This being Veterans' Day, I could write another post about the need for a more compassionate policy for veterans who have returned from our recent (and not so recent) wars. This year, though, I wish to call attention to the fact that Veterans' Day was originally Armistice Day, a celebration of the end of the First World War. I'm hoping that NATO can move the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan prior to the projected 2014 departure. It sure would be good to have a genuine armistice, an end to the long, pointless war. I'm not holding my breath, though.
As is typical, I'll post the video to Tin Soldier by Belfast's Stiff Little Fingers, an angry but not unsympathetic view of the young men who composed an occupation force from a member of the occupied populace.
All too often, young people join the military to escape from dim economic prospects, only to be used as pawns by policy makers who will never have to bear the burden of suffering that inevitably results from war. Here's hoping to an early armistice, and a rejection of the impulses that have led us, again and again and again and again, to war.
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4 comments:
We ought to have gotten out of there long ago. Nothing is going to be getting any better before we finally leave, anyways.
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I wonder how many Afghans would leave their country if they could.
I'd just like somebody to explain to me the difference in US policy between a local insurgency in Afghanistan and one in Sudan or Nigeria. Yes, a dozen years ago the Taliban gave al-Quaeda leadership sanctuary, but those guys are dead or in prison now, and the Taliban wasn't ever a threat to US lives or interests.
The answer, of course, is that there is less political risk in continuing a low-level pointless war than there is in ending it. By keeping American combat troops in Afghanistan the President is insulated against recriminations if/when another attack happens in the same way he would be exposed to them if he withdrew those troops...
I had no idea that you guys were still in Afghanistan! Not sure why-I just assumed you left shortly after we did.
Wow!
((Hugs))
Laura
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