Afghanistan - Graveyard Of Empires

My father, with whom I disagree with across the board, politically-speaking, sent me a book called The Places In Between. I recommend that book highly to anyone who wants to understand why Afghanistan is the "Graveyard of Empires". That is not the subject of the book. But, you will learn that Afghanistan is not really a country. It's more like a ring of Dante's Inferno in which there is not gravity. It's as if there was a completely decentralized ring of hell on Earth, where everything is chaos spread out over hundreds of thousands of square miles of moonscape.

There is no way to truly govern Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is not going to change, imho.

However, that being said, there are strategic advantages to our having a troop presence in Afghanistan. As Epa pointed out recently, Afghanistan is a base from which to launch possible emergency measures against the Taliban in Pakistan.

The Taliban has control of over 2/3's of Pakistan already. Were they to topple the Pakistani government, the Taliban would then gain control of over 200 nuclear weapons. We can even allow that possibility. And, as Epa noted, we can not expect to do what would be needed from the Indian Ocean, unless we decided that the solution was just to nuke the entire country into oblivion, and that does not seem like a wise choice, as far as I'm concerned.

The situation described in the article by Paul Williams posted below, is absolutely intolerable. We should not be pouring money into Afghanistan. We should just fence off our base and keep it as our very own property, and let the Afghanis go about killing each other, just as they always do and have done.

From Paul Williams at the Last Crusade:

OBAMA SACRIFICES AMERICAN SOLDIERS FOR RIGGED AFGHAN ELECTION AND CAUSE OF ALLAH

Posted by thelastcrusade - September 10th, 2009

What Are We Fighting For?

Making the World Safe for Islam

Killing GI’S for Karzai

By

Paul L. Williams, Ph.D.

thelastcrusade.org

Surprise. Surprise.

President Hamid Karzai has received 54% of the vote in Afghanistan with nearly all ballots tallied, enough to avoid a runoff.

His re-election has been accompanied by “convincing evidence of widespread fraud,” according to a U.N.-backed commission. A recount, observers insist, will produce the same results since the process will be conducted by a host of Karzai appointees.

The crooked election, according to Ronald E. Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, will serve to undermine the U.S. mission to free the country from the grips of the Taliban and radical Islam.

“The perception of fraud will shorten the length of time that one can expect foreign aid,” Mr. Neumann said. “People will get disgusted. They’ll say, ‘Why do I sacrifice my son for a leadership that cannot rally the country fairly?”

Mr. Neumann appears to be overly optimistic.

The widespread election fraud has done little to lessen President Obama’s resolve to stay the course.

Mr. Obama has pledged $10 billion in non-military aid to the Karzai government. He has deployed 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to make the country safe for the presidential election and has sent an additional contingency of 4,000 military advisers to train Afghan security forces to protect the polling places.

All for naught.

The election fraud, according to commission officials, is so immense and widespread that the results may not be known for months, if not years.

The attempt of the Obama Administration to secure the country for the election that was held on August 20 has resulted in unprecedented U.S. casualties. Six U.S. soldiers have been killed thus far in September; 54 were killed in August; and 53 in July. And Afghanistan remains one of the most corrupt and radical countries in the world.

The Karzai government now relies on US taxpayers to provide 90% of the country’s budget. Most of this money goes into the pockets of corrupt government officials and unscrupulous contractors. For every $100 shelled out by the Obama Administration, less than $20 is spent for the designated project. The remaining $80 gets lost in the shuffle.

Of the $15 billion which the Karzai Administration has received in foreign aid, $5 billion has vanished into thin air.

But no Capitol Hill official has expressed concern – – let alone launch an investigation. Afghanistan ranks fifth in Transparency International’s list of corrupt countries.

The only countries with less transparency and more corruption are Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar, and Somalia.

Jean Mazurelle, the director of the World Bank in Kabul, recently said: “In Afghanistan, the wastage of aid is sky-high. There is real looting going on. It’s a scandal. In 30 years of my career, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

What’s worse, the coalition forces in Afghanistan and the expenditure of over $70 billion from the American taxpayers have served not to transform the country into a democracy but to advance the cause of radical Islam. The Islamic laws that govern the country remain unchanged since the time of the Taliban.

President Karzai recently signed a bill that allows a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex.

Under the Karzai regime, the Taliban’s Department of Vice and Virtue has morphed into the Ministry of Religious Affairs, an agency responsible for making sure Afghan woman don’t engage in “un-Islamic” displays in public. Married girls are still forbidden by law to attend high school classes for fear their unmarried classmates will hear sexual information. Recently, three girls, ages 10 to 15, were poisoned for attending school in the town of Khost.

Afghan women are still regularly subjected to forced marriage and forced to undergo “virginity checks” if they are seen in the presence of a male not related to them.

The fashion of the day remains the head-to-toe blue burqa is still worn by a majority of Afghan women out of fear of rape and harassment and the death penalty is prescribed for anyone who converts to Christianity.

Democrats such as Congressman John Murtha (PA), who opposed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, remain silent over the war in Afghanistan and the rising death toll of American troops.