November 21, 2001

Sometimes, I find myself in the ridiculous position of cheering for Osama bin Laden. He's a mass murderer on a grand scale, I realize. Normally, I would despise him. And in fact, I do. Of course I do not believe that terrorism should be a part of the world in which we live. But the US policies make it hard for me to cheer for the US. And their "for us or against us" policy makes it difficult -- of course, I'm not for the US. They're arrogant manipulative bastards. Essentially, they're not giving me much choice. How many people are there out there like me? Very few people I know (of course these are mostly college/university students I'm talking about, whose opinions are always without exception marginalized) agree with the American policies in Afghanistan.

Firstly, what does the US want to do? End international terrorism, and bring bin Laden to justice. Exact revenge on him, is what they mean. So, in the last five or so weeks of killing innocent people, bombing innocent towns, bombing international Red Cross hospitals, what have they done? They haven't scratched the surface on ending international terrorism, and they've maybe let bin Laden escape to a different country. So essentially, this war is solving nothing, except for satisfying the American peoples' bloodlust.

Well, they say that the Taliban is bad to women. Laura Bush gave a national address (without her husband, this was apparently a big big big big deal) where she yammered on about the repressive Taliban and how they were mean to women. So, what does the Americans do? They bring in as their puppet government, the Northern Alliance.

What about this Northern Alliance. Basically, they're a group of warlords who have been waging war against each other, and against the Taliban, for hundreds of years. When they found out that the Americans were giving away money and guns and whatever the hell else, they set aside their personal differences and are going after the Taliban. The Americans have stepped into a civil war, and are prepared to support one side. Ostensibly because the Taliban regime is repressive to women. The Northern Alliance on the other hand, are paragons of virtue. They rape, pillage, plunder, steal, murder, and other virtuous things that Americans like to do. They're also not under the full control of the Americans. It's pretty much a mishmash of stuff. A free-for-all down there. American generals are afraid to risk American lives, but Northern Alliance lives are expendable. After all, the more of them die now, the less to worry about later, right? In terms of American casualties, you don't hear a whole lot. I did hear last week that a sailor fell off a boat and suffered minor injuries. He'll probably be given the Purple fucking Heart or some shit. I think he should probably be fired for gross incompetence.

They've offered a reward for the successful capture of bin Laden. $25 million US. That should get the ball rolling without the US even having to get their hands dirty. This isn't a war, it's a fucking business.

I don't have a problem with the aims of the Americans. It's nice to stop terrorism. But they're going about it the wrong way. The brute force way, which is what they're using now, is not good. They'd have to probably make war on the entire middle east, probably large parts of africa and asia, and decimate a large part of their own American (see Oklahoma truck bomb) population to get rid of terrorism in that way. They're off to a good start by killing innocent Afghanis, but don't you think that they should kill all of them if they're going to do this? Don't tell me that the war there isn't going to produce more terrorists. If the Americans killed my family, or my sweetheart, or my dog for basically no reason at all, I'd be mighty pissed too.

Calvin, you took the words right out of my mouth!

Barb