Why We're In Afghanistan

Finally Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made it clear why the U.S. is in Afghanistan. He was giving testimony to Congress as a follow up to Obama's order to send an additional 30,000 troops into the meat grinder . He said, " The U. S. must win in Afghanistan because the Taliban defeated the Soviet Union. They were the only other super power at the time some 20 years ago and if they [Taliban] defeat the United States now then they will win a great symbolic victory and become unstopable."

Consider that the old USSR was defeated because it was in a country that it shouldn't have been. Also the U.S. helped the Taliban defeat the Russians. Now we have traded postions with the Russians and the British before them and Ghengis Khan before them and Alexander The Great before them. The take away lesson is that empires don't work for long. In the end they have to go home. But people like Gates and Obama and all the criminals before who indulge in empire building get paid too much for mischief and more importantly never appear at the front lines to catch bullets.

And if the Taliban want to be foolish also then will be made to look like fools also if they show up in the U.S. For now the American effort in Afghanistan has only created more blowback to the foreign invaders.

Afghanistan: "Graveyard Of Empires"

Rudyard Kipling's early 20th century poem "The Young British Soldier" includes:

"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 an' blow out your brains
and go to your gawd like a soldier."

Afghanistan has received and became a "graveyard of empires" from Alexander The Great through Genghis Khan including the British then the Russians and now the United States. Barack Obama declared today, " Afghanistan is a war we have to win." And so the only comfort that can come for those words is philosophical. No matter when you lived or died you have experienced the one reality.