I don’t care about rugs or drugs and I don’t care about
So, here’s what we're gonna do. We're gonna air drop Bourne, Bond and Rambo to clean up
the mess while the overlords get to declare mission accomplished and we
wave bye-bye, so long and farewell to yet another foolish, wasteful losing war! Thanks for listening.. Now, let's find the exit door. August 4, 2010
UPDATE: Eleven years after it began on October 7, 2012, the Dubya dubbed, "Operation Enduring Freedom" drones on.
During the 2008 campaign, President Obama, declared that we had taken our eye off the ball by invading Iraq and pledged to focus on the Afghan offensive, presumably to punish the Taliban. That promise has been unfulfilled. We have strained the limits of our tenuous relations with Pakistan (a far more important strategic nation) by stepping over their sovereign border and using it as a launching pad to kill the Taliban. The number of Taliban leaders killed has been estimated at 900. The number of civilians, Pakistani and Afghan alike, who have been killed is uncertain but certainly far more than that. The grand prize, Osama Bin Laden has been killed. The justification for continuing this incursion eludes me.
Despite heavy criticism from some quarters the President placed time lines on the withdrawal of troops with 30,000 having been withdrawn through this past summer and the remaining 100,000+ scheduled to leave by 2014, "if" the Afghan government is stable. (Uh-huh.) So now, as John McCain has noted, we are on the clock and the Afghans, chieftains and Taliban alike, have the time.
In exchange for whatever it is that has been gained, 2,000 troops have been killed, 17,000 wounded and $1.7 trillion have been bled from our economic coffers. Among the dead are 52 Americans killed by "internal fire"; code for Afghan troops turning their weapons on American soldiers. Today brings reports of 14 people killed by a Taliban suicide bomber, including 3 more U.S. troops.
Fighting for another nations' freedom may or may not be virtuous. Being murdered for the trouble is foolish.
All of this calls to mind the adage: "Afghanistan is where dynasties go to die". Whether or not this has been true of all invaders is in dispute (by some reports, Alexander the Great and Genghis Kahn did reasonably well, but they were there only to slaughter and plunder, not build a nation in our image), but that hardly matters in this day and age where modern parallels are more instructive. Invading this barbarous, treacherous pile of rock and dirt didn't do the former Soviet Union any good and the modern Taliban was born out of the opposition to that doomed incursion.
All of which leads to the penultimate question: What are we doing there? The inescapable conclusion: all that can be won there has already been won. It's time to declare Operation Enduring Freedom a mission accomplished and bring 'em on home. October 1, 2012
UPDATE: Eleven years after it began on October 7, 2012, the Dubya dubbed, "Operation Enduring Freedom" drones on.
During the 2008 campaign, President Obama, declared that we had taken our eye off the ball by invading Iraq and pledged to focus on the Afghan offensive, presumably to punish the Taliban. That promise has been unfulfilled. We have strained the limits of our tenuous relations with Pakistan (a far more important strategic nation) by stepping over their sovereign border and using it as a launching pad to kill the Taliban. The number of Taliban leaders killed has been estimated at 900. The number of civilians, Pakistani and Afghan alike, who have been killed is uncertain but certainly far more than that. The grand prize, Osama Bin Laden has been killed. The justification for continuing this incursion eludes me.
Despite heavy criticism from some quarters the President placed time lines on the withdrawal of troops with 30,000 having been withdrawn through this past summer and the remaining 100,000+ scheduled to leave by 2014, "if" the Afghan government is stable. (Uh-huh.) So now, as John McCain has noted, we are on the clock and the Afghans, chieftains and Taliban alike, have the time.
In exchange for whatever it is that has been gained, 2,000 troops have been killed, 17,000 wounded and $1.7 trillion have been bled from our economic coffers. Among the dead are 52 Americans killed by "internal fire"; code for Afghan troops turning their weapons on American soldiers. Today brings reports of 14 people killed by a Taliban suicide bomber, including 3 more U.S. troops.
Fighting for another nations' freedom may or may not be virtuous. Being murdered for the trouble is foolish.
All of this calls to mind the adage: "Afghanistan is where dynasties go to die". Whether or not this has been true of all invaders is in dispute (by some reports, Alexander the Great and Genghis Kahn did reasonably well, but they were there only to slaughter and plunder, not build a nation in our image), but that hardly matters in this day and age where modern parallels are more instructive. Invading this barbarous, treacherous pile of rock and dirt didn't do the former Soviet Union any good and the modern Taliban was born out of the opposition to that doomed incursion.
All of which leads to the penultimate question: What are we doing there? The inescapable conclusion: all that can be won there has already been won. It's time to declare Operation Enduring Freedom a mission accomplished and bring 'em on home. October 1, 2012
1 comment:
This is yet another great piece Harold. Thank you.
However, even A the G knew to stay out of Afganistan all those
years ago. He got through it, using strategy and power, but he knew better
than to try to stay. It's one of the few places he went but did
not keep Macedonians there.
I think the Chinese, et al, are interested in Afg. because, if memory serves, there is a hunks gold and uranium in them thar hills.
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