Will defeating the Taleban actually stem terrorism or is political violence a fact of life in an unfair world? The West defines itself by choosing its enemies. After the Nazis, came the Soviets. The threat of communist Russia justified enormous spending by America that resulted in over a thousand nuclear tests being conducted (mainly by America) refining the deterrent or amplifying the madness?

MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is still considered a deterrent. It is extremely wasteful of national resources in a time of great financial troubles. Using fear as a weapon against their own populations is hardly beneficial.

Conspiracy theorists come unstuck when they consider that Governments are evil. Although some Governments may indeed be evil, most are not. They do however act in the interests of their own nation.

How is the deterrent logical if you can not use it under any circumstances? How can war succeed if a “short” war extends to nine years of bloody vengeance for the acts of 19 people?

The year 2000 was a fine boundary, because of the mathematics of dates. 2010 seems a little more mathematical, in that the century count is double that of the year count. 2000 however exposed a hole in thinking shared by everyone who entered a two figure date into their computers. Time marches on, and it is necessary to record the details.

The 2000 decade was the decade that Tony Blair and GW Bush decided that the Geneva Convention prevented them from dealing with the threat of Iraq. There is a movement to bring them to justice as their actions were not legal or desirable. They appear to have been politically driven to protect energy consumption by Americans as that was the “engine of the world” economically. How wrong could they be? Far from being an engine, the West was empowering China and India by overextending greed.

And that is why the war in Iraq was a mistake of epic proportions. If a war was to be fought in Iraq, it’s timing was wrong. Iraq was the barrier between Israel and Iran, and two “dangerous” countries who were at war with each other for years seems more threatening than one tamed and one restricted. By weakening Iraq militarily, there is a weaker buffer zone separating Iran and Israel.

It is an imbalance of credibility to claim that certain countries have a “right” to nuclear weapons, and others do not. Nobody has a right to murder all life on the planet.

And when the US withdraws from Iraq, Iran is far more likely to try and annex the Shi’ite zones of Iraq and thus raise the stakes by presenting a more polarised fundamentalist Sunni and Shi’ite division. Iran lies between the two GW Bush war zones. The Taleban are anti-Shia, therefore America has strengthened Iran and is in essence attempting to defeat Sunni fundamentalism with its continued war against the Taleban. Afghanistan is 99% Sunni, therefore acceptance of the Taleban is a very likely consequence of the failing war effort. That is why the Obama administration are ramping up the war against Sunni extremism. Iran is being defended by America. The rational however for Iran’s nuclear capability is clear.

The cause of international law and justice continues to be of terrible importance. The injustice of the Iraq invasion is reflected by a new generation of terrorists, some home grown. The unpredictable threat of a suicide bomber on air-plane flights is inviting Western governments to screen the skin surface of all passengers, so Al Qaeda has now managed to terrorise huge numbers of Muslims.

This insensitivity is due to the nature of Islamic militancy: most evident in the Teleban movement. Young men controlled the government of Afghanistan with ultra strict Sharia law enforcement. When the toll of continuous war is considered, it is no wonder that the Taleban arose. They were the children of the war with the USSR.

The absence of justice for reckless or ill considered actions by these leaders implies that they were infallible and somehow above all that. Remember, justice is a balance and if Blair or Bush were to be found not guilty of war crimes, at least it would explain their rationale. And if they were found guilty?

Guardian Article

Dick Cheney has said that he believes that the Bush Administration has done “pretty well”. Considering the circumstances.

One does not expect the likes of Cheney to talk himself down from a mountain of justification for disasterous policies.

The Bush administration’s illogical framing of Saddam Hussein being briefly accepted as a good enough reason to go ahead and invade, the billions that Halliburton has reaped, and the trillions invested in a financial industry that is failing says enough about how well they did.

Cheney appears unable to contemplate how much better they would have done – if they had simply done their jobs with balance and skill, and not undermined American democracy with an illegal war – the world would not be having a financial crisis of unbelievable proportions.

I give Cheney F-