We're Not Being Told The Truth About Afghanistan

If you listen to the government pronouncements about Afghanistan, you might think we are winning there. President Obama has recently told us that things are going so well over there that he is planning to withdraw some troops this summer. And after a recent visit to Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Panetta declared that we are close to defeating al-Queda.

What they are not talking about is the fact that the number of troops being withdrawn are just a tiny fraction of the troops stationed in that country, and the administration is planning to have troops in that country until the end of 2014 -- another three years (and no one can assure us even that will really be the end of our involvement there). And the international aid agencies working in Afghanistan paint a very different picture. They say that security in most of the nation's provinces has actually gotten worse in the last year.

But all we really have to do is look at the death totals of American soldiers. During this last week, the number of military deaths in the Afghan War reached 1,002 since President Obama took office. That's two-thirds of all the soldiers killed in the entire war, even though President Obama has been in office for only a quarter of the war. That sounds to me like things are getting worse in Afghanistan -- not better.

George Bush was trying to build an American-style democracy in Afghanistan. President Obama is just trying to save face there. Neither of those things is likely to happen. But we are still pouring more than $2 billion a week into the endless war there, and American soldiers are being killed at an increasing rate. Our involvement in Afghanistan no longer makes any sense at all, if it ever did to begin with.

Once again I say, it is past time to pull ALL of our soldiers out of Afghanistan -- now, not in 2014.