In the midst of all the controversy over health care and other Obama Administration initiatives, the background struggle is going on over plans to increase substantially the number of US troops in Afghanistan, in a war which is starting to cause greater American casualties at a time when many NATO nations are planning withdrawal of their forces.
Vice President Joe Biden, an acknowledged expert on foreign policy, and formerly, for many years, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, has privately been spreading the word that Afghanistan is a war that will be going on for years with almost no chance of real success, and one that will eventually be fought primarily alone. Biden sees this as another Vietnam, which cost the country a lot of treasure in men and money, and divided the nation in a way that had not been seen since the Civil War. The cost is astronomical, at a point when the debt issue is a gigantic one, and we are being told that millions of Americans cannot be considered to be protected on health care.
Of course, it is obvious that the opposition Republicans will claim that Obama has “lost” Afghanistan, as they, sixty years ago, charged that President Truman “lost” China. Both charges are of course ridiculous, but if we want to discuss who has “lost” Afghanistan after eight long years of combat, it is George W. Bush, who took his “eye off the ball” from the beginning of the intervention in the Fall of 2001 by his obsession with Saddam Hussein, and the decision to wage a major, disastrous war in Iraq.
Some people complain that Joe Biden talks too much, which he does at times, but on this issue, foreign policy, I call upon President Obama to LISTEN to the man who better understands international affairs than any military man.
Instead of committing blood and treasure for an interminable period of many years, let’s follow George Will’s view that it is time to get out, and use intelligence and aerial bombing, rather than sacrifice the young men and women of the nation in an impossible, hellish country that NO ONE has been able, historically, to take over and control. And let’s also build up our intelligence capability and homeland security instead!