Endless War

When he was campaigning for the presidency Barack Obama promised Americans he would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.   He claims to have removed all "combat" troops from Iraq, but 50,000 American soldiers remain in that country and there is no reason to believe they won't be there indefinitely.   The situation is even worse in Afghanistan.

President Obama has told Americans that things are improving in Afghanistan and he expects to be able to start withdrawing troops in July of 2011, and have all American troops home by the end of 2011.   He must be drinking the Republican kool-aid, because I see little if any improvement in the military situation there.

While the American troops may be able to outfight the Afghan rebels in a particular situation, there are not enough of them to actually hold conquered territory.   The Taliban fighters just hide in other areas (or in Pakistan) and wait for the Western troops to move to another area -- then they come back and resume their control.   Nothing is actually being accomplished.

The officers have been saying for months that they will not be able to pacify the country enough by the end of 2011 to insure the survival of the (corrupt) government we installed there.   Now we are starting to hear a little bit of honesty from administration officials.   Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted it will take until at least 2014.

Gates was talking to a group of American and Australian reporters at the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations and said the Taliban is "going to be very surprised come August, September, October and November (of 2011), when most American forces are still there, and still coming after them."   Then he spoke of the meeting of NATO heads of government later this month in Lisbon, Portugal.

He said,   "One of the agenda itms for the Lisbon summit is to embrace President Karzai's goal of completing the transfer of security responsibility to Afghanistan by 2014.   So I think that's the kind of time frame we're looking at."   In other words, American troops will be in Afghanistan until at least 2014.

But even that may be too optimistic.   The British government has told its population that their troops will be out of Afghanistan by 2015.   Can you imagine the British staying longer than America?   Unthinkable.

The long and short of it is that we are looking at another five years of war in Afghanistan -- at the very least.   And it's anybody's guess how much longer our troops will be in Iraq (where the British have already withdrawn).   We are truly in a situation of endless war -- on two fronts.

The fact is that we can't "win" either of these wars.   We'll be doing good just to maintain the status quo, which is unacceptable.   If President Obama had any political courage he'd withdraw the troops right now and end this mess.   But no one in Washington has that much political courage.   They're all afraid they be blamed for losing these unnecessary wars that Bush started.

That's why we will remain in these never ending wars.