Pull out of Afghanistan now, before it becomes humiliating as fall of Saigon

By David McElroy · March 12, 2012

As I watch the events unfolding in Afghanistan today, my thoughts keep going back almost 40 years to the fall of South Vietnam. If there had ever been a reason for U.S. forces to be in Vietnam, those reasons had been lost for years before the south fell. If there was any good reason for U.S. forces to be in Afghanistan, those reasons have similarly been lost. Will the fall of Kabul in a civil war be similar to the fall of Saigon?

For more than a decade, U.S. ground forces were heavily involved in fighting in Vietnam. Close to 60,000 Americans died, but the North Vietnamese forces wouldn’t be defeated. The South Vietnamese troops allied with the United States weren’t as effective as the communist troops from North Vietnam. After becoming stuck in a long and bloody quagmire, the American public grew weary of the war.

In 1973, the various sides — North Vietnam, South Vietnam, the Viet Cong and the United States — finally agreed to a peace treaty. U.S. troops left the country, but the other combatants went back to fighting. In late April of 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell — with frantic South Vietnamese desperately trying to get onto U.S. helicopters evacuating the remaining Americans. (The photo above shows Vietnamese going over the wall of the U.S. embassy trying to board U.S. helicopters.)

It was a humiliating moment for the United States. After spending years — and wasting tens of thousands of American lives and untold tax dollars — trying to fight the war, it became clear that the only answer was to cut and run.

It’s time to do the same in Afghanistan. Before another person can be killed who doesn’t have to die, it’s time to get out of that place and let the Afghans fight over their own country.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan a decade ago, it was with a clear and simple mission — to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and destroy terrorist training camps. Well, the terrorist-in-chief is dead and the old bases were pretty much wiped out years ago. (And Bin Laden turned out to be in Pakistan, not Afghanistan anyway.) But the continued fighting is doing nothing but creating more enemies for the United States. It’s doing nothing to help anyone.

What exactly is the purpose of continued U.S. involvement in the country? Does anyone have some fantasy that the Afghans are suddenly going to quit being what they are? Are they suddenly going to adopt liberal democracy and embrace our way of life? Are we going to be the first group of outsiders to successfully invade the place and win? (Ask the British and the Russians how well that went for them.)

There’s no longer a reason to be there, even if you think there ever was one. The regime that the United States has put into place there will collapse when U.S. troops leave, but so what? It’s their country, not ours. It’s their business if they want to let a bunch of religious fanatics rule them. (Remember that Ronald Reagan called those religious fanatics “freedom fighters” when they were fighting the Soviets a few decades ago.)

Recent events have made things even worse for the United States. The burning of copies of the Koran at a U.S. base enflamed locals. Just as that started dying down, a U.S. soldier went into some random homes over the weekend and killed 16 Afghans, including women and children. (See the blood on the floor on the home on the right?) Why did he do it? We don’t know, but some reports say he might have been drunk and some eyewitnesses claimed there was more than one soldier involved. (U.S. officials deny that.)

Afghans are vowing to get revenge, so how many more will die? We’re sure to see a new wave of anti-American feeling because of the latest atrocity. Do you blame the Afghans for wanting us out of their country? How would you feel if there were foreign troops occupying your country because they wanted to choose a government friendly to them?

Most Americans now want U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, according to a new poll from the Washington Post. Election-year politics might prevent anything from happening right now, but let’s hope Barack Obama can find the political and moral will to do the right thing and get out now.

There’s no rational reason for us to be there. Most Afghans don’t want us there. Most Americans don’t want us there. There’s no justification, moral or pragmatic. It’s time to cut our losses and get out of something that should never have developed into the mess it’s become. Let’s get out now.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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