If you want a dose of machining today go directly to the ads, because I’m mad and I just can’t take it anymore.
In a couple of days we’ll celebrate Thanksgiving, watch the NFL, sop our dressing, and try to sleep with reflux. But 10,000 miles away thousands of American men and women will be trying to stay alive in Afghanistan.
Tell me, why?
We are propping up a corrupt Karzai government, playing ball with a Pakistan that harbors Al Qaeda, and inflating our monstrous budget deficit, to accomplish what?
I don’t care if you are a lefty or a righty, counting the caskets of young Americans dying in the hundred-year quagmire called Afghanistan is ridiculous. Thirty years ago the Russians lost a generation of kids while we supported the Mujahedin, which spawned a Bin Laden. Tell me why it makes sense for Americans to emulate the Russian experience.
Afghans do one thing brilliantly—kill each other. It’s their national sport or religion, or both.
If we have to indulge our own blood lust, buy 5000 more Predator drones and play remote control war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but take the soldiers out of the field and away from the hideous roadside bombs.
I am grateful to our brave soldiers for their sacrifice to country, but I am sick of politicians sending kids out to be killed in another meaningless war we cannot win. Hell, we don’t even know who’s on our team.
Question: This Thanksgiving, what are you thankful for?
7 Comments
Lloyd, as a veteran and the father of one of the men present in that Afghani valley during that battle, I couldn’t agree more. We are mired in a Vietnam style conflict that cannot be won without the population of the country 100% behind us. This will never be true in Afghanistan. We would make better use of our soldiers by using them as security in our airports and ports around the country. We need to continue the tightening of security at both locations to keep the terrorists out, instead of miring ourselves in a hostile terrain and environment, exposed to enemy fire and an unfriendly “ally”.
I’m very thankful that I work for a progressive company in a recession resistant industry. I’m thankful for a long distant vision of how todays decisions, mine or otherwise, affect things to come which can also be a curse when looking at the decisions affecting me that other people make and have made.
Try to remember that the war in Afghanistan was started with public support under a wave of patriotism that surged from the ashes of 9/11. The real goal of capturing Osama Bin Laden and permanently disabling Al-Qaeda was circumvented by stupid white men in suits who saw some sort of opportunity in Iraq. We missed Osama, shortchanged the war in Afghanistan and lost sight of the goal. What we are doing now amounts to nothing more than standard issue saving face.
Let’s just hope we can stay out of North Korea.
The thing that frustrates me the most with our “war efforts” is the pussy-footed way that we go about things. Maybe if a few of the mountains that these Taliban hide in disappeared entirely through the use of some serious bombs the villages that harbor them would turn them out like lepers. I understand the intention of our attempt to not kill innocent bystanders, but when not doing so results in the death of thousands of our young men and leaves the objective incomplete then we are going about it the wrong way. When these guys fled into the mountains years ago a few well placed nukes would have taken care of business and sent a loud message to Pakistan and any other countries that let terrorists hide within their borders that they are making a fatal mistake.
We keep repeating the mistakes of the past – being a Vietnam era veteran it galls me that places like Pottery Barn are selling tables MADE IN VIETNAM after 55,000 American men and women died there – for what? To prevent communism from spreading. Like that worked.
Iraq and Afghanistan have been at war for thousands of years. Our interventions there aren’t going to change a thing. As soon as the last American troop walks out of there, both countries are going to go right back to where they were before this all began.
Who appointed the USA the world police anyway?
I THINK TED HIT IT ON THE HEAD.
Of course, it causes great pain to see our people killed in this awful place, which unlike some places, was awful largely independently of us.
BUT
That is part of where the 9/11 bombers came from, and as the terror war technology escalates, it will become harder and harder to stop suicide bombers once they’ve reached the airport (train station, power plant, etc.) Hence, our troops have much more effect there than here. (Or so I thihk. I openly admit there are aguments otherwise.)
And, if we leave, the Taliban (whom we maybe did help create a little bit) and AlQaeda, will not only go back to supporting terror, but to cutting noses off of women, poisoning girls who go to school, andn generally proving they are the world’s leading barbarians. We really did not create radical coercive islam (though we may have helped arm part of it), but since we are already there, do we want to leave people in it’s crushing grasp?
As for North Korea – another fine place to NOT fight a war, but would having the loonies who run the North have control of the resources of South Korea be tolerable?
Make no mistake, I am made sick by it too, but be very careful what you wish for.
If you read ” the Creature from Jykell Island ” you will have a full understanding of not only this war, but of every war we have had since WW1. Remember the Lusitania. These are all money wars of the rich, fought by the poor.