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| Afghanistan |
| Graveyard Myths |
| 2009-03-30 |
| by Peter Bergen AS President Obama orders an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, he faces growing skepticism over the United States' prospects there. Critics of the troop buildup often point out that Afghanistan has long been the "graveyard of empires." In 1842, the British lost a nasty war that ended when fierce tribesmen notoriously destroyed an army of thousands retreating from Kabul. And, of course, the Soviets spent almost a decade waging war in Afghanistan, only to give up ignominiously in 1989. But in fact, these are only two isolated examples. Since Alexander the Great, plenty of conquerors have subdued Afghanistan. In the early 13th century, Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes ravaged the country's two major cities. And in 1504, Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire in India, easily took the throne in Kabul. Even the humiliation of 1842 did not last. Three and a half decades later, the British initiated a punitive invasion and ultimately won the second Anglo-Afghan war, which gave them the right to determine Afghanistan's foreign policy. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 In an ABC/BBC poll conducted in 2005, a full four years after the fall of the Taliban, 8 in 10 Afghans expressed a favorable opinion of the United States -- an extraordinary proportion in a Muslim nation -- and the same number supported the American-led overthrow of the Taliban in their country. And just last month, in a new poll by ABC and the BBC, 58 percent of Afghans named the Taliban as the greatest threat to their nation. Only 8 percent said it was the United States. And while only 47 percent of Afghans still had a favorable opinion of America, the Taliban fared far worse, with just 7 percent approval. In the New York Times. But I don't recall hearing things like this from them back in the olden days when Mr. Bush lived in the White House... |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-03-30 13:23 |