Years wasted in Afghan effort

Matthew Henderson

SOC 202-02

Sep, 2 2009

I read the article “Years wasted in Afghan effort, UN official says” released by the Associated Press on Tuesday, September 1^st of this year. The title states the theme of the article well. It talks about all of the fraud in the election that was held last month. We had hoped that the election would establish government that could stand up to Taliban and the drug trade. It seems though that the election has only caused more violence. The author says we should be working on major missions that will really help the economy get off the ground but we only do minor projects because it costs less. The month of August, with 49 deaths, was the most deadly month for our soldiers to this point in the 8 years that we have been at war in Afghanistan. Apparently we want to add more troops as well.

To me as a voter and taxpayer this sounds pretty bad. To think that we have not really accomplished much at all in 8 very expensive years in a war that I was never in favor of, needless to say, makes me upset. It doesn’t seem at all that we are headed in the right direction, which would be out of that country, at all. To me as a person this sounds even worse. I myself am against war altogether. People may look at the wars we are in now and say that we haven’t lost that many soldiers compared to those wars of the past but who is to say what a life is worth. One death is too many for me. I realize that right now that it is not an option to just end the war but we need to figure a way out of this mess that we got ourselves into 8 years ago. Instead we are getting deeper into it.

http://dailyme.com/story/2009090100001425/bomb-kills-service-member-afghanistan.html