The sooner the US gets out of Afghanistan, and takes us in the UK with it, the sooner that the Afghans can sort out their own problems, as well as those left behind when we leave.
We can then concentrate on finally “sorting out” the Palestinian problem; it’s only been allowed to go on for a mere 62 years, long before the invasion of Afghanistan.

Keep on searchin Moonwalker….I dont thinks its him

Hey, is that the ghost of Michael Jackson in the background?

Tremendous comments!! Sincere thanks to you all for a centered Sunday morning. Great reading.

    I enjoyed Mr. Kutlers article and appreciated his political objectivity when discussing the forces shaping the region, especially Iran.

    It’s well known, that as in Viet Nam, Heroin is a major industry in Afghanistan and that the corrupt Karzai family is up to their necks in the trade. And, as in Viet Nam, I can’t imagine American “spooks” aren’t in it with them. The money in the drug trade is huge. Recent revelations that major American and International Banks were caught openly laundering drug money and were fined without individual prosecution is (my opinion)a sure “tell” that above-the-law International Black Market Crime, Finance and corrupt Corporate Capitalists, have subsumed Washington. To state the obvious again, the dirty money that feeds the revolving door thugs, who subvert our Constitution, as they distort and blemish the Honor of our fighting men and women, is travesty. Major Campaign Finance Reform now!!

      Posters outrage at the word “we” strikes a chord I’ve struggled with for a while now. It’s a hard hair to split. “We” are in the War like it or not. The carnage crosses all lines of moral demarcation. “We” are all touched by it. “We” are all responsible. Just as Afghan Heroin finds its way into the bloodstream of American streets and High Schools, so the senseless murder of Afghan civilians and the suicides of returning American Veteran boys and girls next door, enters ours. The complicit silence of our compromised press allows our denial to scab but the wound only deepens. “We” are all in the War.

      Many here feel that the Cheney-Bushite-Rove regime opened the door to overt Fascism. That the War was manufactured, and the Patriot Act was/is a subversion of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. That the American Economy was intentionally destroyed and openly looted by Goldman-Sachs and Wall Street, knowingly helped by our elected Representatives. That the Supreme Court betrayed us by allowing hidden so called “foreign” money to buy American elections, and a host of other laments. “They” scoff at and excuse all concern. Are they inept idiots, or do they just think “WE” are?

    Washington represents “We the people—”. Get it? “WE the people—”. “We” labor. “They” steal it. “We” pay tax. “They” steal it. “We” build lives and an economy. “They” destroy them. “They” have failed outright and are openly corrupt and morally bankrupt. “They” have separated themselves from and failed: “We the people—”. The peoples of other modern nations don’t allow this. Are “WE” dupes so battered, propagandized and ignorant any cheap hustler (and that’s what “THEY” are) can destroy our childrens future at will?

    I wish this was a rant—but it’s reality. We all know that the fascist Bushites Rove and Boehner are fronts for the criminal corporatists poised to deliver the death blow to a free America. It is their intent to gut whatever remains of a morally social society and loot the treasure and lives of us all. “They” are “for sale” criminals. “They” are not “We”. “We” all grasp the fact, but to this point some “unknow” prevents unity and action. The VOTE itself has become a bone of contention.

      My only sure belief is that “WE” are the POWER. How much more of America must be lost and how many more lives destroyed before “WE” accept it?

Come Nov 2nd, I plan to vote out all encumbents here in Maryland, from Steny Hoyer and Barbra Mikulski all the way down to my local delegate.

They are all part of the entrenched evil which has taken over the U.S. govenment in our name.

I hope the vote is so overwhelming, Diebold can’t save them.

I say ‘we’ because I’m still a part of America.  And because at some fundamental level, America is a democracy.  It may be a flawed democracy.  The machinery of democracy may seem like its rusted solidly into one position. But its still there.

That’s more than other places have had.  Its more than what the people of the Soviet Union had, and the rest of eastern Europe when they threw off the communist totalitarians. Its more than the French had when they overthrew King Louis.  Its about what our founding fathers had when they overthrew King George.

If ‘we’ are still doing such awful things as fighting a war in Afghanistan, then its at least partially because I haven’t done enough to change it.  Because ‘we’ haven’t done enough to change it.

We are not powerless.  No people is ever powerless except when they choose to be powerless.  And that happens when they tell themselves that they are powerless.

We are not disenfranchised. We’re mainly just too lazy to run campaigns.  Most places you can get on the ballot in the general election.  Pretty much everywhere you could try to run in the Dem primaries.  But almost no one is doing that this year.  There was a scattering of ‘progressive’ primary challenges ...actually 2 that come to mind (Winograd-House-CA and Romanoff-Senate-CO), but there were probably a handful of others.  But there sure wasn’t a massive slate of anti-war candidates in either the primaries or general elections this year.

People are disenfranchised when there’s no one to vote for.  And basically, that’s our own fault.  We aren’t running the campaigns. When there is a campaign, we aren’t giving them the grassroots support that they need to compete. We complain about the power of money, but we aren’t putting every waking hour that we can into an anti-war campaign.

And all of this is only our own fault.  People can tell us that we are powerless. People can tell us that we are disenfranchised, that we can’t win.  But we don’t have to believe them.

Near as I can tell, the attitude of the anti-war movement and the left in general is that it wasn’t easy to get change.  It wasn’t easy to stop the war. It wasn’t easy to get single payer health care or stronger unions.  And since none of this was easy and just handed to us by those getting rich from our defeats, then we should just sit back and say that it couldn’t be done.

Change is never easy. 
Change is always possible.

I do appreciate the sentiment of saying that the evil things I see around me are not me.  At some core level, that’s a necessary step. Both for improvement and for the sanctity of my soul.  This evil is not me.

But, if you are in America, we are this evil.  We are this evil because we haven’t done enough to stop it.  In a land with at least some freedom and excellent communications, we have not been able to stop this evil.  If our forefathers could overthrow one of the most powerful kings of his day, stopping a war that’s opposed by 60% of the people should not be impossible.

In some ways, we are responsible. That’s not a pleasant thought. But its another necessary one if we want change.  We are responsible because we aren’t doing enough.  Because not even the residents of the Soviet police state were powerless, propagandized cannon-fodder who couldn’t change anything.

We have an Afghanistan where the President’s defense against someone seeing large bags of cash in his office was that this wasn’t anything unusual and that it happens all of the time.

We have an Afghanistan where every election has massive numbers of fraudulent votes.

Its time to declare victory, state that Obama has now successfully given Afghanistan a Chicago-style democracy, and bring our dang troops home!

And you don’t think someone in the defence (or is it offence) industry is earning
millions from this?

“We do not do coups well”
“We gained 10 more years of fruitless war”
“We are once again waist-deep and sinking in a quagmire”
“We have a client state that is difficult to control”

I also object to all this “we” talk. I understand it’s convenient shorthand for the Washington consensus, that two-party dictatorship of the corporate elite, but words have power and meaning when twisted this way.

By weaving all of us into the narrative, the author makes us out to be willing participants in some sort of difficult foreign affairs puzzle, inviting us to sit at the table of some policy conference and pretend that our opinions matter. That we should compare this political mistake to some previous blunder, and after careful consideration and writing letters to newspaper editors, help shape a better tomorrow.

It is a classic pathology of the sociopathic mind to blame the victims and make them confess their complicity and guilt. It is a trait of psychopathogenic societies—through its media and politicians—to constantly use this collective “we” to suggest we equally share the blame for the crimes of the state and corporations: “We” bought houses we can’t afford, “we” need to balance the needs of the insurance mafias with the drug cartels, “we” need to tighten our belts so thieving banker scum get paid.

By adopting this rhetorical “we” gimmick, the author unfortunately perpetuates the myths of a democratic America, an informed and empowered citizenry, and that the use of American military power is a well-intended exercise that has somehow gone astray.

The reality is that “we” are the powerless, propagandized, disenfranchised, indebted cannon fodder of a tyrannical police state waging immoral wars of aggression and occupation, fought on behalf of war profiteers, tyrannical globalists, and utterly soul-less, amoral men - a villainous cabal of psychopaths pursuing games of greed and power with the blood of innocents and the fate of nations.

The Vietnam allegory is ironic - following WWII, partisan ally Ho begged Truman to
not allow French Colonialists, who’d cut and run in the face of Tojo’s aggression;
but, the Dulles Bros. lies prevailed and Truman betrayed his ally. Had Vietnam
gotten a Marshal plan, or the post-war reconstruction investment Japan did.

Too often we hear that Capitalists are pragmatic non-ideologues - baloney -
those who pull the strings are oligarchs who believe only in themselves and those
in the trenches are brainwashed in free-market, Austrian and Chicago School
catechism - they can’t question a thing they do - no different than rank-and-file
communists.

>>In 1954, we created a classic state where there had
been none.<< ???

Who do you mean, “we”?
Mr Kutler, one must first get their terms and history
correct if that history is to be used to provide an
example.  Because the wrong inferences are drawn, as
the history is incorrect, that altered history cannot
be the basis for any lesson, that version of history
cannot be employed as allegory.
Iraq is not VietNam, but many things ARE parallel,
most notably the use of the CIA and its EHM and shock
troops to foment violence (to justify regular US
troops), coercion, compromise by entrapment, and the
sham of US puppet leaders, chosen because they are
the most corruptible.  They sign away sovereignty and
sign up for huge IMF loans which always profit the
Banksters, knowing they themselves and their friends
will be richly rewarded, “protected” by the US, and
the people can generally go to hell.  When the puppet
gets pangs of remorse, and begins thinking that maybe
they might have some actual say in what goes on in
their country, Uncle Sam will first accuse him of the
worst of crimes, have him killed, and install another
puppet.  A familiar pattern.

With respect to Vietnam, the US industrialists and
bankers accomplished diplomatically the only thing
they know how to do, which is to militarily find a
way continue and profit from the disparity created
and enforced from the exploitive colonial system
France could no longer afford to enforce (What’s
called “stability”, for it MUST be enforced.  The
countries are rich, it’s the people that are
(desperately) poor, but not stupid.) “Create” is
perhaps, therefore, the correct word, for it is an
artificial thing, this imposition of military rule
over a trade route and/or source of (kept) cheap
labor and raw-materials-for-a-song (grand theft,
objectively speaking, on a massive scale). 
Capitalism demands such disparity for profit, such
absolute control of all resources, all markets, all
laws. All capitalist powers are necessarily colonial,
and as brutal as the pretzel-logic of the money-as-
debt pursuit of profits at all cost (to others).
Imperial powers therefore share goals as self-
aggrandizing psychopathic empires - all seek
hegemony, none will allow (least, because of the
dangerous demonstration effect) any independent
“development”. The facts are that what the US does
was/is dishonest & dishonorable at every step along
the way, no better (often worse) than its official
enemies. It fomented every crisis, always pointing
fingers toward always-alleged “foreign” interference
(the CIA helpfully creating and planting “foreign
intelligence” to show what wasn’t found) and
committed every war crime and crime against humanity
possible. The US violated every rule just laid out in
Geneva after WW2, its well-placed capitalists
profited hand over fist. Millions killed, and
Lockheed and Dow Chemical and Bell made fortunes and
politicians looked the other way. War is to never
end, the profits require it, and if there’s any
lesson to be drawn form Vietnam, it is this: It
doesn’t matter what lands the US despoils, how may
millions it mass-murders… it’s all profits to the
rich, jobs in the arms industry for the proles.  To
claim, with the massive poisoning of what was once
one of the world’s most fertile regions, and the
mass-murder and intentional misery that our troops
committed against a people for wanting nothing more
than to decide their own fate, to be rid of a
colonial overlord, whether French or American or
Japanese of Chinese, that Vietnam won that war, or
that the US lost, does not understand why the war is
a feature of capitalism competition for market share,
and that war is the “safest” (allows the least public
input, the least democracy) way to waste about 10% of
its GDP to keep prices and scarcity up, wages down.

Does that mean we’re pulling out? And if not why not?
What an expensive exercise in military stupidity.