The War We Are Losing

One thing that has been greatly downplayed over the last few days is the recent prison escape in Kandahar Afghanistan of 892 prisoners-389 of them Taliban, the rest common criminals.

This was the result of what appears to be an Al-Queda operation, an offensive aimed at breaking out the prisoners. An account follows-

In Friday's incident, the militants used suicide truck bombs loaded with about two tons of explosives to blast holes in the mud brick walls of the Soviet-era prison, a Taliban spokesman said.

A gun and rocket battle between the militants and prison guards lasted several hours and ended with dozens of militants rushing inside on motorcycles to free all prisoners inside, the Taliban spokesman said.

Nine guards, seven prisoners and one civilian were killed in the attack, according to Ahmad Wal Karzai.

I have an idea this is viewed, by the US government and our media, as a potential propaganda victory for Al-Queda and the Taliban, which is why you hear very little, if anything at all, about it. Propaganda for them of course means our government looks like the asses they are.

Of course, we should know about it anyway. That is allegedly one of the things that separate us from our enemies. Nevertheless, you have to hunt for the information, it seems. You never even hear anything about it on the NBC Nightly News, despite the fact that Tom Brokaw is currently stationed in Afghanistan, and over the last week has broadcast his network evening news program from there. I guess he might have casually mentioned this event, but if he did, I must have blinked.

If I had not checked Google News, I might never have found the preceding CNN link, nor, for that matter, heard or read anything about the breakout until possibly weeks or months later.

To make matters worse, we are unlikely to recapture the most dangerous of these former prisoners. For the most part, they made their way into areas either controlled by the Taliban, or sympathetic to them, or otherwise too rugged or inaccessible.

It all reads like something out of an American war film, maybe yet another Seven Against Thebes derivative. If American troops had performed the exact same thing, we would soon have a film about the exploits of “The Kandahar Brigade.” The Taliban have proven themselves rugged, brave, and, despite how you might feel about their seventh century savagery, tactically proficient. From an objective viewpoint, they are worthwhile foes, at least deserving of grudging respect as dedicated warriors, the type we should take more seriously than I fear we sometimes do.

Unfortunately, we are making a mess of this war effort. While all of this is going on, we are engaged in a policy of burning the opium crop while trying to phase the Afghan farmers into farming crops that are not nearly as profitable to them. In the meantime, many of them sell their own daughters in order to pay off the debt they have incurred to the opium drug lords. I am speaking here about the so-called “opium brides”, many of whom are under ten years old.

Naturally, the farmers and their families blame us for their predicament. The irony is, we could easily purchase the crops in a way that would be cost effective compared to what we are doing now. We could do this on an ongoing basis, and since the crop would be ours, we could do then whatever we want with it-including burn it just as we now are, only we could burn more of it, faster and cheaper with less resistance, and far more effectively.

We could contribute to the economy of the country in this way, and do so at a far cheaper and less controversial way. The farmers would be happy with us, the drug lords left without a base, the Taliban and Al-Queda without a recruitment tool, and it would be far easier and far less expensive to establish peace and prosperity in the region. In the meantime we could phase them into growing other crops more gradually, peacefully, effectively-and do you know what?

It’s a waste of time to even think along these lines, because let’s face it-whether it is run by Democrats or Republicans-we have a stupid fucking government, and we are getting exactly what we pay for. The sad thing is, we have a limited and very sorry supply to choose from, and so we are obliged to pay through the nose for a product that is very mediocre at best.

When we first entered the war in Afghanistan, the rightness of our cause was evident to anybody with an IQ in the triple digits. Few wars we have engaged in have been as justified, and almost none of them more so. From the moment we quickly dislodged the Taliban government, even though they quickly formed an insurgency, the war has been ours to lose.

Well, we are losing it.