I just finished watching Restrepo. It is available on Netflix. It will also be shown again on NatGeo Monday night at 9 pm. We have been so protected from our wars. Only military families have suffered. Industry and defense contractors have gotten rich. The rest of us have basically remained untouched.
The war in Afghanistan is costing 2 billion dollars a week. Our troops are being asked to be social workers. Meanwhile, those same troops are suffering death, horrible brain injuries, loss of limb and overall life-altering injuries. Military families have suffered because also because of the multiply deployments. Children have grown up without a parent and spouses have spent 10 years with partners popping in and out of their lives.
There is no end plan. Politicians have known for at least 3 years that Afghanistan is unwinnable. Most politicians will admit they are not even sure what ‘winning’ means. There was no plan under Bush and there is no plan now under Obama to exit.
So why do our politians lack the moral clarity to insist that we bring our troops home? Is ‘support our troops’ simply a bumper sticker? What are our goals? We will not change the people of Afghanistan. They hate us, as they hated the Soviets 40 years ago and who also left without a victory. That country cannot be built up. The women cannot be saved from what amounts to centuries of backwards thinking.
Afghanistan is a rocky, mountainous hell hole. The people eek out a feeble existence and live much the way mountain goats do. After watching that documentary, I felt like I would never be clean again. We cannot drive the Taliban out. It is probably much like trying to win war on jackrabbits. It can’t be done. As long as we use this war as a political ploy, we are wasting money and our resources–our human resources, our troops.
Will any politician in either party just step forward and demand that we leave without being accused of cutting and running? Afghanistan cannot be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Lets stop trying. Bring the troops home. Save their lives and save our money. That is a good place to start deficit reduction.
We are at something in excess of $1.29 TRILLION and 5,875 killed + 43,098 wounded. And now we have decided to employ unmanned drones in Libya, which IMHO is the second step on a very slippery slop or, if you prefer, we can call it “mission creep.” How long will it be before we have “boots on the ground”? I have said many times, we must really love war because we just can’t seem to “Just say no” when an opportunity comes along to unsheath our sword. Once we abandoned the original invasion in Afghanistan we lost all rights to be there and the longer we stay the more we lose. We are dealing with a government that is corrupt as any that we have been dealing with in that part of the world for decades yet we persist.
I haven’t watched the documentary but read the book and just finished reading “Unbroken”, Lauren Hillenbrand’s (author of “Seabiscuit” novel about the atrocities suffered by Louis Zamperini and thousands of others while prisoners in Japanese POW camps. I had a cousin who was a POW for all of WWII and worked with at least one other Navy chief petty officer who also was a POW for the entire war. Oh, the stories I could tell. My cousin is gone now but spent his post-war years blind as a result of malnutrition at the hands of the Japanese. The chief petty officer I worked with was just a little “off plumb”–never really quite “connected” with the rest of us. When you learn of these kind of experiences, it changes your whole outlook on the price of war.
We now have tens of thousands of young men and women whose lives have been forever altered from physical and mental injuries. They will never, ever be the same and neither will we, as a nation, be the same. These young people will be out nation’s invisible legacy.
George, you need to publish this somewhere else with more readership than Moonhowlings. You gave me cold chills with your eloquence.
@Moon-howler
Agreed.
I think you must have me confused with Moe Davis.
I think it is very hard for most of us to understand the deprivation our military people endure in order to satisfy the gods of war. For those who die, the battle is over, but for the wounded, physically and mentally, the war never ends. “Restrepo” lets us peek into that world and what we see is often beyond our comprehension. “Unbroken” provides a similar look at a different time but there are still victims all around us–time is healing that wound for us but not for them.
I have now lost the title of a book about life in Afghanistan but it dwelt with life outside the urban areas–life in the moutains and valleys where life has not changed much for perhaps a thousand years. Weapons have changed but not life in general. Again, it is beyond the imagination many. Imagine never having the things we take so much for granted–safe running water, sewage disposal systems, electricity, heat at the flip of a switch or twist of a knob, modern medicine or any medicine at all, modern transportation, super markets or even a corner grocery store. Imagine not knowing anything much about the people in the next valley over except that they are not “your people” and are thus suspect. Imagine that this is your whole life with no other future in view–just try to imagine.
@George, I meant you ….re eloquence.
You pretty much captured the feeling I got while watching Restrepo. The soldiers kept calling their area a ‘sh!thole.’ No kidding!!! While writing this thread I kept wanting to call it them a stone age society. That wasn’t accurate. I am not sure what IS accurate. I was blown away. We hear and read about that desolate region but seeing it is something else. They weren’t making that up. I can’t imagine that land producing much of anything.
I even knew a little about the country because of my interest in gem stones–the best lapis comes from Afghanistan. I have some gem quality stones that a friend’s husband brought back for me for $35. That in itself speaks volumes. But I didn’t realize how devoid of civilization that area was. The words escape me.
We need to get the hell out. Cover it with satellite and if it becomes training groups again…send them a daisy cutter or two and leave.
Afghanistan is old–really old. People have been there for about 50,000 years and have been living pretty much as small farmers and herdsmen. Not much has changed in all that time. Valley to valley communities are independent of one another. Some cities are ancient, Balkh, which is near Mazar-i-Sharif in the northwest is perhaps 3,000 years old. You mentioned “stone age”–my grandson said the houses reminded him of the Flintstones. So, you were right on the mark! If there were fourth world countries, the rural areas of Afghanistan certainly would qualify.
@George
When we first went there I read that it was the poorest nation in the world. I suppose that is even with their poppy drug industry.
That housing on the cliffs of the mountains was amazing. How do they do it? How can modern man live that primitively?
There is no winning. I don’t think it is possible for modern man to understand the political structure of places like that. I probably could understand clan of the cave bear easier.
@Moon-howler
It certainly is one of the poorest when it comes to urbanization.
I guess you would have to define “modern man”. I suppose in some ways they are not so much different that the people in Clan of the Cave Bears except may they were Cro Magnons. When you have almost no transportation other than your feet and journey to anywhere is filled with danger, it is very easy to live in isolation. “Primitive” is a relative term I think. If you have never known anything else, then it may not be “primitive”. A treadle sewing machine would be a miraculous machine and I suspect at one point even a steel needle would have been looked upon with awe.
People are very adaptive–it is amazing what they can and will do to survive. All you have to do is go somewhere less developed that here and it is mind bogglin.
“boggling”