Doug Bandow, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, asks the following question of our African American President with the funny name: President Obama: Why Are We in Afghanistan?
I assume Mr. Bandow, as a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute is asking this question not because he doesn’t know the answer (I will assume in this case a modicum of intelligence since this is the Cato Institute and not Glenn Beck) but because he does and just wants to bash President Obama and Democrats a bit.
So here’s the short answer you already know Mr. Bandow: We’re still in Afghanistan because George Bush went there, didn’t finish the job he set for himself (killing or capturing all the Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11/2001) and then authorized and extended killing spree in Iraq in which we wasted the lives of the population and our military forces to make Iran stronger and Halliburton, et al., richer all in the vain hope that his oil buddies would also make billions of dollars.
Now, if Obama leaves Afghanistan he and his party will be will be crucified by Fox, Beck, Limbaugh and every Tea Party wannabe who can hold up a misspelled racist sign as un-American, terrorist-loving, military-hating Democrats who can’t defend America from the Islamofascists. In an election year.
That would give those same neoconservative loving Republicans who created the very idea of “the long war” (the same Republicans whose donors are profiting so much from these wars) a much better chance of regaining control of Congress and endangering Obama’s own chance at a second term in 2012. In which case you better hope the people who endow the Cato Institute with all that cash so you can think those deep thoughts and ask such penetrating intellectual questions don’t decide to cut off their welfare checks donations to your employer when they realize they don’t need the cost of paying for your niche brand of conservatism anymore.
Which is not to say I don’t agree that the US should get out of Afghanistan, and the sooner the better. But you find me any Republican or Democrat, who, if President, would actually follow through on that policy prior to the November elections this year first.
Because this is the political system we have allowed our nation to be sucked into: one where no President has the power to stop the wars in which the American military industrial complex is heavily invested until the Generals and the heavily propagandized American populace are ready to throw in the towel, have George Will declare victory, and allow the troops to be brought home. To think otherwise is to believe in things like magic fairy dust and that free markets are efficient and self-regulating.
