I'm really annoyed at all you Australians. We sent you our Prime Minister on the understanding that you would keep a muzzle on him and give us a bit of a break. Instead, you allowed him to hob-nob with John Howard. Now look what you've done. Our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has caught the war bug from yours. According to Reuters Canada this is what Harper said in your parliament [Harper vows continued support for Afghanistan].CANBERRA (Reuters) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper, under fire at home for a troop commitment to Afghanistan that has cost 70 lives, said on Tuesday he would not abandon the country.9-11 showed no such thing. Don't you remember? They didn't attack America because they were poor, miserable, and stupid, they attacked because they hate freedom and democracy. If we stay in Afghanistan and force them to be free and democratic then they'll hate us even more,
"This cause is global and necessary," Harper said in a speech to Australia's parliament on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
"Because as 9-11 showed, if we abandon our fellow human beings to lives of poverty, brutality and ignorance, in today's global village, their misery will eventually and inevitably become our own," said Harper.
Hmmm ... there seems to be something wrong with that argument ....
Okay, let's try this. If we stay in Afghanistan we'll have just as much success as the British did before World War II and the Russians did in the 1980's.
Nope .... that one doesn't work either.
The heck with it. Let's just get out as fast as we can and allow the people of Afghanistan to deal with their own problems.
By the way, you Australians can keep him. We don't want him back.
[Photo Credit: REUTERS/Tim Wimborne]
I wonder if the people of Afganistan actually know how to deal with their problems. Not to worry, it looks as though the Taliban are falling over themselves to help out!
ReplyDeleteWhile I am personally in favour of further Canadian presence and military action in Afghanistan, I'm somewhat disturbed by the attitudes of some of my fellow-travellers.
ReplyDeleteShouting "Taliban!" over and over again as if it's some magical mind-changing chant hardly seems beneficial to advancing reasoned discourse.
I'm afraid that you are too late. While he was here, we did a deal, and instead we are sending Howard to Canada, with the understanding that he won't be prosecuted for crimes against civility if he never returns.
ReplyDeleteIf he ends up as the next Canadian prime minister, well, that's your lookout.
Let's just get out as fast as we can and allow the people of Afghanistan to deal with their own problems.
ReplyDeleteWe already tried that once. The result was rigid religious oppression of the Afghan population, thousands of years of cultural heritage destroyed, billions of dollars in damaged and destroyed property all over the world, and well over three thousand innocent lives lost.
Oh, wait -- most of those were American and Third Worlder lives. Sorry, they don't count for much in your reckoning, do they?
(Yeah, I know that's harsh. You deserve it for writing such drivel. Isolationism doesn't work in the 21st century, and anybody as savvy as you are should understand that without me having to tell you.)
Blame 9/11 on "leaving afghanistan alone", simply like that? Naaaa.
ReplyDeleteBin Laden, the leader of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, is Saudi, not Afghan. Trained and armed by the US, BTW. He made afghanistan his playground.
Most of the guys in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi too...and inmediatley before this attack, in case some of you guys did not notice, the situation was getting pretty nasty in Israel- you know, that country armed to the back teeth that the US created as a solution to the Jew problem.
One can equally say that It's all the meddling with the arab world that got us here in the first place
ReplyDelete...that country armed to the back teeth that the US created as a solution to the Jew problem.
ReplyDeleteUm... did you mean that to sound as horrible as it does?
"the Jew problem." What is this, 1933? You know how that looks, right? You didn't intend to sound like an antisemitic ass, did you?
I am NOT an antisemitic ass. Many bright and lovable types have come form that people. I don't judge them nor any "nation"
ReplyDeleteAntisemitism is not my problem; I am merely pointing out that some europeans made it their problem back in the 1930's, and the consequences of this internal problem in europe were transported to the middle east.
Every time you build nations where some kind of nation already exists, we get this kind of problem: specially if th new nations are dominated by a foreign kind of culture.
ReplyDeleteMya we be reminded too that the bristish invented the current arab countires, and dicing upt the map and leaving zones in conflict (Irak vs Iran; Pakistn vs India)
I am NOT an antisemitic ass.
ReplyDeleteGood. Just making sure; my opinion is that your earlier words could easily be misconstrued. Thanks for clarifying.
Now we seem to be wandering into a discussion of colonial and post-colonial history. I'm afraid I can't add much to that discussion
Well, some western supremacists seem to think this is all about barbaric islamic tribes fighting each other.
ReplyDeleteWesterners and Israelites are just another of the "barbaric tribes", as involved in the turmoil and killing as any other.
We should keep that in mind.