Hello Afghanistan



Posted: Sunday, December 06, 2009

by Kenneth Brown

As a proud citizen of the greatest nation on the planet, I truly believe we can be greater. When I see the discrimination that’s being used against women and people of color I can’t help but think of the greatness that goes untapped. Considering women and people of color make up the majority of Americans, it’s easy to see the genius, energy, creativity, imagination and skill that are going untapped.

Lost in this untapped resource could very well be the cure for cancer, aids, cars that get 50 miles to the gallon, the discovery of additional sources of alternative energy, an effective method of recycling coal emissions, the reduction in environmental destruction, a reduction in the loss of wildlife, educational techniques that create an environment and thirst for learning and maybe just maybe fewer wars. Instead of tapping into this resource, America depends on a minority which consists of a few white men. There’s no doubt these white men have done a good job, but I’m talking about the possibility of turning a good job into a great job. It’s like the difference between flying and soaring.

The few white men of the previous administration are a good example. It was those few white men who mislead us into Iraq. They also allowed Osama Bin Laden to go from Afghanistan to Pakistan and now we are left fighting the Taliban who did not attack us on 9/11. On March 15 th , 2002, President George W. Bush said the Taliban was out of business. As we occupy Afghanistan today, the Taliban is making a move to control the government in Pakistan. I truly believe America would be safer with the Taliban controlling the opium in Afghanistan than we will be if the Taliban are controlling the nuclear weapons in Pakistan. I continuously hear people talk about winning the war in Afghanistan. But what does America win? If I hear one more person talk about how much safer America will be I think I’ll throw up. How can we be safer when we are pushing the Taliban in the direction of having nuclear weapons? We may be monitoring their nuclear program now, but what happens if the Taliban and/or their supporters are elected to run the Pakistan government? We can monitor training Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan from the sky, but if they get their hands on the nuclear weapons in Pakistan the rules of the game completely change and Allah better bless their enemies.

If what we are doing in Afghanistan will make Afghanistan a better place there should be a line from Kabul to the Pakistan border of Afghanis wanting to join the military. How can anyone expect us to succeed without the support of Afghanistan’s people? The relationship I see between Afghanistan and Viet Nam is America’s attempt to prop up a government in those countries that the people don’t respect or support. But instead, U.S. Army General Stanley A. McChrystal says he can win in Afghanistan with 40,000 more troops. Again I ask, win what? And yes, this is the same General McChrystal who lied to the American people and the Pat Tillman family about how Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan.

America has been in Afghanistan longer than the Russians and we are no closer to winning than they were. And the Russians didn’t leave Afghanistan they were kicked out. America has been training Afghanistan recruits for eight years and their Army is no better prepared than they were when we arrived. I went into the U.S. Marines in August and by December I was ready to fight.

I’ve even heard people suggest that by having an Iraqi style surge would help Afghanistan as if what appeared to work in Iraq will work in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan isn’t Iraq, and the people making this suggestion must not have a clue about the role the Sunni Awakening played in reducing the violence in Iraq. If we want to do some comparing, let’s compare General McChrystal to General Westmoreland who said he could win in Viet Nam with more troops. The only thing Westmoreland won with more troops was more dead Americans.

In the September 21, 2009 issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria said it best when he said, “…There continues to be a large gap between the goals being outlined by the administration and the means available to achieve them." Although Obama inherited the war in Afghanistan, as President he needs to change America’s goals in that country. The same practice the previous administration used in Iraq was also used to in Afghanistan. Just like in Iraq, we went into Afghanistan on one mission and after our arrival the mission was changed to another. We went into Afghanistan to capture the people responsible for 9/11, but now we are trying to turn it into Utopia. The Afghan people didn’t ask for our help, Hamid Karzai asked for it and let us not forget Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, was not elected by the Afghan people. He was put into office by the same few white men who told the American people, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, had a nuclear weapons program and was in bed with Al Qaeda. All of which was untrue. Karzai’s government is so ineffective and corrupt it has absolutely no credibility among the Afghan people. He can’t even go out into the public without someone trying to slit his throat. If he speaks for the Afghan people, why don’t they know it? Why aren’t the Afghan people fighting as hard to rid their country of the Taliban as they are to get rid of us? So how do you work with and turn over a country’s development to a government its own people don’t recognize? One thing seems for sure, the Taliban has a much better recruitment policy in Afghanistan than the Afghanistan government.

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