Is It Time Now To Leave Afghanistan, Pretty Please

The title of this entry is not meant to be mocking. You could write full essays with multiple reasons on why it is time for us to leave Afghanistan. You could, of course, have written the same paper years ago.

The cost of the effort in Afghanistan is dollars is billions a year. We do not have the money. On a cost benefit analysis money we are spending in Afghanistan should be considered the same as burning it. Any short term benefit to that society will be reversed the minute we leave.

Our original intent to find the Al Queda cells that were hiding in Afghanistan. Of course catching Bin Laden was a goal as well. Instead the mission in Afghanistan has been cloudy for the last five years at least. If, as we claim, we have been very successful in taking out Al Queda calls and leaders what then are we doing. Are we going to be a permanant premptive police force in a country that does not want us.

The person we have become partners with in Harmid Karzi is a crook at best, a despot on a level with others we have in the past aligned ourselves with in the interest of stability. One can rest assured that a large percentage of the aid money we are giving his government is being used for his own benefit and not his countries.

And now this past weekend we have this horrible incident. A soldier, on his third of fourth tour of duty in this whole ten year Afghanistan/Iraq cycle, one who had suffered a traumatic brain injury and been cleared to return, got up from his camp in the middle of the night, walked a mile to a village and shot sixteen people, many of them children while they were sleeping.

What does this mean. Is this a reflection on the mission. No, not in the sense that the original purpose had merit. The mission, however, at this time is going backward. We are hated in a country. Stories told by survivors stating that they told their children to be quiet and scared as " The Americans" were coming should make one question the mission. In the last six months stories have come out that our soldiers have urinated on corpses, burned, if mistakenly, Korans, and now this.

This soldier was obviously disturbed. Afghans are asking for him to stand trial there. Of course that will not happen. Leon Panetta says that this could be a death penalty case. It seems to me the Army will not want to go down that road either, this man was disturbed, three tours, a brain injury and yet he was back in Afghanistan. One has to wonder what kind of screening process we are using to determine a soldier's ability to function under the incredible stress on site in Afghanistan.

The last thing to keep in mind is how this story should illustrate that we as Americans and Afghani citizens as well are provincial. We see news stories as they shine in our light. We see this story and feel badly for those who died but also feel for the soldier and wonder what must have occurred to him to bring this about.

Think about this. A soldier guns down many people at Fort Hood and a soldier guns down many innocent people in Afghanistan. Is there a difference. To me, to Americans there is. We think of the soldier as distrubed in Afghanistan and evil at Fort Hood. Is this the right way to think. Could any objective person look at the two and not determine that they both were disturbed.


You can only walk in a cesspool so long before it starts to affect you, inside and out. Afghanistan is a cesspool. It is a tragedy that we have been there so long and clearly now the cost in dollars and lives might only be eclipsed by the loss of human qualities in those soldiers lucky enough to make it back. We need to make sure that any help they need to prepare for reentry into civilian society is given.

The first thing we can do to help them is bring them home.