Sunday, March 18, 2012

Graveyard Of Empires

War, what is it good for? Not even oil.
The news of the massacre in Afghanistan really didn't surprise me.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/18/robert-bales-us-soldier-accused-of-afghan-massacre
Why Robert Bales? And Why now? This attack occurred last Sunday, and there are still no charges against the Staff Sargent, but plenty of speculation. Our government is now suddenly concerned that Sargent Bales may have had PTSD issues. After FOUR tours of duty, and the partial loss of his foot. According to what I have read he bought a $280,000 home in Washington state, and was having trouble keeping up with the mortgage payments. It's really too bad he didn't go batshit on Bank of America, but I digress.
The Afghan villagers are saying that there is no way one man could have carried out this atrocity. Witnesses have said that the murders occurred in three houses in two different neighborhoods and no one man could have dragged the bodies back to one room and set them on fire. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/16/us-afghanistan-idUSBRE82F0PV2012031
There is speculation that Sargent Bales is taking the fall for allowing a situation to get out of hand, that he and his men had been drinking and things got ugly. Our government may be putting out the insane lone gunman story. It's like a flashback of the massacre at My-Lai in Vietnam, and it is probably a likelier story. Obviously there were no high level people in firing range and we have drones to do that now anyway, so it probably wasn't an undercover mission gone wild.
Here's some interesting statistics; in 2011 the China National Petroleum Corp. signed a contract with Afghanistan for their oil (they have about 1.6 billion barrels). The China Metallurgical Group got the copper mine and probably the other minerals too. So "W"'s oil war back-fired. Like everything else he did.
The Afghans want us out of their country, after this atrocity, I see no reason to delay. That no one looked at the history of war in that country and the loss of life over centuries is astonishing. What other outcome could there possibly be but failure and continued suffering. Because of Bales we should bail.

1 comment:

  1. I don't disagree with your title and I adamantly agree with your conclusions but in reality it's a Graveyard of People... Empires be damned!

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