No, no, I don't mean your standard cop-out of the 9/11 faith-based initiative by 19 mostly Saudi Arabian al-Qaida Islamic fundamentalist holy-rollers being an act of war. On the contrary, 9/11 was a criminal conspiracy and had George W. Bush allowed the world's various police forces to perform the work they clamored to do, Osama would either be dead or in prison rather than running loose on the Pakistani/Afghani border still scheming for jihad.
Al-Qaida, headed by bin Laden, the millionaire scion of a Saudi multi-millionaire's family, does not in any way constitute a country. Al-Qaida was allowed to operate in Afghanistan by the Taliban, another of the world's already too-many religious fundamentalist mobs. The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan and violently enforced its own brand of a state-prescribed conservative religious lifestyle; prayer in schools, but no girls of course, and government-ordained nationwide Islamic prayer rituals five times a day. That says enough for the practical value of state-sponsored and required prayer.
The last great leader, an exclusive club of which Bush most certainly is not a member, to have any measure of success in Afghanistan was Alexander the Great some 2,300 years ago. The Brits tried and lost, then allied with Russia and tried again and lost. Finally the USSR gave Afghanistan a solitary whirl and departed with its metaphysical tail tightly tucked. Should Afghanistan be renamed Demizeistan?
America had a bad experience with another Asian nation to the southeast. One is hot, wet and verdant with seasonal monsoon rains; the other is also hot, but as dry as the other is wet. One exports agricultural, mineral and petroleum products, the other heroin. One has over a 2,000-mile coastline, great natural harbors and a tropical ambiance; the other is landlocked with all the ambiance of a dry mountainous desert peppered with IEDs and RPGs. Can you name the one that cost 58,209 of America's finest before we ran away like France?
Empires have crashed and burned intervening in Afghanistan; let's not allow America to be next. Whether we like and agree with it or not, it's time America allowed Afghanistan to be Afghanistan the way Afghanis want it. Bush's idiotic, macho arrogance aided and abetted Osama's stated objective of destroying America's economy and harming our military capability. Hey neocons, who's next, Korea or Iran?
