My bet is that a majority would state that, whether they liked it or not, the U.S. was going to become embroiled, add "boots on the ground," and receive a new influx of flag-draped coffins and "wounded heroes" who needed tending to. D'oh!
The U.S. will join Islamic State in the rush to kill Americans.
It's time-consuming to have the commander in chief constantly reconfiguring U.S. policy. Yup, the troops are coming home. But wait! Maybe we should send in more troops ... it's in the country's national interest.
The fact is that it is easier to make war than to create peace. And since re-election is the name of the political game and since war creates an atmosphere that no flag-waving patriot would dare to dispute, my hunch is that the public already knows what Obama wriggles to re-explain: We're going to be there a long time and your (but not my) offspring will pay the price.
One small example:
(Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday granted Afghan requests to slow the drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and said he would maintain a force of 9,800 through the end of 2015 while sticking to a 2017 exit plan.Why waste time dancing around what 'everyone knows' is going to happen? Any serious person knows that history is routinely ignored when it comes to things like fighting in Afghanistan. Stand up, speak up and shut up!
It would be nice if the politicians' kith and kin were folded into the arms-bearing mix.
In the book 1984, an endless war called to the citizens to accept austerity measures for patriotic reasons. And as i recall, nobody in the book paid much attention when the enemy would shift from one evil to another. Maybe we've found ours, an old fashioned, shifting enemy such as our colonial forbears fought to clear the west. A nuclear war wouldn't be very profitable, or last very long.
ReplyDelete