And now, back to Afghanistan

There is an increasing disconnect between what our goals, both from a military and cultural standpoint, are in Afghanistan. This recent insanity in the House of Commons, not to mention the economic crisis threatening the globe, serves only to take our eyes off what is at stake here. Our survival as a nation.

There is a soldier who has been to Afghanistan, deep in the valleys with the Afghan people. He has fought with and for them; Drunk chai; Broken read. During his time served in Afghanistan he posted on his blog Bill and Bob's Excellent Afghan Adventure some of the most insightful and certainly the most literary pieces of writing to date on the subject of why we are fighting.

Now that he's home he's still writing; still analyzing the situation and doing it brilliantly. What follows is an excerpt from a recent post. At the end of the post you will find a link to a soldier who has taken up the pen and writes to us from the valleys, among the people and soldiers of Afghanistan. His blog is called AFGHANISTAN SHRUGGED . I urge those of you who might have an interest as to the significance of our role in Afghanistan to bookmark these sites.

"We like to believe that our intentions are noble, and stating unequivocally that our purpose in Afghanistan is, at its root, in our own self-interest does not remove the nobility of our purpose. Sacrificing for the sake of one's children is noble. Leaving our children with the same type of society that we were fortunate enough to have been born into (through no virtue of our own) is noble. In the meantime, it turns out that what we are doing in Afghanistan (and by extension in other GWOT-involved countries) is noble.

If we strive to get it right in Afghanistan, we don't give up, and we succeed in leaving a stable, independent, Islamic Republic with a growing economy and secure borders, the long-suffering people of Afghanistan will be so much better off than they have been for the past thirty years. It turns out that by doing the noble thing for the future of our own children, we have to do noble things for Afghanistan's future, too.

Let's maintain a sense of reality as to what this is all about. Let's not lose the simplicity of some basic truths about what we are involved in because of that fast-flowing data stream carrying the detritus of daily events swirling through our line of sight. Let's not be distracted by the shiny objects we are presented with on a frequent basis.

This is all history and overview type stuff. If you haven't already, I would recommend that you read Afghanistan Shrugged's post about the challenges of the Rubik's Cube at the local level. It's a great post and deserves the widest possible dissemination. It tells it like it is about security at the local level; the key to the rest of the job."