What is "success" in Afghanistan? What would it look like?
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (born April 24, 1941), Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Obama administration, is a top-ranking American diplomat...
How would we know when we've succeeded in Afghanistan, Holbrooke was asked.
Let's find out what he said...
http://www.americanprogress.org/...
Holbrooke was cautious in saying what victory in the region would look like. When pressed by John Podesta to define success in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he remarked—"we’ll know it when we see it."
"We'll know it when we see it."
Now what in the Wide, Wide World of Sports does THAT mean? Is this guy and our policy that incoherent?
I don't think so. I thing we're just not being told the truth.
It's starting to appear very like an interminable, impossible mission -- just like Vietnam. Just like Vietnam. Which means: Re Afghanistan: "We'll be there forever...preventing the spread of "terrorism."
Now where have we heard that before? Why is it that were we in Vietnam, again? Well, we were obviously there (potentially) forever...preventing the spread of communism.
Since we're there practically speaking forever, how else could Holbrooke have answered this query without lying? The only way he could avoid telling the truth was to spit out: "We'll know victory when we see it." Which means: "We don't have a fucking clue what else to tell you since we're lying to you through our teeth and there will be no such thing as "victory" -- because it's not a war. It's a permanent occupation."
So let's stop calling it a war, ok? It's an OCCUPATION. an INDEFINITE occupation.
We just have to repeat THE BIG LIE: It's a war. It's a war. It's a war. And people will start to believe it.
Joseph Goebbels elaborates:
http://thinkexist.com/...
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
So to make it seem more like a war -- to keep the LIE alive -- we have to make and keep both the lie and the war BIG.
We keep the lie big by incessantly repeating it.
And we have to keep the war big because wars in general are big. Lest we risk undercutting the lie.
So we keep the war big by...shipping even more troops out there.