The Problem: Everyone is Value-Laden. In other words, we are born into whatever social, political environment and then tend to defend its virtues when confronted with alternatives: we might say, that slavery is morally just and use a convincing argument for why this system should persist. The value-laden reality of human interaction is disturbing because there are argument to justify any course of action based on our value-laden perspective.

Having said that from an outside observer – the majority of the Western world – the US is extremely strange with regard to their healthcare. Most Americans believe the public sector cannot do anything as well as the private sector. When it comes to the right to have medical treatment: corporate interested prevail. There is the philosophical question of whether the individual should be solely responsible for their wellbeing or whether the state can provide some protection when individuals alone cannot prevent health problems, or are unable to provide their commodified value in a market economy. don’t see it this way. Also, rational arguments regarding comparisons to other healthcare systems are difficult to come by: Americans are inundated with the worst cases of universal healthcare in Western Europe, Canada, Taiwan, and Japan> For example, how foreign leaders come to the US to receive treatment must imply that the US has the best healthcare system…such arguments overlook the question of who benefits from such a system. Some rich man/person? or the Rest of Society?

IN the USA:
• Customers go into bankruptcy while executives make bonuses and take their family on vacation in the Bahamas. Profiteering by doctors, CEOs in healthcare businesses is institutionalized. For example with WellPoint Health Benefits Company: their interests are with their shareholders. Like an health insurance company their incentive is to have their stock options go up: the incentive is NOT to improve the health for their customers. The US has little preventative care: the health insurance companies do not benefit from having healthy people in their system.
• If you leave healthcare to business, healthcare becomes a market where it is the ability to pay not the need of the individual that matters. The burden is on the individual to be productive enough to receive care. A circle of inequality is an obvious by-product where an individual becomes ill and then cannot be a productive member of society.
• The cost of healthcare is absurd in the United States of America. Premiums are raised to increase the wealth of those at the top of market based organizations, from cell phone companies to small businesses to health insurance companies: The healthcare insurance in the US per person is twice the cost of healthcare in Canada, UK, and France. 6,000 American dollars per year versus 3,000 (US) dollars in Canada, UK, and France and yet 46 million Americans are uninsured and do not receive any care unless they fill out Medicaid forms (which provide poor coverage for poor/ill people).
• Health Insurance companies deny customers because they are unprofitable customers ie. customers who get sick, lose their jobs, and can’t pay their premiums. They should no longer be able to reject someone with a preexisting condition. The new Healthcare Reform’s only significant victory is that it will be unlawful to cancel insurance once someone gets ill. Health insurance companies purge small businesses (50 people or less) and individual people. They don’t care that people have a lot of insurance. The CEOs do not interact with the poor who can’t afford insurance. CEOs are trying to avoid interacting with the consequences of a market system that benefits from illness not from healthy citizenry.
• Doctors have an incentive to over prescribe medication. Psychiatric drugs are rampant. Doctors are motivated by sales, not necessarily by best practices. Increasing profits is the bottom-line, the health of patients is ancillary.
• The lobbying going into Congress by the health insurance industry is overbearing, as well as the politics of weakening Obama’s presidential capital. There is always something to complain about when it comes to a bill before the US Congress: it’s too long (the Patriot Act, Healthcare Reform). Federal bills are very complex: deal with it: that is not a critique: the central issues are answered as straightforwardly as possible. The details are settled by legal hacks, any major problems with the bill will emerge and be rectified.

1980 100,000 USSR Soldiers: Soviet soldiers were promised combat against American troops by the KGB but this claim was an obvious lie. The Soviet war was useless because the Mujahadeen consistently reappeared after the previous days of fighting. Mujahadeen had internal conflicts. Gratitude lasted seldom longer than a few hours. The War was fought with Mujahadeen blood and with America’s goal: to end communism in Russia. The USSR abandoned massive sweeps with air based tactics. The UN pushed for shuttle diplomacy saying that if Russia left Afghanistan the US would stop supporting the Mujahadeen. (Similar to Iran’s promise with Americans). The USSR bombed Aghanistan from the air. The Soviets destroyed a whole village. Many young men were forced into the Afghan army those who refused were shot. The toll of Soviet dead was as much as 2000 per year. The soviet arm was largely drunk, drugged, and felt the war was pointless.

As a soldier in the USSR, you realized that the system creates lies in USSR. The USSR lied to its public claiming that there was no war but that their soldiers were building schools. The USSR would not allow people to write on their son’s gravestone regarding where that son had died: Afghanistan. Gorbachev had to explain what the point of the war was: they needed to find a process for escape. It was difficult to withdraw from Afghanistan. What kind of government would emerge without the USSR in Afhgnistan. USSR choose a new leader in Afghanistan: Nagibula. They needed a peace initiative with the Mujahadeen. The USSR needed US support. But Reagan wanted to make the USSR pay for Vietnam. The Mujahadeen were given USSR weapons by increasing US aid. The USSR was punished brutally in this war.

It was the Vietnam syndrome for the USSR as a superpower: impossible to run away from that country. Afghanistan is a traditionally an Islamic nation. Afghanistan has a history of conquest. It became a focal-point for Cold War conflict. Afghanistan was strategically important for oil. US aided Islamic fundamentalist.

AFGHAN CRISIS:
In 1978 a communist government emerges. The Afghan government of Taraki looked to the Soviet Union for support. Moscow sent hundred of advisors, military trainers, and military supplies to Afghanistan in 1978 – 1979. Afghanistan was an agricultural country and the government advocated land reform allowing peasants to achieve egalitarian objectives. Women were encouraged to stop wearing veils and began schooling. The rural communities opposed these changes and the Mullahs felt that the communists were trying to destroy Islamic tradition. God must decide who is rich or poor according to the Mullahs. Mullahs attempted to burn schools. The Kabul Taraki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nur_Muhammad_Taraki) government was trying to build socialism for 5 years, the regime was vastly ignorant. There was a holy war declared against the godless communist government of Afghanistan. Russia might move south to seize oil in Iran as was feared by Jimmy Carter. The Shahs fall in Iran meant the US had few allies in the region. The US gave covert aid in July 1979 to the Mujahadeen.

The invasion by the USSR into Afghanistan was an affront against US foreign policy interests. The Afghanistan government was replaced by Amin however, he realized that the USSR wanted him out. The Russians were concerned that Amin would ask for US assistance and support US invasion. Russian sent troops in after Americans had deployed cruise missiles to threaten the USSR’s military superiority in the region. The Politburo in the USSR a) feared Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan, b) if the USSR did not enter Afghanistan some one else would, c) there was instability between the USSR/Afghanistan border. KGB special-forces killed Amin in his palace.

Karmal was the president of Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was seen as a threat to world order because it was the first invasion outside of the Warsaw Pact. Jimmy Carter issued a threat that if the USSR invaded Pakistan or Iran he would respond with Nuclear War. The soviet invasion was widely condemned at the UN. The 1980 Moscow Olympics were boycotted. The US supported the Mujahadeen in a clandestine manner: God was on their side. The idea was to allow for the bleeding of the USSR in Afghanistan. US bought Soviet arms from Czechloslovakia (corrupt), Egypt, and China. Pakistan wanted a strongly Islamic neighbour even with nuclear weapons interests and drugs as long as the Afghan resistance was supported.

Underlying causes of the Partition of Pakistan & India:
a) British departure: The cost of India was too high for Britain. The removal of a colonial power which frequently served to consolidate interethnic tensions led to the resurgence of such conflict between the colonized communities.
b) Conflict between communities had persisted for centuries (possibly longer) but the competing political movements opened the flood-gates. During uncertain times human beings tends to rally around what is most psychological comforting. For example, their relatives, their religious denominations, their perceived Nation. These groups tend to turn to their signposts and pit themselves against the Other which threatens their resources, community, and lives: (See Henry E. Hale, The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of states and nations in Eurasia and the World)
c) Institutional Advantage for Nation-State Creation: The preexisting institutional structure of India provided the transitional infrastructure for an independent India. The somewhat federated structured of Indian dynasties allowed for the transition to quickly produce a clear delineation between Muslim and Sihk and Hindi Indians. (Phillip G. Roeder, Where Nation-States come from: Institutional Changes in the age of nationalism).
d) Mobilization by politicians through the available divisions in society. Politicians divide for their own sake: power through using the signposts available to them. In regions where there is no clear majority, mobilization along ethnic lines is not tenable. Where there is a majority, lack of economic opportunity, and insecurity, politically motivtedviolence is produced. Such violence may be culturally enforced as well. In the Muslim league, there was a fear of zamindar system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamindari) being abolished which would weaken the power of the zamindar families, for example. Partition was justified because it was better to abandon a united Indian in order to avoid policy standardization from a socialist central government in New Delhi.

Nehru supported a united India but accepted partition because there was inequality between Muslim and Hindu peoples. Jinnah of the Muslim League was completely unwilling to move on the issue of India’s partition. His support for a new Muslim state as Pakistan was based on the issue of democratic representation of a Muslim minority. One year after the partition he died. Had he died earlier partition may have been avoided but this is speculative and another political leader might well have advanced Jinnah’s goals in his place. The Partition is another dubious sign of cultural groups with deeply divergent philosophies of being able to co-exist under a unified state.