I was just reading an article about Marines trying to make headway in Afghanistan. It says, “The eight-year-old war is at its most intense, with more than 400 NATO troops dead this year. U.S. Afghan commander Stanley McChrystal has told President Barack Obama he needs 40,000 troops to push back a resurgent Taliban and convince the population insurgents will not win.”
Can that be right? Eight years already? Yep. Bush started shocking and awing in Afghanistan after 9/11, in 2001. So the war has already lasted twice as long as WWII, which lasted from 1941 to 1945. But don’t worry, Vietnam lasted longer. And if there’s anything we Americans can do, it’s get our asses stuck in a quagmire.
My nephew was born in 2001. He’s in the 3rd grade, he can read and write and he knows more about dinosaurs than I’ve forgotten. And for the entirety of his life so far, we have been at war in Afghanistan. And we’re doing this why? To save the people there from the Taliban? To win friends and influence people? To make a rhetorical point? What a waste of life and treasure. What a meaningless crock of shit.
October 14, 2009 at 8:45 pm |
It’s true, as you say, that Obama has inherited both these two wars and Bush’s war against the middle class. I worry, however, that Obama is too caught up in the bureaucratic morass that is Washington, D.C, to work us out of wars. His campaign about “change you can believe in” wasn’t so much about fundamental changes in either economic or military posture as it was directed to more superficial facets of government. Or at least that’s how it now appears to me.