Obama admitted that the American-trained Afghan army sucks. After 15 years, the training hasn’t stuck, so Obama will keep American troops there until he leaves office: “While America’s combat mission in Afghanistan may be over, our commitment to Afghanistan and its people endures…”
That’s a horrible lie. An American AC-130 gunship just combated a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, killing scores of innocent people. The combat mission can’t be over if American armed forces remain on Afghan soil for purposes like that.
Obama’s idea of rational strategy is completely out of touch with reality. He said “I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again.” What terrorist needs a base in Afghanistan for training in how to shoot, attack and build bombs when they have such training grounds as Libya, large portions of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and other places? Terrorists can use cellars, attics, farmhouses, warehouses and other buildings to train and hide. Heck, in the U.S. they were able to go to flying schools and use gun ranges. Anyone can get martial arts training. Coordinated attack tactics are no great secret either if terrorists decide to use such methods.
No one needs a fixed piece of land to learn terrorist tactics. Calling pieces of land by the name “safe haven” is good copy for gullible Americans, but it’s useless strategically. Safe havens (camps) that shelter terrorists in far off lands are not the key factor when terrorists launch attacks in target countries. Infiltration of these target countries is a much more important factor. Failure of identification by police authorities is another critical factor. Failure to heed tips provided by the public is critical too. Failure to use and coordinate available information is very critical, as it was with the CIA and FBI who missed something like 23 chances to prevent 9/11.
Armies and bombs do not stop terrorists who stick to isolated attacks.
Obama’s bravado is useless posturing. Every policy he adopts concerning terrorism and Afghanistan is senseless. With the possible exception of sending in a limited force with the strictly limited objective of capturing bin Laden, everything else that the U.S. government did in Afghanistan has been senseless.
“About 92,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan war since 2001. More than 26,000 of those killed have been civilians. Nearly 100,000 people have been injured since 2001.” See here. U.S. war dead in Afghanistan number between 3,506 and 5,035. Between wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, “Over 970,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veteran disability claims have been registered with the VA.”
Think of the immense human cost associated with 970,000 disabled veterans!
These wars have been utterly tragic and irrational from any objective perspective that considers the costs and benefits to ordinary Americans and inhabitants of these countries, not to those who profit from war.
War is not now and never has been the right way to reduce terrorism. Intervention in foreign countries is not the right way either. Intervention by the U.S. government, with or without war, encourages and breeds terrorists and terrorism.
The correct strategy is two-pronged, consisting of (a) non-intervention and (b) proper policing and intelligence operations. The U.S. government has shown itself incapable of both non-intervention and proper policing and intelligence operations.
We in the American public would be better off in this area of government in the same way as we would in all other areas, and that is if each of us had true freedom and had the right of personal secession from existing governments. There is no better or quicker way of rectifying such enormous government crimes against humanity and societal ills as wars like those against Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya except by each of us having the option freely to walk away financially and politically from supporting them without penalty to ourselves or our property.
Let people who support wars against safe havens pay for and engage in such strategies themselves. Let people who do not believe in such methods be free of their forced participation and support of them. Rather quickly the warmongers, war-supporters, and those on the fence will see that the free people are progressing much faster than they are. Many will cross over to the free side, causing the government sector to shrink even more. Government would have to prove itself and improve itself to survive.
There is no obvious way to bring about a new reality in which people recognize the virtue of the right of personal secession and proceed to secure it for themselves and posterity. However, what is obvious is that the State indoctrinates children and adults constantly to view a condition that lacks such a right of personal secession as normal, proper and good when it is none of these things. Counteracting this indoctrination (or brainwashing) is essential.
If a government can bring about such monstrous wrongs as the U.S. government has in the 21st century with no prospect of correcting the policies that caused them and every prospect of repeating the follies on an even larger scale, I ask what means of controlling such a monstrous government exist?
Within the system, there is almost no prospect. There is no control mechanism in place. The election system combined with indoctrination has produced this dreadful outcome and continues to produce candidates who promise to reinforce and extend it.
We need an “opt-out” of government movement, a mass movement. Many people have already opted out of the system emotionally and intellectually, but they can’t do so financially, legally and officially. The State does not permit it. They should have that right. It’s the moral high ground. It’s what freedom entails. The right to secede personally is the most important and fundamental political right that is going to have to be won in order for human beings to move beyond the system of states. It is that or else movement toward its opposite, which is a world run by and tyrannized by one government.
In the past, one-government tyranny of a total character has been hard to attain even within one country. However, power-seekers will keep on trying. They will use new technology in their quest. It is up to the masses to thwart their attempts. Access to arms is essential. Under no circumstances should a people allow themselves to be disarmed, as this greases the path to tyranny.
The way things are moving in America, other essentials now taken for granted are at risk. Any independence or personal secession movements are going to have to take pains to secure freedom of movement and transportation, freedom of communication, alternative means of both of these, and alternative currencies and associated systems. A higher degree of economic self-sufficiency will become necessary to check or checkmate the state.
1:45 pm on October 15, 2015
