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.

Anyone For Afghanistan?

Poor Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on Sunday he remarked in Munich, Germany about the NATO alliance, " We must not -we cannot-become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not." He was speaking about the blowback of NATO allies to commit more troops and expand the mission to what may be an eternal war in Afghanistan.

Well, fight for what? Fight for how long? Who are we fighting? Afghanies or Taliban or al-qaeda don't wear uniforms and even so we can't tell when NATO drops bombs from fast moving jets . So the enevitable civilian casualties bear the bulk of the deaths and displacement. It's the more sane contingent of the NATO alliance that balks from further devestation of a country that didn't have much to begin with but now suffers with even less while they are getting blown up at the same time.

There was a rhetorical question asked by the antiwar activists in the 1960s. They asked," Suppose someone gave a war and nobody came?"