Seriously? Someone is surprised at this?

"It's like having 26 kids that I have to watch after . . . Who's smoking hashish around here?" This YouTube video is an interesting insight into how the war in Afghanistan is going for the men and women on the ground. While Congress and the President pontificate about "winning," the people responsible for "building the Afghanistan army" are wrestling with a corrupt local government and derelict material with which to build a puppet army that will hold up long enough for Obama to escape with some pretense of "winning" Bush's war against the Taliban.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2F80llZ5F4

Empire-building is frustrating work. When the people who want to liberate their country are all on the other side, what you get work with is pretty poor material. We have been here in the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq, and we're there in Afghanistan. The "advisers" in Vietnam made the same kind of comments about "training" the ARVN.

"They've recruited the wrong kind of men. They're all stupid and ignorant. These young men are a bunch of delinquents." Big surprise. What sort of men did the British manage to recruit to fight against American revolutionaries? Benedict Arnold, for one. Even the British didn't think much of the Tories they had to repatriate after losing that war. In the US, our record of honoring the Vietnamese who served our side has been less than stellar.

You don't win civil wars, especially by foreign intervention. Hell, we can't honestly claim to have won our own Civil War, since a substantial portion of the southeast consistent elects representatives (and Presidents) who fight against the ideals of this nation and who support only 1 of 27 2nd amendment) of the Bill of Rights. Further, their only reason for supporting the 2nd amendment is that they still have dreams of resurrecting their lost secession by taking arms against the United States government. If we can't create democracy, promote civil rights, protect working people from abuse by international corporations, or protect civilians from invasion and terrorism by foreign terrorists, how do we plan to create that kind of democracy in the places where racial hatred, religious superstition, and inequality is ingrained in the culture?