Getting worse

Something is happening. Afghanistan is under attack. Things are escalating rapidly. A massive bomb killed twenty people in Kabul on Friday, and there have been numerous rocket attacks. Yesterday a suicide bomber killed one of the provincial governors, and today at his funeral six people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up among the mourners. There's a full war going on in the South. A war that the Taliban is winning.

I wonder how many times we can ask ourselves what the heck we are doing here before we actually do something about it. Without a doubt, this is the most afraid I have ever been; at times I honesty feel trapped in the lion's den. But what should we do? Give up on Afghanistan? Leave our Afghan friends to suffer and die in the hands of medieval psychopaths? Or should we wait it out until it gets better?

I think the worst part of it is the hopelessness and the depression. There is very little hope to be found anywhere around here, except perhaps in the creative minds of military speech writers that have never left the US military base. They keep saying that they are killing dozens of Taliban, that they are winning. Yet the situation gets worse every day.

I spend most of my waking hours pondering what could be done to save this failing country. At this point, all my strategies involve 100,000 troops, playing hardball with Pakistan, and--most importantly--a lot of real development and emergency aid so as to prevent the starvation and disillusionment that drive people into the hands of the Taliban. We must show them that democracy, peace, and progress will make their lives worth living.

Today is September 11. Five years ago, I could not tell you the first thing about Afghanistan; I was busy getting used to living in the United States. It's amazing how quickly life changes. For the sake of the wonderful Afghan people, and for the whole of the world, let us hope that five years from now this Islamist fundamentalist terrorist trend will have been broken.