America's Fool's Errand in Afghanistan

I've noted before that if one bothers to learn some history - something Chimperator George Bush and his military leaders should have done a decade ago - one thing becomes shockingly clear: every would be imperial power that has gone into Afghanistan over the last 2,300+ years has met with disaster. The list of those who have squandered treasure and lives include the British Empire, the former Soviet Union and, of course now, the United States. No one has ever succeeded in ruling or taming Afghanistan. Even Alexander the Great maintained a veneer of control by marring Roxane, a princess from the region and handing control to her already entrenched family. Sadly, America never learns from the past and time and time again rushes in where only fools would tread - all too typically blinded by the myth of "American exceptionalism" and an overwhelming hubris that makes leaders, both civilian and military, believe that they can do what others have found impossible. Vietnam was but another of such fool's errands. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times that looks at the fact that even the often hawkish and delusional North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones has belatedly realized that America needs to get out of Afghanistan now before even more treasure and lives are squandered for nothing. Here are highlights:

On Tuesday morning, members of the House Armed Services Committee tried to grill Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the commander in Afghanistan who succeeded David Petraeus, about the state of the mission.

The impossible has happened in the past few weeks. A war that long ago reached its breaking point has gone mad, with violent episodes that seemed emblematic of the searing, mind-bending frustration on both sides after 10 years of fighting in a place where battle has been an occupation, and preoccupation, for centuries.

There was an exhausted feel to the oversight hearing, lawmakers on both sides looking visibly sapped by our draining decade of wars. Even hawks seem beaten down by our self-defeating pattern in Afghanistan: giving billions to rebuild the country, money that ends up in the foreign bank accounts of its corrupt officials.

The White House seems ready to forget eliminating the poppy trade and expanding education for girls. We’re not going to turn our desolate protectorate into a modern Athens and there’s not going to be any victory strut on an aircraft carrier.

When you’re buried alive in the Graveyard of Empires, all you can do is claw your way out.

Congressman Jones directly confronted General Allen on the most salient point: “What is the metric?” How do you know when it’s time to go? “When does the Congress have the testimony that someone will say, we have done all we can do?” he asked. “Bin Laden is dead. There are hundreds of tribes in Afghanistan and everyone has their own mission.”

Jones was once so gung ho about W.’s attempts to impose democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . . But now he thinks that both wars are sucking away lives and money, reaping only futility, and that he was silly about the fries. He said he’s fed up with having military commanders and Pentagon officials come to Capitol Hill year after year for a decade and say about Afghanistan: “Our gains are sustainable, but there will be setbacks” and “We are making progress, but it’s fragile and reversible.”

Jones also read an e-mail from a military big shot whom he described as a former boss of General Allen’s, giving the congressman this unvarnished assessment: “Attempting to find a true military and political answer to the problems in Afghanistan would take decades. Would drain our nation of precious resources, with the most precious being our sons and daughters. Simply put, the United States cannot solve the Afghan problem, no matter how brave and determined our troops are.”

He concluded: “We can declare victory now. But there’s one thing we cannot do, and that is change history, because Afghanistan has never changed since they’ve been existing.”

The epitaph of our Sisyphean decade of two agonizing wars was written last year by then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates: “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to send a big American land army into Asia, or into the Middle East or Africa, should have his head examined.”

How many more young Americans have to have their lives thrown away for nothing before we get the Hell out of this fool's errand? We need to exit NOW.