I just finished re-reading President Obama's 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Now I think I understand what our president has been trying to tell us right along; that war is not really war but that war is really peace. This is so reminiscent of a quote from Orwell's classic novel, "1984"; "The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous, war has ceased to exist. ... War is Peace."
But wait a minute. I still have some reservations and doubts in my mind about what his message really means. You see, in this eloquent speech, the main objective seems to be the justification of war by portraying an illusion of peace; So, let's further analyze his remarks about war and peace by recalling the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by G.W. Bush, together with the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and the widespread use of drones in Pakistan by President Obama. These warlike actions have all been steps in the quest for peace -" right?
Therefore, the people of those nations should, at some point, finally begin to understand that they are a part of this honorable quest for peace. They have to put out of their minds the fact that hundreds of thousands of their countrymen have either died, had their homes destroyed, or have been forced into exile in neighboring countries; that they live in constant fear, that his is the price that they have to pay in the process of establishing peace.
Quite logically it follows that these people must further understand that in order to truly achieve peace they have to be controlled and pacified. That is sometimes very difficult for such people to accept but, over time, it becomes easier as they realize that it is for their own good. This, of course, is a part of the commonly used military strategy of "capturing" hearts and minds.
In order to continue this process to the intended objective of peace, it is also necessary to invest billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to build numerous military bases and to spend additional billions to train and equip the police and military in these nations to make certain that the programs of control and pacification of the citizenry are successful.
Was it the Taliban that was responsible for the despicable attack of 9/11? No, in fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, two were Egyptians, one a Lebanese and one from the United Arab Emirates. If this is so then why did G.W. Bush order an attack on Afghanistan rather than Saudi Arabia? The obvious answer is that it would not have been justifiable to attack one of our primary suppliers of petroleum. So the Taliban, who actually did have some contacts with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, became the primary targets; the insurgents, the enemy and the face of terror to America.
So Afghanistan rather than Saudi Arabia was attacked and the mission to hunt down no more than 100 or so Al Qaeda terrorists was undertaken by using a combination of NATO and U.S. troops to form a massive military force to fight a guerilla war. The Taliban were in control of that nation as they have been for a very long time and they weren't going to watch their country be invaded and occupied. So they had to be eliminated.
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