President Obama Needs to Rethink Afghanistan

Until last night I stlll had a little hope that President Obama would be a different kind of President. A thoughtful President capable of setting a new course for an America that has become the most militarized nation on earth. A nation that seems determined to be always at war. A nation that has lost it’s once inspiring luster as a home for freedom and liberty and become a nation intend on imposing its will on the rest of the world.

If you doubt our nations militarism then answer one question. Why would we at great expense have over 700 military bases , many of them huge, in over 150 countries around the world? We are so insecure with all of that far flung security that we spend as much on national defense as the rest of the world combined. It seems that some kind of sickness has infected our leaders in Washington, D.C. and that newly elected officials immediately catch an incurable form of it.

As a Vietnam War veteran I can tell you in all honesty that many years ago I’ve heard all of this nonsense about a “focused strategy” . The names may be different but the BS is the same. I’m very certain that Obama’s war will end in tragedy.

I cried like a baby when I saw the TV images of the US evacuating Saigon in a panic in helicopters full of scared shitless US military and a few lucky Vietnamese civilians who were able to get onboard. I fear I will be watching a similar scene a few years from now as American helicopters evacuate the American Embassy in Kabul. It will not be a pretty sight.

Mr. President you really do need to rethink Afghanistan. Here is a little personal on the ground insight. I lived in Lahore, Pakistan for 30 months in the early 90′s and had many Pakistani friends, some of them at high levels in the government. I can assure you that the culture in that region of the world is extremely different from our own. I lived in a lovely part of Lahore and had at the everyday life level fantastic neighbors.

But the cultural differences were profound. My “friends” hoped to gain some advantage from knowing me and were very upfront about it, even if it were a little thing like a drink of Johnny Walker Black scotch now and then. Things that Americans would call corruption and vice were considered perfectly normal and the way you do business.

Pakistan is not Afghanistan nor is Afghanistan the same as Vietnam. However, the culture of corruption is very similar. Many high level Afghanistan officials are playing us. They are getting rich off of our money and our efforts in their country. They would be happy to see us pour in money and blood into the country forever. There is no way we are going to change the culture of corruption in that part of the world.

With all due respect to VP Joe Biden and to President Barack Obama we need to rethink Afghanistan. Don’t let American hubris get in the way of sound policy. We need to get our military out of that country ASAP.

And please President Obama don’t give me this total BS about the Taliban being a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. What they want is for us to be out of their country. The most powerful nation on this planet has little to fear from the Taliban, except in the extreme terrain of their own country. The Taliban have no air force, no tanks, no heavy transport vehicles, only light weapons, and total at most only a few thousand fighters. Most of them would be happy to return to farming once the foreigners, mostly Americans, have returned to their own homeland. Or to fight the neighboring tribe.

If we fear the Taliban shame on us. Except in trying to occupy their own nation. Then they are transformed into a fierce enemy. No American would be less of a fighter if we once again were fighting on our own soil. The Taliban are mostly Pashtuns, some of the most independent, fierce when the occasion calls for it, and tribal people on earth. There are Russian generals who know their fighting capabilities well. The Russia generals and 115,000 Soviet soldiers withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 after nine brutal years of combat.

Perhaps a few Russian generals of the Soviet era in Afghanistan should be invited to Washington for a briefing. I expect that they would be more honest in their comments and more upfront as to their views on our prospects for a favorable outcome to Obama’s War than our own always optimistic generals.