Saturday, February 2, 2008

Leave Afghanistan NOW!


The Belgian government has decided to send four F16 fighter bombers and 100 support personnel to Kandahar in September for four months to beef up Belgium's contribution to the NATO aggression against Afghanistan. While Canada is considering pulling its troops out and Germany refuses to give in to pressure by the U.S. to increase its forces in the South of Afghanistan, the Belgian government and its so-called “Christian” minister of defense Pieter De Crem show their total moral depravity by jumping deeper in the Afghan quagmire.

As Matthew Parris convincingly argues in The Times (“Enough. Time to pack up and leave”), Britain should also withdraw its forces because they are not doing anything worthwhile in Afghanistan. Parris: “We British - never mind about America, or Italy, or Canada, Germany or France - are at the limit of what we can achieve by force. It is no good sending any more troops: we haven't any to spare, and the force we already send to Helmand province is overstretched.”

Foreign forces should finally withdraw from the country and let the Afghans sort out their problems. Today the country is no better off than under the Taliban. Sure, there are some pockets of progress, some girls can go back to school, but nobody is in control of the country, certainly not the puppet Kharzai clique, which is not worth to be called a government. Violence is rife, development is stunted and here comes De Crem throwing 30 million euro into the cesspool to finance Belgium's contribution to the mess.

While Belgian F16s have been stationed in the country before, they never dropped a bomb. This time, they will be assigned combat missions and start dropping bombs, killing tens, perhaps hundreds, of innocent Afghan civilians, while the pilots committing these war crimes remain safe up in the air, so De Crem can avoid the ordeal of seeing body bags arriving in Brussels. While murdering Afghan civilians, the Belgian airmen should not run any risks. Shouldn't we call this racism?

2 comments:

Andes Tang said...

While I don't disapprove to a stable Afghanistan and the reasons of America's invasion of the country. I feel that the methods by which the United States has gone about "restructuring" the country has probably made things worse than before. Their lack of a plan is what is causing this issue of a power vacuum in Central Eastern Asia, affecting countries such as Pakistan, India, and China with the fallout of terrorism.

Instead of spreading themselves thin, by attacking an otherwise unassociated country such as Iraq, and killing tens of thousands, the Americans should have consolidated Afghanistan instead of turning it into the new hive of terrorism.

Belgium's relatively minor (4 jets and 100 troops), while a token to the Americans is only that. This doesn't augment the capabilities of the coalition forces there, but rather just gives more targets for Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives to take pot shots at.

I believe that while the Americans are quite successful at winning the conventional war, their inability to create a stable environment, one promotes anti-terrorism sentiments, is extremely lacking. Adversely speaking, they're actually creating even more of a problem by creating the perfect recruiting and training grounds for terrorists. And regardless of how many troops they ship into Afghanistan, things won't change until they are able to change these sentiments.

Anonymous said...

Hello. This post is likeable, and your blog is very interesting, congratulations :-). I will add in my blogroll =). If possible gives a last there on my blog, it is about the Smartphone, I hope you enjoy. The address is http://smartphone-brasil.blogspot.com. A hug.