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Feb. 17th, 2008 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adiva_calandia*head in hands* This class is terrible for my blood pressure.
You know what makes me truly incoherent with wrath? The fact that when I was in seventh grade, a few months after September 11th, I very earnestly researched a project on women in Afghanistan and the Taliban's strictures, inspired by an article in Time. Of course, even at 13, I wasn't thrilled about the fact that the US had invaded Afghanistan without actually declaring war on them, just on this nebulous "terror."
And it pisses me off that having torn down the government in Afghanistan, having bombed them and changed life there in significant ways, having pledged to bring them democracy and a stable government and to help them rebuild, having joked about not bringing knitting needles on plans because "someone might knit an Afghan" for a few years . . . nobody talks about it anymore.
Do not think for a second that I devalue the war in Iraq in favor of Afghanistan. Particularly with what I've been reading over the past couple weeks, I end up wanting to punch a bag until my knuckles bleed over the absofuckinglutely stupid and evil way that conflict has been handled. I want to scream, but I'm in a Starbucks.
But I want someone to talk about the fact that before the US unilaterally, preemptively invaded Iraq with the noble goals of finding WMDs, unseating Saddam Hussein, and incidentally gaining control over one of the most important sources of oil in the world, we first got ourselves a nice foothold in Afghanistan. We're still there. We're thinking about sending more troops. The country is still in turmoil.
Our track record does not start in Iraq.
And since no one else seems to want to talk about it, I will. I am angry and sad and impotent, but I will remember, and I will talk.
Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guidelines about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. -- George Bush, Sr., and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998) (Full quote)
You know what makes me truly incoherent with wrath? The fact that when I was in seventh grade, a few months after September 11th, I very earnestly researched a project on women in Afghanistan and the Taliban's strictures, inspired by an article in Time. Of course, even at 13, I wasn't thrilled about the fact that the US had invaded Afghanistan without actually declaring war on them, just on this nebulous "terror."
And it pisses me off that having torn down the government in Afghanistan, having bombed them and changed life there in significant ways, having pledged to bring them democracy and a stable government and to help them rebuild, having joked about not bringing knitting needles on plans because "someone might knit an Afghan" for a few years . . . nobody talks about it anymore.
Do not think for a second that I devalue the war in Iraq in favor of Afghanistan. Particularly with what I've been reading over the past couple weeks, I end up wanting to punch a bag until my knuckles bleed over the absofuckinglutely stupid and evil way that conflict has been handled. I want to scream, but I'm in a Starbucks.
But I want someone to talk about the fact that before the US unilaterally, preemptively invaded Iraq with the noble goals of finding WMDs, unseating Saddam Hussein, and incidentally gaining control over one of the most important sources of oil in the world, we first got ourselves a nice foothold in Afghanistan. We're still there. We're thinking about sending more troops. The country is still in turmoil.
Our track record does not start in Iraq.
And since no one else seems to want to talk about it, I will. I am angry and sad and impotent, but I will remember, and I will talk.
