Afghanistanism

  News item: Total American casualties in Afghanistan have exceeded 2,000 deaths in the past eleven years. In the city of Philadelphia, the total number killed in gun violence in the ten years through the end of 2011 was 3,405. Add another 200 or so murder victims so far this year in the City of Brotherly Love -- a number that is not far behind the military death rate in the war zone known as Afghanistan.

 Since the mid-19th Century, editorial writers have ranted on what to do about Afghanistan. This went on at such length and for so long that journalism textbooks had a word to describe opinions on situations that were far away, unsolvable and to some extent irrelevant to the Western world.
   It was called "Afghanistanism."
   For 150 years, the largest and most powerful military forces on the planet have tried and failed to control that strife-ridden country.
   In the 19th Century, the British Army could not.
   In the 20th Century, the Russian Army could not.
   And in the 21st Century, the American military cannot.
  
   Perhaps it's time to rethink priorities and leave Afghanistan to the Afghans.