Graveyard of Empires
I have been arguing since right after the election that the one campaign promise Obama should not keep is to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. Already the New York Times is labeling it “Obama’s War” in a smart reappraisal this morning by Helene Cooper.
“It seems there’s a rush to send in more reinforcements absent the careful analysis that’s most needed here,” said Andrew Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project)
“There’s clearly a consensus that things are heading in the wrong direction,” Mr. Bacevich said. “What’s not clear to me is why sending 30,000 more troops is the essential step to changing that. My understanding of the larger objective of the allied enterprise in Afghanistan is to bring into existence something that looks like a modern cohesive Afghan state. Well, it could be that that’s an unrealistic objective. It could be that sending 30,000 more troops is throwing money and lives down a rat hole.
Our President needs to make clear what the objective is in Afghanistan. There is a huge gap between denying Al Qaeda safe havens to launch attacks against the West and the much more intractable task of creating a “cohesive state” in a 16th Century tribal culture. The former task is an intelligence and special forces driven effort which we are quite capable of managing with far fewer troops than we have there now. The latter task is one that brought both the British and the Soviet empires to their knees and there is no reason to believe we will be any more successful. As the Times notes, the $300 million a year pouring into the warlords’ coffers from Opium production makes it impossible for the government of Karzai to rule. Ironically as the following chart from the UN office of Drugs and Crime shows, it was only during the reign of the Taliban that opium production was significantly curbed, “for religious reasons”.
Afghanistan Poppy Cultivation
For now of course, the Taliban are happy to use opium “Tribute Payments” from the warlords to fund their battle against the “Infidel Occupation” citing the long history of driving foreign occupiers like Alexander the Great out of their sacred lands. Ultimately the Obama administration cannot say that our task is to shore up Afghanistan because it is a failed state. If that is the rationale, then perhaps Bush’s Long War has just begun, as the map below shows there are many more failed states (in red and orange) to fix.
We are not the world’s un-reimbursed policeman and the sooner our new National Security Team gets that straight, the better. Afghanistan is a hellhole not of our own making. Barack Obama was elected to restore our economy and stop the preemptive war policies of the Bush Administration. We must begin to end our “imperial overstretch” and once again employ our blood, sweat and tears on the task of rebuilding our own country.
Actually, I’d say that Afghanistan is a hellhole at least partly of our making, and of all our efforts to make things better, success here could have the greatest positive impact.
Afghanistan was a run-of-the mill, low-income, successful nation until the invasion by Russia in 1979. Our choosing to use that invasion as one more angle in our Cold War proxy battles contributed to the absolute destruction of the country. Our abandonment of our Jihadist allies after Russia’s retreat created a vaccuum that has lead to where we are today. Face it, we failed to clean up the mess we helped make the first time, which lead to making the mess we’ve created now. Troops are needed, but I’d say what’s really needed is an honest effort to rebuild to the levels of 1979. Altruistically. Just make it right, make it a place people want to live in, and then leave. Roads, schools, power plants, airports, hospitals, all the things were removed from the face of the country between 1979 and 2002.
If somehow, miraculously, for once, we could do that right, we’d gain a whole lot more respect in the Arab world than any of our military muscle-flexing will ever get us.
Actually, I’d say that Afghanistan is a hellhole at least partly of our making, and of all our efforts to make things better, success here could have the greatest positive impact.
Afghanistan was a run-of-the mill, low-income, successful nation until the invasion by Russia in 1979. Our choosing to use that invasion as one more angle in our Cold War proxy battles contributed to the absolute destruction of the country. Our abandonment of our Jihadist allies after Russia’s retreat created a vaccuum that has lead to where we are today. Face it, we failed to clean up the mess we helped make the first time, which lead to making the mess we’ve created now. Troops are needed, but I’d say what’s really needed is an honest effort to rebuild to the levels of 1979. Altruistically. Just make it right, make it a place people want to live in, and then leave. Roads, schools, power plants, airports, hospitals, all the things were removed from the face of the country between 1979 and 2002.
If somehow, miraculously, for once, we could do that right, we’d gain a whole lot more respect in the Arab world than any of our military muscle-flexing will ever get us.
“There is a huge gap between denying Al Qaeda safe havens to launch attacks against the West and the much more intractable task of creating a “cohesive state” in a 16th Century tribal culture.”
I’d think about this a little more. Are you sure the gap is as huge as you think? Don’t we need at least some government cooperation, whether it’s from a dictator or a Prime Minister, to effectively combat terrorism in another country?
I’m not sure what you are proposing. Withdrawing all troops and aid, letting whatever happens to the country happens, and if another Taliban-ish government arises, say “Oh, well”?
Do you think we shouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan in the first place after 9/11?
Perhaps spending money and lives to stabilize Afghanistan is a futile effort, but I want to hear what you think the alternative is.
“There is a huge gap between denying Al Qaeda safe havens to launch attacks against the West and the much more intractable task of creating a “cohesive state” in a 16th Century tribal culture.”
I’d think about this a little more. Are you sure the gap is as huge as you think? Don’t we need at least some government cooperation, whether it’s from a dictator or a Prime Minister, to effectively combat terrorism in another country?
I’m not sure what you are proposing. Withdrawing all troops and aid, letting whatever happens to the country happens, and if another Taliban-ish government arises, say “Oh, well”?
Do you think we shouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan in the first place after 9/11?
Perhaps spending money and lives to stabilize Afghanistan is a futile effort, but I want to hear what you think the alternative is.
It’s my suspicion that Afghanistan as a cause was nothing more than a fig leaf for Obama’s anit-Iraq war campaign rhetoric. I don’t think a withdraw there is possible without exposing Obama as not different than the Clinton administration in policy on terror. While I think that’s the wrong policy, I don’t think it’s an irrational one. What I dread is us escalating a war in Afghanistan when I don’t believe the CiC has his heart in winning it.
It’s my suspicion that Afghanistan as a cause was nothing more than a fig leaf for Obama’s anit-Iraq war campaign rhetoric. I don’t think a withdraw there is possible without exposing Obama as not different than the Clinton administration in policy on terror. While I think that’s the wrong policy, I don’t think it’s an irrational one. What I dread is us escalating a war in Afghanistan when I don’t believe the CiC has his heart in winning it.
Let’s get out of there all together. This is a war that we shouldn’t be fighting in the first place.
I’m all for the poppy cultivation though….
Let’s get out of there all together. This is a war that we shouldn’t be fighting in the first place.
I’m all for the poppy cultivation though….
Let’s get out of there all together. This is a war that we shouldn’t be fighting in the first place.
I’m all for the poppy cultivation though….
Mr. Taplin, I am very much of your mind on Obama’s incomprehensible notion of increased waste in the so-called “nation of Afghanistan.” This area is a “nation” only in that atlases and Google Earth and such sources have an irregular multigon colored all one color in them – a lot like “Iraq.” The “central government” is universally recognized as one of the most completely venial and corrupt on the planet, where theft of national and public resources is even worse than it has been in America of late.
I ask Jason and cmag to please educate us geopolitical ignoramuses just how “victory” is to be defined and attained in any involvement in either Iraq or “Afghanistan.” Sounds to me like the only winners will be suppliers of arms and contractors, charming organizations like Lockheed-Martin whose totally ambiguous slogan is “We never forget who we’re working for.” And of course the paramilitary sneaky-petes who “divert” millions to billions of “dollars” that exist only as a hope that somehow they can be extracted future Real Economy activity and the taxes on the people who will be creating it.
So please enlighten the rest of us: What exactly does “victory” look like, other than a seven-letter phantasm held to by people who study how many mullahs can dance on the head of a pin, and who think all the war toys and “noble combat” are really cool? And how do “we” get there, to that “goal line” that all these whiz kids are absolutely sure is just around the corner, or behind the “light at the end of the tunnel?” I have never read or seen stated by any talking head, any definition of that “victory,” or how “we” will know when “we” get there, or HOW “we” will get there.
How the hell are “we” supposed to “put it back the way it was in 1979,” before “we” created the nascent “Taliban” by Reaganaut support for mujahidin “freedom fighters,” hereditary warriors and warlords who are pretty good at kicking out “outsiders” so they can get back to their millennia-old games of tribal and family and clan and ethnic internecine warfare? “Afghanistan” back then was pretty much what you see now, maybe with a lower level of violence, plenty of opium, no central government, division into ethnic, clan and family areas each with its own little warlord, everybody armed to the teeth. “Put it back?” This is not the end of recess in kindergarten and it’s time to put all the toys back in their designated cubbyholes. There’s nothing to “put back” to, and no cubbyholes to put the playthings in.
But “the Taliban,” the phony collective noun which is no more accurately described or any less misleading in any discussion of Policy, Doctrine, Strategy or Tactics, is not “an enemy,” it’s a shitty reactionary-male dominated collection of SOBs who are not a lot different in operation than the Communist Party in Russia – all these rules, no shaving your beard, no dancing, no music, no girls in school, no this, no that, and take whatever you want from people who are not part of the “religious” Mafia.
Sending 30,000 more “troops” is bottomlessly stupid. To do what? “Nation-build?” Shee-it. Rather, to become targets for snipers and IEDs, some of them to display their innate decency by trying to build schools and hospitals that the same night become targets for the murderous Mafiosi, while some of them come up with really nasty names for the indigenes, do a little rape and murder on the side, blow up houses of people who turn out to be neutral or “on our side” and thus make yet another set of people already predisposed to hate outsiders, and who will now be joining the “anti-Coalition” violence against “our troops.” Who will then start with stuff like the Russians did, more slyly probably, but still part of that cycle of violence and revenge. And we’ll have another wave of that horrendous hypocrisy that feeds the Folks Back Home in their dreams of Honorable Sacrifice and, don’t say it too loud, American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
And get tempted by the same Effing’ corruption that poisons the “government?” Which so many of “our people on the ground,” CIA and “contractors” like KBR and Blackwater, are already deeply into? Will “we” eventually learn about where hundreds of billions of dollars went astray, and where they went? Iran-Contra-Panama-style? And have a new, highly coached and line-perfect Oliver North to hide behind decorations and uniform while telling us it’s all in a good cause?“Afghanistan,” that collection of warring factions and ungovernable terrain and people who just love a good fight and have figured out all kinds of reasons to hate and kill one another, where shaving your beard or showing an ankle or falling in love with the wrong person or playing even “traditional” music is a threat to the new Patriarchic Syndicate and will get you killed? Where the “central government” as in the old days controls a few square miles of territory, is sneered at even by the “allied” warlords that Karzai tries to line up with bribery and promises of American money and weapons? Where temporary “loyalty” in a land where loyalties and alliances shift faster than on Survivor or Fantasy Island is “bought” or at least rented for a while by a really sharp CIA guy with a handful of Viagra? And are about as deep? It ain’t EXACTLY like “Iraq” or The Tragic American Involvement In Vietnam Where Our Clothes Are Now Made, but it’s close enough.
Like Mr. Taplin says, dealing with the present members of al Qaeda is a police function, not a war function. What’s in train now is a lot like what happens in some unfortunate people’s bodies, where the physiological Army, Navy, Air Force and police get their roles all mixed up. The police get summoned to deal with a little infection or a few cells that have turned cancerous, and all of a sudden the military intercepts the call and starts shooting off the big guns in all directions, wrecking all that Intelligently Designed homeostasis with battalions of leucocytes and waves of inflammatories.
People who want to live in calm if not in peace, to be left alone and not to have to fear the violence of sociopaths and True Believers of many gospels, deserve some protection by “the government.” But they deserve real PROTECTION, not just another ramp-up strategy for the ersatz “Realpolitikians” and players of the Game of Risk with the actual human world as their board and world domination as their goal. And who pull bonehead plays that just make things worse, create more monsters of hate and violence and those kinds of people who LIKE to shoot that .50-cal sniper rifle at a live target, or detonate the IED with a cell phone, or massacre a houseful or mosqueful or hospital or schoolful of people as a way of making more of the culture medium in which their kinds of plague bacilli thrive.
Come on, Mr. President – don’t let some perceived need not to be seen as “soft on terrorism” suck you into this tar pit, dragging the rest of us along with you because “you won the election.” Because that’s what it is, and like the La Brea pits, future generations will have a lot of fun figuring out the behaviors from the stripped bones that bubble up from that muck. And will still be paying for that idiocy.
Mr. Taplin, I am very much of your mind on Obama’s incomprehensible notion of increased waste in the so-called “nation of Afghanistan.” This area is a “nation” only in that atlases and Google Earth and such sources have an irregular multigon colored all one color in them – a lot like “Iraq.” The “central government” is universally recognized as one of the most completely venial and corrupt on the planet, where theft of national and public resources is even worse than it has been in America of late.
I ask Jason and cmag to please educate us geopolitical ignoramuses just how “victory” is to be defined and attained in any involvement in either Iraq or “Afghanistan.” Sounds to me like the only winners will be suppliers of arms and contractors, charming organizations like Lockheed-Martin whose totally ambiguous slogan is “We never forget who we’re working for.” And of course the paramilitary sneaky-petes who “divert” millions to billions of “dollars” that exist only as a hope that somehow they can be extracted future Real Economy activity and the taxes on the people who will be creating it.
So please enlighten the rest of us: What exactly does “victory” look like, other than a seven-letter phantasm held to by people who study how many mullahs can dance on the head of a pin, and who think all the war toys and “noble combat” are really cool? And how do “we” get there, to that “goal line” that all these whiz kids are absolutely sure is just around the corner, or behind the “light at the end of the tunnel?” I have never read or seen stated by any talking head, any definition of that “victory,” or how “we” will know when “we” get there, or HOW “we” will get there.
How the hell are “we” supposed to “put it back the way it was in 1979,” before “we” created the nascent “Taliban” by Reaganaut support for mujahidin “freedom fighters,” hereditary warriors and warlords who are pretty good at kicking out “outsiders” so they can get back to their millennia-old games of tribal and family and clan and ethnic internecine warfare? “Afghanistan” back then was pretty much what you see now, maybe with a lower level of violence, plenty of opium, no central government, division into ethnic, clan and family areas each with its own little warlord, everybody armed to the teeth. “Put it back?” This is not the end of recess in kindergarten and it’s time to put all the toys back in their designated cubbyholes. There’s nothing to “put back” to, and no cubbyholes to put the playthings in.
But “the Taliban,” the phony collective noun which is no more accurately described or any less misleading in any discussion of Policy, Doctrine, Strategy or Tactics, is not “an enemy,” it’s a shitty reactionary-male dominated collection of SOBs who are not a lot different in operation than the Communist Party in Russia – all these rules, no shaving your beard, no dancing, no music, no girls in school, no this, no that, and take whatever you want from people who are not part of the “religious” Mafia.
Sending 30,000 more “troops” is bottomlessly stupid. To do what? “Nation-build?” Shee-it. Rather, to become targets for snipers and IEDs, some of them to display their innate decency by trying to build schools and hospitals that the same night become targets for the murderous Mafiosi, while some of them come up with really nasty names for the indigenes, do a little rape and murder on the side, blow up houses of people who turn out to be neutral or “on our side” and thus make yet another set of people already predisposed to hate outsiders, and who will now be joining the “anti-Coalition” violence against “our troops.” Who will then start with stuff like the Russians did, more slyly probably, but still part of that cycle of violence and revenge. And we’ll have another wave of that horrendous hypocrisy that feeds the Folks Back Home in their dreams of Honorable Sacrifice and, don’t say it too loud, American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.
And get tempted by the same Effing’ corruption that poisons the “government?” Which so many of “our people on the ground,” CIA and “contractors” like KBR and Blackwater, are already deeply into? Will “we” eventually learn about where hundreds of billions of dollars went astray, and where they went? Iran-Contra-Panama-style? And have a new, highly coached and line-perfect Oliver North to hide behind decorations and uniform while telling us it’s all in a good cause?“Afghanistan,” that collection of warring factions and ungovernable terrain and people who just love a good fight and have figured out all kinds of reasons to hate and kill one another, where shaving your beard or showing an ankle or falling in love with the wrong person or playing even “traditional” music is a threat to the new Patriarchic Syndicate and will get you killed? Where the “central government” as in the old days controls a few square miles of territory, is sneered at even by the “allied” warlords that Karzai tries to line up with bribery and promises of American money and weapons? Where temporary “loyalty” in a land where loyalties and alliances shift faster than on Survivor or Fantasy Island is “bought” or at least rented for a while by a really sharp CIA guy with a handful of Viagra? And are about as deep? It ain’t EXACTLY like “Iraq” or The Tragic American Involvement In Vietnam Where Our Clothes Are Now Made, but it’s close enough.
Like Mr. Taplin says, dealing with the present members of al Qaeda is a police function, not a war function. What’s in train now is a lot like what happens in some unfortunate people’s bodies, where the physiological Army, Navy, Air Force and police get their roles all mixed up. The police get summoned to deal with a little infection or a few cells that have turned cancerous, and all of a sudden the military intercepts the call and starts shooting off the big guns in all directions, wrecking all that Intelligently Designed homeostasis with battalions of leucocytes and waves of inflammatories.
People who want to live in calm if not in peace, to be left alone and not to have to fear the violence of sociopaths and True Believers of many gospels, deserve some protection by “the government.” But they deserve real PROTECTION, not just another ramp-up strategy for the ersatz “Realpolitikians” and players of the Game of Risk with the actual human world as their board and world domination as their goal. And who pull bonehead plays that just make things worse, create more monsters of hate and violence and those kinds of people who LIKE to shoot that .50-cal sniper rifle at a live target, or detonate the IED with a cell phone, or massacre a houseful or mosqueful or hospital or schoolful of people as a way of making more of the culture medium in which their kinds of plague bacilli thrive.
Come on, Mr. President – don’t let some perceived need not to be seen as “soft on terrorism” suck you into this tar pit, dragging the rest of us along with you because “you won the election.” Because that’s what it is, and like the La Brea pits, future generations will have a lot of fun figuring out the behaviors from the stripped bones that bubble up from that muck. And will still be paying for that idiocy.
Remember the USSR had about a million men in Afghanistan, IIRC, and couldn’t do much to actually hold the country.
The Brits also fell on their sword there. I see no reason why we would do any better. We have little or no understanding of the political situation on the ground, which is very fluid to say the least.
We need to keep Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist haven like it was, but there are many ways to do that, other than wasting American fighting forces in a quagmire that is ill understood and with ill defined objectives.
A “Surge” isn’t going to help here. We desperately need a coherent strategy with clear, well defined objectives and a clear measures of how we are or aren’t progressing.
And an exit strategy if the whole thing tanks.
Remember the USSR had about a million men in Afghanistan, IIRC, and couldn’t do much to actually hold the country.
The Brits also fell on their sword there. I see no reason why we would do any better. We have little or no understanding of the political situation on the ground, which is very fluid to say the least.
We need to keep Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist haven like it was, but there are many ways to do that, other than wasting American fighting forces in a quagmire that is ill understood and with ill defined objectives.
A “Surge” isn’t going to help here. We desperately need a coherent strategy with clear, well defined objectives and a clear measures of how we are or aren’t progressing.
And an exit strategy if the whole thing tanks.
Remember the USSR had about a million men in Afghanistan, IIRC, and couldn’t do much to actually hold the country.
The Brits also fell on their sword there. I see no reason why we would do any better. We have little or no understanding of the political situation on the ground, which is very fluid to say the least.
We need to keep Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist haven like it was, but there are many ways to do that, other than wasting American fighting forces in a quagmire that is ill understood and with ill defined objectives.
A “Surge” isn’t going to help here. We desperately need a coherent strategy with clear, well defined objectives and a clear measures of how we are or aren’t progressing.
And an exit strategy if the whole thing tanks.
[woodnsoul] “We need to keep Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist haven like it was, but there are many ways to do that, other than wasting American fighting forces in a quagmire that is ill understood and with ill defined objectives.”
I agree with this completely, but I’ve yet to hear much of a plan or strategy from both the “stay in” or “get out” sides of the debate. I hope Obama articulates his goals and strategy soon.
[woodnsoul] “We need to keep Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist haven like it was, but there are many ways to do that, other than wasting American fighting forces in a quagmire that is ill understood and with ill defined objectives.”
I agree with this completely, but I’ve yet to hear much of a plan or strategy from both the “stay in” or “get out” sides of the debate. I hope Obama articulates his goals and strategy soon.
[woodnsoul] “We need to keep Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist haven like it was, but there are many ways to do that, other than wasting American fighting forces in a quagmire that is ill understood and with ill defined objectives.”
I agree with this completely, but I’ve yet to hear much of a plan or strategy from both the “stay in” or “get out” sides of the debate. I hope Obama articulates his goals and strategy soon.
[woodnsoul] “We need to keep Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist haven like it was, but there are many ways to do that, other than wasting American fighting forces in a quagmire that is ill understood and with ill defined objectives.”
I agree with this completely, but I’ve yet to hear much of a plan or strategy from both the “stay in” or “get out” sides of the debate. I hope Obama articulates his goals and strategy soon.
Why isn’t the US yellow or orange on that map? Rogue military operations, disregard for rule of law, secret torture prisons, high infant mortality, declining literacy, sky-high incarceration rate, especially for racial minorities, and an economy in the tank.
Why isn’t the US yellow or orange on that map? Rogue military operations, disregard for rule of law, secret torture prisons, high infant mortality, declining literacy, sky-high incarceration rate, especially for racial minorities, and an economy in the tank.
Why isn’t the US yellow or orange on that map? Rogue military operations, disregard for rule of law, secret torture prisons, high infant mortality, declining literacy, sky-high incarceration rate, especially for racial minorities, and an economy in the tank.
Speaking of money and terrorism. Here’s a heartwarming little story. Lloyd’s TSB Bank has been funneling Iranian and Sudanese money into the U.S. banking system, laundering it so that it can be used to buy tungsten, a material important in building long-range missiles.
Caught red-handed, it appears that they’ll get the usual treatment. They pay a fine, $350 million, which is probably a lot less than the profit they turned (and I seriously doubt that they’ll pay anything close to that amount when all is said and done). If they don’t do any more naughtiness for two years, the whole thing is forgotten.
Instead of, as should be done, dragging the people responsible into the light of day, trying them, finding them guilty, and sentencing them to life in prison with no parole.
Send all the troops and helicopters and agents and whatever else you want to fight terrorism (note I won’t use the empty and phony phrase “fight the war on terror”). Our own interlocking international behemoth banking system is cashing in on death, and when they get caught, they just fork over a percentage.
Sickening.
Speaking of money and terrorism. Here’s a heartwarming little story. Lloyd’s TSB Bank has been funneling Iranian and Sudanese money into the U.S. banking system, laundering it so that it can be used to buy tungsten, a material important in building long-range missiles.
Caught red-handed, it appears that they’ll get the usual treatment. They pay a fine, $350 million, which is probably a lot less than the profit they turned (and I seriously doubt that they’ll pay anything close to that amount when all is said and done). If they don’t do any more naughtiness for two years, the whole thing is forgotten.
Instead of, as should be done, dragging the people responsible into the light of day, trying them, finding them guilty, and sentencing them to life in prison with no parole.
Send all the troops and helicopters and agents and whatever else you want to fight terrorism (note I won’t use the empty and phony phrase “fight the war on terror”). Our own interlocking international behemoth banking system is cashing in on death, and when they get caught, they just fork over a percentage.
Sickening.
This small doc. should put some light in the kind of mess the war with Afganistan means.
http://www.vbs.tv/full_screen.php?s=DGFE2305DC&sc=1363196
This small doc. should put some light in the kind of mess the war with Afganistan means.
http://www.vbs.tv/full_screen.php?s=DGFE2305DC&sc=1363196
This small doc. should put some light in the kind of mess the war with Afganistan means.
http://www.vbs.tv/full_screen.php?s=DGFE2305DC&sc=1363196
bernard, there’s of course more at that same site, like a BBC 8-parter here:
http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1834373791
But us humans don’t seem to be able to do any better than what we’re doing, do we? “War is good business — invest your son! (and now daughter!)” Like the dude said in the link you gave, over there in his tribal/ethnic area, “Have many sons, and lots of guns!”
bernard, there’s of course more at that same site, like a BBC 8-parter here:
http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1834373791
But us humans don’t seem to be able to do any better than what we’re doing, do we? “War is good business — invest your son! (and now daughter!)” Like the dude said in the link you gave, over there in his tribal/ethnic area, “Have many sons, and lots of guns!”
Well said, there is no end to violence I’ll just have to get used to it even if its not good business to me.
Well said, there is no end to violence I’ll just have to get used to it even if its not good business to me.