Lord help me, I am about to write a diary inspired by something written by George Will that isn’t blasting him. The fact is that the war in Afghanistan has cost about $1 trillion and more than 2,200 American lives. And that’s just American lives. It doesn’t count civilian casualties and allied soldiers. Remember that this began with a coalition.
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The sad truth is that there is no more Walter Cronkite to declare on national news that a war is at a stalemate. There is no national news showing the daily carnage occurring in Afghanistan. There is barely any awareness at all that our armed forces are still there. There is no draft to protest. There is almost nothing at all to remind us that this conflict is ongoing. I won’t even begin to ask is my fellow citizens know mush about this war. I doubt most of us could place Afghanistan on a map.
There are currently around 13,000 US troops in Afghanistan and I don’t know how many more who have deployed there and returned. To what purpose are they there? What is the US trying to accomplish in Afghanistan? What is the mission? If it is keeping our citizens safe or fighting for our freedom then this is the wrong war to fight. If it is peacekeeping then we need a new approach.
If it’s keeping Halliburton in business then we are right on track. And that, sadly, is where I think we are today. This is the wrong place for our military to be, or at least the wrong way that it should be used. Hey, I wanted to believe that an international coalition could find a way to make Afghanistan less of a threat to international safety. I wanted to believe that there was the will and intention to keep opium from being the best way to make money for an Afghan farmer. I wanted to believe in the possibility of a different world.
I was angry about the attacks on 9/11. I wanted the people behind it to be found and punished. I wanted to make it impossible for such a thing to ever happen on US soil ever again. I also knew that other nations around the world deal with that level of violence regularly and that the military solution was the wrong one. It still is.
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From ZenTrainer:
In my diary about the Republicans urging their members to vote for the Democratic candidate in TN's Special Election next Tuesday, with this comment, Proginoske breaks down the far rights reasons for not voting for the Republican candidate, and does it well.
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Top Mojo for yesterday, March 9, 2018, first comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary on FAQing Top Mojo.
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