Afghanistan and the collective shame of the West
And so this horror occupation limps to an end…
Taliban welcomes NZDF withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years
The Taliban has welcomed yesterday’s announcement that New Zealand will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan within months.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed that the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) will end its 20-year involvement in the conflict, which has claimed 10 Kiwi lives, by May this year.
Now, extremist Islamic group the Taliban has reacted to the decision.
“New Zealand’s move to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan under the Doha Accords is welcome,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said in a statement posted on Twitter.
…when you join the armed forces, you make a solemn promise that you are prepared to lay down your life for the ‘national interest’ and it is the obligation of any Government to use that power with extreme due diligence.
So remind me what the hell we have been doing in Afghanistan for 20 years?
America invaded Afghanistan looking for Osama Bin Laden who was a Saudi for a terror attack carried out by Saudis all so that there was an excuse to invade Iraq.
Charming.
Afghanistan cost us 10 lives.
It cost America $822 Billion.
It cost the Afghans over 300 000 civilian lives.
It also had our troops handing over civilians to known torture units, it had our troops killing 21 civilians, it had our military lying to the public repeatedly and it had our military smear investigative journalist Jon Stephenson when he got too close to the truth.
We propped up corrupt regime after corrupt regime in Afghanistan to justify the West invading Iraq, at a cost of almost a trillion dollars while killing almost half a million people.
All we learned from our 20 years in Afghanistan was how far the NZDF were prepared to go to mislead us.
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Sins of omission. You forget the war vets whose lives never come right again. You forget the Brit guys coming out of Afghanistan and going straight into a hospital in Germany. You forget small children growing up seeing foreign invaders like us as a greater threat than any opium poppies and less of a comfort. You forget friends of Hollywood Harry boasting that he flew around in a helicopter shooting Afghan peasants. You forget the SAS burning down the room housing the one shelf of books owned by a Turigin Valley farmer in a calculated act of destruction. You forget to mention who got knighthoods or prestigious positions or awards or other spoils of war, or why. You forget to mention that that Saturday night in 2017, as New Zealanders reeled under the shock of the Hager-Stephenson revelations, PM Bill English was up in Auckland just to attend an Adele Concert, and thenceforth strutted around saying, “ Nothing to see here,” which sums him up too.
I think everyone forgets that the decent of Afghanistan into the protracted graveyard it is today ,,,,,,, was based on a Usa plan, put into action in 1979.
“Beginning in 1979, the largest secret operation in the history of the CIA was carried out against Afghanistan. ” ,,, “35,000 radical Islamists from 40 Islamic countries were restructured into powerful and armed organisations and unleashed on Afghanistan, under the direction of the CIA and its Pakistani brother organization Inter Service Intelligence (ISI). In this way, more than 100,000 Islamists have been directly influenced by the war against Afghanistan.” ,, “According to the German journal Spiegel, the Islamists were officially armed to the amount of “more than two billion US dollars” during the first ten years of the civil war in Afghanistan.”
“This was the birth of the Taliban, brought into existence by the United States.” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/afghanistan-and-usa/
Like starving hundreds of thousands of Iraq children to death ,,, the destruction and misery inflicted on Afghanistan , ,,, and even the coming into power of the Taliban,,, it was all ‘worth it’.
Millions of lives destroyed and refugees ,,, Monday 21 September 2015–“The United Nations would like them all to go home, all 1.2 million of them in Pakistan. In the UN compound in Peshawar – with its carefully laid out gardens and air conditioning – they run a “repatriation” programme to send the Afghans “home”. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/robert-fisk-struggle-continues-for-unfashionable-afghans-279666.html
Six years Japanese jujutsu, not Brazilian sports jujutsu, and a whole bunch of security work. And a bunch of other martial arts including aikido which I Loved.
Yet you think I even care for all that now? Really?
Its all a bunch of crock as far as I’m concerned now. At one point I was even going to apply for Blackwaters. I’m so glad I chose the path of peace. Just the thought of all the cold blooded genocide turns me off.
When I make old bones, I will die with a clear conscience and stand before my maker without the charge of murder hanging over my head. And for that I am grateful. Such is the way of peace,… that is not to say, that a defensive military is not justifiable, it is needed, but an offensive position, one which deigns to enslave and oppress others, is never commendable.