Hamid Karzai (above, right) obviously doesn’t want American troops in Afghanistan. His anti-American rhetoric and his insistence on dictating how Americans must behave if they stay make it clear that the Afghan president has pocketed enough loot from the drawn-out occupation and would be happy if he were left alone with his drug dealing buddies from now on.
So, come on, Barack, bring the troops home! All of them.
Tell Karzai where to stick the deal that he is holding hostage. Forget about leaving tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan indefinitely.
Stop pouring billions of dollars into that God forsaken country. Americans need those billions a lot more than Karzai does. There are hungry children who are being deprived of food stamps and free school lunches right here at home.
Of course the hawks will warn of “another Iraq.” They claim that the civil war raging in Iraq is Obama’s fault. They argue that he should have left American troops to be wounded and killed in that wretched country. That’s nonsense, of course.
The violence in Iraq is caused by religious rivalry – mostly between the Shia and the Suni. And various religious sects have been slaughtering each other in the Middle East throughout history. Nothing America does today will end that.
But the hawks will insist Afghanistan will become “a failed state” if American troops leave.
It’s a dangerous argument. Followed to its logical conclusion, America would have to deploy troops throughout all of the world’s trouble spots forever.
These arguments are coming from the same crazies who are lobbying for war with Iran. Who in their right mind would listen to them?
Nobody appointed America the world’s policeman. Certainly not the Founding Fathers.
They conceived of “defense” as protecting America, not keeping other nations in line.
America would be better advised to leave such tasks to the United Nations. If policing the world is a desirable objective, surely it should be done by an international body.The only American troops that should be stationed abroad should be those assigned to UN Peacekeeping forces.
I suspect President Obama wants to have troops on Pakistan’s doorstep just in case. And I know Pakistan is a ticking time bomb.
But in this age of advanced technology, America is equipped to defend itself from a distance.
In a world where the oceans are crowded with nuclear submarines and the sky with remote-controlled drones, the days of hand-to-hand fighting should be long gone.
And so should the need to have troops stationed all over the globe.
Click for more on Afghanistan.
