We are now in four wars, three of them the responsibility of President Obama. The four are Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen. The latter three are Obama’s wars. Afghanistan became his when he sent an additional 30,000 troops there. The other two were directly initiated by him.
With the American public suffering through a severely depressed economy requiring layoffs by local governments of teachers, cops and other needed personnel, and that public being told the cherished and needed programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are now on the chopping block to be changed to the point of disfigurement with major reductions in coverage and benefits, that public is in no mood to see new wars initiated and old wars extended, with more than $100 billion spent annually in Afghanistan.
We have been in Iraq for eight years and in Afghanistan for ten years. We lose young American soldiers every week in Afghanistan, too often in Iraq and the military and others want to extend our stay in both countries for additional years.
At the end of the year, President Obama will be faced with the decision of bringing the troops home or leaving large numbers there. Our troops are now being killed by the very Afghani troops they are training to defend their own country.
In Iraq last week, six American soldiers were killed by mortar fire. The Times reported on June 10th, “Since March 2009, at least 57 people, including 32 American troops, have been killed in at least 19 attacks in which Afghan service members have turned their weapons on coalition forces. Another 64 were wounded…More than half of the casualties occurred in the first five months of this year, signaling an escalation in the number and intensity of the attacks. But while the Taliban often takes credit for these attacks, NATO officials say the majority of the episodes stem from disagreements and arguments that escalate into violence.” Do you believe them?
We know that the US is spending huge amounts in these wars and paying more than 75 percent of NATO’s budget, while our own country can’t spend needed monies on our crumbling infrastructure and China surges ahead with building the largest dams and bullet trains and other needed works, putting their population to work, while we suffer an ongoing unemployment rate in excess of 9 percent.
How long can this go on before we wake up and change. In the words of a civil rights hymn, “How long? Too long.”