So here we go....total Democratic buy-in on needless, and endless, war. For starters, $83.4 billion, Democratically-led, and Democratically- funded. $83.4 billion
Barack Obama is ensuring that our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have turned the corner from Republican-led and Democratically-funded missteps to Democratically led and funded misuse and abuse of our Armed Forces.
It's hard to picture many congressional Democrats objecting to Obama's budget, isn't it? Wholesale ownership of the combat casualities now indisputably belongs to the Democrats. For instance, my senator, Dick Durbin, is fully behind the mirage that occupying Afghanistan makes us safer somehow. As he says on his website,
The United States has been in a state of heightened alert since the attacks of September 11, 2001. From the outset, I supported our efforts to combat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and I continue to do so.
The unfortunate truth is that the war in Iraq is monopolizing military resources needed to effectively fight terrorism in Afghanistan. Despite the Bush Administration's assertions, Al Qaeda was not in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. As we spend several billion dollars a week pursuing the war in Iraq, terrorist ranks continue to grow in and around Afghanistan.
I don't see how occupying Afghanistan is going to make us safer. Our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan did not prevent the post-9/11 attacks in London and Madrid. Timothy McVeigh didn't attack the federal building in Oklahoma from a foreign nation. If you could actually root out terrorists from Afghanistan and Pakistan, then there are only a billion other locations on the planet they can use to plot harm. The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war has been replaced by the Obama doctrine of pre-emptive occupation.
Also, if we occupy Afghanistan for the next year or fifty years, once we leave, the Afghanis are entitled to destroy whatever we've built there, are they not? For this, we are sacrificing our troops?
There are some independent thinkers out there who question and reject the premise that keeping our troops mired in Iraq and Afghanistan makes us any safer. A couple of recent noteworthy articles:
Ray McGovern a former Army intel officer and CIA analyst, titled "Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President", and Hero Blues: Liberals Line Up With Militarism by Chris Floyd.