Wise words on Afghanistan from an American soldier.
This summarizes things much better than any politician has.
Huge thank you to Jay Nordlinger for publishing this post. It's very moving.
Afghanistan is a hopeless cesspool of barbarians-and nobody there is worth the sacrifice of life that has been made up to this point. As this fine soldier writes:
"What does it even mean to win here? I sure as hell don’t know. By some measures we’ve already won. By others we could never hope to win. We’ve pretty much done what is achievable. Did we win then?"
"On my good days I focus on what’s right in front of me. Doing the best I can, helping whoever I can, killing as many bad guys as I can, and taking care of my guys. On my bad days I just want to cut our losses and end this thing (I work with the Afghans directly and see that many of them, they care less than we do)."
"If pressed, I say that I feel like we need to fight on, if only to honor the sacrifices we’ve already made. Then Karzai says something stupid, or our “partners” attack us, or our own leaders refuse to step up — and it’s back to the dark thoughts."
A stunningly honest admission.
Let them have a Taliban government again for all I care. Afghanistan is an insufferable cesspool of barbarians that cannot be cured, "fixed" or democratized not pulled, kicking and screaming "Allahu Akbar" into the twenty first century.
