Let’s at least get on the right page one issue relating to Afghanistan. The Taliban and Al Quaeda are not the same thing. From here they look alike. The press uses these two terms as though they were interchangeable, but that is a mistake. If you are interested in the realities of the situation, you can thank me later.

          Let’s start with the indisputable fact that almost everyone in Afghanistan hates our guts, or the guts of any non Muslin westerner for that matter. Hell, they don’t love the Russians either. Moreover, it isn’t much different anywhere in the Middle East, except Israel, and we pay lavishly for that “affection”/affectation.

          We tend to delude ourselves into the wishful thinking that Muslims are just Christians who look funny and refuse to take any crap from women. While Mohammed considered the teachings of Christ in the Quran, modern Islamic culture is a mixture of religion and secular prerogatives. Muslims do not see the world as we see it. They do not evaluate relationships as we do.

          The only difference between Shia, Sunni and Wahabi is the degree to which they detest non conforming cultures.

          Our being present in their territories with military assets is not making anything better. No matter what any General says, we are not winning Jack Shit in the Middle East – not in Iraq and certainly not in Afghanistan. There is nothing in Afghanistan to win anyway. If we owned Afghanistan we would very quickly wish that we didn’t.

          We helped Afghanistan, or rather the Northern Alliance warlords in Afghanistan drive out the Russians. If you believe that endeared us to Afghanistanis, you really don’t understand anything about Afghanistan. They cheered us while we were helping them, and the minute it was over they welcomed the Taliban into Kabul one week later.

          The Taliban is not Al Quaeda. Al Quaeda is an amalgam of Wahabi Muslims and Jihadis of various stripes. The Taliban is a very conservative, right wing, sect of Islam that has for its agenda the return of the Middle East to the Islam of the fourteenth century. It is simply an absolutist agenda, somewhat in the nature of the wing nut far right extremists in the United States. Think of the Taliban as the Joe Wilson wing of the Republican Party – a bunch of crackers from Crackerville, South Carolina.

          The Taliban would probably never attack the United States if we were not in Afghanistan. The Taliban did not attack the United States on 9 – 11. Al Quaeda attacked the United States on 9 – 11.

          Do the Afghanistanis have the same right to prefer the Taliban to the bozo thugs of Hamid Karzai? Of course they do. They have just as much right to prefer the Taliban as anyone in America has the right to send money to Joe Wilson. Disgusting as he may be, Joe Wilson is as much an American as Barack Obama.

          We will never “stabilize” Afghanistan by sending in military assets to prop up a thug like Karzai. We couldn’t keep that charade up in Cuba with Batista or anywhere else in Latin America back in the 50s and 60s. It is time we learned the lessons of our own international history. We cannot, either with money or with bullets, force a government on anyone that they despise. We could do that in the early 20th Century. Those days are over. There are too many other resources available to anyone we abuse in that manner. The Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans and Iran will all happily arm any population with whatever it takes to make our life in their country unproductive and miserable. No one in Afghanistan is fighting us with sticks and stones. Laughingly, in this instance, they are in many situations fighting us in the manner and with the equipment we gave them to fight the Russians. And it is the Russians and their ilk that happily provide the Taliban with resupply so that it remains an impossible burden for the United States to continue to remain in Afghanistan. Nothing pleases the Russians more than for us to have as impossible a time as they did trying to occupy and “pacify” Afghanistan.

          The Afghanis in many instances prefer to live with the Taliban over living with the Karzai thugs. Karzai’s apparachiks abuse Afghanistanis even more than the Taliban did when they were in power. They style of abuse may differ, but the abuse is just as distasteful. Politically, we will never be able to make Karzai palatable, and we need to stop this ridiculous charade that we are bringing stability to Afghanistan. We are not doing anything like that. Every time an American soldier dies in Afghanistan, it is a complete waste of a wonderful person for absolutely no positive purpose.

          Generals talk of the resources needed to avoid losing in Afghanistan. No general has any perspective on any situation that is not military. That is what generals do. They crave conflict, as that is how they gain fame and advancement. If you really wish to evaluate American generals, consider the history of the last 50 years. We have not won a war since World War Two. What have the generals accomplished at the cost of so many American lives and so much American resources? When you come up with an answer that is not laughable, please share it with us.

          There are a lot of people who make money when we are occupying or invading another country. These same people finance political support for our sending military assets around the world to intimidate or try to intimidate people. Dick Cheney’s affiliation with Halliburton is not a coincidence. His ilk, the Carl Roves and Don Rumsfelds, would happily send your children into harms way for the enhancement of their commercial and financial interests. They provided us with a stunning example in the matter of Iraq. Iraq was not a danger to anyone that could not have been controlled by ousting Iraq from Kuwait. Actually invading Iraq was only for the benefit of Halliburton and similarly situated companies supporting a militarist agenda – just as did German industry with Hitler during the depression of the 1930s. War is profitable. Maybe not for your son or daughter in the ranks, but it sure is for the likes of the Cheneys.

          No one has ever accomplished anything militarily in Afghanistan in the entire history of the world. There is no scenario that isn’t patently ridiculous that supports our continued presence in Afghanistan.

         We certainly need to deal with Al Quaeda, but we won’t accomplish that by occupying Afghanistan, and the price of Afghanistan is not justifiable under any possible evaluation.