Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Strategy in Afghanistan not working

In Afghanistan, we are mired in the same dead-end conflict that the Soviet Union was smart enough to leave all those years ago. The only difference is that as a communist regime, it had no shame and felt no compulsion to explain its occupation or subsequent withdrawal to the rest of the world.

There is no winning of hearts and minds when a people feel trapped and violated. And the Afghans are stuck in the Middle Ages, with economic, social and psychological realities that the march of time and human progress cannot seem to cure.

I, like most other compassionate humans, pray for the rights of women, the chance for children to be truly educated, for a government and economy to take root. Like others, I thank God every day that I was born here. But this is a sick joke, and instinctively rejected when thrust upon village after village in those mountains. The self-preservation gene kicks in, and Afghans realize that one day, our men and women will leave, and the power vacuum will be filled by strangers and neighbors, bearing arms.

Meanwhile, my friends and their family members routinely die and risk life and limb in a struggle that will at best be a historical footnote. Why?

Is our ultimate goal the destruction of the Taliban? If it is, then rooting out the Taliban will take more than our specialized rules-of-engagement will allow. It will take our military going back to its historical foundation of acting as the “tip of the spear” of our foreign policy. When exactly did war stop being hell?

Am I alone in wondering what could have been accomplished with the lives and dollars spent if a magnifying focus was originally placed on the elimination of Osama bin Laden and his network?

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy