Afghanistan

The BBC, with the largest news organization in the world routinely reports on the world's trouble spots. Armed clashes, revolts, dictatorships and the like.

These are all of prime concern to the United States since any instability in the world will eventually affect our nation, its business and its citizens abroad. Aside from North Korea, Sudan, Burma, and Iran the top pick for American concern (according to the newsmedia) is Afghanistan. It is increasingly identified as the main problem spot for the US, probably because we are heavily involved there and are about to become even more so.

So maybe we ought to sit back and try to determine our purpose in Afghanistan. The Taliban was reprehensible to us because they gave comfort and shelter to our enemy, Al-Queda. We then worked ourselves into a fit based on their tough enforcement of sharia law and what we perceived to be unfair treatment of their women and those more lax about their religion. Imperceptibly, this became our main reason for opposing the Taliban and its return to power even after their commitment to Al-Queda became doubtful.

At present, Obama is considering increasing the forces we will commit to that forsaken land. He sees the need to strengthen the central government, but right now it is weak and corrupt. It is doubtful whether more troops are going to solve the problem. The people resent the idea of foreign troops trying to reorganize their lives. Among our policy makers, there seems to be an ignorance of Afghanistan's past history. Afghanistan needs a king, elected by local and tribal leaders who have the trust of their people. Even in a nation as small as Afghanistan, there are bound to be people who rebel against their religion and culture, but they do not, by a long shot, represent even a tiny minority of the nation's opinion. The west amplifies the importance of advocates for democracy and free expression because they mirror our view of the world, not because they have much to contribute to the society they live in. The idea that everyone, man woman and child should have a say in selecting their government, is, in that part of the world, nonsense. Much as we would like to see the whole world governed as we are with universal suffrage as the method of choosing our leaders, it isn't going to work over there. It's a foreign idea which is so out of keeping with their culture and religion that it cannot work.


Our role in Afghanistan should be to patrol their borders to prevent foreign adventurers from entering the country but otherwise to leave the people to be governed by traditional means. As abhorrent as some of the muslim practices are to our western sensibilities, veiling women, barbaric punishments for crimes, and savage religious practices they are prefectly acceptable to most who profess the religion of Mohammed. Believe it or not, people in the muslim world are offended by our public expressions of atheism, nudity, and lax moral standards.

We should not have to sacrifice our young men and women for the ideal of universal democracy. Our real enemy is Islam. Either fight them all or stay out of it.