Why?

Editor,

This plan, and especially the spin on it, is total idiocy. That the Soviets could hold Kabul but were impotent in the hinterlands was and is a measure of the failure of their project in Afghanistan.

Now the Obama administration is embracing this failure as a so-called "strategy." Why? Why does this administration refuse to leave Afghanistan? Because we are there? We never should have invaded in the first place.

As has been said many times and many ways, the way you fight terrorism is to make friends with as many people on this planet as you can. And the way you make friends with people is to help them prosper, not rip them off or use them as pawns in your own imperial game.

If the Taliban dominate Afghanistan, a resistance movement in some form will emerge. We can arm and train this movement to fight the Taliban precisely as we armed and trained Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviets. Again I ask: why does President Obama want American troops in Afghanistan?

re: "U.S. to Protect Populous Afghan Areas, Officials Say" (10/28/2009)