Why We're In Afghanistan

Finally Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made it clear why the U.S. is in Afghanistan. He was giving testimony to Congress as a follow up to Obama's order to send an additional 30,000 troops into the meat grinder . He said, " The U. S. must win in Afghanistan because the Taliban defeated the Soviet Union. They were the only other super power at the time some 20 years ago and if they [Taliban] defeat the United States now then they will win a great symbolic victory and become unstopable."

Consider that the old USSR was defeated because it was in a country that it shouldn't have been. Also the U.S. helped the Taliban defeat the Russians. Now we have traded postions with the Russians and the British before them and Ghengis Khan before them and Alexander The Great before them. The take away lesson is that empires don't work for long. In the end they have to go home. But people like Gates and Obama and all the criminals before who indulge in empire building get paid too much for mischief and more importantly never appear at the front lines to catch bullets.

And if the Taliban want to be foolish also then will be made to look like fools also if they show up in the U.S. For now the American effort in Afghanistan has only created more blowback to the foreign invaders.

Time For Backlash Against Congress

When someone is legally stealing they should not be comfortable. I'm talking about members of Congress. Their stealing of our future by auctioning off our rights to the highest bidder cannot continue. Congress passes laws which make their actions legal. But that does not make the laws moral. For instance, the Iraq invasion was not moral or justified. Yet the House funded the desires of the military-industrial-complex. The bailout of Wall Street bankers after they recklessly undermined the security of the US should not have happened. The potential seizure of the health system by Washington and the roving lawyers should not happen.

The least all of us can do is make the lives of members of Congress, lawyers, military-industrial-complex operatives not pleasant within legal limits. This includes peer pressure. Whether it takes the form of simple, nasty but purposeful e-mails or piketing their homes or snubbing them in public. Keep it legal for now.

Dick Cheney's Revealing Comment

Yesterday on a Fox News interview Dick Cheney made an interesting comparison. He was defending the Bush Administration's war policies when he said, " If you think about what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War.... [he] went far beyond anything we've done in the global war on terror".

He's right. Lincoln was acting more like Saddam Hussein's treatment of the Shiites and Kurds in his over-the-top punishment and occupation of the American South. The Civil War was not justified nor was its barbaric prosecution.
John Wilkes Booth provided some but not off setting justice to that crime. Now there was an actor who could do more than just act.