Why Are We There?

"Afghanistan has been known over the years as the graveyard of empires." -David H. Petraeus

There is no better way to put it. Afghanistan is and always has been an unconquerable land. Genghis Khan couldn't do it, Britain couldn't do it, the USSR couldn't do it, so what makes the US government so confident that change can be brought to one of the poorest and war-torn nations in the world? Donors and foreign investors pour money into the country, but do it such an inept way that it all goes to those at the top of the food chain. The citizens with the least education and wealth are forgotten. In a country where only one-third of the population is literate and half of the GDP comes from opium exports (Afghanistan singlehandedly set and broke the record for the most amount of heroin produced in the entire world... ever...), it should be obvious that any real change has to come from an organized central government, which doesn't exist. When foreign nations intervene a conflict of interest arises; we become interested in the resources and economic opportunities available, rather than the establishment of a functioning government.

I feel a bit sorry for poor ol' Karzai. His country has gone to Hell because of the exact countries that supposedly try to assist him. Can anyone honestly say that they would appreciate armies bombing their nation, even if it is for a good cause? Quit trying to destroy the Taliban; they aren't the problem. Afghanistan is filled with rogue warlords who set up their own spheres of influence and control their own parts of the nation, and with a small, untrained army, there's not much Karzai can do about it. When other nations target the wrong enemies and cause innocent deaths, it leads to more people wanting to join the resistance. This is simple logic, people. C'mon now.

Maybe we should try something we gave up on not too long ago: compromising with the Taliban. We never had a problem with them before, and they used to be considered a friendly force. Now with the rumors of al Quaida* and other Middle Eastern threats, our government is trying to eliminate anything that even ranks as a low-level threat. Of course, if we compromise then the Taliban, which happens to hold a fairly strong influence in Afghanistan, could fight the warlords for us. Problem sloved.

*Just a little fact: al Quaida is nowhere near the threat it's made out to be. The organization has been around for years, and spans worldwide, yet they rarely actually do anything that classifies as a terrorist act. The entire group is completely disorganized; there is no central leadership, and it's not as if members of al Quaida hold meetings or anything like that. By the time a plan actually does go underway, the communication has taken long enough for the authorities to have been tipped off. Quit worrying about them.