Afghanistan

President Obama has said tonight that he will be sending another 30 thousand troops to Afghanistan to fight terrorism.
There is no doubt that politicians are stuck with promises that they make in a campaign that when elected they have no choice to fulfill or it will be used against them at the next opportunity.
Unfortunately he will be sending 30 thousand young people to a never ending conflict. This will be Mr Obama’s Vietnam. I say this because he says that there is a time limit. By doing this he is trying to persuade his base that the troops will not be there forever. By the time this “timeframe” is up he will be stuck with his re-election. He will be then stuck with a quack mire, if he pulls out people are going to label him as a surrender, if he doesn’t then he is not keeping with his promise if a temporary mission.
The easiest way to resolve this and any other conflict such as Iraq is simple, two words people dislike to hear in this country: draft and taxes. The first one because it is a reminder if the last long conflict the US was involved in, Vietnam. Not only long but lack of support, and with an end result that this country has a hard time dealing with: FAILURE. I am a believer in this because it is an equalizer as far as troops are concerned. Even though neo-cons such as Cheney, and former president Bush were able to dodge Vietnam, it still levels the plainfield.
And second taxes. We cannot go on spending billions we do not have and charging the credit card. If we go ahead and have, like FDR had, a war tax, it will force those who benefit the most from wars, and who love beating the drum of war, to pay a much higher part of the taxes.
With these two measures the ordinary person will start being against conflicts, not just these that we are in, but also deter us from future conflicts.
We are willing to spend very easily money we don’t have in conflicts we don’t belong, while we refuse to cover every person living in this country with healthcare, and we are not interested in investing in people’s education.
We need to get our priorities straight unless we are willing to take the same path that took the Roman Empire to its collapse.