Welcome Back Hibatullah

Those wacky Taliban fighters have gone and confirmed what the least bit observant among us have long known: The American “war on terror” and century-plus (at least) experiment in nation building is a farce and a failure.

As I glanced upon the picture above, I couldn’t help but think that these guys look like the Pashtun version of the old American TV series, Welcome Back Kotter.

No telling which one plays the Vinnie Barbarino character…

In any case, Mr. Kotter’s remedial high school class could have identified “the mission” in Afghanistan as a complete and utter debacle. Making such an obvious observation would have rendered them smarter than any of the tens of thousands of State and Defense Department apparatchiks, Council on Foreign Relations dopes, and National Review neo-cons who supported this fools’ errand, with their prestigious degrees from Dartmouth, Georgetown and Yale.

The total cost: $2.26 trillion (that’s about $300 million A DAY for 20 years), and everyone of the following groups had skin (and sometimes blood) in the game except the aforementioned “foreign policy wonks”, Raytheon executives, and the politicians in Washington: troops, families, Afghan civilians, the American saver, and the American taxpayer. That latter group and constituency constitutes the perpetually screwed.

Oh, and that’s only the cost so far. Care for those who survived the disaster will cost another $500 billion.

At least Ron Paul is trending again.

And to think, in the 1920s and 30s, due to a lack of interventionism in the Middle East and Central Asia, the United States was viewed favorably.

The damage that the warfare/welfare state can do–Afghanistan proves yet again–to be inestimable.