What’s In It For Us?
“Afghanistan’s biggest suicide bomb attack death toll is 64 and rising. 59 of them are children, and five of them are teachers,” said Education Ministry spokesman Zahoor Afghan. “There are 96 wounded,” some of them so critically they may die.
The primary reason more children will very likely die is because the medical facilities there are limited. So you would think that we or some other country or the International Red Cross or the Red Crescent or somebody would offer to send in teams of surgeons and medical supplies, but there’s not a whisper of it in the news. No. Here’s all that’s in the news describing the help they got for the worst homicide bombing ever perpetrated in that country:
“US General Dan McNeill, the head of the NATO-led military force here to help the government fight the insurgency, said his soldiers had provided medical assistance and a damage assessment team.” “The White House denounced the bombing and vowed to keep working with NATO to defeat extremists and terrorists.”
That’s it. That’s what help they got. Medical assistance from some soldiers, a “damage assessment” and a Bush denouncement. Whoopee. Sorry, kids.
There’s nothing in Afghanistan for us. No oil, no strategic metals, no manufacturing, nothing but rocks and sand and skinny goats. All that Afghanistan means to our government is that it’s the place Osama lived while he planned the 9/11 attack, supported by the Taliban, the Islamists who’d taken over the country. Afghanistan is nothing more to our government than its propaganda value. It’s a war of containment with as few troops as possible. As long as we can maintain the existence of the Karzai government in Afghanistan that we created, Afghanistan has propaganda value.
That’s what’s in it for us in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s President Musharraf has had opposition leader Benazir Bhuttos house surrounded with barbed wire and police, placed her under house arrest and rounded up about 5000 of her supporters in an effort to stifle protests and demonstrations against his declaration of martial law.
Musharraf has set up his former spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ashfaq Kiani, who is widely considered to be moderate and pro-Western, to take over command of the army if he steps down after presidential elections Saturday. This, of course, is crucial to U.S. anti-terror interests.
This affair is likely to end with Musharraf still President, Bhutto as PM and Gen. Kiani in command of the army, and the United States still an ally of Pakistan. Pakistan would still be a conduit for military materiel going to Afghanistan and at that point progress might even be made on cleaning out the Taliban and their tribal supporters in the interior of Pakistan. If it does, then those 40 to 50 A-bombs will continue to be relatively safe from Islamist hands.
That’s what’s in it for us in Pakistan and why we keep supporting the Musharraf government in spite of his stomping all over the Paki constitution.
Morals and sentiment have nothing to do it anymore. Only the end goals are kept in focus. That, perhaps more than anything else, is what’s wrong with our current administration and why they’ve had so many problems. If you don’t do what’s right, you lose the trust of good people and only scoundrels will be by your side.