On 17 Jan 2006 at 9:51, Denys Beauchemin wrote:

> Those evil US soldiers, will they stop at nothing? 

It is a remarkable contrast with today, is it not, how the US 
government viewed and the portrayed the Soviet era invasion of 
Afghanistan in 1979? Was that not also an attempt by a great power 
to put down terrorism, inflamed by radical Islam, for the purpose 
of domestic security?  As I recall, was this not the war in which 
Osama bin Laden, under U.S. tutelage, got his start in irregular 
warfare?

The extraordinary medical care lavished on the relative handful 
Canadian and American casualties only highlights in the starkest 
possible terms who is actually suffering in this obscene attempt to 
cast the world in a mould that it will not fit.  Consider only the 
number of children killed in the airstrikes and gunship attacks on 
"suspected" terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.   Recall for the 
example loss of a dozen people killed while they slept in their 
home in Baghdad this past January 3rd., all women and children, 
some below the age of ten.  They were the victims of an intentional 
USAF aerial attack on a home "suspected" of harbouring terrorists. 

This was an aerial attack on a densely populated urban centre in 
the middle of the night on the basis of a suspicion!  No ground 
sweep.  No attempt to locate and identify who was present or what 
activities might be subject to sanction.  No bomb-damage assessment 
or mission effectiveness inquiry. No, some middle-aged officer 
flying a twenty million dollar warplane just dropped some form of 
guided munition, probably a Maverick (unit cost ~ $100,000.00) or 
two, on a house picked out of a group of identical houses by the 
remote operator of a pilotless drone and twelve women and children 
are dead and the neighbours left to clean up the mess.  Our hero 
then returned his fast-mover to his airfield and no doubt retired 
to an air-conditioned mess to retell his adventure and embellish 
the details of his personal blow against terrorism.

I suspect that if this had happened in say, Texas, and if it was 
the family of one of this list's members, that then perhaps a 
rather different viewpoint regarding the liberal application of 
lethal violence in the pursuit of peace might develop.  Some might 
begin to appreciate the despair that engenders such hatred of those 
who have taken all that one values that self-sacrifice in the form 
of a human weapon is actually embraced as a welcome relief from the 
pain of surviving.

Then again, perhaps not.  Some people are so wedded to their 
imaginary worlds that they are content to see everything about them 
consumed in a holocaust rather than alter their beliefs.  But it is 
no doubt far easier to stomach when it is somebody else's children 
and it is far, far away.  

I regret all of the deaths and all of the injuries to all of the 
people who have suffered, soldier and civilian alike, because a 
small group of powerful people have their worldviews stuck in the 
late 19C.  They should be careful about what they seek however.  
They may yet find it and it will not be to their taste.


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