Ending The War in Afghanistan

The WAR in Afghanistan is an American war.  We started it when we went looking for bin Laden and El Qaeda.  Supposedly, bin Laden was being sheltered or at least tolerated by the Taliban.   Personally I question whether Bush ever really wanted to catch bin Laden.  If we had caught him then our war on terror would have been over.  That is not what the Bushes had in mind.  Additionally, had we really been serious, we would have sent more troops.  We had more police on duty in New York during the last Republican National Convention than the number of soldiers we ever sent to find bin Laden.  Based on those two items, I question how serious we were.  Regardless, THAT was how the present war started.  We started it when we went over there.

Some of you reading this are going to say we did not start the war, they did, when they destroyed the World Trade Center.  We need to get the “They” straight.  The “they” who destroyed the Trade Center were not official representatives of an actual country, as it were.  They were a group of individuals like Nichols and McVeigh in Oklahoma.  The perpetrators of 9/11 were criminals, not soldiers.  They were not even Afghans.  But, we sent soldiers after them.

So with whom are we fighting?  We started out pursuing El Qaeda.  To do that, we had to traipse through the territories of various warlords.   My understanding of that is that it is somewhat akin to going after the Unabomber if he had been hiding out in territories governed by the Bloods and the Crips.  The Unabomber wouldn’t belong to either group but they would let him stay there.  I am not clear as to how the Taliban and the warlords are differentiated.  What I do know is that there was a coalition of guerrillas that we helped create to fight Russia.  They were recruited from and commanded by the various warlords.  We armed and trained them.   The difference is that when they were on our side, we called them the Mujahideen.   After the defeat of Russia, the Mujahideen had no one left to fight so they started fighting each other.  Out of this strife the ultra conservative, religious Taliban emerged.  The Mujahideen have become their militia.  My best guess is that Afghanistan would probably be a loose theocracy if we had not installed Hamid Karzai as the secular head of state.

So, again, with whom are we fighting?  We are fighting Afghans, but not the government.  Well, there is the rub.  There is no real government.  Karzai, the head of state, actually falsified the last election, so he doesn’t really represent the people.  The people didn’t vote for him because his government is so corrupt it really doesn’t govern.  The Afghans have governmental chaos since the late ‘70s.  They are used to the Taliban imposing a strict moral code.

So, what started this never-ending question?  I heard the news commentator on “The News Hour” say something about needing to train the Afghans to fight on their own.  Whoa, to fight with whom? I would say that if there were any people on this earth who do not need to learn how to fight better, it would be the Afghans.  They are sure kicking our butts.  If we were not there, there would be no war.  We started it.  What do the people we are fighting want?  They want us to leave.  What will they do when we leave?  Nothing.  How simple is that?  Will they topple the Karzai government?  Probably, but then he was already voted out of office, anyway.  Perhaps when there actually is a government elected by the Afghans, themselves, we can assist their head of state to repair some of the damage we caused.  That is how terrorism is defeated.  That is how you end this thing.