Sunday, September 27, 2009

Afghanistan

There has never been a clearer reason to get out of Afghanistan since the Soviets faced the same problem thirty years ago. If President Obama was wise, he'd stop the coming bloodshed in that country before it ever gets a chance to start.

Among some of the most important reasons is that unlike Iraq, the people of Afghanistan have no stomach for a national Army. Even their own government doesn't want an army greater than 60,000 troops. This is a force roughly the size of Canada's with a population of 30 million.

As the lack of direction continues our country now plans to send more troops to this country. Like every time we send more troops anywhere it won't be long before the existing population will see this as an occupying force. Once this sentiment has been established we will find ten new enemies for every one soldier we send there.

A young woman in my church just lost her husband of four months to an IED in Afghanistan. More families will become devestated with hurt and loss as we continue to be mired in fighting in the hills against an invisible enemy.

The United States no longer has the means to slay dragons all over the world. Hopefully some day we'll learn that our over-aggressiveness in foreign policy makes us less safe, not more.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Uh oh, I agree.

Tracy said...

Why do we hate America Don?

Gino said...

nicely said, tracy.

nationbuilding a nation that cant be built just cant be done.

Unknown said...

Good point, Gino. We readily accept differences in culture-"Women can't drive, Saudi Arabia? No big deal!"-but have real tunnel vision as to what constitutes legitimate governance. This sounds bad, and I don't mean it to be, but maybe the geography and culture there makes tribal warlords the best possible system. The fact they still run everything after the last 20 years of their history makes me either believe that, or give up my Darwinist beliefs.