format_quote Originally Posted by
Supreme
Lots of people support the war. Lots of people don't support the war. Lots of people don't care enough to decide either way. And those last group of people are most likely in the majority.
And it's the governments telling them to continue. NATO is fantastic alliance, in that it has so many members, and an attack on one member is an attack on all members. Thus, every country in the Alliance became involved. And I do think it's this 'peer pressure' and loyalty the governments feel towards one another that is forcing them to kepp their troops in Afghanistan.
Supreme, I think you are a sincere person, but with all due respect rather ill-informed or naive (no offense).
Please read this...
NATO: A Tool Of U.S. Imperialism
By Ghali Hassan
25 August, 2008
Countercurrents.org
The U.S.-controlled North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has lost its purpose to continue as a defence alliance. However, its aggressive expansion is endangering world peace and the survival of the planet.
Despite its irrelevant role, NATO has become part of the U.S. military. Instead of dismantling the once defence alliance, the U.S. pushed to enlarge NATO and expand its boundaries. The U.S. has lured most European nations, including former Warsaw Pact members, the so-called “New Europe”, to join its military. Poland, Hungry and the Czech Republic joined in 1999; Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuanian, Estonia, Slovakia and Romania in 2004, others are waiting in line. Becoming a NATO member proves to be a profit bonanza for U.S.-Israeli weapon industries and arm dealers. All new recruits into NATO are obliged to increase their “defence” budgets to modernise and enlarge their military arsenals at the expense of vital public services.
It is important to bear in mind that the U.S.-NATO demands for expansion have met with opposition from Russia, China – with a legitimate concern against unprovoked threat – and nations such as Germany, the Netherlands and France. Almost all new mini-dictators supported the illegal U.S. aggression against the Iraqi people. They are in complete complicity in the war crimes committed by the regime of George Bush despite overwhelming majority of their citizens’ opposition to U.S. aggression. From the criminal U.S. aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to the ongoing murderous occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the new European armies have become U.S. foot soldiers serving U.S. imperialist interests.
Engineering and using crisis in Europe and elsewhere, the U.S. cancelled the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in order to locate ABMs and to lure more nations to sign up for the system, including Australia, South Korea and Japan. Under the fraudulent pretext of defence against “rogue” states, the U.S. has just signed a “deal” with Poland to station on Polish soil U.S. “interceptor missiles”. The provocative deal is seen by Russians as a dangerous opportunity for the U.S. to expand its military presence and threat across the world. Poland hailed the deal as a counter to Russian “threat”. Of course Poland is fully aware that the missiles are against Russia not Iran, as the U.S. continues to mislead the public. After Poland, the U.S. is planning to build a twin anti-missile radar system in the Czech Republic. Many Poles as well as Czechs are against the deals and rightly believe their countries are becoming vassal states of a dangerous U.S. militarism.
Since the end of the so-called “Cold War”, the U.S. aim has always been a quest for imperialist domination of the globe through U.S. militarism, including the establishment of U.S. military bases in strategic areas of the world. The U.S. policy of destabilising Russia and undermining Russia’s integration with Europe is aimed at controlling Eurasia’s natural resources . The events of 9/11 provided the U.S. with a pretext to justify the U.S. war on Islam and a global imperialist expansion.
It is hard to believe that the recent unprovoked aggression by Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili against the semi-independent district of South Ossetia wasn’t engineered by the U.S. ruling class in Washington. The aggression came at the time when Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was at the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony and President Dmitry Medvedev on holiday. Georgian air force and heavy rocket and artillery indiscriminately attacked the town of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia at midnight destroying schools, hospitals, homes, and even the University, leaving much of the city in ruins. Hundreds of innocent civilians were killed in the first hours of the attack. Saakashvili’s U.S.-Israeli trained Special Forces shot 10 Russian peacekeepers stationed there under an international peace agreement. Saakashvili’s aim was to take control of South Ossetia and ethnically cleanse it of its majority Russian inhabitants.
Saakashvili thought that destroying Tskhinvali and terrorising the population may go well with his plan to please Washington and joins NATO as a new U.S. proxy army. Meanwhile, the aggression provides the U.S. and its vassals with a pretext to use “humanitarian aid” deliveries to Georgia as cover for a military build-up in the Black Sea. Whatever the outcome, Saakashvili (like Bush) must be suffering from lack of rational thinking.
Saakashvili’s aggression may have enhanced U.S. anti-Russian propaganda, it has encouraged a rethinking among many European heavy weight nations (who rightly see Russia as an important part of Europe), that playing with fire close to Russia’s border is not a very good idea. With several European countries – France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Norway, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg and Portugal – still have their doubts, Georgia’s bid to join NATO may have suffered a terminal setback as a result of Saakashvili’s war crimes in South Ossetia.
Russia has a legitimate right to protect its citizens. Most Ossetians are Russian citizens and do not want to be dominated by a racist Georgia. Russia’s response to Saakachvili’s aggression was swift and in full compliance with international laws. Saakashvili’s army of mercenaries – trained and armed by the U.S. and Israel – has suffered a deserving humiliating defeat that should be a lesson to all those “new” European vassals who think they can participate in U.S. war crimes and count on U.S. help.
Yet despite Georgia’s unprovoked aggression, Western-Zionist mainstream media led by the BBC, CNN, NBC, Fox News, New York Times and Washington Post turned the aggressor into a victime. In a grotesque display of distortion and dishonesty, Western media lauded Saakashvili as “democrat” defending democracy against the “Russian Bear”. Of course, forgotten are the U.S.-staged rigged elections that brought Saakashvili to power, Saakashvili’s corrupt authoritarian rule, the banning of news broadcasts, mass arrests of dissidents and Georgian police and masked thugs firing on peaceful demonstrators in Tbilisi and the imposition of marshal law. Playing on the prejudice and ignorance of their populations, Western media is demonising Russia in order to create an enemy and divert the public from ongoing war crimes perpetuated by Western governments. The ongoing anti-Russian propaganda is reminiscent of Nazis propaganda during World War II to manipulate the people and create an anti-Russian sentiment. All of this is in accord with U.S. quest for an imperialist control of the planet and the application of Neocons-fascist ideology of global hegemonic control.
Meanwhile, George Bush (speaking on behalf of the “West”) unashamedly condemned Russia’s legitimate response to Georgia’s unprovoked aggression as “disproportionate”, and added: “[It] is unacceptable in the 21st Century”. The hypocrisy and double standards continued: “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbour, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it”, ranted Condoleezza Rice, the tireless Secretary of Travelling. Did Bush and his Rice forget the U.S. premeditated and illegal invasion of and destruction of the Iraqi state, including the murder of members of Iraq legitimate government? Before criticising Russia, the U.S. ruling class should take a hard look at U.S. history of massive atrocities and serious war crimes committed around the world. Indeed, the U.S. government is the only government who get a way with any crime it commits. Hence, the U.S. ruling class and their complicit media must be suffering from the contagious diseases of moral bankruptcy and classic hypocrisy.
The U.S. ruling class, the Bush regime in particular, has no moral standing whatsoever to criticize Russia for protecting Russian nationals and defending South Ossetia against unprovoked aggression. After more than five years of murderous Occupation, the Bush regime is directly responsible for the premeditated killing of more than 1.3 million innocent Iraqi civilians. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are imprisoned and tortured on regular basis, and at leas 5 million Iraqis have been displaced as refugees living in appalling conditions. The entire sovereign nation of Iraq is destroyed in a premeditated act of aggression justified by outright lies. Moreover, despite the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people’s opposition to the Occupation, the Bush regime refused to withdraw U.S. troops and mercenaries from Iraq and end the murderous Occupation of their nation.
Finally, it is obvious that Western governments and their mainstream media are demonising Russia even if Russia is not the aggressor. As Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister told the media: “NATO is trying to make a victim of an aggressor and whitewash a criminal regime - save a collapsing regime - and is taking a path to the rearmament of the current leaders in Georgia”. Saakashvili as perpetrator of war crimes has become the victime by embarking on an ill-advised act of aggression not dissimilar from U.S. recent acts of aggression.
World peace is greatly served by multilateralism and international institutions without an aggressive U.S. military expansion. The transformation of NATO into a tool of U.S. imperialism is endangering the survival of the planet.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
Source:
http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan250808.htm