After almost ten years of  U.S.  involvement in Afghanistan,  the American people have almost nothing to show for their spent treasure,  spilled blood, and thousands of disabled sons and daughters.  Not only is the war against  the Taliban insurgents going badly, but the entire Afghan economy has become totally dependent on the billions of dollars of military spending, combined with billions more in civilian economic assistance.   In fact, The World Bank has estimated that 97 percent of Afghanistan’s anemic economic output is from spending related to the international military and …

Image via Wikipedia

Once again, the weird and wacky world of  Afghanistan politics has taken center stage.  The issue this time, like many other times in the past, is Afghanistan’s bumper crop of illegal heroin.  As the world’s leading supplier of heroin for decades, if not centuries, the population of this impoverished and war-torn nation know full well the importance of their country’s only, real cash crop.  The fact that illegal Afghanistan heroin has made its way into every major crime syndicate in the world, and the fact that this highly …

Image by azrainman via Flickr

At the same time that  U.S. troops in Afghanistan are putting their lives on the line  fighting Taliban and al Qaida insurgents, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Kabul.  As could be expected, Ahmadinejad has taken this opportunity to sharply criticize the U.S. for its military presence in Afghanistan, and to emphasize that Americans will never be able to bring peace to Afghanistan through military means.  The Iranian President further stated that the presence of  U.S. troops in Afghanistan is …