KABUL, Afghanistan — It was Kabul and it wasn’t Kabul. There was a clock and there wasn’t a clock. Soon after a two-hour secret visit to Afghanistan by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson on Monday was publicly disclosed, the American Embassy and the office of President Ashraf Ghani made statements about their productive meeting in Kabul. The problem is that the meeting was not in Kabul, but in a windowless room in Bagram, the heavily fortified American military base a 90-minute drive away. The misinformation, apparently meant to obscure the true venue, was betrayed by discrepancies in similar photographs released by the Americans and the Afghans. Oct23 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/world/asia/afghanistan-kabul-bagram-photographs-tillerson.html
The U.S. on 7 October 2001 at 12:30 pm EDT launched Operation Enduring
Freedom which began the war in Afghanistan. A horoscope for this date and
time drawn for Washington DC charts the
US involvement in the Afghan war. At once we notice the Saturn-Pluto opposition
on the horizon axis as the defining factor in this chart. This is the same
opposition that aligned with the US Sibley horizon axis in the 9/11 incident.
It may therefore be worthwhile to recall what Eric Francis in his essay The Country of Our Dreams, has to say about the profound effect
this opposition has had on the US.
Due to the variance in
possibilities for when the Declaration was signed I considered this chart iffy
until the Sept. 11 incident. This event was associated with the alignment of
Saturn and Pluto across Gemini and Sagittarius. That opposition, exact for the
first time on Aug. 5, 2001, went directly across the axis at 12+ Gemini and 12+
Sagittarius. In other words, it intersected the ascendant/descendant of the
Sibley chart to less than one degree of exactitude; and then we had this
terrible thing happen, which changed the course of history forever.
This transit includes
Pluto crossing the ascendant of the Sibley chart. Pluto in the ascendant is one
of those transits that redefines one’s identity; it changes the nature of one’s
relationship to existence. Indeed, at the time of Sept. 11 we became identified
with Plutonic forces of death and destruction, both as victim and perpetrator.
We allowed the righteous fundamentalism of Pluto in Sagittarius to literally
seize our identity, reinvigorating the long battle between Muslims and
Christians. We allowed other people to lure us, once again, into believing lies
that would not even fool a dog.
On one level, the
Saturn-Pluto opposition seems to have derailed us as a country; but really, it
exposed who we have been as a nation through much of the 20th century. We might
want to ask ourselves: is this the side of Sagittarius we want to express — the
one that thinks it can define right and wrong for itself?
For a country that has been imposing itself on the rest of
the world, a Saturn-Pluto opposition becomes a reality check on this obsessive
and self-righteous behavior. Pluto [13sa] on the Ascendant in the War Chart is conjunct stars of Hercules, a hero who is
known more for his brawn than his brain. He often rushes in and gets entangled in a
mess. Saturn [15ge] in the War Chart is conjunct Rigel, beta Orionis , in the
constellation of Orion – the Hunter or Warrior.
About this area Diana Rosenberg writes.
Proud, stubborn, enclosed within themselves, they act on
their beliefs and do not listen or relate easily, often failing to see the
outcome of their decisions and actions, seeming to feel there is some “divine
right” underlying their impulses. Most disasters here are caused by excessive
speed or impatience.
The War Chart has the radix Sun trine the radix Saturn. A
trine considered a harmonious aspect can easily lull us into complacency. In 2017, sixteen years later, the progressed
Sun [0sc] is now in a sesquisquare aspect with Saturn. The easy going trine is
now facing a serious obstacle. From here onwards powerful forces can ensnare the
over-confident. Problems also develop
here if one comes to regard oneself as a power "unto itself," capable
of standing alone against the cosmos [1].
The US has extended an invitation to some members of the
Taliban to negotiate and join the Afghan government claiming that the Taliban will
never win a military victory. But it is
false to conclude that the Taliban will fail against the foreign occupation,
because the fact is that the Taliban is not showing signs of weakness as they
have been gaining territory. This is partly the reason why the meeting between Secretary
of State Rex W. Tillerson and President
Ashraf Ghani on Monday was held in a
tightly secured military base. The
notion that the US is going to turn the tide doesn’t seem realistic.
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