the more things change... the more you've been mislead

the BBC news headline says that afghan pres hamid karzai, who started off as conoco's man on the ground before realizing he could bank more playing both sides against the middle, finds himself increasingly forced to bite the west's hand that feeds him, if only to prevent him losing that and some other bodily real estate in the ugly and devolving afghan massacre:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has forcefully condemned the killing of 14 civilians in the south-west of the country in a suspected Nato air strike.
Mr Karzai said his government had repeatedly asked the US to stop raids which end up killing Afghan civilians and this was his 'last warning'.
A Nato spokesman said a team had been sent to Helmand province to investigate the attack carried out on Saturday.

 another day, another NATO "investigation" of the shoddy-but-deadly imperial operation that is the "peacekeeping" operation in afghanistan.

how many mindless, shameless massacres have the afghan people to endure before some collective level of indignation is reached, and the citizens of NATO put a stop to this shameful charade?

the entire premise for this military adventure is preposterous, and if there was any end game in the US' AUMF that sent an NATO invasion force into afghanistan back in 2001, we've surely achieved our purpose, and should declare victory and carry our shameful asses home.

no one in DC wants to be the one to "lose" afghanistan, i suppose -- the way dubya didn't want to "lose" iraq, where we decided to pay off our foes there to achieve that most american of goals, "peace through strength."

in another part of the country, NATO experienced another black eye at the hands of "insurgents,"

Taleqan, Afghanistan - Afghan officials said Sunday an investigation was underway into Saturday's suicide attack that killed two senior police commanders, two German soldiers and two others and also wounded a German general.

we enjoy telling ourselves how exquisitely splendid we are as both humanitarians and war-making machines, and so when the ingrates we are trying to help rise up and kill our people, instead of giving the required thanks, we feel the sting of it. our wounded pride calls out for revenge and retribution, and to teach the barbarians about the superiority of the western way.

it was written somewhere -- not that i had the stomach to read it -- that the CIA considered the execution of osama bin laden as "payback" for a previous taliban attack by a double agent that cost the lives of a number of CIA "operatives" in afghanistan.

while no one will be much surprised to hear about this grudge match mentality on the part of NATO against the afghan people and the islamic world in general, it will be difficult under the circumstances to convince any neutral observer -- not that there are any -- that the west is advancing any kind of superior morality in its struggle in a strange land, so very far away from the reality most of us here in the USA inhabit.

in short, however, rather than passing along some sort of superior civilization and values, we are no doubt hardening the resolve of the people we're fighting to grind our forces down, and demoralize our side so much that, after having flung untold trillions of dollars down the military rathole, we finally decide to cut our losses and get the hell out of there.

graveyard of empires, indeed.

honestly, this war seems to have no future. for a world power teetering on the verge of economic collapse, the powers directing the grand imperial project must certainly be seeking another conflict with the prospect of greater ROI that afghanistan. whether it actually leads to a change in global strategy and a reallocation of resources to an easier target is, at this point, hard to say. it certainly makes sense pragmatically to get out of an unwinnable quagmire, and instead focus on an easy victory using hi-tech, gee-whiz weaponry.