|
|
The
views expressed
on this page are soley those of the author and do not
necessarily
represent the views of County News Online
|
 |
Townhall
Afghan
Gratitude, American Folly
Steve Chapman
Mar 29, 2015
If you're looking for gratitude from the Afghans, President Ashraf
Ghani is your man. When he appeared before Congress Wednesday, he
expressed thanks to American troops, their families, Congress, Barack
Obama and "ordinary Americans whose hard-earned TAXES have over the
years built the partnership" between the United States and Afghanistan.
He couldn't have laid it on any thicker if he'd been using a trowel.
Americans in uniform, he attested, "have come to know our snowcapped
mountains, our verdant valleys, our windswept deserts, our parched
FIELDS, our unharnessed, flowing rivers, and our plains of waving
wheat." He said, "Veterans will always be welcome in Afghanistan."
It may be a tad early to sell his COUNTRY as a tourist destination. And
I'm guessing that when veterans think back to their time there, it's
not the amber waves of grain that will be uppermost in their minds.
Still, after nearly a trillion U.S. dollars spent on the WAR, it's nice
to hear someone on the other end of the money pipeline acknowledge our
sacrifices. It's definitely a change from Ghani's predecessor.
Though his government survived financially only through Western aid,
Hamid Karzai was never happy. He accused the U.S. of carrying out
terrorist attacks that it blamed on the enemy. He complained that we
didn't provide modern weapons. He refused TO SIGN the bilateral
security agreement he had negotiated, providing a basis for U.S. forces
to remain in the country. He even threatened to join the Taliban.
Karzai often brought to mind the 19th-century Austrian statesman Felix
Schwarzenberg. When warned of the dangers of incurring a DEBT TO the
Russian czar, legend has it, he replied that his country would
"astonish the world with the magnitude of her ingratitude...
Read the rest of the article at Townhall
|
|
|
|
