Obama, Afghanistan, and what the hell are we doing there?

Obama wants to "surge" troops to Afghanistan by withdrawing from Iraq. I just have one question: What the hell are we doing there in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban? The Taliban haven't attacked us. They never will. We ought to be ignoring the Taliban. Instead, we're fighting them as mercenaries on behalf of an Afghan central government that we devised and installed which apparently is incompetent to control its own territory and its own people.

In the end, we had no business trying to build an Afghan state in the first place. Our goal in Afghanistan should have been to catch Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda freaks, the guys who attacked us on 9/11 remember, and then leave. That's our only strategic interest in Afghanistan. Otherwise the place is an armpit, and all we do by staying there is breed enemies. The Taliban never attacked us and as a native Pashtun nationalist movement never will, we have no national interests involved fighting them, and I am still appalled that anybody thinks we have any business dealing with the Taliban in any way other than to make them a deal, "you give us bin Laden and his Arabs, we stop killing you and leave your country." Which is what they want, in the end -- us to leave their country. No more, no less. And bin Laden and his Arabs, remember, are the folks who attacked us on 9/11/2001 -- *not* the Taliban.

And if Obama wants to continue the current failed policies in Afghanistan, I will oppose those policies just as much as I oppose the failed policies of Dear Leader and Dear Leader's Buddy (John McInsane)... in my opinion, Obama has things half-right. Which is better than all-wrong (which is where Dear Leader and Dear Leader's Buddy are), but he deserves to have his feet held to the grindstone on this, and I have no compunctions about doing so.

-- Badtux the Geopolitical Penguin