The US is ‘winding down’ the Afghanistan war by pulling out regular troops and boosting the number Special Forces. Gosh, that should work.
Three things.
1) You just knew this whole new “combat mission ends in 2013, troops out by 2014” was election-year spin, didn’t you?2) This is yet another example of how special forces are becoming the mover-and-shaker of the military, with consequently rising budgetary and bureaucratic clout (as well as ever closer ties to the CIA, now run by SOF-fan General Petraeus.)
3) The Green Beret’s real mission, no matter what is being said now, is going to turn into refereeing the next Afghan civil war.
The only explanation of the US propensity to be involved in ever increasing numbers of wars, conflicts, and interventions is the we are Addicted To War. (Read it online for free. It’s several years old and goes up to the Iraq War but is still completely relevant.)
11 years of bloodshed and misery to remove the Taliban and as the West pulls out the Taliban are ready to move in and take control. However what we have left is a country in ruins with massive unemployment, heart breaking drug addiction, unbelievable poverty and wealthy drug barons in control. This is the legacy the West hands to the Afghan people, they paid in lives and misery, we paid in billions of dollars and the deaths of far too many of our young people. The story in Iraq is much the same, the ordinary people pay and are left to cope with depleted uranium, deaths in every family, destroyed infrastructure, homelessness, poverty and deprivation. Where is the benefit of either of these actions, where is the public outrage in the West. We accept this slaughter and no doubt if the powers that be decide, for what ever insane reason, to do the same to Syria, the people of the West will put up with it with the usual anti-war protest by the handful. We live under a state of international corporate fascism and the public seem to want it, accept it, or are blind to the fact. WHY.