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American Hubris: The Real Reason For The Afghan Debacle
Power not only corrupts, but stupefies the proud
Afghanistan is the Graveyard of Empires. Afghanistan is a swamp, the more you move, the more you bog down. — Suhail Shaheen
Over the past twenty years, most of us have heard of Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan. It is a truly ancient city, having been founded by its namesake Iskandar in 330 BCE. “Iskandar” was the local version of the name “Alexander”, as in Alexander the Great. Archaeologists have documented a wealth of evidence of Greek influence in the Afghan hinterlands. After Alexander’s death, his empire was divided into the Successor States, and the region we now call Afghanistan was taken his general Seleucus, who founded the Seleucid Empire which lasted for over three centuries.
Twelve centuries later, the Mongol Horde descended upon Afghanistan, and from that period until the mid-19th century, the region was ruled (if with occasional interruptions) by Genghis Khan and those who claimed to be his descendants, including Timur the Lame (“Tamerlane”) and Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire (which name is a corruption of ‘Mongol’). One of the major ethnic groups of central Afghanistan today are the Hazaras who appear to be of Mongol descent, and who face bitter retribution from the Taliban as…
