"Prematurely Correct" my ass. Everybody who got information from any sources other than the US corporate media and mainstream politicians knew how this would end before it started.
Representative Barbara Lee spoke out against the War on Terror sooner than I ever did. In 2001, I kept quiet and justified my own cowardice to myself by telling myself that any resistance to the official decision to conquer Afghanistan was futile. The Middle North American people were scared and angry and needed to hurt somebody back, and the Taliban government was so horrid that I thought we could hardly make things any worse.
In retrospect, I believe I was wrong.
When we attacked Afghanistan and destroyed most of the meager infrastructure that the Afghan people possessed, we morally obligated ourselves to rebuild the Afghan economy and to rebuild it better. We should know by now that Republicans are unable to do this, because they believe economies build themselves when governments get out of the way, which is manifestly untrue. Only Democrats understand that rebuilding a totally demolished country takes international oversight and a Marshall Plan's worth of foreign aid, even if the demolished country was formerly rich. To the best of my knowledge, the last foreign economy the United States and its allies successfully rebuilt was the formerly rich economy of the western part of Germany.
But for the last two decades, Democrats have never been eager to clean up the mess that President George W. Bush made in Afghanistan. President Obama merely followed Bush's plan, to the degree that Bush had had any plan at all, by assassinating Osama Bin Laden (in Pakistan, a country that we never officially went to war with). This is what we have come to expect from centrist Democrats ever since President Clinton: they don't offer any alternative to Republican policy; all they do is adopt it like a maltreated pet rhinoceros and try to take better care of it than the Republicans did. Very few Democrats ever dared to state the obvious, which was that the United States' military occupation of Afghanistan was poorly conceived and even more poorly executed. It never had more than a tiny fraction of the international co-operation and foreign economic aid that might have made it work.
We should never have invaded Afghanistan. The majority of military men and women of our country and a few others who served in Afghanistan and daily risked their lives surely meant well, but what we expected them to do was impossible. We expected these soldiers to police citizens whose language they could not speak at all. We expected these soldiers to win the hearts and minds of the people they occupied even as they still continued to wage a low-intensity war among them, often without knowing who their friends were and who were their enemies were.
Like the Iraqis, the Afghan people must have their own government, even if it is a mostly feudal government, which is all that we can expect to emerge from a mostly feudal economy. We are not effective spokespeople for the liberal political system that we wish to export to the rest of the world, because the rest of the world is tired of hearing us say "Do as we say, not as we do." And we are unqualified to manage any other country's economy until we once again recognize that economies, including our own, do not manage themselves but have need of humane rules.
U.S. Representative Barbara Lee was right about Afghanistan. She has been right all along. May Cassandra of Troy, the matron saint of all the truth-tellers nobody listens to until it is too late, bless her and keep her and give her peace.
But I'll wager they are already saying, "If this country's right wingers had the guts to do things the way the Taliban do, we'd be set. Their religion is wrong and their colour is wrong but their methods are right on target. What's the matter with us? We need to start flying planes into buildings and shooting gays. Beheading would be okay too."Then if they were arrested for inciting violence and terror it would be, "First Amendment Rights!"
But George W. Bush was President for 7 months but 9-11 was Clinton's fault!BTW, OHJB will have been CINC for 7 months on Friday - he's got time travel capability too!
"Prematurely Correct" my ass. Everybody who got information from any sources other than the US corporate media and mainstream politicians knew how this would end before it started.
We took a lot of shit for it too.
True, many of us saw through the jingoism and were vocal about it. But we were not Members of Congress.
Lee was the only person in a position to stop the madness.
Is Sandra Day O’Connor still alive?
She’s the nexus event of this crisis.
Thank you for this article, Robyn Pennacchia.
Representative Barbara Lee spoke out against the War on Terror sooner than I ever did. In 2001, I kept quiet and justified my own cowardice to myself by telling myself that any resistance to the official decision to conquer Afghanistan was futile. The Middle North American people were scared and angry and needed to hurt somebody back, and the Taliban government was so horrid that I thought we could hardly make things any worse.
In retrospect, I believe I was wrong.
When we attacked Afghanistan and destroyed most of the meager infrastructure that the Afghan people possessed, we morally obligated ourselves to rebuild the Afghan economy and to rebuild it better. We should know by now that Republicans are unable to do this, because they believe economies build themselves when governments get out of the way, which is manifestly untrue. Only Democrats understand that rebuilding a totally demolished country takes international oversight and a Marshall Plan's worth of foreign aid, even if the demolished country was formerly rich. To the best of my knowledge, the last foreign economy the United States and its allies successfully rebuilt was the formerly rich economy of the western part of Germany.
But for the last two decades, Democrats have never been eager to clean up the mess that President George W. Bush made in Afghanistan. President Obama merely followed Bush's plan, to the degree that Bush had had any plan at all, by assassinating Osama Bin Laden (in Pakistan, a country that we never officially went to war with). This is what we have come to expect from centrist Democrats ever since President Clinton: they don't offer any alternative to Republican policy; all they do is adopt it like a maltreated pet rhinoceros and try to take better care of it than the Republicans did. Very few Democrats ever dared to state the obvious, which was that the United States' military occupation of Afghanistan was poorly conceived and even more poorly executed. It never had more than a tiny fraction of the international co-operation and foreign economic aid that might have made it work.
We should never have invaded Afghanistan. The majority of military men and women of our country and a few others who served in Afghanistan and daily risked their lives surely meant well, but what we expected them to do was impossible. We expected these soldiers to police citizens whose language they could not speak at all. We expected these soldiers to win the hearts and minds of the people they occupied even as they still continued to wage a low-intensity war among them, often without knowing who their friends were and who were their enemies were.
Like the Iraqis, the Afghan people must have their own government, even if it is a mostly feudal government, which is all that we can expect to emerge from a mostly feudal economy. We are not effective spokespeople for the liberal political system that we wish to export to the rest of the world, because the rest of the world is tired of hearing us say "Do as we say, not as we do." And we are unqualified to manage any other country's economy until we once again recognize that economies, including our own, do not manage themselves but have need of humane rules.
U.S. Representative Barbara Lee was right about Afghanistan. She has been right all along. May Cassandra of Troy, the matron saint of all the truth-tellers nobody listens to until it is too late, bless her and keep her and give her peace.
But I'll wager they are already saying, "If this country's right wingers had the guts to do things the way the Taliban do, we'd be set. Their religion is wrong and their colour is wrong but their methods are right on target. What's the matter with us? We need to start flying planes into buildings and shooting gays. Beheading would be okay too."Then if they were arrested for inciting violence and terror it would be, "First Amendment Rights!"
"Aus der Geschichte der Völker können wir lernen, dass die Völker nichts aus der Geschichte gelernt haben."
"From the history of nations we can learn that the nations have learned nothing from history."
G. W. F. Hegel
Wow. That’s incredible. It’s like she had 20 years of foresight.
All of them did, in fact, vote for the bill.
Ghani's only concern was "Save me two seats – one for the Ameros I'm leaving with."
Because it happened under OHJB - they had no issues when TFG agreed to let the Taliban take over.
After 20 years of mediocre results (at best), the best option is to leave.
Genghis Khan and the Mongol Hordes say "what am I, chopped liver?"
What, wasn't Senator Collins's concern level at full eyebrows and had 11 Republican Senators voting to admit Afghan refugees?
But George W. Bush was President for 7 months but 9-11 was Clinton's fault!BTW, OHJB will have been CINC for 7 months on Friday - he's got time travel capability too!
Who's the a-hole behind Tenet between Condi and Rummy?
You don't have to try to reach across the aisle, so no need to tone down the rhetoric 😉