Monday, May 10, 2021

Afghanistan - A National Tragedy

Both President Trump and Biden decided to bring our troops out of Afghanistan to end our 20 year longest war in history.  It should have happened long ago.  We have suffered more than 4,000 coalition forces dead and more than 20,000 wounded.  It was right for President George W. Bush to wage war against Afghanistan after that country was used as the base for Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.  It was right for President Obama to send in the troops to kill Osama Bin Laden; just unfortunate that it took 10 years to track him down because he was being protected by Pakistan, supposedly one of our allies that we give billions of dollars to every year as bribes.  

But we never seemed to learn the lessons of Viet Nam.  We decided that rather than just punish the Taliban in Afghanistan, which we could have done by air bombing, we had to engage in nation building to protect corrupt politicians and more importantly the women of Afghanistan, who were brutalized by the Taliban.  So here we are twenty years later having spent a trillion dollars on the war with all of our casualties.  The Taliban today controls most of the country. 

We were told by the Generals for 20 years that victory, whatever that was supposed to mean was just around the corner.  The Generals got their promotions with all the medals on their jackets, while  young men and women came home in body bags.  If we learned nothing from Viet Nam, it should have been never trust the Generals because wars are good for their careers. Now we are told that in all likelihood after we leave, the Taliban will regain control of the country.   So, we should plan on evacuating all the politicians and military officers and their families that cooperated with us because they will surely be murdered by the Taliban once we are gone.  We can expect to see the helicopters and ships evacuating thousands of Afghani's to prevent their murders.  They will be coming to America.  

Most important, the rule we should learn for these wars is never fight on the other guy terms.  We should not land troops anywhere except to protect the United States including our borders.  Instead, we should use air power only to defend our interests and keep bombing the bad guys until they are dead.  Sadly, many Americans died and were wounded in Afghanistan to achieve nothing.  It is a National Tragedy and disgraceful.  

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