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Only a few months ago President Obama announced the good news that our combat role in Afghanistan – the longest war in American history – would finally end by January 1.
But put away the champagne, for a flock of screeching war hawks brought heavy political pressure on Obama to reverse himself. So our troops will stay in that war-ravaged, corrupt, bankrupted, ethnically-divided country for at least another year or two. Amazingly, the hawks’ argument was that Obama should not rush the timeline for training Afghan security forces to defend their own country.
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Rush? Hello: IT’S BEEN 13 YEARS! “Operation Enduring Freedom,” as this mess of a military mission was named, should be renamed “Operation Endless War.” Here we go again, not merely conducting training exercises, but also continuing to mire our courageous but overstressed military forces in the Afghans’ civil war, including using US ground troops in combat missions against the Afghan Taliban.
How many more Americans will die or be horribly maimed in that hapless land? How many more billions of our tax dollars will be dumped into Afghanistan’s abyss? And why? Why are we there, why are we wasting so many lives and so much of the money we desperately need here at home – and why are We the People not consulted on such a massive and momentous decision? It’s reported that the Pentagon not only wants to keep troops there through 2016, but beyond. How many troops? What are they to achieve? That’s a secret.
When Obama announced last May that the US would have no combat role in Afghanistan after this year, he said, “It’s harder to end wars than to start them.” True, but being “harder” doesn’t mean we can just surrender to those who are turning America into a militaristic state. If he won’t fight them, we must. To help, go to www.peace-action.org.
“In Secret, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat,” The New York Times, November 22, 2014.
“Egged on by the Hawks of Doom, Obama sinks America into a misguided war with the Islamic State,” hightowerlowdown.org, November 2014.