Posted on 01/01/2019 3:50:28 AM PST by reaganaut1
...
[T]he downsizing of the Afghan mission was probably inevitable. Indeed, it may soon be time for the United States to get out of the country altogether.
No other country in the world symbolizes the decline of the American empire as much as Afghanistan. There is virtually no possibility of a military victory over the Taliban and little chance of leaving behind a self-sustaining democracy — facts that Washington’s policy community has mostly been unable to accept.
While many American troops stay behind steel-reinforced concrete walls to protect themselves from the very population they are supposed to help, it is striking how little discussion Afghanistan has generated in government and media circles in Washington. When it comes to Afghanistan, Washington has been a city hiding behind its own walls of shame and frustration.
While the Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians and Iranians are all developing competing energy and mining projects in and next door to Afghanistan, the United States appears to have little commercial future in the country, even though it spends about $45 billion there annually. The total cost of the war could reach as high as $2 trillion when long-term costs are factored in, according to Brown University's Cost of War Project. All that to prop up an unstable government that would most likely disintegrate if aid were to end.
Indeed, Afghanistan represents the triumph of the deterministic forces of geography, history, culture, and ethnic and sectarian awareness, with Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras and other groups competing for patches of ground. Tribes, warlords and mafia-style networks that control the drug trade rule huge segments of the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
NYT recommendation nuff sed
Occasionally, pigs find truffles.
Give it to the ChiComs.
Afghanistan is a tribal dump. We’ve been there for 17 years.
Salt the poppy fields, and come home.
When did perpetual warfare become a conservative viewpoint?
Reduce it to $40 billion and use the other $5B to build the wall.
Enough money to build our border wall several times over.
Nancy P and Chuck U are happy we’re wasting lives and money on a chithole Third World country but they’re admantly opposed to securing our own border.
Go figure.
NYT agrees with Trump!
That is a great headline...
It is hard to fight an enemy who does not wear uniforms and wears the same clothes as the civilian population. You don’t know who is who. We had the same problem in Nam. Unless the guy has an AK47 in hand, hard to figure who is who. And now, the enemy send children in with bombs tied to them to kill our people. To me, this place is not worth the blood of one of our people. If you want to kill em, bomb them into the stone age, where they are from and where THEY CONTINUE TO LIVE IN. These people are still living in 730 AD, when Moo-ham-id was squirted out a cow’s butt onto the scene. They are still living in those days.
“Give it to the ChiComs”
Our biggest strategic mistake was giving aid to those muslims against the Soviets back in the 1980s.
Its also the nation-building thing. We have no business building and running other people’s countries for them and we don’t know the first thing on how to do it well.
Let the Afghans decide what kind of country they want to have and let’s go back to building ours.
I never understood why we needed a single boot on the ground!
Getting rid of the Taliban was worth it. The Bush-Obama mission creep wasn’t.
The Brits learned this lesson twice in the 1800’s.
The Rooskies just in the last few dacades.
I totally reject anything the NYT has to say.
That being said...I think it’s high time we vamoosed from Afghanistan.
We may be the most powerful country on earth but we are never going to do to Afghanistan what the Romans did to Carthage.
Afghanistan is important only because its a Deep State prestige project not because it reflects a vital US national security interest for us to be there.
Its not worth squandering American lives and resources over. Period.
I can’t think of the last time I agreed with a NYT Editorial, but this time I do. It is time to leave this land locked country which has no meaningful value to the U.S.
The biggest part of history is to not repeat the same mistakes.
Time for us to leave those Islamic filth in the 7th century where they belong.
Alexander the Great spent a little time there too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.