The news media today are reporting how seven US servicemen who were advising Afghan security forces were wounded in a grenade attack carried out by one of their students. That is on top of two US Army officers murdered while advising an Afghan government ministry three days ago. If anything underlines the absolute futility of the US "mission" in Afghanistan it is the attacks being staged against so-called trainers and advisers by the very people that some in Washington believe we are helping. The Afghans recognize that they are being occupied by foreign forces even if we haven't quite figured it out.
I supported the initial US intervention in Afghanistan because it was a terrorist haven from which we were attacked and I was, in fact, one of the first CIA officers to arrive in the country after the Taliban fell. Ron Paul also believed the military action to be justified though he would have wished a proper declaration of war to precede the US invasion of the country. Then we should have left. No one will be able to straighten out Afghanistan but the Afghans, if it can be done at all. But that is their problem. The recent killings demonstrate that it is not a question of leaving Afghanistan in 2013, or 2014, or even 2020 as some generals would like. We should have left a long time ago and spared the thousands of killed in action US and Allied troops as well as the tens of thousands of Afghans who have died in a war that is not only completely pointless and unwinnable but which is also the longest in US history.
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