Readers who have been following WWW since Day One know that Walt has stopped noting the deaths of Canadian military personnel in Afghanistan. That's because Canada gave up on supporting the US-led occupation, withdrawing all but 1000 or so "trainers" who are now safely (?) inside the wire in Kabul.
Most of the French left last year, and other NATO forces are packing their duffel bags even as we speak, leaving the Americans to turn off the lights, which they plan to do by the end of 2014, leaving the so-called Afghan National Army and police responsible for their so-called country's so-called security.
But the withdrawal ["retreat" or "headlong flight", surely! Ed.] isn't happening quickly enough to suit the Afghans. They showed their impatience to be rid of the occupying infidels several times in August, killing numerous western troops and more numerous Afghans in suicide bombings and other attacks in various parts of the sandpit.
At dawn today, two suicide attackers, one driving a fuel tanker, blew themselves up near a US base in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 12 people. No American or coalition soldiers were killed, although an undisclosed number were wounded.
A Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack, which he said was targeting the US base. In a separate incident, two US soldiers were killed in eastern Ghazni province. That's the first two for September. 53 foreign troops were killed in Afghanistan in August.
A disturbing number of the attacks on Western troops are what are now being called "green-on-blue killings" -- attacks by Afghan soldiers or police, or at least by terrorists dressed in those uniforms. According to a recent column by Gwynne Dyer, fully one-quarter of the Westerners killed in August were murdered by Afghan government soldiers or police.
Why are the "students" rising up against their "teachers"? It's not because they are all terrorists. According to a 2011 Pentagon analysis reported by Bloomberg, only 11% of the killings are the result of Taliban infiltration. The more common cause is beefs about and against their western "teachers" and "helpers". The Afghans don't want their country occupied by infidel foreigners. Period.
Quoting now from Gwynne Dyer's column:
Last year a team of US Army psychologists investigated the nature of these grudges and quarrels, conducting interviews with dozens of American and Afghan focus groups. Their report, "A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility," concluded that the Afghan troops see the American soldiers as "a bunch of violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving, profane infidel bullies hiding behind high technology."
The U.S. troops, in return, generally view their Afghan allies as "a bunch of cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous and murderous radicals."
Dyer says this does not constitute the foundation for a successful collaboration. Indeed. But it gets worse.
The view of the Afghan soldiers is more positive, despite all that, than the civilian population's attitude towards the foreign forces. A poll conducted in late 2010 by the Afghan Centre for Socio-Economic Research reported that nearly 60 percent of civilians wanted all the foreign soldiers gone within a year. Forty percent would still want the foreigners out, even if their departure meant that the violence got worse.
The question becomes, then, why are we still there? The Afghans hate us even more than we hate them. Western blood and Western treasure are being poured into the desert sands every day. Yet America still plans to leave tens of thousands of its military personnel in Afghanistan after 2014 -- on their own, mind you -- to "help" those who cannot and will not be helped.
Why?! If you're an American, you need to think about that before you vote in November. If you're a citizen of Australia, Britain, Canada or a western European country, let your government know that you oppose following the USA into any other Middle Eastern quagmires. Like Syria or Iran. We can't afford to do this again!
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