Americans have surely worn out our welcome in Afghanistan, if we were ever welcome there in the first place. The eleven year relationship has unraveled like a cheap sweater. No foreign power occupier from the time of Alexander the Great to Obama the Omniscient has ever been successful in subduing those unmitigated savages. Just ask the Russians what they think about conquering Afghanistan.
Oh, yes, we’ve killed a bunch of them Taliban’s for sure; we’re super good at that. But then they keep popping back up like Jack’s in the Box as we keep turning the crank. Just like with Vietnam, we did most of the killing there while the Vietcong were winning the war. And just like with Vietnam, it has all amounted to nothing – no; less than nothing.
Eleven years, hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of wounded and maimed, and nothing – absolutely nothing – to show for it, not even so much as a thank-you card. And now it appears that even our Afghan buddies, our allies, our so-called friends are turning their weapons on us.
“Shoulder to shoulder" is the rallying cry of the NATO-Afghan military partnership. But after a few Korans were found smoldering in the trash, our Afghan brothers, police and military alike; you know, the beneficiaries of American largess, the ones we are training to take back their country, are starting to use us for target practice. We can’t trust any of them, period.
The Koran burning thing is just the latest and most vicious evidence of distrust since we’ve occupied Afghanistan. Our “friendly” Afghan “partners” have now shot and killed more than 75 U.S. and other NATO coalition forces within the last five years. Now we’ve been forced to recall hundreds of coalition personnel working in more than two dozen government ministries in Kabul in order to protect them from their “friends.”
"It's a declining relationship. It has been for years,” said one official. "You won't be able to fix that. The big question is 'Will it remain a workable relationship?' I think it's possible. It could settle down, but it won't fully settle down to the old level." Another official at the Interior Ministry said the Western advisers' morale had been shattered. Surely that remark qualifies for understatement of the year.
"These advisers are crucial, especially in the security sector when we're talking about transition," explained the director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies. "Certainly the Afghan government can function without them, but if they don't return, it will take a toll on the financial situation of the government. Many of these projects financed by donors require the presence of these advisers."
Crucial; crucial for what, I ask you? Just exactly what are we Americans getting out of this deal while our Afghan “friends” are biting the hand that feeds them? We get eleven years of nothing while we pay for it with blood and cash.
A senior Western adviser who oversees advisers in several ministries said that when they go back they probably will be required to wear body armor and travel in groups with armed escorts. They might also have to get permission to visit the ministries, reducing day-to-day contact with their Afghan partners.
On the political front, Afghanistan’s government also appears to be scaling back its support for women's rights in order to advance peace talks with the Taliban ahead of the withdrawal of foreign troops according to Afghan lawmakers and human-rights activists.
A government-appointed council of 150 leading Muslim clerics last week urged strict application of a conservative and literalist interpretation of Islamic law, which would require women to wear the veil and forbid them from mixing with men in the work place or traveling without a male chaperon. "Men are fundamental and women are secondary," said the Council in a written statement published by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.
Let’s see; America went to war in Afghanistan for eleven years now to oust the Taliban because they were harboring Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorists. We toppled the Taliban gangsters and in the process emancipated the entire population of Afghan women from barbaric radical Islamic slavery. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives in the effort. But now our ungrateful benefactors want peace with the Taliban and are willing to throw their women back under the bus to achieve it.
It sure looks like we’re back to square one, doesn’t it?
Yes, we should leave that filthy Afghan hell hole, alright; and maybe we should take their women and children along with us; any of them who would like to escape their prison to enjoy a new and fruitful life in the West. I would truly love to have all the “fundamental” Afghan men wake up tomorrow with no women to kick around anymore. Come to think of it, that might be the best way for us to win the war.
Your last point is good. It probobly would have been cheaper (definitely cheaper in lives) if we had simply offered to move anybody who wanted out of Afghanistan to a new place (e.g., Detroit, New Orleans, Nevada, etc.), give them a place to live and enough money (or food) to eat for a year, than to try and remake Afghanistan in some neocon image.
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