UNNECESSARY WAR

Richard Haass, pres. of the Council of Foreign Rela-
tions wrote in NYT op-ed (8/21/09): "If Afghanistan
were a war of necessity, it would justify any level of
effort. It is not and does not. It is not certain that
doing more will achieve more." (emphasis mine).

In the article he argues convincingly that the war is one
of choice (our choice) and not one of necessity. He writes:
"It is not obvious that Afghans can overcome ethnic and
tribal loyalties, corruption and personal rivalries. No mat-
ter who is declared the winner, the (recent) election is al-
most certain to leave the country even more divided."

Here's the skinny on the above-mentioned divisions:
Afghanistan has about 37 million people. 40% of them are
Pashtuns living in the S. E. part of the country. There are
25 million more of them across the border in western Paki-
stan. Remember, the Brits set the boundary (the Durand
Line) back in the 19th century without regard to ethnic or
tribal lines. The natives have always ignored the line.
Pashtuns in both countries regard each other as one united
people. While not all Pashtuns are Taliban (Karzai is Pash.),
virtually all Taliban are Pashtuns.

Over the centuries, as the majority group in Afghanistan,
Pashtuns have wielded political power most of the time.
But tribal people in the north of the country still maintain
ethnic connections across national boundaries with people
to their north: Uzbeks look to Uzbekistan as their home-
land, Tajiks to Tajikistan, Kyrygs to Kyrygzstan, and Turko-
men to Turkistan.

Together, these various ethnic (and linguistic) groupings
make up the "Northern Alliance" which was armed and
equipped (and brought together) by our CIA to drive out
the Soviets. They are fiercely anti-Taliban, and even when
Taliban ruled the rest of the country, they were never
successful in conquering the northern forces. The anti-
pathy between Tajiks and Pashtuns goes back for centu-
ries and is a major hurdle against the kind of national
unity the U. S. is trying to foster. In intensity it is some-
thing like the Kurd-Arab split in Iraq (or the Sunni-Shia
one, take your pick.)

Another major barrier against unity is the fact that each
region in the country is run by one or more warlords.
These guys (naturally) are for the most-part corrupt, and
involved in the drug trade and doing business with the
Taliban. Many also remain on the CIA payroll, and funnel
useful information to our people. They go along and get
along with everyone! Some of them also serve in the Karzai
government! They are more interested in personal power
than they are in national unity. Their system runs on crime,
corruption, dope and violence.

Efforts by the U.S, its allies, and its Afghan clients to clean
up the corruption, curb the drug trade, and control depre-
dations by the Taliban are so far (after eight years) still
unsuccessful. The Taliban are gaining, reported our top
military honcho, Adm. Mike Mullen. Our situation is "de-
teriorating" (his words). The military says we are going to
have to supply more troops there, probably a lot more.
That will, of course, escalate the resistance and hence the
violence, and hence the suffering and enmity of the popula-
tion.

Governor Massoud, of Helmand province said he personally
admires the Marines there, from the Second Light Armored
Reconnaissance Battalion, but he said many people "just
don't want them here." He estimated that two of every
three local residents supported the Taliban, mostly because
they make a living growing poppy for the drug trade, which
the Taliban control. Others support them for religious
reasons or because they object to foreign (non-Muslim)
forces. The Taliban receives over $200 million a year from
the drug business.

As violence increases, and more civilians are killed, the
alienation of the people grows, like it did in Viet Nam and
Iraq. And, by the way, on-going flareups in Iraq indicate
that nothing was settled there. 95 people were killed there
and 600 wounded in explosions in the past two weeks. We
imposed a Shia government on them that is still unwilling
to share power or oil revenue with the Sunnis and Kurds.
That means more trouble, not less. Nothing has been
learned!


jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

DISCUSSION OF DEATH AND THE DEATH OF DISCUSSION

We are witnessing the death of reasonable discussion
in open forums like town meetings. Noisy thugs are
claiming that "free speech" entitles them to trump
others' right to listen, learn and reason together in a
civilized manner and atmosphere. What we are being
robbed of is not only the sacred privilege of civil discourse,
but also the sense and practice of community.

Disruption of deliberative discussion is one of the first
tactics employed by antidemocratic forces throughout
history. Naomi Wolf has documented in The End of
America how thuggery has been used in the early
stages of mass movements in Germany, Italy, Chile
and innumerable other societies to disrupt and take
over public gatherings and then use them for propaganda
purposes to take over the government.

Another tactic used to cause confusion and disruption is
the invention and propagation of outright lies. One of the
leading ones at the moment is "socialism." "Government
takeover of the health system" is a variation of this lie.
To be socialism, the government would have to own the
hospitals and employ all the doctors, nurses and support
personnel. That is not being advocated here by anyone!
Under Obama's plan, private doctors practice, private
hospitals flourish, and private insurance companies con-
tinue to do their thing. That's not socialism, folks. Not
even close.

Part of the lying going on equates our health reform plan
with the National Health Service in England. Sen. Grassley
(who gets his misinformation from Glen Beck) remarked
that Sen. Kennedy would be refused treatment for his
brain tumor in England because of his age. "That's just
wrong," retorted a British Health Department spokesman,
who went on to say "The NHS in England provides health
services on the basis of clinical need, irrespective of age or
ability to pay." The British public approves of their health
service at a much higher rate than our people approve of
ours. They wouldn't if they didn't see it as fair and equitable.
Actually, truth be told, there is very little that can be done
by conventional medicine anywhere for advanced brain tumors.
Dr. Burzynski in Houston has had considerable success with
brain tumors, but the FDA has tried for years to shut him
down. He doesn't jump through their hoops or do chemo,
so big Pharma hates him and wants him out of business!
Google him if you are interested in that story.

And we won't have living will information paid for in the
new plan, thanks to Sarah Palin and her lie (repeated by
Glen Beck and Sen. Grassley and others) about "death
panels." Many people, particularly in their later years,
want to make plans about end of life matters. They want
peace of mind and do not want to be kept alive by extra-
ordinary measures when terminally ill. Currently, we
already have death panels: they are called insurance
companies. By deciding what treatments they'll pay for,
and what they refuse, they are deciding life and death
decisions all the time. They are also rationing. After
taking people's money for years, the first serious illness
may result in a "rescission" by your insurer. They may
now go back and discover you had a pre-existing con-
dition (perhaps a childhood illness) you had forgotten
to tell them about when you signed up. That makes your
insurance null and void, per fine print in the contract.
Have a nice day!

DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE?

"We've become a society in which the big bucks go to bad
actors, a society that lavishly rewards those who make us
poorer." So writes Paul Krugman (PK) in a NYT op. ed.
of 8/3/09. He had in mind Wall St. and the financial in-
dustry gamblers that "plunged us into economic crisis"
(his words) and were then rescued by taxpayers' money
to the tune of $1 trillion or so.

PK goes on to explain "high speed trading," where big
firms use super fast (and super expensive) computers to
act ahead of other investors by a millisecond to reap huge
profits by buying or selling a stock before ordinary inves-
tors can. Of course that's an unfair advantage, and should
be illegal.

The super fast computers also secure "insider information"
by anticipating by split seconds what the price of a parti-
cular stock will do. Trading with insider information not
available to the general public is illegal. But it is done with
impunity. There are cops, but they are blind! Who do you
suppose arranges that?

Making us poorer to enrich a few unscrupulous gamblers is,
of course, at the very heart of lais-sez-faire capitalism. They
play and the public pays. Twas ever thus. St. Jerome, one
of the early church Fathers, said: "The Gospel rightly calls
riches unjust because they have no origin other than injus-
tice, and nobody can own them without another losing them."

An arm of Citigroup that speculates in oil and other com-
modities has made so much profit (according to PK) that
their star broker is entitled to a $100 million bonus! Citi,
you will recall, is into us taxpayers for $45 billion. Where's
our bonus?

The finance wizards continue to move investment (and
therefor jobs) overseas, where the action is: China's GDP is
growing at 8% while ours has "improved" from -8% to
"only" -1% this quarter. But it's still minus, and unemploy-
ment continues to rise.

In the meantime, our manufacturing base continues to
shrink as more of those firms go out of business or out of
the country. The remaining jobs will be either in well
paying hi-tech areas (not enough of those) or in lower
paying service areas (most employment, actually.) The
latter do not enable families to flourish as the working
class once did. The underclass becomes enslaved by debt,
poor health, lack of education and underemployment. To
deal with it many turn to crime or recreational drugs.
Confucius (500 B. C.) said: "When poverty is widespread
the bold (among them) become robbers." Well, isn't that
what the richest among us become as well? And how
about their enablers is Congress? James K. Galbraith
has written about that brilliantly in The Predator State.

Tertullian, another influential church Father, said that
Jesus, who had no material possessions, always defended
the poor and condemned the rich. We've come a long
way, haven't we? But in which direction?

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net