POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES
"Afghanistan" and the word "prospects" in the same sentence are pretty much an oxymoron.
This is one of the poorest regions on earth, a vast sprawl of deserts and mountains with few valuable resources.
The U.S. always had the option of dropping dollar bills rather than bombs, but that's just not the American way.
Afghanistan will have "prospects" after decades of economic growth and not before, if that ever comes to pass.
The U.S. went there to kill (something it did plenty of), not to help anyone, but the world's press picked up on all the propaganda and seems to pretend it means something.
The culture and backward ways of the people are the natural adaptations of countless centuries and are, in that sense, normal.
What the U.S. is trying to impose is definitely abnormal, not fitting the land and its people at its stage of their development.
Of course, the stupidity of making the Taleban a bitter enemy was foolish.
No Taleban ever attacked the U.S., a point so easily glided over by the press in the last eight years.
Yes, they housed bin Laden (a Saudi) for a time, but then so did the U.S. for a time.
They offered, eight years ago, to comply with extradition if offered some evidence for the accused, the completely normal behavior of any government, but the U.S. rejected the request and proceeded to attack, as useless and mindless an act of destruction as Israel's assault on the giant refugee camp called Gaza.
To this day, by the way, we have never been given a single piece of evidence that bin Laden himself was responsible for anything. I'm not claiming his innocence, just pointing out how irrational and lawless all this has been.
General McChrystal is a nasty killer, of the type that carried out that shameful Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, a man absolutely without a larger view. What else would he do but ask for more troops?
Well, there's light at the end of the tunnel apparently.
Wait, now, I believe I heard that somewhere else. Was it Vietnam?
Good luck, Obama, you are now being squeezed on all sides by the Military-Industrial Complex.
