Afghanistan Will Remain A "Graveyard For Foreigners"

[Coventina]

Source: CBS News

A former government minister from the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan says the United States can throw as many soldiers into the country as it wants, they will just meet the same fate as all previous "foreign invaders."

A day after President Obama announced a massive increase in the U.S. troop presence — an additional 17,000 pairs of boots on the ground, coming soon — the former minister told CBS News he couldn't understand, "why the U.S. relies on figures and the number of troops in a country such as Afghanistan, where the number of foreign invaders has never made any difference, and the winners have always been the freedom fighters."

(snip)

The former government official, who is now a Taliban commander and member of the movement's Military Council, pointed to the drawn-out war Russian forces fought to win control of Afghanistan, only to be turned back by a relentless insurgency.

"The more troops that the U.S. and NATO send, the more they will get deeper stuck in Afghanistan," said the former minister, who spoke to CBS on condition that he not be identified.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/02/19/world/worldwatch/entry4812154.shtml

[truebrit71]

1. Dear US military planners RE: Afghanistan please see Russia & Great Britain if you want a sneek peak

at what happens to super powers that think they can "win" in Afghanistan..

[dipsydoodle]

2. Sounds about right

and the USA really are mugs if they actually believe otherwise.

Old saying : Pride comes before a fall.

[iverglas]

6. history is long

In the last couple of years, by combining things I discovered in genealogical research and snippets of stories within the family, I learned that one of my great-great-grandfathers deserted from the British military in 1878.

He had served 5 years in India, apparently signing up right after his first wife died of tuberculosis in England in 1873. He had been promised discharge at the end of the 5 years. Instead, he was told he was being stop-lossed -- and sent to Afghanistan.

He returned to England lived the rest of his life in fear of apprehension -- he changed his name, and I imagine this was a reason behind his emigration, first to Australia and then to Canada -- and suffered nightmares, until he died in the 1930s, about the old Queen coming to get him.

But I'm here, and if he'd gone to Afghanistan, I might not be. ;)

[Mist]

3. Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about that:

"And the end of the fight
Is a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased
And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here
who tried to hustle the East."

[iverglas]

7. and a book ;)

and a movie now of course: The Man who Would be King.

By pure coincidence, I was reading it when Afghanistan was invaded.

[Marrah_G]

4. Dear Mr Taliban Commander- Please go fuck a goat

We all know you value them more then human females.

Asshole.

[Winterblues]

5. An American response the entire world would recognize.

:shrug: