When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
— Rudyard Kipling, “The Young British Soldier,” 1895
106 years before the United States invaded Afghanistan, Kipling wrote about Afghanistan. Britain wasn’t the first country to invade Afghanistan. Previously the Maurya Empire, Alexander the Great, the Rashidun Caliphate, Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire, the Timurid Empire, the Mughal Empire, various Persian Empires, the Sikh Empire, the British Empire and finally in 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. All ended badly. Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
There’s an old saying about the Afghanistan rebel forces. They’re too strong to ever lose a war and too weak to ever win a war. Here we are, 20 years into the Afghanistan War and can you tell me what the United States has accomplished? Over $1 trillion wasted and 2,448 U.S. servicemen and women (including Humboldt County’s), Department of Defense civilians and private contractors have paid the ultimate sacrifice and for what? We can’t impose our culture and force our style of government on other countries, no matter how backwards we perceive them. For those of you who think we should stay in Afghanistan with no end in sight, how many of your sons and daughters are volunteering to fight over there? My step-son was wounded in combat fighting in Afghanistan.
The United States made a fatal mistake post-9/11. We wanted to invade Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaida and kill or capture Osama bin Laden. Only we went in with minimal forces as the Bush administration’s ultimate goal was to invade Iraq to force a regime change. Do you even remember Saddam Hussein? We changed regimes in Iraq and that country and the entire Middle East region are still disasters. Did the Bush administration capture or kill bin Laden? Nope, that took nearly another 10 years and another president.
Before starting a war you better have a mission statement, a plan. Once the bullets start flying no plan ever goes as expected as the fog of war takes over. Think back to the Vietnam War. Why did the United States invade Vietnam? The Domino Theory. We actually used to believe that other countries in Asia would become communist nations, much like Eastern Europe. Because of our narcissistic visions of worldwide grandeur, 58,318 Americans died and billions were wasted for nothing to have changed. Oh yeah, today Vietnam is vacation destination.
Same with Afghanistan. We never had a plan for Afghanistan. Merging U.S. Special Forces with the Afghanistan Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban has been going on for almost 20 years and what have we accomplished? I’ll remind you the United States and its allies defeated Nazi Germany (huge credit to Russia) and Imperial Japan in just 3½ years. In the ’40s, you could follow the battles from Normandy to Berlin on a map. Can the average high school student even locate Afghanistan on a world map today? We can’t keep flying drone missions and firing Hellfire missiles on suspected Taliban leaders. How many Afghan civilians have we killed as “collateral damage”? Every drone strike with civilian casualties creates 10 new jihadists who want nothing more than “Death to America!”
Back in 2011-2013, Citizen Trump tweeted about withdrawing our military forces from Afghanistan. He understood that middle America was tired of sending our sons and daughters off to fight endless wars with no military or political objectives in sight. When the former president campaigned on getting out of endless wars, the Republicans and most of the country agreed with him. So now we have President Biden stating we will withdraw all U.S. military forces out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, exactly 20 years after 9/11. You’d think this would make everyone happy. However as this is 2021, everything is political left vs. right and the right-wing media weapons of mass distraction now want to keep us in Afghanistan forever. When I see Sean Hannity’s son driving a M35 cargo truck in 105-degree heat through the Kandahar Pass, I’ll know they’re not just making their usual propaganda noise.
To quote Congressman “Gym” Jordan, “When is the time? When is this going to end? What measure? I mean, are we just going to continue this forever?” Oops, sorry. That was Jordan talking to Dr. Fauci about COVID.
Matthew Owen resides in Eureka, and believes the First Amendment allows for free speech, even when married to a Humboldt County supervisor.
"middle" - Google News
April 25, 2021 at 11:03PM
https://ift.tt/2Qvaw6K
Matthew in the Middle | Endless war - Eureka Times-Standard
"middle" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MY042F
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment