The Other War
Citizen Smash reminds us that there’s still fighting going on in Afghanistan:
U.S. special operations soldiers killed nine suspected Taliban rebels in a firefight in eastern Afghanistan after the militants tried to sneak by their position, a U.S. military spokesman said Saturday.
The clash occurred Friday east of Orgun, about 105 miles south of Kabul and not far from the border with Pakistan, said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a military spokesman. There were no U.S. casualties.
Apparently, Sgt Hook will be heading there before long.
So, someone remind me again. Why did we do the whole Iraq war thing? It seems to me that if we took the 200 billion or so we spent on the war and distributed it evenly among the Afghanistan population (~ $7,000) we would have raised their standard of living by a factor of 10. By now, we’d probably have a shining example of a liberal democracy, complete with couch potatoes, and angry suburban men complaining about the pussification of Afghanistan culture (while they’re swigging beers and packing that ample beer belly).
This plan seems to have just as much chance of actually working than the “bold roll of the dice” on our man Chalabi and the patented US Three Week Regime Change plan had in Iraq.
I’ve always wondered why Afghanistan wouldn’t have been a prime candidate for the flower of democracy to bloom in the middle east. We were already there. We had just overthrown the regime. Everyone around the world had agreed with our actions in the country. Heck, it was the *very* country our terrorist enemies came from. What better place to smack them back in the face by building a consumer society like no other in that region.
This odd predicament and zero rational response by the pro-Iraq-war-now side has always left me rather suspicious of the motives.
I guess the other explanation is one that is less conspiratorial: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb. Maybe the sad fact is that none of these jokers running our foreign policy actually have no other strategy for spreading democracy other than by the sword.
They’re not evil. Just dim and have little imagination or creativity.
<sigh>
Hal, where were you during the 14-month-long “Rush to War” debate over the Iraq thing? Most of us remember that it was talked about, and most of us remember that an overwhelming majority of the American people were with the President on it.
Y’all can keep right on with the “Bush Lied” campaign theme, but look where it got Mad Howie.