Cowards and Fools on Afghanistan. A CBS News poll today revealed that 64% of respondents want the U.S. to reduce troop levels in Afghanistan. And "Half of Americans - 51 percent - think the U.S. should not be involved in the war in Afghanistan". A number of members of Congress are becoming vocal to the same effect. What a bunch of losers.
+
The CBS Evening News story about that poll said that 164 American military were killed in Afghanistan so far this year, as tho that means anything. 164 individuals! My GOD, what a catastrophic, unsustainable loss! There are, after all, only 308 MILLION Americans, and a mere 1.2 MILLION in the armed forces! At the rate of 164 dead in a bit more than 5 months, the U.S. military will be entirely wiped out in — what? 36,585 months, or a mere 3,048 years! The horror! We're being wiped out by this catastrophic war!
+
The total U.S. death toll in Afghanistan is 1,614, in nearly ten years. By contrast, the death toll of D-Day, one day in WWII (67 years ago this week), was 2,499 — 1.5 TIMES as many, in a single day, as the entire course of the Afghan war to date. So is the current war's death toll an unbearable catastrophe, or trivia, as wars go? Did Americans bitch and moan about the deaths on D-Day, and say that WWII was just not worth fiting? Or were Americans a hardier breed in 1944 than they are today?
+
Not all polls show the exact same weakness of will. A Washington Post/ABC poll shows support actually up in the last month, but still to only 43% as against 31% in March.
+
The ignorance of the public is hard to overstate. A Pew Research poll shows that only "19 percent[ ] said tax cuts enacted over the past decade were the major cause" of the runaway growth of the national debt. The general public knows almost nothing about international relations, military strategy, or the national budget. Congress should know better, but is following the lead of the ignorant, and questioning a long-term commitment to reshaping Afghanistan into a modern nation worthy of inclusion in the community of nations.
+
If the fools and cowards now in Congress had been in charge of U.S. policy during the Cold War, they would simply have surrendered to the Soviets, Communist Chinese, etc., and there would be no democracy nor free enterpise in this country, which would be just another Soviet satellite.
+
It took 44 YEARS for us to win the Cold War. 44 years. We've been in Afghanistan for 10. If we leave Afghanistan now, and it returns to Taliban control, and the Taliban once again tolerates Al-Qaeda training camps on Afghan territory, and another devastating attack on U.S. territory occurs as a consequence, will the fools and cowards who are now flapping their gums going to admit — too late — that they made a terrible mistake?
+
Shut up and stay the course. If after 44 years, we haven't managed to drag Afghanistan, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century, that will be time enuf to withdraw.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,459 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:19 PM