will we ever learn

Ok, if I am not mistaken, we have just passed the eight year mark of being in Afghanistan. Yet our idiot politicians and media dumb fcks seem to not understand or know what is being done and worse, what should be done. They are so caught up on this us versus them mentality among themselves, that they, like a wine sauce, have been reduced to bickering and pointing fingers among each other.

But such is the nature of supremacist, who tend to take the Alexander Pope purview of the world as being the center of the Universe. As a former Western power attempting to reclaim our global throne, we don’t get it and miss the picture completely. Albeit we talk a good game regarding a geopolitical strategy that includes Pakistan when we speak of Afghanistan, our policy and actions state otherwise and we have no firm objective for we have not or cannot learn from the lessons of history or geography.

To begin, Pakistan was formed in 1947, after India gained independence from Great Britain. as a homeland for India's Muslim population. I even remember when it was divided into East and West Pakistan. What we call Pakistan today is really West Pakistan since in the early 1970s, East Pakistan succeeded after war to become what is now Bangladesh. A similar history can be said with respect to its neighbor Afghanistan. What is consistent about both nations is their history of colonial interference and the impact of imperialism, as well as the presence of Muslim Nationalism. Add to that a history of incessant marginalized citizenship by the west and the problem begins.

First, in both countries, the majority ethnic group is the Pashtun (Muslims) and Pakistan was founded on the equation Pakistani=Muslim. This is our problem for what we see is not seen by the folks who live in both countries for they cannot visualize, and rightly so, the Taliban being terrorists in their own land. Not to mention we have yet to put any substantive efforts to get the figure head of Kabul, Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari together on the same page.

What we as imperial and colonialist nations of the past fail to integrate into present problem solving regarding the region is that both Afghanistan and Pakistan’s political mode of operandi has never been accountable, especially with respect to international and geopolitical measures for the central dogma for both is based on radical Islamic doctrine. We never speak in terms of politics and solutions just in aggression and ego. Pakistan’s largest mainstream religious political parties, the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islami, freely support the Taliban openly, even against the country's own military. And we cannot complain for we in addition to the Saudi’s started this with our anti-Soviet mujahedeen movement in Afghanistan some 25 to 30 years ago.

America really aint concerned about winning the war as it is on the image of winning. Which shows me we learned nothing from Russia’s adventure for not only was its image damaged by getting it’s ass whupped but also for wasting billions of dollars it spent during the war. In fact it could be suggested the ferocity and venom the US and NATO faces there currently is a consequence of the hatred that developed for richer western nations. Strange aint it: we gave the Afghan guns and anti-aircraft missiles that shoot and kill our troops today. Just like the Russians who went into Afghanistan in 1979, we too want to influence the region politically.

Truth be told Hamid Karzai aint jack and only has power and control, if that, in the capitol. The rest of the country is under the Taliban and tribal Klan leaders. I just wonder if 200 to 300 thousand soviet and Afghan troops, funded by heroin loot ,could not defeat the Pashtuns in ten years, what can we and NATO forces do?

We will never get it, in math we have least common denominators, not in American politics for all politicians, especially if they are Republican or Democrats are the same. Truth is that the Pashtun will always support their own, which are the Taliban as history has shown us. Alexander the Great conquered Afghanistan but had to leave as did the colonialist East India Company after an unprofitable occupation. And I won’t even mention the Persians (Iranians) or the Mongols. Again, we seem not to know history or even worse learn from history. We look for Osama bin Laden like the British did searching the Fakir of Ippi for more than 20-years - who was never caught and died in 1960.

We call our mission "anti-terrorist" and the people in the aforementioned countries see it as anti-Pashtun. They see it as another Anglo-Afghan War like that in 1880. The Russians did not plan or prepare adequately for their mission in Afghanistan nor did they study or learn from history. And like the Russians, we still cant connect history or its lessons with the influential role of Islam in the Afghan and Pakistan social order. We, the US fail to see or connect that our concerns in both nations, especially Pakistan is associated with the aforementioned. The recent increase in attacks, like the car bomb last week outside the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan's capital demonstrates the resolve of the people connected to the area; not the Taliban. In 1989, Soviet forces left Afghanistan. Billions of dollars had been spent annually in Afghanistan and at one point there were at least 200,000 troops there yet they were not able to defeat the mujahidin we train and funded.

Currently, we and NATO side with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who will get a second term when we know it was full of fraud. This is why Obama's Afghanistan is even more tumultuous. He supports the ineptness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who in order to have won, besides cheating, had to deal with corrupt politicians and "warlords" to win the recent elections. This means that Pashtuns, who we know hate the Taliban, will deal with their brothers and family any way even if the disagree politically about the future vision of both countries because the have even more disdain for ANY Army backed by foreign nations, even the US.

Yet we make it all worse by giving the Pakistani government loot and arm twisting, to wage battle against their own kind, the Pashtun people. We the same country that funded and supplied the Taliban and Pashtun to overthrow an Afghan government buttressed by Russia. In fact the Clinton White House encouraged Pakistan to help put the Taliban in Kabul. All we really care about are natural resources and to make Afghanistan and Pakistan lever arms of our geo-political goals.

Again, I don’t blame Obama, but I note his ineptness and ignorance. Now true he is not as ignorant as the former president, but ignorant none the less. Afghanistan has never been colonized and in their eyes they see, the Pashtuns, no difference in the borders of the two nations western colonial and imperial powers created. We just don’t see or get it.