Wasted Days, and Wasted Nights

On and on, on and on, on and on

--On and On, Steven Bishop

Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on
--Don't Stop, Believin', Journey

In the 1870's Amir Sher Ali Khan recreated the Afghan army
that disintegrated during the second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80).
In the 1880's Amir Abdur Rahman had to reestablish the army
to unify the fragmented country. The army was remodeled
under King Amanullah following the third Anglo-Afghan War (1919),
but it met a fatal blow during the civil war of 1929.
A new military establishment was created by Nadeshah
after his accession in 1929.
The Soviet-sponsored reorganization and modernization of the Afghan
army began in the 1960s and continued through the Moscow-backed
communist rule.
It was totally disintegrated during the civil war of 1992-2001.
Parameters, Autumn 2002 (footnote), Ali A. Jalali

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Sounds like an uphill battle.

Assuming we accept the official figures of Iraqi and American deaths (depending upon whose figures you choose), the number of deaths in Iraq was down last month, depending upon which months in which year you chose to compare the figure to.

The question is: How does a decrease in the violence in Iraq benefit the security of the American taxpayer?

The U.S. Army is funded and tasked to defend the U.S. The U.S. Army was not organized or paid for to become the Baghdad security force.

Bottom line: How does America benefit by a drop in violence in Iraq, a statistic which is an irrelevant fact, albeit an expensive one, bought and paid for to the tune of $500,000 a minute?

At one point in time, the existence of the Vietnamese Army was the sole focus of U.S. policy. When the Vietnamese Army collapsed, no North Vietnamese soldiers invaded California.

If Iraq imploded today, the U.S. would not be in any greater danger from terrorism than it was yesterday.