By Lowell Grant
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” said Albert Einstein. Why is this important and why have we not learned his most simple equation yet? Sadly, there are many examples today proving that his words have been lost on us.
In the 1950s the French were entangled in Vietnam fighting to regain control of their former colony. During World War II, America found an ally in the struggle against Japan named Ho Chi Minh and he led his people in the fight against the Japanese in part because he so admired the U.S. Constitution and Thomas Jefferson. We funded him, sent him arms, ammunition and gave him training. Just as we recruited, trained and outfitted Osama bin laden decades later in the struggle against the Russians in Afghanistan.
We had promised Vietnam the right of self-determination but abandoned their cause of freedom, allowing the French to resume their domination. Ho defeated the French and the Geneva Accord of 1954 gave the Vietnamese people the right to choose their own leader via a nationwide election scheduled for 1956. When it became clear that Ho would win any election in a landslide, the CIA picked a fellow named Diem to become our puppet and he refused to allow the nationwide election to take place, instead rigging an election for the South, which gave him an absurd 98-percent win, getting 133 percent of the vote in Saigon. Yes, you read that right, look it up.
This would all be ancient history if it were not such a close parallel with our creation of bin laden in Afghanistan, followed by us abandoning that country after the Russians were defeated, followed by the corrupt regime of Hamid Karzai. There are other similar cases such as our one-time client Saddam in Iraq, or the installation of the Shah in Iran following a coup staged once again by the CIA in which we deposed a democratically elected leader. The list goes on and on. They don”t hate us “for our freedom” as a fool once claimed, they hate us because we deny their freedom to choose their own leaders.
Now we find ourselves mired in Afghanistan eight years after we invaded, supposedly to kill or capture our former client bin laden. Hamid Karzai just completed an election that, by all accounts, was lousy with corruption. His brother is one of the biggest heroin dealers in the world. Karzai and his clan have siphoned off almost all of the borrowed billions we have sent to Afghanistan during the past eight years. Karzai barely controls a few blocks of downtown Kabul and only with the constant aid of Blackwater. He has virtually no influence over the countryside. President Obama has already increased our troop strength there by 21,000 this year after the previous administration all but forgot about this war while they pursued Iraq, who never attacked us and is still a pathetic mess, but as Ike warned us, the generals always want more.
Where does it end? When will it end? The opposition, no longer concerned with anything other than the destruction of our president, demands that Obama now complete immediately that which they could not accomplish in eight years. And they demand he do it now without “dithering” or second thought, just do it! It is so easy to simply say that if he doesn”t send another 40,000 of our best and brightest into harm”s way immediately, that he is a failure. Somehow they feel that blindly sending troops into pointless battles time and again shows how much we support them. But what are we really fighting for? Most experts agree that bin laden and his gang of criminals are all in Pakistan today, having escaped the caves at Tora Bora seven years ago. Should we commit our troops to preserve the corrupt and lawless Karzai or Diem, or the Shah”s government? “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Lowell Grant is a Lake County real estate broker.
