Violence in Afghanistan this year is worse than at any time since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the militant Islamist Taliban in 2001 and fears are growing among NATO members that they are losing both the military campaign and the support of ordinary Afghans.
“In July and August we witnessed the highest number of security incidents since 2002,” U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide told the U.N. Security Council. The rise over the same period in 2007 was nearly 40 percent, he said.
Our rendezvous in Iraq has directly bolstered the Taliban forces in Afghanistan, a very disturbing notion considering that it was the Taliban that directly supported the 9/11 hijackers. One can only hope that our next Commander-in-Chief will have the common sense to carve our a more sensible foreign policy that focuses our military and financial resources on real threats to the United States, not imaginary ones.
