The NATO Withdrawal and the Future of Afghanistan: Construction or Destruction?

“The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” (Thomas Jefferson - US President, 1801-1809)

It is far easier to destroy then to build; a single explosion can destroy in a moment a building that took weeks to construct. This holds true for physical artefacts as well as the human character. A single incident can tarnish an individual’s reputation permanently, but it takes years to build a good name and gain the trust of the community. Applying this axiom of ‘destruction being easier than reconstruction’ to Afghanistan, the country needs political stability, a rebuilding programme, and a thorough cleansing of the existing network of corruption.

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Rochdale Sex Crimes – Are they a product of the Pakistani Ghetto or Liberalism?

For certain, had these men been white Anglo-Saxons, the media coverage and the reaction would have been different; an isolated group of criminals only, with no reference to their racial or cultural identity. This is how for example serial killers are often portrayed. Take the example of the 8 Scottish paedophile gang convicted in 2009 [1] who were caught raping babies not consenting young teenagers like the Rochdale case, the news went unnoticed. Similarly, the recent case in Cornwall [2] also slipped under the media radar. There was no attempt to cast a slur on the wider community, based on the actions of these culprits.

In contrast, based on the actions of the 9 culprits in Rochdale, the media and certain politicians have been busy tarnishing the Pakistani community, which is almost a million or more in the UK. The notion of proportion and logic is discarded when there is an underlying agenda; predictably, the usual Islamophobes to the closet racists have come out blaming it on race and culture, the more daft elements of the far right are blaming religion.

Was it Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Usamah Bin Laden behind the 9/11 attacks?

The US-led coalition went to war, and in the process killed almost a million people, in order to capture Usmah bin Laden, who allegedly masterminded the 9/11 attacks from the caves in Afghanistan. To avenge the killing of innocent civilians, by killing many more innocent civilians is a perverse notion of justice. If dispensing collective punishment is the policy, then it makes little sense to talk of innocence or guilt. Thus a suicide bomber is no different to those dropping bombs from a distance, both dispensing collective punishment on a community.  

Yet there was constant talk of guilt, and everybody pointed the finger at Usamah Bin Laden. He was conveniently killed, instead of being captured and put on trial – which would have provided the perfect opportunity to discover who was telling the truth. Of course, that is assuming he was going to be given a fair trial, rather than one based on ‘evidence’ acquired from water-boarding and other forms of torture that are regularly used by the Americans, euphemistically called "enhanced interrogation".