Afghanistan is a very ancient country. When Americans think of Afghanistan, they probably never do, they think of it in terms of us fighting one of the longest wars we have ever fought in modern history. I say this because we have been fighting there since 2001 when we invaded that country after the Russians left. Interestingly when the Russians were fighting there we were supplying weapons to help some of the Afghans to defeat the Russians and made it very costly for the Russians to continue the war. Another reason the Russians left was probably they felt they gained nothing even if they won. Some of the people in Afghanistan we were supplying weapons to are now our bitter enemies and are known as terrorists. We have troops in that country which number in the 80,000 plus range and it seems we are no better off today in what we have accomplished then we were on the first day we invaded. President Trump has chewed out the commanding general, but how can you expect a man with so few soldiers to conquer a nation of over thirty million people?

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Its people were estimated in 2016 to have an annual income of only $600. That is only about $1.65 per day. The country of Afghanistan is surrounded by countries like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Iran. One of the reasons we probably want to stay in this country is that it borders Iran. It is said there are some very rich mineral deposits there, but one has to wonder how hard it might be to extract them while fighting off the tribes that lived there. The Taliban who once controlled Afghanistan had been our allies which many wonder about since they believed women had very few rights of any and didn’t even let them go to school. There is one thing which could be said for Afghanistan and that is it seems to be strategically located in a very troublesome region and perhaps this could be the real reason we don’t want to leave. Many Americans are tired of the loss of American lives due to this war and also the tremendous expense because this money that we are wasting could actually be used for useful things.

There have been so many invasions into Afghanistan throughout history it is hard to know every single one, but here are some of the ones we know about. Ancient India invaded Afghanistan as did Alexander the great, Umar, Genghis Khan, Timur, India again, Persia several times, the British, the Sikhs, the Soviet Union and United States. The Greeks maintained control for about three centuries. Alexander the great invaded because he was invading the Persian Empire and that Empire had gotten some control of the country. When the caliphate invaded they converted most of the people in the country to Islam. After Genghis Khan invaded and left the Afghans eventually revolted, but that was put down and bloodied retribution by the son of Genghis Khan, Ogedei Kahn. I could go on about all the different conquests of this country by many other countries, but what is the point?

The United States is just another country in a long list of countries who were far more powerful than Afghanistan and invaded it. We said we wanted to do it to drive out the terrorists, because they were using it as a base. We also said we were having a hard time getting rid of them because of the mountainous terrain and all the caves the terrorists were able to hide in and protect themselves even from bombs and shells. This should not have been a surprise, you can’t tell me we didn’t know what the terrain was like before we went into that country. Obviously if you invade a very mountainous country there were going to be a lot of caves for people to hide in. Did we believe these people were so backward that we would just run into their country kill all the ones we didn’t like and get right out? Obviously that was never going to happen and you can’t tell me the planners of the invasion didn’t know this beforehand. It is now being said we have created a democratically run country where one didn’t exist before. While this may be true while we are in that country one has to wonder if a country made up of many different tribes will allow our government like this to stand if we weren’t there.