More than 11 years ago, angry over 9/11, the U.S. launched the Afghanistan War, and since then thousands of men, women and children have been killed or maimed and additional children have been orphaned.
The U.S. and it's allies have spent several hundred billion dollars to fight this war as the death toll and the number of maimed and orphaned keep mounting, and the financial cost keeps growing. The U.S. keeps the Karzai government in power, even as U.S. and its allied soldiers are killed by Afghan troops and the Taliban presence expands.
This war is clearly lost and yet the U.S. government continues to fight it instead of negotiating a settlement. Why? The oldest reasons in history. A deep ego driven desire to control someone else's country and vindication. Vindication means the U.S. refuses to acknowledge that it wasted so many lives and so much money, and somehow more killing and more monetary spending will justify what is already lost. These people didn't die in vain nor was all that money wasted.
The colossal example of this thinking is World War 1. Millions of lives lost, nations destroyed and a generation of young European men lost. And for what? All it did was pave the way for Hitler and World War 2, 20 years later, in which many millions of people more were killed and nations destroyed.
World War 2 worked so well, that it immediately led to The Cold War, which several times put the world on the brink of a nuclear Holocaust. The Korean and Vietnam Wars were part of The Cold War. The disaster of the U.S.'s two post Cold War Iraq Wars is an added bonus.
This coveting thy neighbor's property and vindication will continue as long as nations can find the money to buy endless numbers of weapons and recruit military lives to sacrifice, until you and I and others raise our voices in the name sanity. Then and only then will mankind find the peace it claims it is seeking.
Dick
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