It is becoming increasingly obvious that President Obama needs to be watched carefully, and that his administration has done nothing to win automatic trust.

There are quite a few places where this is becoming clearer and clearer with each day.  Here I will only talk about one, because it is a place with which I have some knowledge, Afghanistan.

Between 1965 and 1966, I was stationed not far from the Khyber Pass for fourteen months, with the USAF.  During that time I had the chance to study the history of the area in some detail, to talk with both Pakistanis and Afghans, and with other Americans (and Brits) in the area, about the history and the peoples of the area.  I also took advantage of opportunities to travel as much as possible.  Since that time, now over forty years ago, I have kept up to date on the situation, further stimulated partly as a result of professional duties which brought me into close personal contact with Afghans during the time of the Soviet occupation. 

The United States involvement in Afghanistan is a mistake that should have been avoided, could have been avoided, and should never have been embraced by President Obama.  To me, it is a matter of criminal negligence, for which he should take responsibility, although as president of my own organization I realize the extent to which it is necessary to rely on one's advisors.  The history of the area makes it clear that we cannot control the area.  It was one thing for Bush's ego to make the mistake to get involved there, it is another for Obama to.....what is it?  Ego?  The Imperial prerogative?  I wish I knew....

But let me go back a bit and explain my thinking.  The people of the Afghan/Pakistan area are intensely proud, and intensely independent.  They are a beautiful and highly intelligent people, with a fierce desire to defend their freedom -- their desire is, I believe, as intense as that of the Founding Fathers of the USA.  However, distinct from our own Founding Fathers, the leaders of the incredibly mountainous, arid, and otherwise difficult terrain are also bound by traditions and ways of doing things which have roots that go far deeper than the slightly over two hundred years of our own history.  To their own traditions have been added those of Islam.  When I was in Pakistan, I was told at the outset that if I wandered more than 50 yards off the road anywhere outside of the city of Peshawar, no one could guarantee my safety, not the US military, not the Pakistani military....no one...because the area was under the control of local "war lords" who knew no masters besides themselves.  The situation has not changed.  The area is under tribal control, which pays no homage to either the Afghan government or the Pakistani government. 

In the late nineteenth century, Afghanistan came more or less under the control of the British.  They suffered miserably, and as a result of the Anglo-Afghan war of 1919, Afghanistan gained at least some independence from the UK.  However, it remained something of a pawn -- as a buffer zone -- between the UK and the Soviets.  When I was stationed in Pakistan there was still a US presence in Kabul, at least. 

In 1979 the Soviets invaded Afghanistan...and the US and UK both criticized them for doing so, but did nothing to stop them.....part of the "give and take" of the "buffer zone trade off," I suppose.  As I remember it, the US press gave quite a bit of space to criticizing the folly of the Soviets in thinking that they could ever subdue what is basically a loose federation of independent tribes.  We laughed at the Soviets as they suffered, laughed that "poor, ignorant, badly equipped, ill-trained militia" could defeat the might of the world's second most powerful nation.  And yet they did.    The Soviets finally withdrew in 1988.

The CIA has of course had its dirty hands in the affairs of that part of the world, going back to the Carter administration, continuing with the Reagan...and thus involving both Democrats and Republicans.  They were supporting the "freedom fighters" against the Soviets, in a manner that really reminded me of the "French and Indian Wars," with the various Iroquois nations facing off against each other, both really hoping that the foreigners they were allied with would at some point sensitively consider their situations. (False hopes are the most painful.)

The Soviet occupation solved nothing, and resulted in the deaths of perhaps as many as two million Afghan civilians.  I wonder how many civilian deaths the US has been responsible for since it invaded in 2001.  We cannot rely on the US Government to tell us....or the official government of Afghanistan....we will probably never know....especially with the attacks by drones (another major problem...which I will try to discuss at a later date).  According to Wikipedia, "Over 5 million Afghans fled their country to Pakistan, Iran and other parts of the world" during the Soviet involvement.  How many have we displaced so far?  It is not a pretty story.

Now the Russians are laughing at us, for making the same stupid mistake they made, by invading in the first place, and laughing at us for continuing to make the same mistakes.  Ignorance is no excuse.

Haven't President Obama's military advisors, or his Afghan specialists told him the truth about the situation?   Have they both been bought out by the military/industrial complex that is behind our involvement there?  Has he no one to tell him the truth?    Does he not know how to read between the lines and hear the desperate cries of the "puppet" Afghanistan government (I'm sorry, I just don't know another word for it...)?

Please, President Obama, stop.  Just stop.  The situation in Afghanistan is a lie, it is a farce.  The lies have cost far too many lives, both those of the citizens of the US and the allied nations and those of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The lies have created Guantanamo and the horrendous conditions of the prisons there.... to continue as you are is to make you as much a criminal as Bush.  And it is to only guarantee the continued deaths of US servicemen and women, and of those of the allied nations, and of those of the Afghans and Pakistanis...and to continue the suffering of civilians on all sides, from the spouses loved ones and families of our own military to those of all other peoples....the suffering is already too intense.  It has already gone on far too long.

My mind goes back to an afternoon in the early 1980s, to my office at a prestigious university, to a meeting with a young woman whose MA thesis I was directing....she cried for over two hours as she told me of the suffering of her people...of her family in Afghanistan...of her husband and their children...of her desires and hopes for freedom....of how their life had been completely disrupted by the Soviets.....she was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, and I listened, sometimes crying with her.  The family had fled Afghanistan and received political refugee status, for which their passports had been revoked by the Afghan government.  Her husband was given employment which barely kept them alive, the children were almost school age....she had no way of knowing how long her husband's job would last, or what would happen after that, and feared for the education of her children, in a country with a language and customs so very different from her own.  For months she had had no word at all from her family, or from his....not knowing if they had starved, or been arrested, or if letters from them had been censored out of existence by the Afghan authorities.  It was an afternoon I will never forget.  And as I have watched the news from that part of the world over the last eight years, over and over again her face, and those of her husband and children have come back to me. 

We have no business being in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama.  We never did.  We never will.  Get us out.  Now.  Please.