If A Superpower Afghanistan Invaded And Occupied
A Tiny US Would Americans Cooperate?
By Jay Janson
29 April, 2010
Opednews.com
If an omnipotent superpower Afghanistan Invaded the United States, how many patriotic Americans would cooperate with an Afghan occupation and help the invaders kill American bad guys? We certainly have a lot of bad guys.
Would American Christians feel their religion under attack by Muslim armies on our soil? Would we be able to understand and accept the collateral slaughter of thousands of our children? Or be outraged by the couple of thousand dollars a super wealthy Afghan government would be awarding to the surviving family of each American child killed "inadvertently' by Afghani drones, helicopters or troops firing point blank trying to eliminate bad Americans seen as a threat to world peace?
How many of our unemployed young men would enlist in a war against their own American countrymen? How many of us would fight alongside a state of the art invincible Afghan military for the pay in order to feed our families?
And how many Americans would sympathize with the targeted Americans and be furious about the violent and bold destruction and homicide brought by heavily armed Afghanis kicking in our doors and wildly firing at anything that moves in fear for their own safety with only secondary concern for any Americans they might kill or maim?
How many us would risk imprisonment, torture or death rather than cooperate with the Afghanis
and their allies from other Muslim nations?
How many American kids would be willing to die fighting the Afghani and other foreigners that have overwhelming firepower including terrifying all seeing drones in the sky firing missiles?
How many of us would believe the Afghani occupation was good for America in the long run -that we would benefit from Afghanistan bringing us a superior life style?
In another scenario, what if Iraq was again the superpower it once was thousands of years ago and was now invading an America the size of the original thirteen colonies claiming to be doing America the favor of getting rid of a tyrannical American commander-in-chief who had been invading even smaller nations with our weapons of mass destruction and torturing innocent people?
Would we help the invading and occupying high tech armed forces of Iraq nail their designated American bad guys and any Americans that opposed being conquered by foreigners from the Middle East?. The Iraqis would be coming in from the cradle of civilization - lots of things to teach a modest size America.
How about if it was Buddhist Vietnamese invading and occupying and bringing with them serene wisdom and compassionate attitude toward our temporary existence on Earth? Would we welcome their having come with their guns blazing with every intention of dictating what kind of a government America should have?
And how would Americans react to a Cuban occupation? Cubans could teach us how to have the best medical plan for our whole nation, maybe approach theirs, which has more doctors per capita than all other countries. During a Cuban occupation we might be obliged to have open assemblies in which anyone could place names in nomination for candidates to run for political office as is done in Cuba's 38,000 municipalities.
Dominicans are recognized by their ready smile and happy Caribbean temperament. If a huge army,navy and air force from the Dominican Republic invaded and occupied us, would we be correspondingly grateful and help the Dominican armed forces establish a friendly American government with warm Latin American family values , gladly replacing our proud commercial values of material acquisition and personal consumption?
What if they were Korean anxious to avenge the bombing that flattening every single city North and South taking the lives of millions?
What would the American reaction be to an enormous combined military force of a hundred thousand Cambodians and Laotians first bombing, then invading and planning to stay and have us elect a government acceptable to their two countries? Saving us from a virulent form of capitalism with a two party dictatorship might be their way of rationalizing away all the loss of American life.
But to get back to the Afghanistan in the title of this article, and in reality since October 7, 2001, when the US military's Operation Enduring Freedom was launched less than a month after Saudi Arabians attacked the United States using its own American airplanes.
At the time of writing, the lead corporate media justifying every U.S. war before it began, The New York Times, gives us that occasional glimpse of the reception a people invaded and occupied can provide for incoming uninvited foreign military:
click here
Fuel Trucks Attacked in Afghanistan, 4/26/10, by Alissa Rubin, page 6
"KABUL, Afghanistan -- Twelve trucks, most of them carrying fuel to a NATO base in eastern Afghanistan, were burned by an angry crowd early Sunday less than 30 miles from Kabul, according to local officials and NATO reports. ...
"People are fed up with these night raids and willful operations," said Mohammed Sharif, a teacher in Pul-i-Alam, the provincial capital, which is near the villages raided by the joint forces.
"They are raiding houses during the night, killing innocent people," he said. "Sometimes they kill opposition people as well, but usually they are harming ordinary and innocent people."
Five Afghan insurgents, as well as two American soldiers, were killed Friday night in the first raid of the weekend, according to a NATO report. The second raid, on Saturday night, killed three people, ... One of those killed was the headmaster of the high school at Poorak, a neighboring village; he was also a cleric."
On the front page of the same edition:
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Elite U.S. Units Step Up Effort in Afghan City Before Attack, with illustrating photo of an American military convoy
by Thom Shanker, Helene Cooper and Richard A. Oppel Jr.
Small bands of elite American Special Operations forces have been operating with increased intensity for several weeks in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan's largest city, picking up or picking off insurgent leaders to weaken the Taliban in advance of major operations, senior administration and military officials say.
The looming battle for the spiritual home of the Taliban is shaping up as the pivotal test of President Obama's Afghanistan strategy, ... It will follow a first offensive, into the hamlet of Marja, that is showing mixed results. ... Two months after the Marja offensive, Afghan officials acknowledge that the Taliban have in some ways retaken the momentum there, ... "If you are planning for operations in Kandahar, you must show success in Marja. You have to be able to point to something. Now you don't have a good example to point to there."
The question is whether military force, softened with appeals to the local populace, can overcome a culture built on distrust of outsiders, including foreign forces and even neighboring tribes.
"Large numbers of insurgent leadership based in and around Kandahar have been captured or killed," said one senior American military officer ... But, he acknowledged, "it's still a contested battle space."
Stepped up bombings and attacks against foreign contractors, moderate religious leaders and public officials are viewed as proof that Taliban insurgents are trying to send a message to Afghan tribal leaders not to cooperate with the American offensive. Last Monday night, gunmen killed Azizullah Yarmal, the deputy mayor of Kandahar, as he prayed in a mosque in the city.
American and NATO officials are not eager to speak publicly about one of their biggest challenges: the effect of the continued presence of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's brother and head of the Kandahar provincial council, whose suspected links with drug dealers and insurgents have prompted some Western officials to say that corruption and governance problems have led locals to be more accepting of the Taliban.
... Rather than civil assistance, many residents fear only military action. Already in Kandahar, many locals view Afghan and NATO checkpoints and convoys as great a danger on the roads as Taliban bombs and checkpoints.
"Instead of bringing people close to the government," cautioned Haji Mukhtar, a Kandahar Provincial Council member, more combat "will cause people to stay further from the government and hate the foreigners more."
... an increase in operations will put more residents in the crossfire. ... Recent episodes of civilian casualties, including an attack on a bus, have undermined trust for NATO operations".
- The NY Times puts it mildly, as it has for nearly nine years of reporting on the Afghan reaction to the U.S./ NATO war of occupation.
