“Simply put, we believe the human and financial costs of the war are unacceptable and unsustainable. It is bankrupting us. The United States should devise an exit plan to extricate ourselves from Afghanistan, not a plan to stay there four more years and “then we’ll see.” This doesn’t mean that we abandon the Afghan people – rather, we should abandon this war strategy. It is a failure that has not brought stability to Afghanistan and has not enhanced our own security. As the retired career Army officer Andrew J. Bacevich has written, to die for a mystique is the wrong policy.”
“It is easier for politicians to “go along” rather than make waves. But we were elected to do the right thing, not what is politically expedient. The discussion of Afghanistan shouldn’t be about politics, which we acknowledge are difficult, but what is right for our country. And the right thing is to end this war.”
The solution in Afghanistan: Get out
Thanks,
Jim
Congressman Jim McGovern
twitter.com/repmcgovern
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As long as the USA and other westerners are there to hate and and as a source of funds, Afghanistan will not move on into a state of its own.
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p>Otherwise, America will follow Russia into an Afghan-bankrupted collapse.
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p>As long as we keep trying to tell Afghans what is good for them, and doing for them what they could do for themselves – the won’t.
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p>Like a bad mother, we are making infants of Afghanistan, and the proof is in plain sight.
There is nothing we can accomplish there anymore militarily. We’re spending billions of dollars there that we can better spend here.
Osama Bin Laden stated plan is to bankrupt America:
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p>http://articles.cnn.com/2004-1…
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p>We’ve been stupid enough to fall for it so far.
There is no measurable net upside to staying another year, five or ten. Over the past ten years with the loss of precious lives, environmental destruction, emotional and psychological trauma and billions of dollars (that could have been used domestically for health, education, innovation, jobs….) shifted from the middle class to the military-corporate complex, the war has not ended through fighting. Therefore, the Congressman is absolutely correct and we must “abandon the war strategy” and declare the end.
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p>I would offer for additional consideration that this approach might be applicable to the “war on drugs” in Mexico as well.
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p>The most patriotic action one could take today to end oppression and drug related violence in Afghanistan, Mexico and the US is to stop buying and using the drugs. Yes, I am suggesting a national patriotic movement to boycott “recreational/illegal” drugs until policy/lawmakers can figure out steps that remove the criminal element from the equation.
…but do it in a way that doesn’t call us back in a few years because of a resurgence of a regime that seeks to harm us.
The world is filled with regimes that seek to harm us. Our current policies create more every day.
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p>I suggest we devote rather more energy towards changing our attitudes and behaviors that create such enmity, and rather less towards killing those might someday “seek to harm us”.
The nitpick with the first paragraph is that while there are other regimes that MAY seek to harm us, such as Iran and North Korea, the Taliban in Afghanistan actually DID harm us by giving aid and comfort to and organization that was committed acts of terror against us. Such regimes must NEVER come back.
I suggest that we need to reframe all this as a chronic disease instead of war.
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p>You write “Such regimes must NEVER come back”.
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p>In a perfect world, of course not. In the real world, our attempt to accomplish this by waging direct real-life (as opposed metaphorical) war has failed. The effort to do so is instead destroying us.
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p>I suggest that we face several more immediate threats that, taken together, dwarf the consequences of a resurgent Taliban. Our petroleum addiction, our excessive concentration of wealth among our most powerful, our refusal to face the reality of anthropogenic climate change, our moral cowardice and sloth in facing these facts about ourselves — I suggest that each of these, taken together or separately, exceeds any threat from even a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.
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p>We would all do well to listen, again, to the actual threat explicitly stated by Osama Bin Laden in 2004:
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p>
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p>We are fighting an auto-immune disease — our efforts to directly attack “the enemy” are in fact destroying ourselves. A better strategy is to contain movements like the Taliban and AQ while changing the conditions that make us vulnerable to their attacks.
The war in Afghanistan costs the United States close to $300 million a day. Suppose we bring all of our military out of there, then put up a public offer: Whatever government runs Afghanistan can have $150 million a day for being our friends. That means they do not harbor terrorists, and help to hunt them down, they assist any American companies that want to sell products there or set up operations there, and that they help us out when we’re trying to promote peace in the area, etc. On any day they don’t do those things, they’re out $150 million. Meanwhile, we have $150 million a day that we don’t have now.
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p>The incredibly expensive stick is not working. Why not try a less-expensive carrot?