Afghanistan

Jay Mulberry writes on TheBackFence of his concern with Obama's announced plan for Afghanistan, his fear of another bogged down VietNam type war, and our goal of increasing troops and commitment there:

I think that our all-out, trillion dollar commitment to the destruction of al Queda is a residue of the madness of 9/11. When I came to this conclusion I was pretty shocked, myself. But Al Queda is very small and we are very large; we have many more bombers than Al Queda has bombs; we have satellites, they are afraid to use cellphones; we kill from computer screens in Colorado [computer-operated drone aircraft directed from command center in CO], they have to strap dynamite on men and women; we own the air and the sea, they are hidden in the mountains of Central Asia. How can we possibly think that Al Queda offers us anything like an existential threat or is worth a battle that has already lasted longer than World Wars I and II combined?

Al Queda is our enemy. It hates us and wants us dead. We need to be more vigilant about it and more aggressive toward it than we were before 9/11. But we aren't up against German Panzers or Soviet missiles -- and we act as if we were.

Since 9/11 we have spent, or committed ourselves to spending more than $1 trillion on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Five thousand of our soldiers have died and an equal number of civilian employees; probably 25 thousand have been badly maimed. We have been complicit in the deaths of at least 400,000 and some say more than a million Afghans and Iraqis. And we have almost certainly created more terrorists than we have killed.

As they say on Chicago streets, we have been "played" by Al Queda. They played us for fools and fools we have been for 8 years.

I respect Jay's stand and basically agree with him. And yet . . .

I think he's right that we are caught in a residue of madness from 9/11, but the fact is that this little band did plan and execute the collapse of the iconic buildings of the world's trading center, killed 3000 people, and threw our giant nation into shocked chaos. Could we possibly be so rational and disciplined to accept anything less than the full pursuit of them to the end?

Even if the military and civilian advisers in his administration agreed, could Obama possibly sell a plan to the American people, much less Congress, to simply pull up and leave, relying instead on beefed up intelligence and security?

My rational mind agrees with Jay. But we are not a rational people. Suppose we did that and there was another 9/11 attack in this country?

These are very hard choices, and I'm glad that Obama is making them and not me. I trust his judgment far more than my own on this, and I'm going to leave it to him -- at least for now.

Jay is an idealist on this, and I tend to be also. But I also know that Obama is limited by what he thinks he can lead the American people and Congress to accept and support.

Ralph