Doubling Down In The Graveyard Of Empires

Afghanistan is called the Graveyard of Empires for a reason. The British at the height of their power fought three wars before they finally gave up. The Soviet Union broke its self trying to control the Afghans. Now it’s our turn and we’ve dragged Europe into the grave with us via NATO. We’ve been at this for eight years and we’re losing ground. Even with the surge we will still have fewer troops then the Soviets had in their losing effort. The last empire that managed to hold on to Afghanistan was the Mongol Empire and they had to resort to a scorched earth campaign of near genocide. Even with that they never managed to control the whole country.

Obama has set himself up for failure with his surge. The Taliban will pull back were we put in more forces and strike elsewhere. Mostly the Taliban will just wait and watch as our economy and military slowly melt down. We can’t win; Karzai can’t even control his own capital city. The warlords who control the provinces will only stay loyal as long as they get paid off. The only real question is which will break first, our already crumbling economy or our badly overstretched military. Either way we are the latest empire to wreck its self trying to win a war in the Graveyard of Empires.