Afghanistan update: Ignorance is bliss edition

If you are happy not knowing about the situation in Afghanistan, stop reading here. Believe me, ignorance is bliss. As for the rest of you fools…

Bomb of the day:

At least one person has been killed in a suicide bomb attack outside a Nato base in Khost province in south-eastern Afghanistan, police say.

The bomb targeted the same base where seven CIA agents were killed last year in one of the worst attacks against US intelligence officials.

Meanwhile on Sunday, eight people died in a roadside blast in Paktia province.

Fourteen others were injured when a bomb hit a passenger van, Afghanistan’s interior ministry said.

Reuters interviews CentCom Commander, David Petraeus:

There have been tough moments here in Kandahar in recent weeks…And we know that there will be more tough moments in the weeks and months ahead…And that can mean difficult and tough fights. But that is something that is necessary, because the mission here in Afghanistan is of extraordinary importance to the Afghan people…

This falls under the file labeled “Inside Every Afghan is an American Waiting to Get Out.”

AP alerts us to a new trend among military contractors in Afghanistan that finds yet another reason why Afghans see NATO as more of a threat than a provider of security:

Private Afghan security guards protecting NATO supply convoys in southern Kandahar province regularly fire wildly into villages they pass, hindering coalition efforts to build local support ahead of this summer’s planned offensive in the area, U.S. and Afghan officials say…

Many of the gunmen have little or no training and many are also high on either heroin or hashish, Afghan and U.S. officials said…

Free Range International observes,

There is a group of rouge contractors…who are apparently shooting small arms indiscriminately.  They are an all Afghan crew, off duty ANP soldiers are working with them, and they are on an ISAF contract. It is up to ISAF to put a stop to this and to do so immediately.  But they can’t because nobody seems to know who these clowns work for…

Michael Cohen picks up the thread:

There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the US mission in Afghanistan – for all our talk about protecting civilians, the reality is that our very presence in Southern Afghanistan is getting people killed. And if our goal is to turn the Afghan people against the Taliban and on to the side of NATO and the Kabul government – no matter how noble an endeavor that might be – ensuring that more of them die is a pretty strange way to go about achieving that goal.

How much longer will the US public tolerate that we are clearly losing in Afghanistan? I was talking about this with a relative at dinner last night. After explaining the situation, she replied, “so we’re still in Afghanistan?” Well, if the public is ignorant, I suppose for a long time.

Ignorance is much harder to come by if you live in Kandahar, have US forces on your block convinced there is an American inside your Afghan exterior, and have untrained off duty “police officers” shooting at you. What are we fighting for in Afghanistan, exactly, if the average person sees NATO as the enemy?