Afghanistan

I am an angry American citizen and taxpayer. The sight of an American General pandering with the necessary approval of the Commander-In-Chief, Barach Obama, to neolithic fanatics turns my stomach. How many lives and billions of dollars have been poured into the bottomless pit of Afghanistan? How many more will be? What have we gotten? Religious fanatics, whipped up by Taliban living easily in the capital city, chanting, "Death to America!" By the way, the American media have covered up the fact that the crowd was yelling "Death to America". I clearly heard the word "America" in the chants of the mob on BBC World Service broadcasts. Unless "America" means "foreigners" in the Afghan language, we are being lied to by the American media about details of this incident to provide political cover to the Obama administration and the military-industrial complex.

The obvious fact, staring us in the face, is that Afghanistan will most likely fall back to the Taliban. And who are the Taliban?  The Taliban are a highly organized, armed criminal enterprise. They are drug dealers and human traffickers. They are the lowest ranks of bullying men, hiding behind religiosity.  And now the U.S. government will be dealing with these thugs as legitimate politicians in Qatar.

The U.S, itself is in the hands of a criminal enterprise. Corporate financiers have kidnapped the American Congress and Presidency. Many of these thugs hide behind religiosity as well. The Koch brothers of Texas manipulate religious zealots in the South in support of the Tea Party within the Republican Party. Powerful pro-Israel interests steer American foreign policy with lots of cash in the name of the sanctity of the Jewish state. Saudi Arabian money pours into American coffers to sway American political and social attitudes toward orthodox Islam.

If American troops had burned textbooks on science, engineering or agriculture, these same zealots would have cheered. Afghanistan's howling, impoverished mobs are a shameful living example of the byproducts of unconstrained religiosity in lawless society. While the culture war rages in this election year in the U.S. once again, perhaps Americans will wake up and look to Afghanistan as an example of a society without basic human rights and economic justice for all of its people. Rather than trying to fix Afghanistan, the American people may well consider preventing the U.S. from falling back into the compliant stupor of the Bush Era. It is indeed time to move on.