I’m So Very Sad About Afghanistan

I’m really sad about Afghanistan. And angry.

I didn’t serve over there, but have many friends who did. Friends who lost friends over there.

I’m upset about what America has lost over there, and how it seems we should have known this day was coming for decades. I’ve been saying all along that 20 minutes after we stop nation-building it’ll be like we were never there.

But I’m not an Afghanistan expert. And few people commenting on Twitter are.

We know for example that all of what we did so far doesn’t help us going forward. But what we don’t know, or at least what I don’t know, is how much our time there helped us in the past.

Perhaps being there really did keep some kind of fight there instead of elsewhere, and perhaps that had significant value. I don’t know. I’d like to know.

I live in the Bay Area, the location of the largest Afghan diaspora in the world. I just feel so bad for all the people who are here and who are now cut off from their family back home.

Many of whom probably tried to leave before the Taliban took over the airports.

I mourn for the little girls who won’t be going to school. We just put a damp cloth on a million little candles of potential in that country. Girls who will never be educated. Girls who will become chattel to be traded and used.

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I’m disgusted with humanity for allowing this to happen. It feels very similar to Syria, where the kids there have nothing. No schools, no jobs. No futures.

And what about terrorism in those places now?

What’s the plan for controlling extremism pressure generation in those places now? We all know what happens when you have extremist religion, poverty, and young men.

What’s the plan? Satellites and bombing runs?

That hasn’t even worked while we were in-country. How well will it work from outside?

I’m just at a loss. Such a fucking travesty.