Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Is it even possible to win a war in Afghanistan? Not today.

And here's why...

Follow this link. It will take you to a full description of Forward Operating Base Keating , the same FOB that was attacked this past weekend by 400 Taliban-led troops resulting in the deaths of 8 American soldiers.

What's most amazing to me is how much information the link above provides to our enemies. Wow. Why don't we just put every soldier's Facebook account, street address and photo on these Websites and allow our enemies to just kill them that much more quickly?

Children, we cannot ever "win" in Afghanistan. We can only retreat and allow the Taliban to keep their scrubby piece of mountainous dirt. And why should we care anyway? We have so many things to clean up in our own country.

So, why are we bothering there?

To keep radical Islam from proliferating? Hmmm. That's not working too well. Just ask the British and the Europeans. They can't even contain radical Islam in their own cities.

To control Afghan heroin-producing poppy fields? Does anyone else see the irony in trying to stem supply when Americans have consistently proven that they want heroin and as much as they can shoot? Hey, this drug is now killing more people than auto accidents. Will stemming supply cut that statistic? Doubtful. Americans like to get high. So, they'll just switch to something else. When are we going to learn that the demand side of this equation is where the solution lies?

To win Afghan hearts and minds and make the country safe for democracy? If that's the goal, then maybe the effort is worth it. But, it will take hundreds of years before we see any real change in that direction. The people have to want it. And thus far they don't seem to be too interested in it. If the Taliban can scrape together 400 farmers to take on a fully armed Marine garrison, then I don't think democracy is really on their minds.

Oh, wait, I know what it is. We need a place to use all of the weapons we are producing in order to keep our massive munitions manufacturing industry firing on all pistons. Politicians call it "job creation."

No, I don't want to see us retreat. I want to see us kill every single murdering Taliban member we can find. But, we need to find a different word than retreat to describe the need to get our young soldiers the hell out of there. Time for the Afghans to take care of their own country. Let's use our young soldiers to protect us in more important places like, ahem, San Diego, where are recent shoot out between armed smugglers and U.S. Border Patrol made Quentin Tarantino blush.