Why We Are Not Winning Afghanistan

I think we should pay a little attention to history, both ours and theirs, in order to come out ahead in this chaotic struggle for world peace and prosperity. Take Afghanistan, for example.

Afghanistan has a very violent history. It has been invaded by just about everyone. Alexander the Great tried to conquer it, Genghis Khan, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and now America.

At every invasion, the otherwise scattered and feuding tribes bonded together and withheld the invaders. Time after time. This is their history. It is in their lore, their myths, their legends, their songs. Every Afghan sings about these past victories, often boasting that Afghanistan has never lost a war (although it has lost plenty of battles). Alexander came and took the land, just like the British, the Soviets, but could not hold it. And eventually had to withdraw, often broken.

Keeping this in mind, it is apparent that these people have made an existence out of fighting off invaders. They are fiercely independent. History shows this time and time again.

America goes in, not so much as an invader, but as a liberator (from the Taliban). And at first, many Afghans welcomed us. But then, we placed criminals in high power positions and started bombing villages and killing innocents by the thousands. Google search Afghan civilian casualties and it seems to be a weekly occurrence. We suddenly cease to be "liberators" to them, and this results in them banding together, making the insurgency stronger. To them, it is no longer a fight against the Taliban and terrorism, but a fight to ward off the ever present invaders. When the insurgency was once the weakened band of fanatical Taliban, they are now widows, grieving parents, siblings, and cousins.

Then, you add the history of the Crusades against Muslim nations, and the Afghans have no choice but to sleep with one eye open. They accepted the Americans, but since most of the allies were Christian, they were wary of the soldiers. They were told not to be, assured that this is not a war against Islam, that the American soldiers were not there for a religious purpose, but only to rid the world of terror.

I wonder, then, why on earth we make it so difficult for ourselves to win this war when we have American generals addressing a church congregation in his military uniform that this is hardly anything shy of a crusade. And now, Lieutenant Colonels telling a group of soldiers that they must go out and hunt for souls and bring them to Christ. They were caught red handed. They had printed up bibles in Farsi and Pashto intended to be given as "gifts." They had found a loophole in the Army's General Order Number 1 and realized that gift giving is not the same as preaching.

And we wonder why this war is not being won.

We have too many American lives at stake here for us to behave like this. Too many soldiers from our neighborhoods there that we want back home.

Dear Evangelicals, can you people please stop? Our military is busy trying to restore that image of the professional American soldier that we were once famous for, that I was proud to be a part of. You are not helping.

The Army is not a religious establishment. We are a secular country. Soldiers must be soldiers. Brave, intelligent, loyal, and professional. Soldiers are not preachers. By acting as such, all they are doing is placing in harm's way the other soldiers who actually are being true to their uniform.

Comments

[oxi]

"It has been invaded by just about everyone. Alexander the Great tried to conquer it, Genghis Khan, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and now America."

America is 2 continents, please be more specific!

The U.S. does not care about Afghanistan and winning it over. They know the history, I think the media should just start reporting the truth.

The U.S. only cares about securing enough of a swath of land to secure a safe cooridor for oil pipelines like the TAPI one. If they were concerned about winning they would have sent 250,000 troops and never invaded Iraq until the job was done.

Now Obama is being suckered into another Vietnam with Pakistan next door. Nice.

[Mike Armstrong]

We have Bush and other bornagainazis to thank for this corruption of our military. Bush managed to corrupt every aspect of our government. He has left us weakened in every way.

[oxi]

Why blame Bush? Blame yourself!

You can complain and blame Bush all you want, you citizens of the U.S. were so easily bought after 9/11 you guys didn't even know what hit ya!

You sold your liberties without even lifting a finger to question and now you have the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, warrentless wiretapping, FEMA detention centers, a more powerful central government immune from prosecution and oversight, presidents can enter any war they choose and they are not accountable, etc...

You asked for it, your to blame just like all of your fellow citizens that to this day do nothing to oversee what the federal government is doing these days.

[Solaris123]

It can be safely assumed those who bring up Crusades to explain the situation in Afghanistan will be engaging in mythology, not relevant analysis.