The Bad News Continues…

It appears that the Marjah offensive is working militarily, and that is good news. Whenever the U.S. military is successful, I’m usually happy and relieved. However, it looks like the military victory was the easy part and that managing and governing the area looks to be the long slog.

The news just seems to uncover bad after good — according to this
MSNBC article, the man chosen “to be the fresh face of good Afghan governance” has a criminal record. A CRIMINAL RECORD! Is there no one in the ENTIRE country available who doesn’t have a rap sheet? How is this possible? How can the best option be a criminal? The crime: a 1998 conviction for stabbing his own son. And this is the person handpicked to show Afghanis that corruption, cronyism and government dysfunction is on the outs.

I guess it just goes to show that Afghanistan is simply even more complicated than most people can possibly imagine. Allowing former convicts back into society is one thing; however, I don’t believe that during the rebuilding of a country this is acceptable in any way, shape or form. Don’t the Afghanis deserve better after over three decades of war and violence? Have they not had enough by now?