I listened to our President last night. I think he has serious doubts, like most of America, that we can convert a country run for centuries by tribes and tribal rules; Mullas and religious rules, and get them to subjugate themselves to a single central authority. First America sends in a less than overwhelming force to be 'the authority' and then America somehow transfers their power to the Afgan police and/or army? By training them? Your kidding!
It won’t happen. The Afgannies are too diverse a people and too chaotic. Wealth and power is disbursed too unevenly. Between religious differences and entrenched economic interests-including the drug trade-it would take a Kubla Kahn (or Saddam Hussein) to get them all in line... all following one authority like a central government and/or national police force.
Unless maybe there is a strong-armed dictator somewhere in the bushes. But America usuallys pick the wrong one to help-someone who soon turns against us or gets thrown out of power.
Forgettaboutit!
And I think our President agrees. He is just being, as is normal for him, "politically expedient" and sending in more troops to support an ambiguous, lose-for-sure, strategy.
I wonder why Colin Powell doesn’t speak out? “Go in with overwhelming force and have an exit strategy, or don’t go to war at all” is such good advice.
We need to get out of Afganistan and the existing "strategy" as soon as possible and re-start a new effort to somehow protect ourselves against fanatical, religious terrorists wherever they are.
We need to stop shooting at a moving target; claiming ‘territory’ like Falusia or Southern Afganistan or wherever. We will kill some of them, but if we do start to win the battle over geography, the bad guys will just pull up stakes and go somewhere else.
You don’t think so? Add a comment. As we all sit here waiting to see what will happen politically at the polls, materially with our money and most importantly, with our sons and daughters in the service of our country..
