Feb 21 Sat.

The past week has again allowed the whole world to

view a typical glimpse of America's dubious behaviour in our
present muddy global situation.

First, the US President announced the intention to escalate

the conflict in Afghanistan by adding more US ground troops
there. This stance is a bit different from the one made on
15 July 2008 when the future president then declared that
the focus should be on the terror havens in Pakistan.

President Obama has just visited Canada and reports were that
he had pressed Stephen Harper to send more soldiers to Kabul.
Harper correctly reiterated that Kabuls's security should be
the responsibility of Kabul, not others.

Obama must evaluate Harper's wise words and not make the same
kind of mistakes as Bush did. Any act of misguidance now will
have severe implications in the future.

Obama should not forget that Guantanamo received its prisoners

from the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and that Gitmo was known
to the rest of the world as a place where torture, abuse and
suicide was widely practised. Any new escalation in Afghanistan
will only result in more and more prisoners coming out of that
place and where the heck are they going to be kept is a question
that no one can answer right now.

And only yesterday, perhaps as an indirect dig at Obama and the

situation in Kabul, the New York Post ran a cartoon with the
words "chimp" and "ape" together with a drawing of a black-
coloured animal lying on its back. The outside world is most
thoroughly confused with this. One wonders if Obama has really
been accepted as the CEO of US Inc at all. Or that could well
explain why Obama is so keen on Afghanistan, if only to show
who's bluer than blue. Or, like Michael, a paler shade of pale.

And while the attention is on Afghanistan, the daily lobbing

of rockets into southern Israel apparently does not show up
on the White House's radar ( or perhaps NORAD's radar ). This
is certainly a glaring aberration to the promised policy of
no intention to tolerate terror. Perhaps as a result of the
financial crisis, the defeat of the terrorists now has to be
postponed. But the bloodletting in Afghanistan must continue.

The Taliban in Afghanistan has the wide support of the rural

communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Kabul regime
should be given the right to decide whether to fight them or
make a deal with them. Interference from outside would only
mess up the situation and cause needless civilian suffering.
One wonders if all the civilians there have been stripped of
their rights for self-determination.

And while Obama is busily thinking if he had chosen the right

path for the Afghan problem, the new Secretary of State is
ignominiously digging a potentially bottomless hole for peace
and reconciliation in NE Asia.

Even before the dust had settled on the tarmac, Hillary Clinton
was muttering veiled threats against North Korea. Could this
woman really is capable of bringing peace and harmony to the
region, or could it be that Obama made a blunderous choice in
making her the Secretary of State, the true answer no one knows.

But what is true is that there is no way she has earned the
trust of anyone in the region, much less that from the North
Koreans. Definitely, she is no Henry Kissinger.

Clinton should be aware that people in this region have not

forgotten Abu Ghraib yet, not by a long shot. The dehumanising
conduct of American personnel there provides the perfect reason
why America's word cannot be trusted. Worse, those most guilty
of the abuses and torture that were carried out at Abu Ghraib
are today still immune or free from any prosecution. People now
are very disturbed that the US military are so highly obsessed
with other people's bodies wherever they go. US soldiers are
well known for vicious attacks against women in Korea, Japan,
the Philippines and eleswhere. Filipino women were derisively
referred to as LBFMs. What Americans are busily doing now are
almost exactly the same things the Japs did during WW2.

While people highly responsible for the most extreme, ignoble

and flagrant violations of human rights are happily going
about their business without fear of repercussions, Clinton
is babbling about some vague notions of human rights in Korea.
It is most perplexing that cases considered to be kindergarten
stuff are deliriously highlighted by Clinton while those of
the Abu Ghraib kind are totally ignored. The torture, rape,
forced masturbation, sodomy and other acts of sexual depravation
that took place in Abu Ghraib ( and Guantanamo ) are totally
unforgivable, since the victims have become scarred for life.
On the other hand, Clinton is still clearly unable to understand
that it is totally another's unquestionable right to reject any
maggoty or any undesirable Western decadent whiff.

There is absolutely no assurance that the now US administration

has the moral courage or the willpower to reopen the Abu Ghraib
case files and deliver justice to the wrongdoers. Their victims
can only hope that the memory of their sufferings will never be
forgotten by civilised men. But there is the fear that the acts
of the Americans there would one day be repeated eleswhere.

The statements and policy implementations by the current US

administration are very confusing and are now clearly betraying
indications of the very common and very usual human hypocrisy.
As always, it's perennially America's dubious behaviour.