A.M.F.

Ex Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently told West Point cadets that the United States would be crazy to go to war in places like Iraq or Afghanistan ever again. We are pulling out of Iraq after a ten year stint and what have we received for all the blood and money?

A new Iranian proxy, we have exposed an age old rift between sunni and shia and left a country precariously close to a civil war. An islamic society sure to be less tolerant of women and more prone to theology than the previous dictator's regime. The kurds are sure to ultimately bear the worst of it, as usual. Why were we there again? Junior was upset over some slight to his father, or so I recall.

In Afghanistan, our hand picked man for the job has recently announced that he would back his nemesis, Pakistan in a war with the United States. Not that we should expect necessarily gratitude, but they appear to be sick of us too. Obama says that we will be out in three years. With the same mess we find in Iraq, I am sure.

We eventually found our way to Afghanistan because they were hosting those people like Omar and the rest of the Al Qaeda and Taliban jihadis who flew our planes into the twin towers and the pentagon. But what exactly have we done there besides install a corrupt regime, complicit in a variety of corruption and the opium trade?

They hate us too, maybe even worse than the Iraqis. Did we not make a mistake by not just coming in and wasting terrorists without mercy or the promise of reformation, rather than even attempting with this "nation building" stuff. Would have been quicker and cheaper to just kill a whole mess of those evil bastards and forget about the whole notion of hearts and minds.

Of course the whole region is set to become the world's next tinderbox, with Pakistan courting the Chinese and the U.S. bringing in the Indians as an Afghani suitor. The Indians and the Chinese are not exactly friends and India is now a vital cog with a magnified strategic and dare I say nuclear presence. I would have bet that Taiwan / China was the next powderkeg but the mid east is shaping up quite nicely.

It is so weird how alliances change, in much of my life, India was practically a Russian satellite. Now they are our BFF. Got to keep checking the scorecard. Now we are out of Iraq. Countless soldiers killed, countless civilians killed and nothing gained whatsoever.