Gas stop on the way to Bala Baluk FOB, november 2012. My first time in Afghanistan. A trip that was interesting, boring and scary at the same time. It grew my interest for this country and its people. I spent three weeks in the middle of nothing, where nothing was happening, scared that something bad would happen. It made me understand how expensive, useless and pointless the western effort is. What a waste of life. What a recipe for more future instability. I didn't have the feeling of witnessing a mission, or a war. Rather I saw an economy at work. A huge quantity of men and supplies moving from one part of the world to another. Work, for many. Manufacturers, employees, soldiers. An help to our economy maybe? Everybody says, oh this war costs so and so much. Trillions. But where do these trillions go? They stay home. They are spent on supplies. Food for the soldiers, arms, services, contractors. They stay in our economies. The real waste is the effort we do. The work that produces nothing. The ultimate Keynesian pay someone to dig a hole and someone to fill it? Maybe.
My feeling is that if you want to help this country you should have done something different. Bring education and microcredit, for example. Work so that the next generation of afghans will be grateful to you, not that it will hate you for killing their brothers.
Bin Laden would then be found in Pakistan. Lockheed &co thank for the decades of shooting at rocks.
Now after twenty years we are giving the keys back to the Talibans.
Now the Afghans we were trying to help. That we said we wanted to help. Those who we spent the trillions for, are knocking on our doors. They already have been for some time now. Look at Moria camp in Greece. Look in Bosnia. They are all Afghan young men fleeing from Talibans and looking for a chance to live a life. Hazaras, Tagiki, not Talibans. They are the ones we spent trillions to help.
But one hand, after they arrived here walking a deadly route? No, that's too much.