Afghanistan

Tuesday night December 1, 2009 President Obama announced his plan to deploy 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. It's not an all together surprising move. One thing that's different about Obama's announcement contrasted to past deployments by US Presidents; Obama gave a tentative timeline for withdrawal of the troops. He said he "hoped" to begin withdrawal of US troops by July 2011. The additional 30,000 will bring US forces to total strength of 100,000 troops.

Republicans "throwing more troops at it won't help." Democrats, "more troops are needed." Now Democrats are sounding like Republicans and Republicans are sounding like Democrats. Is there really all that much difference between the two parties? They're both filled with people all of whom are Americans who need their jobs and want to keep their jobs because they all make a decent living and being in political office gives them a sense of importance and meaning.

So too the news folks like their jobs, make a good living at them, get a sense of satisfaction and meaning and they want to keep those jobs. Merely saying, "Yeah, the President is right. There's really not much more we can do right now" would make for a short commentary, talk show, and news article. Even Jon Stewart wouldn't get much laughs out of that.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with Winston Churchill, "...democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." There's nothing better than US democracy. It operates on opinion; opinion of the politicians and public opinion. One of those really isn't needed. Which one do you think?

Does anyone know why we're in Afghanistan? Yes that's right, we went in to kick Taliban and Al Qaeda butt for the 9/11 attacks. We did that, for a long time now. How much butt do we need to kick for payback? What's our goal, to just keep kicking butt? The Middle East produces more radical butt than we can ever hope to kick. And the more butt we kick the more radical butt they produce. Yes, butt...

No butts about it. What are we trying to do? Did anyone give President Bush or President Obama a history lesson? Perhaps the conversation went something like this.

"Uh, Mr. President, the Russians tried to kick Afghan butt but they only got their butts kicked."

"Yes, but we helped the Afghans kick Russian butt."

"That's true, but the Afghans also had that butt Bin Laden to help kick Russian butt. Then when the Russian butt was out, those butts the Taliban moved in to Afghanistan."

"You mean we helped Bin Laden kick Russian butt which allowed Taliban butt to take over. Then that butt Bin Laden and the Taliban butts kicked our butt so we kicked their butt back but harder and now we're still kicking Taliban Afghan butt?"

"You got it."

Seriously, it seems the US did indeed enter the 21^st century in what appears to be a new perpetual guerilla war. It's similar to the Cold War in that we're not fighting the "enemy" on its own soil. We didn't "fight" Russia on Russian soil but rather we fought Russia in Berlin, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and little places all around the world-even on our own soil.

The Cold War goal was "containment." It was mostly a reactive goal; it got done but it was costly. What's our goal in the "Global War on Terror" aka "Overseas Contingency Operation"- to merely keep changing its name?