yamfood

Dimanno got this one utterly wrong and the letter writers compounded her mistake. They enumerate the West’s losses in blood and treasure, but it is never acknowledged how much Afghanistan has lost. The analysis is also completely divorced from history. According to Dimanno, the “U.S., Canada and NATO engineered” Afghanistan’s rapid advancement from 19th century practices under the Taliban, with such things as women’s rights. But women’s rights would have been far more modern under the communist regime supported by U.S.S.R. in 1978. That was before America decided to wage a proxy war against the Soviets through their former allies: the Taliban.

It was during this conflict that the Americans began training and arming the fighters of their agent Osama Bin Laden. Once the Soviets had been pushed back, after years of devastating ground war, the Americans abandoned Afghanistan to its own devices, where it became a narco-state, a sponsor to dangerous terrorists, and a breeding ground for anti-U.S. sentiment. Perhaps OBL, America’s rogue operative, planned the terrorist attacks of 9/11 there, presumably the reason we attacked Afghanistan in the first place. Yet even though that culprit has supposedly been assassinated, we continue to occupy the country and commit atrocities against its people. Soon we will abandon them to fate again.

Imperialistic Western foreign policies have brought Afghanistan to its current state and revisionist historical analyses will not right those wrongs. As long as we remain the wind-up toys and apologists of the American military-industrial complex, Canada will continue to tritely defend the indefensible.

_Mike Sampat, Toronto