President Barack Obama pledged we’d be out of Afghanistan by 2016, but yesterday announced a “modest but meaningful extension of our presence” — keeping the 10,000 troops currently stationed there for all of 2016, and then, in perpetuity, maintaining a force five times larger than previously planned.
Why? Because, after 14 years of conflict and nation-building, Afghanistan is still neck-deep in violence. Last month, the Taliban briefly captured Kunduz, a city of over 250,000 people. Going forward, Obama admitted, “There will continue to be contested areas.”
The Afghan government is not self-sustainable and nobody seems to know how many years or decades or centuries that might take to achieve.
Meanwhile, over in Syria, the U.S. cannot train more than four or five moderate soldiers after much bluster and promise — and splurging a cool $500 million.
The U.S. invaded and “regime-changed” Iraq, helping shape a new government and national army. With all that effort — a cost of thousands of lives — once our soldiers weren’t doing the daily fighting to tamp down the bloody sectarian chasm, ISIS formed, the Iraqi army ran away and the country soon collapsed into civil war.
The Iraq Conquest put southern Iraq into Iranian orbit. How many lives was that worth?
The problem? Not military incompetence. The mission is the problem. Has any politician or military leader plausibly put forth a plan whereby our country’s intervention actually creates an improved and sustainable political order in any of these nations?
If so, let’s see it.
If not, why are our soldiers still in harm’s way?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “A Tunnel with No Light”
The better thought might be.. Why are we, the American people allowing our troops to stay in harm’s and, at the same time, looking the other way while our president arms and trains their opponents?
People who support this plan say things like “we still have troops in Japan long after WWII”.
What is overlooked is that we weren’t FIGHTING Japan all that time. What has to be admitted by our elites is that we can’t help people who don’t want our help. The next thing we hear is “we’re fighting them there to prevent terrorism here”. There’s an easier solution: ban all entry to the US by all Muslims anywhere in the world until THEY call off the jihad against the West and allow non-Muslims to have the same rights in their countries that they expect from us. Muslims divide the world into two regions — the dar-al-harb and dar-al-jihad. We are in the dar-al-harb (land of war). Perhaps it’s time to restrict Muslims to dar-al-jihad. I know it’s not PC and it’s not kind to peaceful Muslims, but until those ‘peaceful’ Muslims are willing to resist , and even fight against, the violence in their midst, there’s nothing we can do for them.
The better to commit war crimes like Kunduz and to maintain the CIA-Wall-Street’s opium cash cow.
Good short overview. All I can add is to quote;“Oh what a tangled web we weave„,etc”