Mired

We are in the ninth year of the Afghanistan war. The first day of the war, I said on the radio, “Have these people in Washington ever seen the Hindu Kush Mountains?”

I read many books about Afghanistan as I read Rudyard Kipling. My first excursion into Afghanistan was by tiptoeing in by the back door from Amristar, India, known for the gold temple of the Sikhs. Two of my wealthy traveling companions, photographers, wanted to go into Afghanistan and photograph the great standing Buddhas at Bamiyan. They had been unable to get visas into the country because of warfare. A private company told them they would take them in with a small plane. My companions wanted me to go along and told me it would cost me nothing. So, my guide and I went along for the trip.

The great standing Buddhas in a mountainside were beautiful beyond words to describe. Still, very much, as it were thousands of years ago, we had to get completely across the valley in order to photograph them. The country, barren and beautiful. Nothing but poor people and poor animals. Just the sound ever so often of the Islam call to prayer. Some years later, I entered Afghanistan from Pakistan. In other commentaries I have described the scenes at the border. People trying to escape the warfare of the country, carrying their meager belongings in large sacks on their backs, small, barefoot children, weathering the cold and depravity in this part of the world. Of course, at a border entrance, photography is not permitted. But, I had a small camera that fitted into the palm of my hand and I did sneak some photographs. After all, if I were to get caught, what were they going to do to an old blind man? They had enough problems.

In Kabul, I stayed at the only large building there, a Hilton hotel. My two traveling companions, two wealthy matrons from Manhattan, always had a drink before dinner. In Muslim countries there was no alcohol so they always carried a bottle of wine. The younger one, age seventy-five, had trouble getting the stopper from the bottle. Since I always dined with them, she asked me to go into another room, adjacent to the dining room, and ask kitchen help to remove the stopper. Of course, I made a wrong turn, and went into a room where high-ranking Russian officials were having a meeting. Immediately, as a man dressed in a dark suit carrying a bottle (they probably thought it was a Molotov Cocktail), they ordered me shot. Just before my impending death, the hotel manager jumped on me and knocked me to the floor screaming, “American!”

The Russians, like the British before them, knew what it was like to get mired in Afghanistan. If I were to take out a knife wanting to know if the knife were sharp, and start whacking on my arm, you would think me crazy. Is in any crazier than the American attempt to conquer Afghanistan? We should have learned the folly of rule there when we assisted our now enemy, the Taliban, in trying to extricate the Russians from the country. There have been books written about the English foolishness there in their attempt to rule the world, not being able to conquer Afghanistan. Just as foolish, Russia, a world superpower, who left Afghanistan in defeat. Billions of dollars later, the loss of many valuable Western lives, the countless loss of Afghanistan lives (a country that does not own a plane, tank, troop carrier). We are as desperate now as we were eight years ago.

I warned of the 2000 mile Afghanistan/Pakistan border. I warned of the 900 mile Iran/Afghanistan border. I warned of the Hindu Kush, the most intimidating mountain range in the world. Mountains in which helicopters cannot maneuver. I warned of the poppy fields which supply heroin dealers around the world. The problem is that most of this cocktail drinking, puppets and perverts in Washington, have never been to these places. Never studied these places. All they know is the song, “Far Away Places with Strange Sounding Names.” Our military was not trained for this type warfare, behind the bush, behind a hill, guerrilla type challenge, unable to fight a conventional war (you would have thought we would have learned in Vietnam). Since the Obama military expertise, we have decided to send drones over the infected areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, indiscriminately dropping bombs on women and children, barely surviving under tribal terror.

As a young Army medical officer, one of the first surgeries I observed was a delivery by Cesarian. One of my friends, specialist in obstetrics, born on the very same day as me, asked me to observe an abortion operation. To this day, I get sick thinking about those small hands and feet that he pulled out of the mother. His assistant, another obstetrician, was the father of five children. If God had not told us anything else, he has certainly told us that man is capable of horrendous sin. They even hung his only son, beaten beyond recognition, totally naked, on a cross. A God-man. The only perfect man who ever lived. Do we really expect to escape the wrath of God, individually or as a nation, for our actions? I was still in the military during Vietnam, in a hospital part of the time. I never went to Vietnam but I helped train those who did.

To this day it is sickening to think of the 58,000 Americans who died there. A useless, protracted, military-industrial madness which politicians in Washington tried to direct. Lyndon Johnson said, “I don't want an outhouse bomb without my permission.” Kissinger has said, “We should have never gotten involved.” Weinberger said, “The U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.” Living across the street from me in Goldsboro, NC, was a mother whose only son who was killed in Vietnam. I still have not forgotten her screams when he was brought home in a box. I still have not forgotten leading a military escort into St. Paul's Church in Goldsboro for a member of my unit killed in Vietnam.

All over the world, at least since World War II, we have tried to treat “symptoms” with drastic surgery. At least under President Reagan, with the Dominican Republic and Panama, we just had surgical strikes. But to involve as much time, talent and treasure as we have involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, as was the case with Vietnam, for any achievement, is foolish.

Mr. Obama, and his ilk, none of which have ever accomplished anything except passing college exams... never run a business, never served in military conflict, we are mired not only by military impotence but civilian military ineptness. For those who are now serving, for those who have served, for the families who have buried the ones who gave all, it is time to realize the mire. I was in the African Niger delta, I had a shadow of vision at the time, looking over the dried river bed. I have photographs of a donkey mired in quicksand. The natives, in their crude ways, were trying to extricate the donkey from the mire. Trying to pry him up with poles, pull him up with ropes. The poor donkey would just jump and jump. He could not disentangle himself from the sand. He finally fell over dead.