The mounting news over the past weeks has come to a head, and President Obama is expected to announce this evening: America will send a few more tens of thousands of military personnel to Afghanistan. Over these weeks, I have felt myself becoming sadder and sadder, more and more disappointed in our President, who I had hoped would have the sense and the courage to disengage militarily. Bob Herbert, in his op-ed column, "
A Tragic Mistake," in today's
New York Times, expresses my opinion better than I could:
It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan....
More soldiers committed suicide this year than in any year for which we have complete records. But the military is now able to meet its recruitment goals because the young men and women who are signing up can’t find jobs in civilian life. The United States is broken—school systems are deteriorating, the economy is in shambles, homelessness and poverty rates are expanding—yet we’re nation-building in Afghanistan, sending economically distressed young people over there by the tens of thousands at an annual cost of a million dollars each.
I keep hearing that Americans are concerned about gargantuan budget deficits. Well, the idea that you can control mounting deficits while engaged in two wars that you refuse to raise taxes to pay for is a patent absurdity. Small children might believe something along those lines. Rational adults should not.
...The tougher choice for the president would have been to tell the public that the U.S. is a nation faced with terrible troubles here at home and that it is time to begin winding down a war that veered wildly off track years ago. But that would have taken great political courage. It would have left Mr. Obama vulnerable to the charge of being weak, of cutting and running, of betraying the troops who have already served. The Republicans would have a field day with that scenario.
...We still haven’t learned to recognize real strength, which is why it so often seems that the easier choice for a president is to keep the troops marching off to war.
Mr. Herbert states flatly that this "will prove to be a tragic mistake." I am afraid that he is right.
See others' opinions
On
The Caucus,
The New York Times's blog of politics and government, find today, under "
Full Circle for the Commander in Chief," other readers' responses to the questions:
What would you like to hear from the president tonight? Will his supporters be open to persuasion? How can he best convince you that he is proceeding on the right path in Afghanistan?
You're invited to share your thoughts there, too, if you can manage to do so before comments are closed.
I myself was able to register a comment on the
Caucus blog. I didn't read all of the comments (there were hundreds), nor did I literally count the pros and cons, but I got a sense that there were five or more comments against sending more troops than comments in support of doing so.
I think that all of the high-level military and political planning (summarized by President Obama on Tuesday evening) dwells in Fantasyland. When it comes to those ancient tribal cultures, we are utterly foolish to think we can establish in them any lasting structures to our liking (without far, far more dedicated resources than we remotely begin to have or could remotely hope to find support for).
Don't say it, for I know: I shouldn't take all of this so seriously.
