By: Daniel Nardini
Osama bin Laden is dead. His Al Qaeda network is largely broke financially and its leadership is on the run. One of the goals of the mission in Afghanistan was to get Osama bin Laden, take out the Al Qaeda network, get rid of the training camps, and free the people of Afghanistan from the Taliban. All of these goals have been accomplished. So why are we still in Afghanistan? The only answer we get from U.S. President Barack Obama is that we must “make sure the Taliban does not come back into power and cannot allow Al Qaeda to reestablish terrorist bases there.”
In other words the U.S. government is trying to do nation-building. This is a bad option. No one nation, not even the United States, can do that. Our military is getting mauled by the Taliban who realize they can out-wait us and eventually know they will be able to take on a weakened and corrupt Afghan government once we are gone. In short the United States is making the same mistakes we made in Somalia. We tried to build up a nation that had minimal infrastructure, no real government in control of its provinces, and a people who were under the control of a whole array of warlords who held real power.
At present the U.S. government is spending on credit $8 billion a month for the war in Afghanistan. We are spending it on keeping U.S. troops there, spending it trying to build the Afghan government infrastructure, roads and schools and hospitals for the Afghan people when our own roads, schools and hospitals are going to pieces. We are telling Americans to do without housing when they are homeless, do without food for their kids in school lunch programs, and do without public assistance when they need it or need medical care. Whatever I feel for the Afghan people, Americans must come first.
I am not the only one thinking along these lines. A growing number of congressional officials in the U.S. House of Representatives (both Democrat and Republican) are seeing the same thing. We have lost 1,500 American troops in Afghanistan alone, and we are spending on credit money for a war we can no longer afford. To complicate things, a good portion of this money has been stolen or gone unaccounted for by the Afghan government. The Afghanistan War is the longest in American history, and there seems to be no end of it in sight. The war has cost this country greatly, and in many ways we are still in this war due to the ego of one man in the White House. We as a nation should prepare to leave Afghanistan, deal with our own problems, and tell the guy in the White House to swallow his pride!
Get Out of Afghanistan!
By: Daniel Nardini
Osama bin Laden is dead. His Al Qaeda network is largely broke financially and its leadership is on the run. One of the goals of the mission in Afghanistan was to get Osama bin Laden, take out the Al Qaeda network, get rid of the training camps, and free the people of Afghanistan from the Taliban. All of these goals have been accomplished. So why are we still in Afghanistan? The only answer we get from U.S. President Barack Obama is that we must “make sure the Taliban does not come back into power and cannot allow Al Qaeda to reestablish terrorist bases there.”
In other words the U.S. government is trying to do nation-building. This is a bad option. No one nation, not even the United States, can do that. Our military is getting mauled by the Taliban who realize they can out-wait us and eventually know they will be able to take on a weakened and corrupt Afghan government once we are gone. In short the United States is making the same mistakes we made in Somalia. We tried to build up a nation that had minimal infrastructure, no real government in control of its provinces, and a people who were under the control of a whole array of warlords who held real power.
At present the U.S. government is spending on credit $8 billion a month for the war in Afghanistan. We are spending it on keeping U.S. troops there, spending it trying to build the Afghan government infrastructure, roads and schools and hospitals for the Afghan people when our own roads, schools and hospitals are going to pieces. We are telling Americans to do without housing when they are homeless, do without food for their kids in school lunch programs, and do without public assistance when they need it or need medical care. Whatever I feel for the Afghan people, Americans must come first.
I am not the only one thinking along these lines. A growing number of congressional officials in the U.S. House of Representatives (both Democrat and Republican) are seeing the same thing. We have lost 1,500 American troops in Afghanistan alone, and we are spending on credit money for a war we can no longer afford. To complicate things, a good portion of this money has been stolen or gone unaccounted for by the Afghan government. The Afghanistan War is the longest in American history, and there seems to be no end of it in sight. The war has cost this country greatly, and in many ways we are still in this war due to the ego of one man in the White House. We as a nation should prepare to leave Afghanistan, deal with our own problems, and tell the guy in the White House to swallow his pride!