Afghanistan, A Graveyard Of Empires

[Hoss68]

Afghanistan has been described as a "graveyard of empires". The British
empire went down after they went to war against this country. The
Soviet empire went down after they went to war against this country.
And now we are tangled up in that mess also.

If ever there was a need to learn the lessons of history, and if
anything cries out for the need of a multi-lateral approach to foreign
policy, then Afghanistan is it. If we continue to try to handle the
country by ourselves, all by ourselves, then it will end up being our
own undoing.

We must work together with as many countries as possible & we must
engage Afghanistan's neighbors to help bring that country to sanity.

Before we invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban were running the country with
an iron fist, and they had done a pretty good job of clamping down on
the illegal drug trade, which they did for "religious" reasons. But
now, unfortunately, Afghanistan has turned into the world's biggest
narco-terrorist State. There is no central authority any more, except
for the capital Kabul, which we control, the rest of Afghanistan has
pretty much fallen under the control of various War Lords, Taliban
remnants, and Al Qaeda terrorists. And Afghanistan is now the world's
largest producer of Opium.

The huge and porous Afghan borders, especially on the Pakistani side,
literally contain the world's largest armada of smuggling routes, from
where terrorists are daily and routinely smuggling thru tons of illegal
drugs, money, manpower and weaponry, all of which are constantly being
used against U.S. forces, both in Afghanistan and thru out the world.

So, even if we catch Osama bin Laden right now, the world-wide terrorist
threat to our nation will still continue to fester and grow out of
control of Afghanistan.

In fact, a good argument can be made that our involvement in
Afghanistan, in the unilateral manner that we got involved in there, has
only made the matters worse. To be sure, NATO countries countries
entered the fray on our behalf, belatedly they assisted us in the
fighting. But they resent the fact that the United States has what can
only be seen as a token force in Afghanistan of somewhere around 10,000
troops. We want other countries to do the heavy lifting for us in
Afghanistan, and the way other countries see it, the largest member of
NATO, the United States, is not putting in its fair share. Complicating
matters is the U.S. preoccupation in another war, Iraq, a war which has
strained relations with NATO and Europe, and it is also a war which has
depleted the resources of the American military. Meanwhile, the real
threat to our country, coming from Afghanistan, just continues to get
ominously worse and worse by the day.

Abel Malcolm
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c...MNGO22V8IF1.DTL

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Found this in the dark hole some of us know as~ the USENET forums... Found it interesting.

[DSmith540]

I tried deleting this post, but it wouldn't let me. My apologies for thinking the text on the original message was Hoss's perspective. I read it wrong.

[Bluehawk]

I am pretty sure that so long as America can keep Ahmad Chalabi and his pals OUT of ALL things having to do with the middle-east, then there is a very good chance that the coming elections in Afghanistan will be the basis of a new freedom for them.

One enormous problem we here in this country have is that we almost never received any meaningful news from the theater there. I saw a wonderful report about this the other night on PBS... but it came on at 2AM, fer cryin' out loud, and was broadcast at no other time!

It really gave me the first hope for that Afghani people that I have had in a long time... and there can be NO doubt that their nation is a graveyard of Empires, like a few others in the area.

[Hoss68]

These articles where found on this site, I found some of them interesting...

[JohnRN]

You guys know why it's called "Hindukush" mountains, don't you?

Hindukush literally means - killer of the Hindus. The Afghans had that natural barrier between Hindustan (India) and Persia and themselves.

The alst person to sucessfully conquer Afghanistan, IF I'm not mistaken was Alexander the Great of macedon, with his Thessalian Hetaroi and Greek Pezhetairoi and allied Persians.

[RIML]

Originally Posted by John.

The alst person to sucessfully conquer Afghanistan, IF I'm not mistaken was Alexander the Great of macedon, with his Thessalian Hetaroi and Greek Pezhetairoi and allied Persians.

Peachy and Danny coulda wrapped it up too, eh????

Afghanistan does have a habit of swallowing up armies. In 1842 the British Dr. Brydon was the only survivor to escape from a column of some 16,000 (4,500 soldiers with 12,000 camp followers) - though some may have perished in prison and not have died in battle....



And we can do it any better???? The Poppies will bloom in more than Flander's field I expect.....

[Bluehawk]

Interesting analogy that, about the poppies, I mean.

I have such hope for Afghanistan... and such pride in our fighters there, showing remarkable restraint, house by house, village by village, person by person.