By Ed Kent
November 1 – It is a well known fact that our leading newspapers are laying off reporters who are qualified to do in depth research. The news that reaches most Americans comes from TV and radio channels focused on advertising catching stuff – the latest child murder, serial killers, and occasional news flashes or largely brief and interrupted interviews with some knowledgeable and other intentionally deceiving commentators.
Personally, I scan a series of net sources each day that I can trust and listen to a few in depth interview programs and then do my blogs. The knowledgeable people have made it clear that Afghanistan is not Iraq.
Afghans for the most part distrust and resist the notion of a national government and have driven out every external ‘colonizer’ or even well intentioned influences such as that of the Obama people. But one has to doubt that there is any way to accomplish our goals of a unified and peace-oriented country there. This is not a country. It is a melange of conflicting forces – tribal to village dominated. The landscape might have been designed to protect such as the murderous Taliban and put our troops at risk.
Obama is now being accused by the right wingers – who seem to have pretty well taken over the Republican Party – of delaying sending yet more troops there as cannon folder for the resisters. It has obviously come clear to them that the more of ours they can kill or maim, the greater will be the American public’s resistance to our continuing on there. As of today we have had 911 of ours killed and many of our allies.
Ed Kent is a retired philosophy professor from Brooklyn College. He writes and posts for several portals.
Editor’s Note: Body Counting Sites:
icasualties.org
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/