…the United States had officially spent exactly as long heroically liberating Afghanistan from itself as the Soviets had spent barbarously enslaving it. And with roughly the same effect, though in the Soviets’ defense they finally mustered the sense to give it up as a bad idea.
Well, this is America, and we do things bigger! Six and a half years after beating the hell out of the record of those evil, benighted Soviets, the government is still benevolently making the rubble jump over there. And now Our Dear Leader Trump has decided that what Afghanistan needs most is more American cannon fodder.
Oh, but this time it’s different.
Mattis has repeatedly stressed that increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan would take place within a broader, long-term strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan.
So you see this time everything will go great.
Couldn’t Trump just do a deal with them or something? Sell weapons to all sides? Isn’t that what he’s good at?
There are mineral deposits there. The military-industrial complex wants them.
Again, as with Russia, it will end badly for the invaders.
Trump is fast becoming one of the more amusing marionettes of the Puppet Masters.
Going to see a lot of road building, dam building, infrastructure development to accommodate the coming corporate take-over of the resources.
feralfae
I have seen elsewhere that it was Winston Churchill who said “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing . . . after they’ve tried everything else.”
🙁 Afghanistan always does. Already I’m losing whatever respect I had for Mattis, getting his organization sucked back in when he had an excuse to keep backing off.
Maybe you’re right, it’s about the mineral resources. If so it’s not going to end well – or any time soon.
Maybe the new strategy should simply be leave Afghanistan alone. Traditionally they don’t really bother anyone maybe the neighbors now and again, but nobody important. Leave them be I say. Their plenty of other resources to exploit in other areas.
Maybe not. It appears someone has jumped the news check cycle on this one.
This taking everything with a grain of salt is exhausting and I’m not sure it isn’t intentional. Eventually people will just give up trying to understand the facts and swallow the line like a big ass Bass.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/06/16/mattis-hasnt-decided-send-4k-more-troops-afghanistan.html