Afghanistan -- Where empires go to die

Just as US is debating how many additional troops to send to Afghanistan the enemy made its presence reverberate by successfully dealing a deadly blow to US troops -- on their own turf at their own timing.

It smells like a trap.

The enemy is goading the US to send more troops to "defend" its current force. The more US sends, the more the enemy can kill turning Afghanistan into the 21st century version of the "burial ground" of empires as that nation had done in the past Alexander the Great, the Persians, Moguls, Russia, England, the communist USSR and now most probably the US.

Read the news here.

Has anyone ever wondered why is it the ruling elite in the US never seems to have read history? It seems the senior political and military leadership does not seem aware of how all other empires had failed since ancient Greece? it raises questions as to what is the worth of a degree from Harvard, Yale, Princeton or West Point.

One possible explanation is how a "liberal arts" education has become a mish-mash of subjects without providing the students, the future elite, any sense of historical continuity. Back the days of the British empires, the ruling elite had to read all the Classics known as the "Greats". No university in the US except Columbia and St. Johns now enforce a "core" education onto their students.

The "core" at Harvard and others is still essentially a hodge podge of subjects.