December 22, 2001 will be remembered and should be remembered by all Afghans. The world and its democratic governments have given the Afghan people their ONLY chance to make good on so many wasted opportunities.

This time around with the blessing of the United States and the United Nations - Afghans are aided by the French, German, Russians, Turks, the British and more help in on the way.

December 21 is Winter Solstice. In yester years on this day the pagan world celebrated the day as the " Festival of Lights". The first Christian Emperor declared December 25 as the "Festival of Lights" - now known the world over as Christmas. Afghans are Muslim but they all have a renewed hope in the Christian world that came to their rescue.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 we saw our world change. Our economy is in a recession. While our Nation is spending over a billion dollars a month on the war on terrorism - thousands at home have lost their jobs and cannot put bread and butter on the table. Thousands more are homeless. San Francisco has it share of homeless folks and this is not right.

Afghanistan can teach us a lot of lessons. Politicians know well they did wrong by leaving the Afghans to defend themselves after the sordid victory over the Soviets in the 1980's. Had we stayed the Taliban would be history. However, we chose to play politics and a decade later - would have to spend billions to rid the Taliban and the forces of terrorism all over the world.

There is a FORCE that sees all and we humankind are pawns of our mistakes. The good thing is that we can make mistakes and correct them. We can make mistakes and learn from them. We can make mistakes and hopefully not repeat them.

The world wishes Hamid Karzai, his interim government, and the people of Afghanistan the very best.

The world thanks our service women and men and those service women and men from all the other nations the best. May God keep them from harms way.