A Petri Dish for Terror:

While Our Attention Is Elsewhere, Afghanistan War Worsens

Rasa - Donald Trump’s presidency has gotten so much attention that America’s war on Afghanistan, now in its 16th year, has received only passing notice.

News ID: 427789

Date: 01 March 2017 - 23:58

RNA - The phrase “no end in sight” barely covers the situation. Victory is an illusion, and chaos, dismay, radically inept are just a few of the recent headlines analyzing Trump’s foreign policy. In truth, disorder would seem to be the strategy of the day for Afghanistan.

After all, this is an administration that thrives on turmoil, always an easier place to rule from than order. And because the commander of US forces in Afghanistan - now America’s longest running war - is asking for more troops, we don’t need to wait that long to find out fairly that the berserkers or the calmer heads in Washington are not running things in Afghanistan.

The idea is “to break a stalemate,” and “those troops would serve mainly as advisers and trainers to Afghan forces, facilitating hold-fight-disrupt operations.” As to how long they would be needed, the generals at the Pentagon are vague. They speak of the necessity of sustaining “an enduring counter-terrorism platform” to bottle up terrorist forces, “so they wouldn’t hit us in the homeland.” This certainly qualifies as one of the stranger definitions of success in a perpetual war that lacks legality under International Law and UN Charter:

1- The United States and its NATO allies have lost the war on Afghanistan. To substantiate, President Trump says the US has squandered trillions of dollars on military operations in the Middle East over the past two decades without winning any of the wars. In his words, “We never win, and we don’t fight to win.” This includes the ongoing war on Afghanistan, which has turned the country into a “petri dish” for terrorists to blend, indeed a laboratory of terror.

2- Trump is calling for a big increase in military spending to send “a message to the world” about America’s strength and resolve. He wants to provide soldiers with the tools to deter war. However, even then America is not going “to start winning wars again.” To substantiate, tens of thousands of classified Afghanistan War documents dumped on the internet by the WikiLeaks add details to what we already knew: The Afghanistan war is messy, American troops target civilians, and weapons fall into the wrong hands. The Pentagon now believes that counter-terrorism (killing Taliban leaders) is more effective than counter-insurgency (allegedly protecting the Afghan population).

3- Coverage of the long-forgotten war has become thinner in the US media, but it's enough to give us the general picture: The war is not going well. It does not seem “winnable” in a strictly military sense of the word. And of course, the Trump administration and a number of high ranking military officials have also told us that. The inevitable outcome of the war is already clear. American and allied troops will be going home soon.

4- America will never win any other war in the Middle East – after almost 17 years of fighting. The US has waged wars on Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. Trump says, “I saw a chart, as of a month ago, $6 trillion we’ve spent in the Middle East. That’s just unacceptable.” He goes on to add that the US has nothing to show for the money spent in the Middle East, with terrorist groups still posing a constant threat.

It’s a true statement. Indeed, “We’re nowhere. We’re less than nowhere.” is an official acknowledgement of failure in America’s global leadership. The entire international community agrees with Trump on that. But don’t expect him to stop all wars. America might be in the biggest decline with economy since the Great Depression, but it’s still business as usual for the Military-Industrial Complex and the War Party. The globalists want Muslim nations to be dysfunctional in order to “stay and entertain”.  Everything is going according to the plan.

Mind you, President Trump is not their undoing either. He is condemned by his own words. He has promised “to defeat” the terrorist group of ISIL. Just like Obama and Bush, he will never do anything to stop the ongoing war on Islam - on the pretext of fighting terror of course. By signing an executive order to ban Muslims and refugees from traveling to the US, he has made that absolutely clear. That is indisputable. Trump is right on warfare – with new tactics though. “Get in, win, and get out as quickly as possible, and get someone else to pay for it. Otherwise forget it.”

As previously, this kind of colonial mentality will only create more chaos with America’s war of aggression in Afghanistan, a war that just won’t end. There will be no “light at the end of the tunnel”, the infamous metaphor from the Vietnam War years, as Trump is in a long war he says the US has already lost. The prospects are dark, metaphors are not superfluous, and in the distance, victory (that “light”) will never be glimpsed - even if he stands tall, sends more troops to America’s number one “petri dish”, and increases military spending. However, getting out is a win in certain ways by saving American lives and not spending trillions more on “exporting democracy”, which will only multiply terrorists in that “dish”.

847/940