Afghans protesting the burning of Qurans by the Americans
Lately, that longest running American led "skirmish" in Afghanistan is back in the news.
As we've seen and heard the last few days, some "industrious" American military non-coms became extra ambitious in carrying out their garbage burning detail and decided to throw Qurans into a burning trash pit at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan and some indigenous Afghans got wind of it.
Within hours the word spread and thousands of Afghans all over the country became incensed and were out violently protesting, burning U.S. flags and one Afghan, who we trained as a high level security officer took the Quran burning especially personally and shot two American security officers in the back of the head as they sat at their desks in the hyper secure Afghan "Interior Ministry". The alleged assailant had high security clearance and worked closely with the two men he shot.
These latest uprisings by the Afghan populous come six weeks after a group of U.S. Marines were caught on video urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban insurgents they had just killed.
Of course that video went viral and within hours of its disclosure high level members of the Obama administration, including the president and the Secretary of State, were seen hyperventilating their outrage and falling over themselves in condemning the marines "extra-curricular" activity.
Just to recall; official U.S. policy has it we're supposed to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. In the meantime we're to reduce combat operations and focus on training Afghan military and security personnel to take over that responsibility once we leave.
In light of the recent violent Afghan uprisings one senior U.S. general said, on the condition of anonymity, "Too many people are asking, "Why are we are we doing this if guys you're supposed to be helping keep murdering our soldiers."
Meanwhile the Pentagon keeps up appearances with spokesman George Little saying, "We believe we have achieved great progress in reversing the Taliban's momentum and in developing the Afghan security forces and believe the fundamentals of our strategy remain sound."
Well to that little sound bite, let's suspend the chutzpah and cut to the chase.
The U.S. led war in Afghanistan was a mistake. What began as the retaliation against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for their supposed role in the 9/11 attacks, has escalated and morphed into a quagmire with the Taliban replacing the all but departed al Qaeda as the enemy.
We've installed a quisling government in Kabul under Hamid Karsai that will surely be overthrown once we leave.
To the anonymous general cited above who wonders why the Afghans reject our helping them; it's quite simple general, "They don't want us in their country."
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