Obama's Zombie War

Dear Mr. President,
I’m trying to understand why you ever thought Afghanistan was a “smart” war; there are no smart wars, they’re all dumb and this one’s getting dumber by the day. Why are you dragging it out for another 2 years—or more—in spite of obvious evidence that Afghanistan is an even worse disaster than Iraq—Bush’s “dumb” war, remember? And why are we still sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to the 3^rd most corrupt country in the world? (Only Somalia and North Korea are worse according to Transparency International.) We’re withdrawing under fire, the Taliban still controls much of the country, government is inept, corrupt and non-functional, democracy is a sham, the rule of law is a fantasy, and the people see little difference between us and the Taliban, they just want to be left alone. They lost faith in the Kabul government long ago and no one believes it will get better. A classic example is Kabul’s ‘Car Guantanamo’ described on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, a vast guarded walled lot where thousands of cars are impounded for minor traffic violations, fender-benders, improper or expired paperwork and, as the article puts it, “most egregious, failure to pay a bribe.” People spend months and thousands of dollars to retrieve their cars from the byzantine network of overlapping agencies and rules only to find their cars stripped down to the bare chassis. As one Afghan scholar put it, “Here, in this country, there is no rule of law.” Sayed Wahid has been trying for months to retrieve his vehicle. “This is not even a government,” he said. So why do you persist, when it’s so clear that to continue the war is futile, a waste of money and lives? Even returning vets think so. A 2011 Pew survey of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan found that half thought the war in Afghanistan wasn’t worth fighting and 60% thought the Iraq war wasn’t. The best thing we can do for both Afghanistan and America is to get the hell out of Kabul, Kandahar, Khost, Kunduz and every one of our 400+ bases and outposts, stop the killing, stop the random acts of terror, stop arming and training an Afghan security force that everyone knows will disintegrate as soon as we leave. We’ve killed too many Mirza Khans, too many civilians, too many children, battered down too many doors, pissed on too many corpses, burned too many Korans and terrorized too many villages with our drones to ever win the hearts and minds. It’s a zombie war, Mr. President, put a stake through its heart.