In the last couple of months, two prominent politicians of different nations visiting their troops on the ground have used the same image to me for Western military bases: crusader forts. Behind the fortifications, a mini-West has been built in a cheerless land: There are Coke machines and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Safely back within the gates, a man can climb out of the full RoboCop and stop pretending he enjoys three cups of tea with the duplicitous warlords, drug barons, and pederasts who pass for Afghanistan’s ruling class. The visiting Western dignitary is cautiously shuttled through outer and inner perimeters, and reminded that even here there are areas he would be ill-advised to venture unaccompanied, and tries to banish memories of his first tour all those years ago when aides still twittered optimistically about the possibility of a photo op at a girls’ schoolroom in Jalalabad or an Internet start-up in Kabul.We need to get the H#!! out of Afghanistan today!Not tomorrow,not next week,not next year,we need to leave Afghanistan right now!Not one more soldier should die for these barbarians!Not one more dollar should be spent on these heathens!No more apologies!Get the H#!! out now!
The last crusader fort I visited was Kerak Castle in Jordan a few years ago. It was built in the 1140s, and still impresses today. I doubt there will be any remains of our latter-day fortresses a millennium hence. Six weeks after the last NATO soldier leaves Afghanistan, it will be as if we were never there. Before the election in 2010, the New York Post carried a picture of women registering to vote in Herat, all in identical top-to-toe bright blue burkas, just as they would have looked on September 10, 2001. We came, we saw, we left no trace. America’s longest war will leave nothing behind.
They can breach our security, but we cannot breach theirs — the vast impregnable psychological fortress in which what passes for the Pashtun mind resides. Someone accidentally burned a Koran your pals had already defaced with covert messages? Die, die, foreigners! The president of the United States issues a groveling and characteristically clueless apology for it? Die, die, foreigners! The American friend who has trained you and hired you and paid you has arrived for a meeting? Die, die, foreigners! And those are the Afghans who know us best. To the upcountry village headmen, the fellows descending from the skies in full body armor are as alien as the space invaders were to Americans in the film Independence Day.
Musings on history,most especially on the War Between The States,southern culture and anything else that may tickle my fancy or riles my blood.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Get H#!! Out Now!!!!!!!
If its Saturday,it must be Steyn:
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2 comments:
Never should have gone there. Should have listened to Ron Paul all these years.
Thank you for your comment,Brock.
Ron Paul voted to go into Afghanistan to take out Al-Quida.Where,Ron Paul,fell out with the Bush administration was when they started to engage in nation building.
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