Just Say good-bye

After September 11, 2001, the Taliban offered to negotiate about bin Laden. George Bush said no, we don't negotiate with terrorists. We see the brilliant results of that war system response: a decade of bloodshed for Americans and Afghans. The Taliban bombed and bombed, the US war planes did the same, and the country is kinetically overrun by American war machinery and the insurgent Taliban pops up and kills a few Americans now and then, and also any Afghans they decide are collaborators. Now we are saying it's time to talk.

When we will ever learn about war?

When all the dead of World War II were counted, the victors lost more than the losers. The Vietnamese got the American interlopers to retreat, giving them the clear victory, and they lost 2.5 million to the Americans' 57,000. Now the mortalities in Afghanistan are--what? Those who call it Operation Enduring Freedom--clearly identifying with the US government--say there have been 2457 deaths. CNN says "More than 6,000 troops" have been killed. One blog site rounds up the troops, civilians, Afghan police and "militants" killed at just a bit more than 10,000 in 2010 alone.

Oh, that's right; civilians count. So do "militants," whatever that means. I'm a militant pacifist. Are you a militant? Watch out; you may be deemed enemy combatant and be hooded, cuffed and detained. You will at least be spied upon.

As Beyond War notes well, war is obsolete. It is the most dysfunctional way to manage conflict that we've discovered, but it is profitable for a manipulative, morality-free elite who gain power over others and monetary reward from that social criminal operation.

Time to Just Leave. Make reparations through the UN and keep all Americans out of Afghanistan for at least a generation. It is not our place to administer aid, teach them anything, or police their sovereign nation. Let them be and they will let us be. We wonder why they hosted bin Laden in the late 1990s and beyond and that is both understandable and a topic to look into deeply. They need to heal and we need to heal. Leave. Now.