The Cost of War

O.K. here's some interesting little facts that I've recently unearthed.

In 1921 the Allies handed German the bill for the First World War - £6,650,000,000!
In 2010 the Germans finally managed to finish paying this enormous bill off!

I had no idea that no lessons were learnt from the Second World War and that we left Germany with that millstone around their necks.  I have to admit I have no idea what sort of bill we gave them for the Second World War.

What I mean by lessons from the Second World War is this - we will hand a country an extortionate bill for a war they didn't actually start (if you look at your history books) having already crippled it by taking away its best industrial and agricultural land.  We will then wonder why a nutcase of a leader gets into power by telling his people "it is the Allies who have crippled our country, who have robbed us of our land and of our jobs.  It is the Allies who have destroyed our national pride, our national standing, who have reduced our homes to squalor and our families to poverty."  At which point his people agree with him because he is right, when you stop and think about it, and go out to give the Allies a right good kick up the back side.

Hang on a minute, am I talking about pre-Nazi Germany or modern Afghanistan here?  Because put in those terms I'm not sure if there are any differences.

From where I'm standing, Developed West hasn't learnt one single thing from the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles.  We crippled a country and then wondered why it turned round and tried to bite our leg off.  Using a not-so-open trading market we are doing the same to Afghanistan and Africa.  Africa can grow sugar cane more economically and environmentally friendly than any where else in the world.  However, they cannot sell on the open market because the cane farmers in America are subsidised one hundred percent before they even put a seed in the ground.  The African farmers cannot compete with the prices of their subsidised rivals so they remain poor.

It is the same in Afghanistan, only in Afghanistan they had a leader turn up who gave them a target for their understandable anger - the West.  Throw religious fervour into that mix and it's a powder keg just waiting to explode.

And explode it did, taking the Twin Towers and hundreds of people as trapped in the system as them with it.

I totally agree that the Taliban are evil but, like the Nazi Party before them, they are an evil that could have been prevented if the governments of the West hadn't been so damn greedy.