history of interloping in Afghanistan

I don't know what conclusions Rabble.ca's Murray Dobbin intends us to draw from this argument, but he presents a very compelling reason to remain in Afghanistan. His column - "How the West Destroyed Afghanistan" - briefly casts the last 20+ years of Afghan history. He enumerates just how often America has involved itself in the affairs of the Afghan people, destabilizing a potentially democratic regime and enabling the Taliban.

This is precisely why the relativism of the NDP makes no sense. It is easy to realize the Taliban is a terrible thing, because it is a terrible thing of our making - and a very recent one at that.

When the Americans faced a short-term security threat, by way of the USSR, they imported, armed, and supported the Taliban. When they no longer saw involvement in Afghanistan as in the national interest, they promptly left their mess and went home. The Afghan people paid a very bitter price.

This is the social irresponsibility inherent in leaving Afghanistan now. We have reduced the country to utter dependency. We are now to declare that our interest lie elsewhere? That our troops would be better used to protect arctic sovereignty, as Jack Layton has suggested? That's an easy decision for us to make - we don't have to live with the ensuing civil war, nor the potential abuses of another undemocratic and illiberal regime.

Perhaps we should indeed recall, as Dobbin urges us, the words of Benjamin Franklin: 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.'