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Qazi Mansoor Hassan 
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''Good morning Vietnam''
By: Anwar Hussain
Updated on Saturday, August 28, 2004 - 10:27:22 AM
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in the midst of that grotesque war a supposedly friendly yet mindless greeting from a radio station to a people some of who would not live to see the sunset of the day. In a curious blend of comedy and horror, the Americans went into that country to liberate the Vietnamese and in the process bombed virtually every inch of it. They went in as friends but ended up murdering the hosts, a pattern that the US would continue to follow for decades to come. > > > > > The Vietnam War is a good example of how the Post 2nd World War US would create enemies to advance its own agenda. During WW-II, Ho Chi Minh led the struggle on behalf of the Allied Powers against the Japanese with the understanding that Vietnam be given its freedom from French domination after the war ended. Ho Chi Minh kept to his words. On September 2, 1945 a band marched through Hanoi playing the Star Spangled Banner. Soon thereafter, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese Independence. > > > > > The Allied Powers, though, had other plans. They divided the country into North and South Vietnam. To add insult to the injury, South Vietnam was given back to the French. The US betrayed the Vietnamese and endorsed French subjugation. The US reportedly even offered the French nuclear weapons to use against the Vietnamese, an offer that the French fortunately declined. It was only after the betrayal by the US that Ho Chi Minh turned to Russia for the help needed to defeat the French and truly became a 'communist'. The US had, in effect, turned a friend into an enemy. > > > > > The CIA's infamous Phoenix Operation began soon after the US takeover in 1954. Under the watchful eyes of their American guardians, the South Vietnamese secret police conducted live burnings, garroting, rape, torture, sabotage - much of which was blamed conveniently on the Vietcong. Over 50,000 civilians were tortured and murdered at the hands of the CIA & military intelligence. In all, the US forces annihilated well over a million Vietnamese. The land mines, unexploded ordinance and death from chemical contamination killed and crippled countless more. Good morning Vietnam. > > > > > Afghanistan followed a similar pattern. In the 80s, the US turned that country into a battleground to decimate the occupying Russian military juggernaut. For the purpose, Islamic resistance was raised, groomed and nurtured by the US. Love oozed out of American pores then for the religious fervor and sense of sacrifice of these Afghan fighters. Hollywood made their Rambo fight against the Russians as the ally of these Afghans and the American press waxed eloquent. > > > > > Washington even courted Taliban, the offspring of that same resistance, for years before indicting them for the crime of harboring Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaida terrorist network. The Clin ton administration feigned ignorance to the rise of Taliban from October 1994 onwards. Between 1995 and 1998, especially after the fall of Kabul in September 1996, Clinton administration officials openly lobbied Taliban authorities for Unocal-an American oil company. The links between the Bin Laden and the incumbent US president's families too are only now coming to the surface. > > > > > When Kabul fell to the Taliban in September 1996, the U.S. State Department announced it would establish diplomatic relations with Taliban by sending a diplomat to Kabul. State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said the U.S. found "nothing objectionable" in the steps taken by the Taliban to impose Islamic law. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphael forcefully endorsed the same in a closed-door UN session in November 1996. > > > > > After capturing Kabul, as the Taliban started their military push northward, top U.S. officials continued to pay regul ar visits to Kabul. They included former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphael, her successor Karl Inderfurth, Deputy Secretary for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering, and the U.S. ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson. As late as July 2001, Christina Rocca, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, met Taliban officials in Islamabad and announced $43 million in food and shelter aid, bringing to $124 million the U.S. contribution that year alone. The Taliban were allowed to spend this money without any accountability. > > > > > Spurred into a knee-jerk response by 9/11, Washington went to war against a country that was being wooed and used by it for years, to which none of the hijackers belonged and from where the supposed mastermind Bin Laden is yet to be recovered. Their overwhelming rejoinder proved to be a kiss of death to about 8000 to 10000 Afghan civilians. Each innocent twin-towers victim was avenged by a ratio of 4:1 from an equally innocent Afghan populace. Innocence of the victims remained the only common denominator. The highlight of the Afghan war was the very low value put upon Afghan civilian lives by U.S. military planners and the political elite, as clearly revealed by U.S. willingness to hit heavily populated regions with devastating firepower. The fact that a living, breathing people were sacrificed in order to (possibly) protect future American lives, has left an indelible imprint on one of the poorest, most desperate peoples of our world. Good morning Afghanistan. > > > > > Likewise in Iraq too the pattern is all too visible. The US involvement goes back several decades and parallels British domination of the country early in the century. In 1958 the CIA is said to have hired Saddam Hussein to assassinate the President of Iraq - Abdel Karim Qassim. By 1963, Hussain and the US were successful in overthrowing the Iraqi government. In the process 5,000 were killed. Immediately afte r the coup Saddam rounded up and murdered another 800 potential opponents on a list provided by the CIA. > > > At the same time the US supplied Iraq with tons of chemical and biological weapons to use against Iran and Iraq's own Kurdish population. Four deadly strains of Anthrax were handed over to Saddam from United States' military Bio Weapons Lab in Fort Dedtrik. The results, of course, were spectacular. In 1986 Reagan sent Saddam a secret message imploring him to step up his bombing of Iran. Rumsfeld remained the principle courier for delivering messages of this kind. Up until Iraq's US approved invasion of Kuwait, various US functionaries sang praises of Saddam Hussein, noting how he had vastly improved education, medical care, and the standard of living of his people. His regime was called one of the most enlightened, progressive governments in the region. > > > As Iraq massed its troops on the Kuwaiti border in preparation for invasion, the US watched on in co mplete silence. The results of that adventure now bear out that Saddam invaded Kuwait to support the administration of George Bush and provide a cause for long-term military bases in the Middle East. > > > > > To further the suffering of the Iraqi people, vicious and pointless sanctions were imposed. At the International Court of Crimes Against Humanity, British, UN officials and US were charged with 'causing the deaths of more than 1,500,000 people including 750,000 children under five, and injury to the entire population of Iraq by genocidal sanctions.' Thousands more were obliterated in the First Gulf War. U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright publicly declared the killing of over half a million Iraqi children as a price well worth the effort. > > > > > As the world watched from the comforts of their living rooms, the same most enlightened and progressive country in the region was bombed back to Stone Age. A latest Guardian report suggests that at least 1 0,000 non-combatants may have been killed thus far during the current invasion of Iraq. Three completed studies suggest that between 1,700 and 2,356 civilians died in the battle for Baghdad alone. As these lines are being written, the American ordnance continues unrelentingly to ricochet through the bodies and souls of citizens of Najaf. The final count will come later. Good morning Iraq. > > > > > The world has cried itself hoarse but the Americans seem determined to continue sleepwalking ever deeper into this spiraling insanity. It is beyond belief that they do not understand that; > > > > a.. They cannot win this war that was started on lies, damned lies and more of the same. > > > > a.. They cannot win a political and guerilla war by any amount of bombing. They never have and they never will. > > > > a.. They cannot win this kind of war when the American government is largely run by wealthy landowners, oil men and a military elite whose real interests are any thing but the plight of the poor, traumatized and war weary Iraqis. > > > > a.. They cannot save a people who do not want to be saved, who view their liberators as oppressors in new costumes. > > > > a.. They cannot win in this deadly poker game that is devoid of scruples by all sides. Any escalation on their part can be matched by a much smaller, but far deadlier in its psychological impact, escalation on the part of their enemies. > > > > The fundamental questions are: Is Iraq really that an all-important factor in the American scheme of things? Is this truly the final showdown of "wars of national liberation"? Is this Armageddon? Will this really guarantee that the future American generations will live safely thereafter? Does it really mean that in case the Americans lose this war, they will have to fight later this same enemy in Florida, Oklahoma or New England? If the answers to all these questions are "yes," then they must proceed at all cost to win this war. > > > > > But alas the facts are far from that. > > > > > The fact is that a ghastly drama is being witnessed by the bleeding, lacerated dawns of Iraq. The fact is that America's sacred cowboys are once again busy doing a liberation job hoping to ride off into the sunset after a job well done. The fact is that as their jets scream away from the blood drenched Iraqi deserts, their compatriots on ground are kicking their way through the decomposing Iraqi corpses, slashing with their bayonets through the walls of meat that stand in defiance of their masters' vision for Iraq. The fact is that they are indeed in a hurry to get back home to pursue the American dream yet least worried that they will one day be answerable to the misshapen children of Iraq. The fact is that this is any thing but a war of liberation. > > > > > For the moment the liberators don't care. They seem oblivious to the fact that when they do go back they will be carrying with them the dust and the blood, the fear and the loathing of a brutally maimed people. That the trauma they inflicted upon Iraq will live and grow on them too and will feed on their souls like only such demons do. That a sure accompaniment in their duffel sacks on their return journeys will be the mincemeat carcasses of their own innocent selves and certainly some plastic bags containing the remains of the American Dream. > > > > > Good morning America.time to wake up
Sent by Anwar Hussain :courtesy by http://www.paktribune.com