http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23458.htm

Haroon Siddiqui presents some hard facts and an even harder speculation about the Afghanistan War in an article entitled "Historic Errors Made In 9/11 Aftermath”:

The facts:

In 2001 the US toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan for having played hosts to the 9/11 plotters. Since then the Taliban and the war have expanded.

NATO has a record number of troops there, 103,000, yet violence is at its highest level. The Taliban are expanding.

NATO could never have enough troops to cover widespread, on-the-ground fighting.

Bombing is relied on to compensate for a lack of troops. But bombing produces more civilian casualties, which President Obama has vowed to decrease.

Yet more American troops on the ground results in a serious increase in the casualties of Americans and NATO forces.

More American troops, claims Defense Secretary Robert Gates, make the Afghans view the U.S. as occupiers which drives many of them to fight with the Taliban against an outside occupier.

Afghanistan needs to have trained approximately 450,000 Afghan troops and police. Haroon Siddiqui estimates that would cost $2 billion a year, whereas Kabul’s annual revenue is less than half that.

The Afghan presidential election had serious irregularities and rather than stabilizing Afghanistan it wounded the credibility of Hamid Karzai.

The two wars cost the U.S. 5,000 lives and $1 trillion.

It is estimated that perhaps 1 million Iraqi civilians have been killed, and 4 million displaced.

There are at present no credible estimates of Afghans dead, injured and displaced.

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The above and other pertinent facts presented by Haroon Siddiqui give a painful picture of a seemingly lose/lose situation for the U.S.

Haroon Siddiqui also presents in his article speculations as to the motivations for the U.S. in continuing the War in Afghanistan.

There is one speculation Haroon Siddiqui makes that made my blood run cold, colder even than a reading of the above list. I will quote directly:

The surge is designed to buy time and space to stabilize Afghanistan just enough by next year to declare victory and withdraw most of the troops in time for the mid-term [U.S.] Congressional elections.

Now just a minute.

I have just seen my vision of humane and affordable universal health care, Single Payer-Medicare for All Plan, scuttled in the name of political “pragmatism” and “feasibility” — better known as self-serving opportunism — by a corporate lobby-bribed Congress and President, hungry to ensure their own job security by placating corporate vendors (a/k/a pirates), even though an insane 30% of every health care dollar goes to inefficient overhead and executive salaries of vendors.

These vendors have betrayed the taxpayer patients with greed and callousness (60 people dying a day, 1 person going bankrupt every 30 seconds). These vendors should be and could be “fired” which is what happens, or should happen, to untrustworthy, fraudulent, overpricing vendors. But since they have bribed Congress and the President to ensure their status quo stranglehold on the system, this corrupt and unsustainable system is to be accommodated. The kabuki of pretend reform will be performed on and promoted by a cooperative corporate media in hopes that the majority of the citizenry will accept and settle for whatever they get.

Now yet again I see Congress and the President prioritizing their needs above those of thousands now risking death — this time internationally. Let me say it again. Prioritizing THEIR needs above thousands now risking death.

Is the strategy of this devastating war being manipulated, the war’s violence being exacerbated, to serve once again the quest for Congress’ next terms of job security and/or sustaining party majority of, if it is true, a faux-patriotic Congress and Democratic Party? (And in focusing right now on a self-aggrandizing Democratic Party, we all know the Republicans played their own horrifying amoral war games.)

A surge means a profound increase in deaths of our soldiers, NATO troops and the Afghans. But timeliness, mid-term election timeliness, is everything for the welfare of the members of Congress and the President. Not so much the welfare of the soldier children of our collective American family, or of the global family of men and women. The war machine, that needs to be stopped, is at least being paced according to one elite and entitled group’s needs.

Good thinking maybe for a video game. Heart sickening as a priority to strategize a war.

Forgive me for entertaining and isolating this speculation so seriously.

It has been a cynicism-inspiring week within a profoundly cynicism-inspiring decade.