in the graphic above. Pretty flowers, aren't they? Pretty opium poppy flowers, from which 90% of the world's heroin come from, and which our military GUARDS and protects, since to destroy them would deny the locals income from the $50 billion a year crop (multiplied many times as it filters through the retail markets and end users), thus perhaps inciting them to naughtiness. And how does this product get to market all around the world, you wonder? Ask the CIA, whose planes are the cargo carriers. Hey, you can't make this stuff up, folks, and YOU are paying for all this fun. Follow the money, folks, it's always, always about the money, and the power and privilege that it brings. How's that "war on drugs" going?

 - CP

Share this post