Xenophon's March

In 401BC ten thousand Greeks fought at the Battle of Cunaxa for the Persian king. The mercenaries heard Cyrus the Younger had been killed in battle. The rebel throne-seeker's death stranded in Ephesus without food or transport home.

Suspicious of nobles the Ten Thousand under Xenophon marched over three thousand miles through the Persian Empire from Ephesus on the Aegean Sea east to the heart of the Persian empire, north to the shore of the Black Sea and back west to Byzantium, where a Hellenic fleet transported the 6000 survivors back to Greece.

The Ten Thousand were lucky, but their general understood their mission.

“Men, the enemy troops you can see are all that stands between us and the place we have for so long been determined to reach. We must find a way to eat them alive!”

In 1839 the British Raj invaded Afghanistan with 15,000 trained troops.

Three years later 700 British and 3,800 Indian troops followed by families, civilians, porters and servants numbering 14,000 retreated from Kabul

Only one soldier from the column reached Jalalabad.

Dr. William Brydon.

HIstory is repeated by people who don't read history.

The 80s were a new day for America under Reagan. We financed the insurgency against the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan. The Kremlin fought the mujaheddin for ten years.

Millions dead.

Millions more in exile.

A nation in ruins.

Russia luckily extracted its army from the 'Bear Trap' in February 1989 by bribing Afghan rebels to not combat the withdrawal.m The last Russian soldier to cross the Amu Darya was Lieut. Gen. Boris V. Gromov.

"There is not a single Soviet soldier or officer left behind me."

Only the dead.

The USA walked away from the following civil war .

I read more books about the region. Peter Hopkirk's THE GREAT GAME, Peter Levi's THE LIGHT GARDEN OF THE ANGEL KING, André Deutsch's A HISTORY OF CONFLICT and anything else venturing onto the subject of Afghanistan. I planned a trip across the region, although peace evaded the landlocked country until the Taliban seized power with the backing of the Pakistan secret service.

Gianni's prediction about something bad had legs.

Civil War, the Taliban, Al-Queda, 9/11.

GW Bush authorized a low-level invasion of Afghanistan in 2002. The Northern Alliance rolled over the Taliban troops and their Arab comrades with the help of US air power. The ease of the conquest emboldened the president to open a second front on the War of Terror before the invasion of Saddam's Iraq.

Afghanistan like Iraq was an easy conquest, but the Taliban were not accepting defeat. They had retreated to prevent the mass starvation that winter and the war raged for twenty-two years through four presidents without ever a sign of victory or even stability.

This afternoon I recalled the words of William Gladstone, the 19th Century English politician.

"Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own."

Our artillery shelled family compounds.

Our troops machine-gunned civilians.

The Air Force bombers and drones dealt death from above and below.

Black-Ops assassinated leaders of all factions and the CIA conducted torture sessions from Day One to now. Only bribes to warlords will prevent a repeat of the 44th regiment's disastrous retreat from Kabul.

Bribes to grow drugs.

Heroin.

A busload of smack could finance my retirement in Thailand for several hundred years.

Earlier in this year President Joe Biden announced the USA was completely leaving the land-locked country by 9/11/2021.

Troop levels dropped to 3000 troops scatted about the airport, embassy, and a few CIA safehouses and torture dens.

The fighting continued between the Taliban and Afghani army. The Pentagon had insisted on teaching the farm boy inductees complicated weaponry rather than the solid performance of the AK-47, RPG, and .50 caliber machine gun. As supplies dwindled for the sophisticated arms soldiers surrendered their positions. The Taliban took one city than another without much resistance. Still the USA military blisslessly touted the resilience of the Afghanis, but the trillions of dollars spent by the military-industrial complex couldn't prevent the collapse and yesterday the Taliban entered the capitol city without threatening the airport or embassy.

The Press and GOP accused President Joe Biden of 'losing Afghanistan'.

It was never found by those idiots.

The President responded by saying, "So I’m left again to ask of those who argue that we should stay: How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghans — Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghan troops will not? How many more lives — American lives — is it worth? How many endless rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery?"

In as one.

Out as one.

Now.

No one in America gave a shit about the endless world.

Except for people like Melvin Sterne, editor of CARVE.

He taught English at the university.

And their are my Friends in the service and their families

The answer is not more troops.

The answer is no troops no matter how bad the consequences for the Afghani people. Our bullets, bombs and torture can not save them or the dead.

They all have faces, names, and lives and as Joe biden ended his speech, he said, "I know my decision will be criticized, but I would rather take all that criticism than pass this decision on to another President of the United States — yet another one — a fifth one.

Because it’s the right one — it’s the right decision for our people. The right one for our brave service members who have risked their lives serving our nation. And it’s the right one for America."

Bring the troops home.