En Passant

Our leaders lie to us every day about Afghanistan.

They lie about why we are there.

They lie about what we are doing. 

And now they are lying about Australian casualties.

According to Paul Toohey in The Weekend Australian:

In hospitals around Australia, soldiers who have been seriously wounded in Afghanistan are checked in under false names in order to protect them from the public eye.

Our leaders don’t want us to know the reality of what is happening in Afghanistan.

They don’t want us to know we are killing innocents there.

They don’t want us to know our hit squads are killing Afghan leaders.

They don’t want us to know the Afghans are fighting back and maiming Australian invaders. So they hide the truth in our hospitals.

They can’t hide those killed there so the liars turn their deaths  into a patriotic circus.

To the liars we are just the dumb schmucks who can’t be trusted with the truth.

They fear that if we knew the truth, some of us, god forbid, might begin to question having our troops killing Afghans for.. well, exactly what for?

For democracy? The Karzia government has no legitimacy. It rigged the recent vote.

For women’s liberation? The Karzai Government legalised rape in marriage and its girls’ schools are just for consumption on TVs in western lounge rooms.

Its real policy is to oppress women.

For stability? We have been there years and despite the death and destruction we have unleashed, there is no stability. The Taliban on the other hand were a stable government with control over about 85 percent of the country.

To end ‘terrorism’?  We are the terrorists.

To end corruption?  This Karzai Government is made up of corrupt war lords and war criminals. They thrive and survive on the drug trade.

Australian troops are in Uruzgan Province, with the Dutch providing the main contingent.  (They will leave next year.)

The Dutch commissioned a report by The Liaison Office, an Afghan non-government organisation, on the Province.

The report found that in four sectors of the province the situation is actually worse than before we went in.  The Taliban have a shadow Government there ready to assume power. 

The Afghans in Uruzgan don’t support our puppets, a pack of corrupt, crooked criminals. 

The resistance, what the invaders label the Taliban, now challenge for power in large swathes of the country. Their victory seems almost inevitable.

The Russian imperialists couldn’t beat the mujaheddin, despite having over 100,000 troops there every year for over 8 years. 

What makes the American imperialists, hated as much as the Russians, think they can achieve what the Soviets couldn’t?

The time has come to challenge our liars about Afghanistan. Let’s build a mass movment to bring Australian troops home.