The Real American Dream

A Story by kingfugazi

In this work I try to blend the insanity of facts and perception regarding the level of public awareness of the differnece between a civilian definition of "war" and a capitalist definition of "war".

I need to provide a quick backdropp for the calculation I am going to attempt. First, the term “The Taliban” doesn’t refer to the original government entity the U.S. declared war against. It in fact has come to refer to at least four independently operating jihadist groups whose primary and secondary targets are “invading infidels” and “traitors”. The traitors consist of Afghan Security Forces in the same way American Revolutionist would have viewed their neighbors, maybe even their family, who chose allegiance to England over independence. And the foreign invaders are nothing short of how we still view the Japan that attacked Pearl Harbor.
It is tragic that these warriors resort to such brutal tactics. I personally feel that the fact that less than 20,000 of these people, that most Americans would honestly consider primitive, have maintained such a level of combat that has demanded counter forces so much greater in proportion and technology, for such long a time, is a great accomplishment in their minds (but not too note worthy to Americans) . No less an accopmlidshment than that which we still feel when thinking about winning our freedom from the military force of the British Empire. I think this is something that binds these men to our nation’s heritage. Afghanistan had to fight three Wars of Independence with the English Empire. Even after the three wars it was not a military victory in Afghanistan that severed Britain’s imperial military influence. It was something that can definitely be argued by scholars and politicians, but in my novice opinion was directly solidified in history as a result of Gandhi’s non-violent defeat of Brittania in India.
Also, consider that U.S. forces found one man in one big a*s country, Saddam in Iraq (hiding in a hole in the dirt) . We spearheaded the operation that led to the killing of Pablo Escobar. And don’t forget, most of us have seen Blackhawk Down. And the big daddy of all Where’s Waldos, U.S. forces snuck in a military controlled country, to a city right next to a major military academy and got Osama bin Laden then snuck back out (sorta, except for that top secret stealth helicopter our forces left behind that “malfunctioned” meaning that that single mission cost multiple BILLIONS of boo-coo tax dollars) .
Either these groups of mountain men in Afghanistan are skilled far beyond the reach of our technology, in which case we should question what technologies are being invested into and why such U.S. military technologies are, apparently, so much more primitive than people we arrogantly call “camel jockies”. Or? Or what? I almost can’t even think of an “or”. These guys are like ninja injuns but better. Concealing their travel routes, methods, recruitment rendezvous sites (as most of the jihadists are not native to Afghanistan) , weapons stashes, escape strategies following attacks from all the unmanned drone hellfire missiles, satellites, patrols, paid informants and whatever other method(s) of surveillance NATO forces (and the majority of the CIA personel, whose highest concentration of agents and assests is in Afghanistan) utilize proves these guys can “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” whether we like it or not.
Or, this is in deed one of the most grotesques misuses of governmental power being perpetrated against a civilian population, US.
True, the use of the FBI to infiltrate the Civil Rights movement, spy on its leaders (Martin Luther King, Jr., Harry Belafonte, Ralph Abernathy to name a few) is another example of government resources being used in a way that endangers its own society and peace. As well as, selling American made missiles to Iran to buy cocaine from guerilla rebels in Nicaragua and using CIA assets to transport the drug into the U.S. for public distribution on the black-market (literally) . Yes, those too are very apparent examples of government corruption and misuse of power. Don’t even mention the Tuskegee experiments on U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.
Even if you consider the mainstream war info[ganda], the management of this war is pretty bad. Like Vietnam, officially declared “a war” after the U.S. government tells the public that the enemy attacked a U.S. naval vessel in the Gulf of Tonkein. The public rallies behind the government to defend the nation from an “act of war” (as the president stated it to be) , something that was actually completely fabricated by the government (including the president) for the sole purpose of seducing the public into a legally CONSTITUTIONAL WAR. A war I am positive the top brass and political elites (like Kissinger) thought would be… a what? A walk in the park? A cinch? Maybe, a capitalist friendly, lucrative social environment both politically and financially? Whatever vision the architects of the Vietnam War had, and we can argue they did what they did for one devious reason or another, but they did do what they did. What they did just happened to extend and expand the war to the breaking point of the public, costing billions of tax dollars, over 58,000 young American lives, oh and just in case there are still some Americans that recognize people of other nations as human beings, around 2 MILLION Indo-Asian lives.
Is Afghanistan a new U.S. experience? Not as a potential loss, we lost Korea and Vietnam. Not in NOT having attacked us but still being invaded. Not in such amazingly low casualty rates (more than 12,000 soldiers have died including: KIA; accidents; soldier on soldier violence; (and the deadliest threat to U.S. soldier RIGHT NOW) suicides) that are far below the 100,000 youths we sacraficed in Korea And Vietnam. Not in that, as an unconventional military force (using the training U.S. personnel provided them 20 years ago to fight the Soviets) they (the “Taliban”) have survived war against a coalition of the world’s top militaries (over 120,000 NATO forces) AND a large national force of security soldiers (Over 300,000) trained by the U.S. with the latest and greatest combat training.
This war is unique in no way whatsoever. An invasion of U.S. forces on the grounds of some threat against “national security” that tends to ever increase the burden of footing the bill on the public (including young lives and their emotional stability) , creating economic hardships, while the government and military sell national interests and services to the highest bidder generating massive capitalist profits (meaning increasing their own personal wealth) . This is the real American Dream and I think we should wake up.