Blind Loyalty

Liberals have always been contemptuous of the “Bush loyalists” who would brook no criticism of George W, following him off the cliff and still singing his praises as they laid with him on the rocks of disaster. Those same people will not tolerate the slightest word that might be critical of their hero who is the current occupant of the White House.

For what it’s worth, I voted for Obama in spite of his promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan, not because of it. I voted for him because he held positions that I favored and positions that I did not; because the former outnumbered and outweighed the latter. I did not vote for him because he was riding some kind of white charger and was clad in shining armor.

From the day, from the hour that the decision was made to allow Osama bin Laden to escape into Pakistan instead of trapping him in the caves of Tora Bora the war in Afghanistan has been an exercise in meaningless death, destruction and futility. It has nothing to do with our people who died on 9/11, or with the people who caused those deaths. That attack was planned in Hamburg and in Florida and the money came from banks that were not in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden approved the plan from his location in Afghanistan, but he could have just easily done so from downtown San Diego and he most certainly is not in Afghanistan today.

I don’t know why we are fighting, why our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan. It certainly is not “in defense of freedom.” Our freedom is not threatened by anything other than financial crisis, and that is made worse instead of better by the expenditure for wars overseas. It is not the silly “deny the use of Afganistan for planning future attacks.” Planning takes place in the minds of terrorists, not in the wilds of the Hindu Kush. It is certainly not to “drive out those who planned the attack of 9/11.” Those planners are not in Afghanistan and have not been for years. And the idea that we can “assure that they never return” is simply absurd.

The only rationale I can discern is that we are unwilling to be seen to have lost, or even to have “not won” that war, and that is the very worst reason of all. If more than 1% of the people of this nation were paying the price of this meaningless fighting and dying, then the people would be demanding that we put a stop to it. But not enough are involved, and 99% just have no stake in making it stop. Obama says it must go on, and we must not be critical of our Democratic salvation.

So much for, "I'm not against all wars, I'm against dumb wars."