The Coming Collapse of Afghanistan

Will all the blood and treasure this nation has sunk into building democracy in Afghanistan come to nothing? Yes. There have been warning signs from the beginning that Afghanistan would not end well. Corruption and double-dealing were a national past-time long before we showed up.

I mean, come on, would you buy a used car from U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai? And when a nation’s leaders care more about lining their own pockets or cutting deals with their enemies than standing up for what's right, nation building is a silly, expensive pipe dream.

This week a Pentagon report said that so-called “insider attacks” on coalition forces in Afghanistan jumped 120 percent in just one year, from 2011 to 2012. The Washington Free Beacon reports that “Afghans with ties to terrorists continue to infiltrate the security forces and carry out planned attacks against U.S. soldiers and other forces.”

This is Vietnam all over again, with Hamid Karzai playing the starring role of South Vietnamese President Thieu.

If you want to watch one of the strongest cases for why we have wasted our time, treasure and precious lives in Afghanistan, it’s the film, "This Is What Winning Looks Like," by war reporter Ben Anderson. Anderson spent six years covering the war in Afghanistan, winning the Foreign Press Award.

This is not a film for the whole family. It contains graphic sexual references in one conversation Anderson recorded with an Afghan commander. Anderson is showing the sexual perversion that is a part of male Afghan Muslim society; specifically, pedophilia.

The film also shows the disturbing ineptitude of Afghanistan’s leaders and the rampant drug abuse among Afghan soldiers. Afghanistan is a nation desperately in need of something different. And back when America still believed in its Christian mission, we would have been the right nation for the job.

But American leaders today no longer believe in the stabilizing, civilizing, liberating power of Christianity to transform a moribund nation like Afghanistan and help it find its feet. Instead, the hapless Bush administration doomed Afghanistan by allowing a constitution based on Islamic Sharia law. There is no protected freedom of thought, and apostasy from Islam can bring the death penalty. Thanks, George.

Bullets and tanks can’t fix broken cultures or nations chained to backward, oppressive religions. When the last allied forces leave Afghanistan, the roof will fall in. You can bank on it. America needs to cease this nation building folly and instead go home and rebuild itself.