insecution (imagine theres no intelligent design)

History is a burning bridge with a thousand opposing people standing at each end, brandishing torches, each accusing the other of starting the conflagration. We all know Ronald Regan won the cold war and brought down the soviet union, we all know Mikhail Gorbachev brought down the soviet union from within and won the cold war by ending it through glasnost and perisroika, we all know that the same is true for Lech Walensa for different reasons.

Imagine, if you will, a world where the neo-cons who hijacked the US government foreign policy had in fact been reigned in, if GW had taken his fathers advice and seen these "crazys" and "extremists" for what they are, crazy extremists.

Imagine if in the days after the attacks on the world trade centre, we didnt have dick cheney, donald rumsfeld, wolfowitz et al, saying lets find some evidence to pin this on Iraq and all that has flowed from there, if a few sane voices had emerged, we know the attack was orchestrated and planned from Afghanistan, with the blessing of the Taliban regime (ok, we can if we want argue over the culpability of the Taliban, but I am taking a sweep of history here, not trying to get to the minuetia) and its there we need to concentrate our desire for revenge, rather than accept rumsfelds word that there weren't enough good targets there.

Imagine if the invasion of Afghanistan had of been prosecuted with half the vigour and troops of the Iraq fiasco, that the US hadnt been focused on the next war, hadnt fought the war with money paid to their proxy army the Northern Alliance, hadnt simply staged the invasion as series of photo ops for the gullible. Imagine the state of the world today with a truly secure Afghan government backed by a world wide coalition of forces building its own defence and legitimacy behind that shield.

The Kharzi government has a total budget to work with of less than US$500 million dollars per year, a figure that is considerably less than the money flowing into the NGO's within the country. Now imagine that there is a truly multi national force of sizable proportions (with half or even a quarter the number of US troops that are currently stationed in Iraq) patroling each province, with the abilty to disarm the multitude of warlords ruling each region and that the US commitment in terms of cash supplied were somewhere in the order of $1 billion per month, less than a sixth of what they are spending in Iraq each month. Imagine that aid money being spent to improve the lot of the people of Afghanistan, to provide health care, education and infrastructure that had been utterly destroyed by thirty years of constant war fare, much of it part of the bloody chess game of cold war politics. Imagine if the Kabel-Harat Highway were able to be built properly, not one again, used as a photo op, where raw ashpalt was poured over uncompacted dirt to give the impression that it had been built.

Would this war torn, war weary, divided nation be Denmark, no, but at the very least the world and the people of Afghanistan would not have to stretch thier imagination to see that we were serious about their plight. The mothers and fathers would not need to send their children to maddrass's that preach radicalised Islam as the only way for them to learn to read. The rule of law practised by a centralised, legitimate authority could be given a chance to undermine the self serving policy of local strong men. Radical Islam would have an opposing voice in action and deeds, rather than the current fleeting glimpses of US guns chasing shadows with bullets, to answer to. The arab street would be able to see a tangible expression of the concerns of the west rather than the paper thin veneer of our hypocrisy and Pakistan would have as a neighbour a country on the rise as a democracy that could possibly work in true partnership with the west and as a model for the future.

In Iran I continually ran into Afghan refugees in markets and on the street who would beg me sell them my australian passport, in halting english they would offer me US dollars (a thousand was the highest I was offered) and try to tell me of just how bad it was in Afghanistan, and of how difficult it was to be a refugee in a country that just didnt want them. Remember that Iran has been flooded with not only Afghani's but also Iraqi's fleeing the turmoil of their country, placing huge pressures upon a nation that can barely maintain its own peoples standard of living, an apartment in Tehran will set you back $1000 a month, while a monthly wage is $400.
The frustration of knowing that the best I could do for these refugees was to buy them lunch and offer them a few dollars and do as all tourists do, leave them to their fate, walk away from their misery.

Instead of this type of "success":

July 27 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends First, "We have a real success story to tell you about this morning. More than 600 suspected Taliban have been killed in the past month in Afghanistan." (Or that Donald Rumsfeld has declared that the Taliban have been defeated three times, so far)

We could be talking of a nation that is making genuine headway in its battle to become a successful member of the world of nations. As it is, we are looking once again, as a forgotten backwater in the war on terror and touting bullshit and death as progress. Historicaly, September 11 will be seen as a direct result of our neglect of Afghansitan after we used them as a proxy battlefield for out cold war delusions, already we are making the same mistakes, living under the same delusions and using them as a proxy battlefield for our delusional "war on terror", will the results be the same? Will the poppy fields bloom in the war on drugs?