This morning my outrage and embarrassment about the United States handling of the war in Afghanistan has returned. Let me explain.
My friend Kyle recommended for me to read the book: Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
So, I purchased it on my Kindle 2, and as of my last subway ride I am 87% through the book (for the life of me couldn’t tell you what page that is). It is terrific! What it’s doing, however, is reminding me of how irresponsible the United States was in taking on a second war in Iraq virtually abandoning the completion of the war in Afghanistan and its rebuilding.
In his book, Greg Mortenson describes a trip to Washington DC after returning from Afghanistan after the removal of the Taliban:
“…But the worst thing you can do is what we’re doing–ignoring the victims. To call them ‘collateral damage’ and not even try to count the numbers of dead. Because to ignore them is to deny they ever existed, and there is no greater insult in the Islamic world. For that, we will never be forgiven.” (87% in)”
This enrages me and makes me embarrassed of the actions of our country. The irresponsibility of the Bush Administration in taking on a second war is mind boggling. Especially when the first war is in a region that had recently emerged from a long, bloody, arguably militarily successful war against a superpower, the USSR, showing that a “shock and awe” strategy might work if and only if it is not a “shock” -pause- “and” -pause- “awe” campaign. I truly hope that somewhere in our government someone is ‘officially’ looking into how this happened. Yes we did free the country from the horrible rule of the Taliban BUT we shouldn’t have stopped there!
That we did not help these people more after the initial campaign is criminal! But how could we? We were fighting another larger war in Iraq.
And of course we have a new President in Barrack Obama and I think he is doing better. But can he make amends for what our country has done to Afghanistan? Unfortunately that is his job, and I hope he does a complete job. So far he has started out well, I think.
None of this is new of course. But this book, Three Cups of Tea, is great, I recommend you read it, there needs to be more in the “news” (I am going to start putting quotes around the “news”) about the 2 wars we are fighting and less about the fucking White House dog!
Tags: Afghanistan, angry, bush, thought, war