So everyone is baling out of Afghanistan. Well not before time. The West has wasted enough blood and treasure on that bleeding piece of Earth. Let the Chinese move in and waste theirs.
I’ve been involved in a YouTube comments spat about whether the Chinese will succeed. Yes the Chinese have a lot of troops and weapons, but so did the Soviet era Russians, and look what happened to them. Ten wasted years. 1989 anybody? Don’t take my word, read what the then Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has to say on the matter.
Let’s face it; as far as the UK is concerned, Afghanistan was another one of Tony Blairs vanity wars. I’ve read various reports and I’m still baffled as to why the Western powers bothered to invade. Maybe the reports of rich mineral deposits blinded them to the long history of other failed occupations.
The Taliban just sauntered into Kabul like they’d never left and laughed in everyone’s face. Which makes me wonder if maybe they are the true face of the Afghan people. I think they always have been. From before the Mughal and later the British Empire, then all the failed modernisations by their own monarchs. They keep reverting to type. Trump was right to talk to the Taliban and stop wasting the lives of western troops.
Here’s a thought. Maybe we should just let the Afghans be until a new generation comes along and gently eases the country out of the 14th century? Until then, leave them be to subsistence agriculture and poverty. If that is what they want. Buy their opium for the pharmaceutical trade and turn a blind eye to the rest. Or let the Chinese buy it for their own abuse.
As for the Chinese ‘moving in’, I say let them and watch them come a cropper. Has no-one else heard of a Pyrrhic victory?
The Bill Sticker Alternative 
First British Invasion of Afghanistan……1839.
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And it was a bloody mess thereafter. No-one seems to pay attention to history any more. There’s just this “Oh but that was then…” They forget that humans are very slow to change their cultures. Short of wiping out an entire population. And that’s been tried (and failed) before.
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I know. My Maternal Grandfather was there.
But we did get the glorious Afghan Hounds. I’ve had five of those. They ran in well organized wild packs in 1839. And they are still a law unto themselves.
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Sounds like Afghan natives to me.
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There is an old tale about a pack of Afghan Hounds who attached themselves to a British Fort. At dusk and two by two they would go out with the night patrols and help to guard the Fort and then at dawn they would go to the cookhouse to be fed. No one taught them to do this.
But I guess it was a tad easier than Tiger Hunting.
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