The Senate is busy debating the merits of health care reform. The President announced today that he is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. The American public is obsessed with Tiger Woods' auto accident. Can I just go on record here as saying, "Who the hell cares?" About Tiger Woods that is. Lives hang in the balance and we're wondering if Tiger was driving drunk, what's up with his wife, and wondering why he's skipping a tournament. Get over it people. It doesn't matter.
For that matter, Lou Dobbs leaving CNN is pretty inconsequential. Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh are all just a lot of noise and distraction that adds up to zero. They entertain people with a questionable grasp of the facts, and do nothing other than distract people from the real issues, those that affect millions of lives. Do I think every American should have access to adequate health care? Well, duh! The Senate is busy beating each other up over that one, and it's frankly not getting a lot of press. That came when the above mentioned nimnals were busy trying to keep the issue from ever reaching the debating stage in the Senate. Too bad! The issue is on the floor and they're talking about a vote before January 1, 2010. Cool!
What really has me concerned just now are the two wars that the U.S. is carrying on in Asia. When the Twin Towers came down on 9/11/2001, it became apparent that we were at war. We were at war with a loose group of terrorists who were being harbored by the government of Afghanistan. The world supported us in going after Al-Qaeda and their support group, the Taliban. Then the Bush-Cheney axis decided that they'd whip up support for kicking Saddam Hussein's butt while we were at it, and while we had troops in that general part of the world. Turns out the supporting reasons for taking on Hussein and Iraq were total b.s. and we got mired in a war there that drags on and on and on and ...... The real serious threat to the U.S., in Afghanistan was relegated to the back burner, and Osama bin Laden got away. He's still out there somewhere plotting against the U.S.
Meanwhile in Iraq we got rid of Saddam Hussein readily, but many years later we're still nowhere near establishing peace in the Fertile Crescent. The Sunnis don't like the Shi'a and vice versa. Neither of them like the Kurds. The Kurds are the only ones that really like the Americans. Somehow they keep the other two groups out of their area and have established some semblance of peace and prosperity. The other two keep blowing each other up and periodic Americans to encourage us to leave so they can get on with serious carnage. We still have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 troops in Iraq. They are supposedly leaving sometime soon. Meaning in the next decade?
Over in Afghanistan we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 68,000 troops already and President Obama, after much consideration, has decided to send an additional 30,000. The fight against the Taliban goes on, and has spilled over into neighboring Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons. The Afghan government is decidedly corrupt. The recent Afghan elections are questionable at best. The Pakistani government is somewhat chicken shit when it comes to actually engaging revolutionary fundamentalist Islamic groups, in spite of the fact that said groups control a significant part of the country.
The President says the 30,000 additional troops should do the job and we will begin bringing them home in 2011. That's just over a year from now. Believe that? Got some nice beach front property in Arizona you might be interested in. Just to recap. Iraq is still a mess. Osama bin Laden is still at large and dangerous. Afghanistan is not pacified, nor is it a stable and real democracy. The Pakistanis have gotten into the mess and if they screw up the terrorists get nuclear weapons. We won't even mention the crazy assed theocracy that is Iran.
This all seems to me to be a mess that India, Russia, and China should be interested in helping to correct. They're in the immediate neighborhood and it could very well spill over their borders. It also seems to be a matter that concerns the United Nations. Let's see. What was their purpose again? Oh yeah, world peace. Haven't done real well in taking care of that, have they?
Hey, we could use some help in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in shutting up Iran. As for that Iraqi thing, well we oughta get the hell out, like yesterday. Let them sort it out for themselves. Not our job. 100,000 troops there still? Hey bring them home and pay them to do something constructive instead, like repair roads and bridges, or run Wall Street and the banking industry, instead of the lame brains currently running the financial industry. Army and National Guard troops couldn't do worse, could they? Just a thought.
Of course a real concern here is that President Obama has a seriously good agenda, health care, jobs, banking oversight, creating high speed rail corridors, etc., etc., etc. The problem is that he can get all of that done, and the only thing the American public is going to remember is war, war, and more war. LBJ inherited a situation in Vietnam. He expanded voting rights and civil rights in general. He oversaw the expansion of the public safety net and helped launch Medicare. The only thing the public saw then and for the most part remembers now is Vietnam.
Obama runs the risk of being a one term President who, for all the good intentions, got mired in a mess that was created by a previous administration, and didn't know how to get out of it. If he lets that happen history will be unequivocal in its assessment. LBJ=BHO. Let's hope this one works out a little better. I remember Vietnam well, and I know enough history to know that Afghanistan was a mess not to be conquered by either the British Empire or the Soviet Union. Can the U.S. succeed where others did not? We'll see.
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