My View: The Afghanistan 'thank you' to the U.S.

In its war effort to stop international terrorism, the United States has given Afghanistan:

• 1,906 U.S. fatalities to date
• $500 billion
• Security and protection
• Improved women’s rights
• Built 608 schools
• Built 670 healthcare clinics
• Trained nearly 17,000 health workers
• Built Islamic centers of worship
• Vaccinated nearly 7 million against polio
• Worked to control TB and AIDS
• Built 3,000 miles of roads
• Expanded agriculture
• Spread democracy and liberty
• Gave health care to 750,000 patients
• Economic growth
• Increased the standard of living
• Lowered poverty rates
• Saved countless lives
• Built and repaired infrastructure
• Bent over backward to be culturally sensitive
• And other immeasurable acts of goodwill, support and humanitarianism

The thanks America received for its efforts?

Yes, Americans are deeply saddened by the lone act of an apparently mentally ill soldier. And that act tarnishes the U.S.

Nonetheless, the thanks we receive? Afghanis murder U.S. citizens and protest against us after some Korans, which had been defaced and used as a means of illegal communication by Muslim prisoners to begin with, were burned.

Let’s cut the nonsense and realize we are not dealing with humans who want to live in a civilization.
The U.S. should end all aid, pack up the troops and leave Afghanistan immediately under a new Doctrine of Ungratefulness, which should say: “The U.S. will bomb and eviscerate to dust any and all suspected al-Qaida, Taliban or Afghan activity that might be seen as a threat to U.S. national security at anytime and in any place without warning and without apology.”

Dean Kalahar, a 40-year Sarasota resident, is a contributor to the Sarasota Observer, an economics teacher at Sarasota High School and author of “Practical Economics.”