KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber tried to attack a meeting of tribal elders and blew himself up near an Afghan primary school on Sunday, killing 14 children and wounding 58 people, the U.S. military said...
Photos of the bombing's aftermath showed bloodied text books lying on the ground beside small pairs of shoes. The U.S. military also released images of the blast caught on a security camera...
Violence has spiked across Afghanistan the last two years, and the U.S. plans to send between 20,000 and 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan over the next six months to reinforce the 32,000 U.S. forces already in the country.
Good. Can't let that one fail.
I hate to say it, but the war in Iraq will be a cakewalk in comparison to really and truly cleaning up Afghanistan. The problem is that we have a loosely aligned coalition of tribal units led by corrupt leaders. They will do whatever pays them the best in terms of prestige and products. And they are trustworthy only to the extent they can be monitored. These leaders are culturally entrenched in the narrow power band of sharia law and even when they give lip service to stepping into the modern age, in their homes, their mosques and their local governments, they persist in abusive, ignorant support for the Taliban and its tenets. The English couldn't conquer them,Russians couldn't do it, and I hate to say it, but I am not sure that the Obama administration has the guts to do what needs to be done in order to effect meaningful change in this part of the world. Maybe the Chinese down the line will get some leverage.
ReplyDeletePart of the entire disconnect with the middle eastern nations is the lack of regard their warlords have for women and children. It is nothing for children to be used as a mean of barter. And westerners are seen as being weak for failing to hang tough in the face of women and children being sacrificed. It's an alien idea and while morally it may put us on the high road, it will certainly cost more in American lives to deal with negotiations that try to avoid needless deaths. People in some nations are expendable. And that is something that most Americans will never get their minds around.
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