The generals want another George Bush troop surge, this time in Afghanistan. We see television propaganda about a “town” (three blocks wide and five blocks long) being supported by a platoon of US Special Forces and another platoon of Afghan “special forces” passing out food and watching for incoming rocket attacks. There are over 2500 “towns” in Afghanistan. Another 40,000 troops would facilitate seeing such vignettes in more “towns”.

          Are we nuts?

          When will we realize that the last thing those people want is for us to bring them western civilization. Since we love surveys so much, the latest Afghanistan survey shows that most folks over there would just as soon make deals with the Taliban (the Republicans of Afghanistan) and have all foreign presence go home.

          The Taliban want to return the region to the 14th century format of Islam. Why should our people die to prevent that?

          If anyone believes we will be attacked less in the future because we maintain a military presence in Middle East countries, they are insane. At least for so long as we are tied to Israel, we will be a target. If we continue to hold our relationship with Israel that dear, we will pay dearly for it. There is no free lunch.

          What is the basis for the claim that what we bring to the Islamic Middle East is something they want? There are few notions as ridiculous as that. Where do we find support in logic or insight for a notion that we will reduce threats to America by trying to force western mores and culture upon the billions of Muslims who don’t want western mores and culture?

          And why is it that the people we seem always to promote are scoundrels with little credibility in their own country? Hamid Karzai is a low class thug in a funny hat – nothing more. His brother/family is/are up to their asses in opium production and in doing business with the Taliban.

          Is the motivation to blame Afghanistan for our consumption of recreational drugs? Does anyone in America sincerely believe we will win this fantasy we call the war on drugs by absorbing 50,000 deaths in another Viet Nam scenario?

          If we are that stupid, maybe I ought to just shut up and quit giving a damn. Why am I so sad at the grieving American families attending the funerals of their loved ones in the military? I think of them as America’s heroes and I get angry that our finest are wasted on worthless adventures.

          We have been unbelievably lucky since 9/11. Our security has been better than I ever imagined. But that can’t remain perfect forever in a world in which attacks come not from the sky but in a U-Haul truck. The poor man’s atomic bomb may be just an aerosol anthrax attack, or saran gas, or a real nuke in a coke machine. We can’t possibly prevent them all every time. Some will get though. The more we try to shove our so called culture down the throats of people who don’t want it, the more likely we will see the small tactical attacks at home. Small attacks do a lot of damage here, because we don’t live in a desert.

          And if we all put on uniforms and picked up an assault rifle, would we succeed in preventing Middle Eastern people from abusing women and little girls? Would we stop Americans from buying the drugs that account for why everyone else wants to grow opium and coca?

          How long are we going to follow wing nut notions that it is someone else’s fault that Americans are drug freaks and that all drug addicts have to do for us to win the war on drugs is join a church and attend Sunday services? That same approach to not educating high school kids about sex has made Texas the state with the highest rate of teen age pregnancies in the nation. People who go to church on Sunday fuck their brains out the rest of the week, and many of them enjoy drugs before they get to the fucking part. Putting crosses up in public places only causes lawsuits. It’s OK to be religious, but use some common sense for Christ’s sake.

          In addition to the fact that we have done nothing positive for anyone in the Middle East in the last ten years, we have wasted roughly $ 120 Billion a year doing it. What we are wasting in Iraq and in Afghanistan could pay for much of the cost of reconfiguring medical care availability in the United States. Considering the ordeal we are going through over the medical care project, that waste of resources is nothing short of criminal.

          People in the Middle East will not stop hating us no matter what we decide or do. They will be more aggressive toward us as we remain in their part of the world brandishing military assets.

          The realities are that we lack sufficient military resources to fight with so many people, especially considering that they have nothing to lose and we do. We will have ample opportunity to use what military assets we have responding to attacks on our own homeland. They are coming and we can’t stop all of them. But we can be as effective as we need to be using stand off and destroy tactics that don’t involve as many coffins being flown back to Dover Air Force Base. The more that countries suffer destruction of their infrastructure as the consequence of harboring jihadis, the less the jihadis will be able to find governments willing to provide them a place to live and operate. As for making the jihadis too poor to function, that is ridiculous.

          For more than half a century insurrectionist movements have financed their activities via the drug trade. We are the source of the drug trade’s financial resources. We buy their drugs. We make the trade in those drugs unlawful so that doing so generates the higher levels of revenue associated with the riskiness of unlawful behavior. The notion that we can enjoy illicit drugs without enriching enemies is just plain stupid. We ourselves used the revenues from the drug trade in financing CIA off the books operations in Cambodia during the Viet Nam war. The Israelis used the drug trade to finance a great deal of its military requirements in 1948, during the lets pretend period when the US pretended to embargo arms shipments to Israel, but sent it to General Somoza in Nicaragua for his resale to the Israelis. We supported a lot of our effort with the Contras in Nicaragua later on when we were trying to prop up General Somoza. Almost everything military in Africa is financed by the drug trade.

          We are not going to bring down the drug trade except by decriminalizing the use of drugs. Idiots will destroy themselves with the cheap/free resulting drugs, and in about a generation, through education, drug use will decrease. We did it that way with cigarettes and it will work the same way with drugs. An epidemic of deaths of very stupid people is a great teaching tool. Think of it as the new curriculum, just as lung cancer is with smoking.

          We get lessons on television every day that our stated objectives in Afghanistan are not achievable. If we shrink from wholesale slaughter over there, we need to get out. And if we don’t shrink from wholesale slaughter over there, and we kill hundreds of thousands, and we occupy all of Afghanistan, what will we then have? NOTHING! There is nothing there but abusive primitive people and opium. DUH!