Afghanistan can make or break Obama’s Presidency and I don’t think there is an easy solution. Let’s face it, if he orders troops out and we have another terrorist attack, he will be the President that was soft and didn’t protect us. And if he stays and it drags out, which it will, he will loss the public’s confidence. So politically he is in a quagmire.
With the Right yelling send more troops into Afghanistan and the left saying bring an end to the wars, it seems he should be caught in the middle, correct! Nope. Not even close, Obama first of all isn’t a Liberal and he isn’t thinking about leaving. So get ready for a long stay. As Defense Secretary Roberts Gates said "We are not leaving Afghanistan" before a meeting with key members of Congress. Obama’s reasoning for inviting select members of Congress (both Democrats and Republicans) was to get their support for the new strategy in Afghanistan. If Obama had any intentions of and exit strategy he would have invited Russ Feingold or Bernie Sanders two men who have called for an end to this war.
Russ Feingold, senator from Wisconsin, is on the Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee and he wasn’t asked to attend? I find it interesting that the President wouldn’t invite a man that might have some important incite as to how we can end this debacle. Instead of the change that we need it’s ironic that Obama is limiting his dialogue with the status quo.
Here is my problem with this war and the Iraqi war. The terrorist have no home. When asked about Afghanistan national security adviser James Jones said "The good news that Americans should feel at least good about in Afghanistan is that the al Qaeda presence is very diminished," He went on to say, the maximum estimate of al Qaeda militants operating in Afghanistan was "less than 100 ... No bases. No buildings to launch attacks on either us or our allies."
So this is what we need 40,000 more troops for. I think not, what we need to do is let the Iraq government and the Afghani governments take back their countries. Build better relations with the people of these regions. Open up fair trade in the region. Keep our military and the intelligence agencies strong so we do not let our guard down again.
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I think the better question is why we, as a country, allow ourselves to be in an almost constant state of warfare. Why do we allow our soldiers to be killed thousands of miles from home? Why do we continue to pour borrowed money into unwinnable conflicts?
ReplyDeleteThe United States, as a country, has very rarely been at peace. (We even managed to have one of the bloodiest wars in history fighting ourselves) For the longest time, though, when these wars ended we benefited from a fattened manufacturing base and increases in our technology. Today however, the industrial base of the country has shifted overseas, where workers can be trained to the same level of competence (gasp!) and work for pennies on the dollar compared to the American counterparts. When this is coupled with the government’s refusal to change the status quo at home, it turns warfare into one of the most costly and stupid things a country can do.
Does anyone really think we would be at war if we had to come up with the money up front? What if congress mandated a war tax before the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan? What if the American people had to pay for these wars with greatly increased taxes and the loss of numerous services? For all the idiots shouting about this being the "right thing to do", who would have put their political career on the line if we had to actually have the money to pay for all of this. No one. And we all know it.
But instead of being adults and coming to the quick and easy conclusion that these foreign wars have absolutely no upside and do nothing but make us lose thousands of lives and TRILLIONS of dollars, our "leaders" decided that they could act like idiots and spend money they didn't have trying to change a people who never wanted to be changed. I shouldn't be surprised, given the reasons for the financial crash, that the American leaders are no better, and often worse, than the American people. We now KNOW (not guess, not think!) what happens when you borrow more money than you can pay back. So why do we continue to allow are leaders to explode the deficit for all these pointless endeavors?
All things being equal, is Iraq a better place today than it was in 2000? Probably. But is that worth thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of lives and TRILLIONS of dollars? Not even close. What was left of the future of our country has now been leveraged because Bush-41 couldn't get the job done in HIS pointless and illegal war.
This money isn't just going to make itself. We need our economy to start growing robustly in order to even think about paying this all back. But we have no manufacturing base. We are a service economy now. And right now, while our "leaders" bicker about how to throw away money that we don't have, India and China are coming to the realization that what Thomas Jefferson wrote two-hundred years ago was correct; that all men ARE created equal, that soon they will no longer need the US for anything.
And what will happen to us when we are no longer the world's predominant economy? When we owe more money than we can ever make? Simple, our line of credit will dry up. People will no longer want to give the US any money, and the dollar will collapse. How do you think Americans will like breadlines? Think it can't happen? What’s the alternative? We have been aware of the problem of our national debt for over two decades, and all it has done since then has gone up.
So, in essence, my response to a discussion about Afghanistan is why the fuck are we even discussing Afghanistan. I'll sum it up this way. Going forward, every week that we still have troops and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government gets to deduct 100$ from your bank account to pay for it.
Now how long do you think that will last?