From Larry Wohlgemuth…

72 virgins is the going Islamic rate to get a man to drive a car filled with explosives into a group of Americans. It must be true, it has to be true, because that’s what our leaders have told us. They want us to believe it’s about the deviant sexual desire of a Muslim, nothing more, nothing less.

I’ve wondered about who would believe that. Amazingly I hear it from people who occupy high stations in life, and not just from the ignorant, wallowing masses. I’ve heard doctors, lawyers, preachers and teachers repeat this claim; totally convinced of its truthfulness. It begs the question, do people become suicide bombers to cash in on a promise of an eternity frolicking with 72 virgins?

My first adult experience with propaganda was Idi Amin. His brutality was never in question, however during his rise to power it wasn’t mentioned in the Western press. His ascension was supported by Western forces eager to get their hands on rich Ugandan mineral deposits. We needed “our son of a bitch” in charge, and only when his demands for a larger cut became inconvenient did the Western press refer to him as “the Butcher of Africa”. Rumors that he was a cannibal were part of the plan to demonize and remove him from power.

In 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait for slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields. He’d received the okay from George Bush I via April Glaspie, who said the United States viewed it as strictly an “Arab matter”. Immediately upon the invasion we spread wild rumors about 300 babies in incubators being removed from hospitals and killed by Iraqi forces. This was the justification used for the first Gulf War. Known as “the Butcher of Baghdad” (sound familiar) he was eventually hunted down and killed.

There are others, like Manuel Noriega and Augusto Pinochet, but the story’s the same. Empowered by the West to facilitate the theft of resources, only to later be demonized and deposed. The reality is that they got greedy and demanded ever bigger shares, and the West dispatched and replaced them with men willing to work for less.

Fast forward to today’s rhetoric and it’s obvious things have not changed. Outlandish claims are made about the Islamic people in the Middle East that we are expected to believe. “They hate our freedoms” and “72 virgins” are the most used. It’s a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign, courtesy of Edward Bernays, designed to influence your beliefs about Muslims. It works because people are too lazy to consider its irrationality. Given that the American Taliban can get one of their unhinged members to walk into a church and shoot a doctor, anything must be possible, right? But let’s consider an alternative.

In the 1953 coup in Iran the CIA helped overthrow the duly elected Mossadegh government and installed the Shah and his American trained SAVAK secret police. A 1963 CIA-backed coup in Iraq brought the Baath party and eventually Saddam Hussein to power. There’s the first Gulf War in 1990, a decade of bombings in the no-fly zones in Iraq throughout the 90s and finally the second Gulf War. As a result millions of Muslims are dead and tens of millions have been injured or otherwise damaged. I can’t imagine what it would be like on my wedding day to see my family and fiancée all lying dead as the result of a bomb. Or my door being kicked in and my wife being dragged away by a secret police force to be beaten, tortured and raped. Or digging through a pile of rubble to retrieve the lifeless body of my three-month-old baby. (WARNING: Graphic Content)

When I was a young man my blood would boil; either for sex when I was horny or revenge when I had been hurt. You could have promised me 72,000 virgins to no avail, but if I had just buried half of my family someone could have convinced me to strap a bomb on my back to kill the people responsible for my pain. I lived for revenge, and I don’t think people in that part of the world are fundamentally any different than me in this regard. They kill because we killed first.

Our government wants us to turn people into cartoon characters, stereotypes, so we won’t consider the ramifications of our actions. In World War II they were called the Krauts and Nips, in Korea it was Chinks, Vietnam was Gooks and now it’s Hajis. The government spreads stories about 72 virgins, but you can’t convince me that they’re any different than we are. They want to fall in love, get married and raise children in what they hope to be a better world, just like we do, and anything else is complete and utter nonsense.

They’re just like us because they ARE us; we’re all one. If our leaders can’t get us to see them as subhuman we would no more pick up a rifle and kill them than we would our own parents, grandparents, spouse or children. By reducing their status it validates our entitlement to exterminate them. Don’t let them do that to you. Your humanity is your birthright, and no one can take it away without your permission.

When we realize we have more in common with the people we are shooting than the people instructing us to do the shooting, then we will own our humanity and the world will know peace, and not before. I say the time is now.

Reuters Photo

The Taliban’s recent assault on downtown Kabul, carried out by a timed series of explosives and suicide bombers, is yet another sign there is no use for The United States, Canada, the UK, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Australia and more to keep their troops in the country. It doesn’t matter if they leave tomorrow or of they leave in 3 years, the end result will be the same; the Taliban will remain and then fight it out with local forces.

In the worst attacks in more than a year, the insurgents did not succeed in seizing  government buildings, but showed they can still cause death, destruction and mayhem.  More than anything, they showed absolutely no fear of or respect for the occupying forces or the Afghan army.  All this at a time when President Obama is desperately trying  to rally support for his short term, but expanded military campaign.

To make matters worse, several of the Taliban were disguised as Afghan security force members, a sure sign that even the Afghan army is working with the Taliban, for fear of what will happen once the the international coalition leaves.

“As we were conducting the ceremony of swearing in, a terrorist attack in a part of Kabul close to the presidential palace is going on. This is just one of the dangers. The danger that could harm Afghanistan is sowing national discord among Afghans,” said corrupt puppet and double agent Afghan President Karzai.

Iraq stands a better chance at stability than Afghanistan, as the Taliban are all about denial. They deny their own government, they deny their own religion, and they even deny the very lives of Afghani men, women and children. Like filthy, shit-smelling cockroaches in the sewers, they will always survive. It’s time to get out, let things happen on their own, and react accordingly. Afterwards, isolation policies like that of what are applied to North Korea and the former Iraqi regime is the only remedy.

What no one seems to understand is that although the Taliban can easily be defeated, wiping them out altogether is like trying get rid of a bad case of herpes – it just ain’t gonna happen.  The best you can hope for is to get it under control, so the occasional flare up can be properly handled.

From David Anthony Hohol…