our "foot-soldiers"

[Doug Millison]

""America's New War," is what they call it on CNN. And of course, as usual,
they've got it wrong. Because in our desire to "bring to justice" - let's
remember those words in the coming days - the vicious men who planned the
crimes against humanity in New York and Washington last month, we're hiring
some well-known rapists and murderers to work for us.

Yes, it's an old war, a dreary routine that we've seen employed around the
world for the past three decades. In Vietnam, the Americans wanted to avoid
further casualties; so they re-armed and re-trained the South Vietnamese
army to be their foot-soldiers. In southern Lebanon, the Israelis used
their Lebanese militia thugs to combat the Palestinians and the Hizbollah.
The Phalange and the so-called "South Lebanon Army" were supposed to be
Israel's foot-soldiers. They failed, but that is in the nature of
wars-by-proxy. In Kosovo, we kept our well-armed Nato troops safely out of
harm's way while the KLA acted as our foot-soldiers.

And now, without a blush or a swallow of embarrassment, we're about to sign
up the so-called "Northern Alliance" in Afghanistan. America's newspapers
are saying - without a hint of irony - that they, too, will be our
"foot-soldiers" in our war to hunt down/bring to justice/smoke
out/eradicate/liquidate Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. US officials - who
know full well the whole bloody, rapacious track record of the killers in
the "Alliance" - are suggesting in good faith that these are the men who
will help us bring democracy to Afghanistan and drive the Taliban and the
terrorists out of the country. In fact, we're ready to hire one gang of
terrorists - our terrorists - to rid ourselves of another gang of
terrorists. What, I wonder, would the dead of New York and Washington think
of this? [...]

...continues at
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=97281
Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com