We Don't Even Have a Sword!

An American army unit, while passing through an Afghan village, stopped to ask a local for help. After being peppered with a slew of questions about the Taliban, the poor villager cried out: “You have your tanks and planes. If you can’t defeat them with all of that, how do you expect us to help you? We don’t even have a sword!”

A sword. These are the people we bring our great army against- -a medieval lot of goat herders, cobblers, and metal smiths.

Now President Obama plans to escalate the war against these people. He tells America, “We will finish the job.”

No, Mr. President, you will finish nothing in Afghanistan. You have neither the power nor the moral authority.

This is what will happen: You will send the most advanced army on Earth against a poor and illiterate people. You will kill many of them- -men, women, and children- -and then you will leave. And the Afghan winds will blow over your tracks, and the Afghan rains will wash all trace of America away. All that will remain of America in Afghanistan will be what is told in the history books.

The Afghans will write their history. They will speak of the brief moment when the Russians interfered in their lives, and then again when the Americans interfered.

America’s story will be told on one page. No matter how many of our brave soldiers die there, no matter how we seek to glorify their sacrifices in our own books, they will merit only one page in the Book of Afghanistan. It will be a bloody page- -a tale of interference in the lives, the culture, and the history of the Afghan people.