Public Comment

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to hunt down and kill members of al-Qaeda and destroy their safe haven in an operation dubbed ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’. What a grotesque name for a war that has gone so badly.
Hundreds of coalition forces and thousands of Afghan soldiers and civilians have died and the Taliban insurgency has become emboldened, occupying large swaths of land in rural areas and terrifying Kabul with IED’s and suicide bombers. Kabul is so dangerous that US personnel are forbidden to drive the 2 miles from the local airport to the US embassy but instructed to use helicopters to land onto the embassy roof. American troops stay behind in steel-reinforced concrete walls to protect themselves.
The CIA admits that it is partially defraying cost of operations by transporting “poppy seed drugs” on American planes generating about $50 billion annually.According to Brown University, ‘Cost of War Project’ the Afghan war could exceed $2 trillion in this mother of all quagmires. American leaders stubbornly refuse to learn the lessons of prior conflicts. It has recently come to light that General Westmorland was seeking permission to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam! 

It is obscene that all this money and human capital is being used to prop up an unstable and highly corrupt government. The ongoing conflict is an ethnic and sectarian conflict with Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras fighting to exercise control over the same piece of geography.The legacy of Afghanistan mirrors other wars, Vietnam, Iraq and countless other conflicts, a humiliating defeat stemming from the arrogance of American military power and politicians who repeatedly mislead the American public. We continue to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam, which we devastated with napalm, Agent Orange, carpet bombing and multiple Mai Lai atrocities. The time to exit Afghanistan is NOW. For more go to, http://callforsocialjustice.blogspot.com/