What's the point?

Reasonable and attainable goals in war haven’t been the United States strong point in the last 50 years. President Obama’s address about the escalation of the war in Afghanistan is where he laid out his goal and it was, disrupting, dismantling, and destroying al-Qaeda and all their terrorist allies.

Lyndon Johnson’s goal in Vietnam was to isolate and stop the spread of communism. This was also the goal in Korea. These goals are very vague and seemingly unattainable.

I keep hearing that I do not understand history correctly when I say Afghanistan is a duplicate of Vietnam. Other than the specific location, nations involved, and actual time in history, they seem very, very similar.

The United States begins by sending trainers and consultants to aid and train the local military. Then they conduct Special Forces missions to try and pick off key opponent officials. When that isn’t successful they send as few troops as possible, so to keep the public naive to the fact the country is actually at war. When that fails, the public is still kept in the dark to things like bombings of cities with innocent civilians in them, or more current, drone attacks on villages. Side note: a ranking military official said in a conference after a Joint Chief’s meeting, it doesn’t matter if there are zero civilians or 40 civilians, if they are in the same place as a military target, they are always going to get their target. Implying one al-Qaeda militant is worth the lives of innocent civilians.

And we’re back. Once those attacks fail, troop escalation takes place. In the example of Vietnam, even when the war was escalated during Johnson’s and again in Nixon’s administration the objective of isolating and stopping the spread of communism wasn’t accomplished. There are my similarities. Afghanistan, in my opinion is no different than Vietnam except we don’t have an ending for the Afghan story yet.

I guess now is where we can see first hand how this troop escalation will turn out, and I pray, for the sake of the world, this is the right decision.

Not only is the United States sending 30,000 more military troops, they are matching that number with private contractors (Blackwater). To accomplish what? To defeat al-Qaeda and all their allies? In an area of the world which has never been conquered? Ask Russia; I bet they tell the U.S. to get the hell out of Dodge.

It’s not just the fact that the goal is unreasonable; we are creating more hate by killing more innocent people. U.S. forces have killed over 4,000 innocent civilians, which are almost 1,000 more than were killed on September 11, 2001. The Afghani civilian deaths are called collateral damage. When the twin towers came down it was called murder. If you ask an Afghani civilian if what is happening in their country is murder or collateral damage, I’ll bet they say murder too.

Aside from the simple fact killing innocent civilians is wrong, every time it happens al-Qaeda has more ammunition to recruit more militants. If you’re father, grandfather, brother, sister, mother, child, wife, or friend was killed by an American drone you are going to be much more likely to despise the United States and join a militant group like al-Qaeda.

Terrorist groups don’t have consciences, they pray on victim’s family and friends. They get a handful of new recruits every time an innocent civilian dies.

The U.S. borrowed every single cent to pay for the Iraq and Afghan war. This is an example of a political tactic to keep the public in the dark. Unless you are in the military, or have a family member in the military, you probably haven’t noticed much difference in your every day life.

One trillion dollars, that is the total to this point the U.S. has borrowed from China to fund these two wars. I have a feeling the public would think a bit differently about these wars if when it came time for buying Christmas gifts board games were bought instead of video games because we are being taxed to sustain two wars.

Filming, or taking pictures of flag draped caskets and casualties in war zones were prohibited during the Bush administration. This is another political tactic to lessen the weight of the war on the American/tax paying public.

Ten billion dollars a month are being spent on these two wars. Imagine if instead of building tanks, helicopters, guns, and bullets if that money was spent on building infrastructure like roads, schools, hospitals, and communication centers? I think that would be a better allocation of eventual taxpayer money.

If the United States does achieve it’s goal in Afghanistan the money will be spent to rebuild those things anyway. Why must the killing persist? Two very influential people in the 20^th century agree, any good achieved through violence is temporary, good achieved non-violently is a much more sustainable and healthy (Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi).