Juvenescence for the Brain

When we entered this war in Afghanistan, I was 13 years old, hardly of the age to really think critically about the situation. However, the Bush Administration, consisting of fully-grown adults with foreign policy experience, were the ones who initiated the conflict – not I. More than eight years have now passed, and the battle still rages – now here, now there, but never quite letting up. How is it that our ostensibly rational, intelligent leaders led us into a horribly misguided, $300 billion debacle such as this?

The country remains largely lawless, with the corrupt Karzai bureaucracy holding sway in Kabul – though hardly anywhere else. Drug production remains rampant in the rural areas. We have yet to really win over the populace in our “psychological war”, making it just as difficult as ever to root out insurgents wherever they may be hiding. We’d hoped that ending air-strikes would help in this regard, but all it’s really doing is hamstringing our troops on the ground. Corruption exists at staggering levels (note the undercover study from December that estimated $10 million cash is smuggled every single day out of Kabul airport alone) with much of the disappearing cash going straight into the hands of terrorists, and Lord knows who else.

To paraphrase, pretty much everything is fucked. Did they really think it would turn out differently?

Rewind back to September 11th, 2001. Thousands of Americans died in a horrible public spectacle, and we were thirsty for revenge. So, we decided to go after Bin Laden. The CIA had boots on the ground on September 13th. Special Forces followed soon after, and then the war began in earnest, with bombs dropping on Taliban positions in October.

But what should have been a quick and dirty operation turned into the war we see today. It should have been like surgery. A few hundred Green Berets with the aid of B-2 bombers might have done the trick. We could have been out of there by 2002, 2003 at the latest. But nope, we’re still there! Billions are still being spent, and we just recently initiated another sizable offensive in Marjah.

I understand there are political reasons for having such a public invasion, as opposed to a clandestine operation. The American public needed appeasement, and we needed to show terrorists that we’re prepared to bring down the hammer. But all we’ve done is make an ass of ourselves! There’s no way we can ever declare victory in Afghanistan, after having been lured into an obscenely expensive and crappy, drawn-out fight in a crappy desert nation. At a time when our government really needs to be focusing on domestic issues (i.e. preventing us from becoming an economic has-been), we’re still worrying about goat-herders in Afghanistan?

I feel like I’ll be beating a dead horse if I continue. Thoughts?

Update (2/25): Danger Room posted an interesting article today talking about that aforementioned missing cash, and how to track it using GPS!