Obama says he needs 30,000 more troops and four more years in Afghanistan so he can quit the "war." This doublespeak is akin to telling your wife that you need to sleep with your mistress 20 more times in order to end the affair.
Ending the "war" in Afghanistan is easy. Order the troops home. Given the cargo planes and aircraft carriers at our disposal, all troops can easily be out within two weeks. The troops can swiftly be returned to civilian life, and the unconscionable and profligate "war" spending can be brought to an immediate and abrupt halt. It truly is as simple as that. The American Conservative ran an excellent article, last year, on this very process, though it discussed an Iraqi withdrawal.
Nation building is a failure, and our efforts there are doomed to an embarrassing and bankrupting end. Only our hubris convinces us otherwise. We are not Afghani, and we are not of their ways and mores. Whatever government or social order we craft will be of our hand and mind, not theirs, and will thus fit uneasily upon them, being vigorously shaken off the moment we depart.
Dangerously, so many Americans see the military as our national "home team" who we must cheer to victory. "Support the Troops" has become conflated to mean "We Must Win." Winning, as conceptualized by most Americans, is an overly simplistic concept that contemplates binary outcomes akin to this weekend's Football game. Our foreign wars, however, are not sporting contests with scoreboards, game clocks, rules and agreed methods of ascertaining a winner.
Every dead American and Afghani is another unrecoverable and morally unjustifiable loss, and every additional billion dollars added to our National Debt further drives America to the brink of dissolution. Throughout history, nations have learned that foreign wars of adventure deplete the treasury and drive the country into poverty. Our American arrogance convinces us that we are exceptional, immune from macroeconomic realities. We are going to learn a painful lesson in these eternal economic realities, presently evidenced by the sinking dollar and soaring metals prices.
To employ a cliche, the only way to win this game is by not playing.
Bob Chapman just announced on the Alex Jones Show, that if the populace ever takes to the street, since we are being looted by the banksters, our military will not shoot us. Keep on blogging, please, Cato.
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