“The Puzzle of Afghanistan.”
The flag of the United States rustles in the dry wind of its bases in Afghanistan, but the bases are bereft of ideas on what to do except harass and humiliate the population by a series of useless counter-terrorism raids.
According to a wealth of documents recently published in the Washington Post, senior military officials who’ve worked in Afghanistan say they had no idea what they were doing there, even as it becomes the nation’s longest war. Retired three-star general Douglas Lute is quoted as saying, “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan. We didn’t know what we were doing.” That was all also published in the New York Times, December 10th.
To anyone who remembers that chaotic war in Vietnam, such sentiment as this sounds remarkably familiar. For over 18 years, military and government officials painted a rosy picture of the Afghanistan War.
In truth, the Taliban rule the night in villages outside of Kabul, the capital, and their forays into Kandahar, have wreaked havoc there. They have waged a long war against the Americans just as they did the Russians before them and the British almost a century before then. They have learned to wait until the latest empire leaves.
From imprisoned nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
