Obama Has Made Me Navy Blue

by Tex Norman⁽⁷⁸⁾

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Obama fan. I find myself a blue about Obama, not just blue, but navy blue, disappointed, and sad. Congress has approved another $96.7 Billion to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This was 96.7 Billion Dollars to pay for an additional 4 months of war expenses. Congress and fearful folk everywhere are alarmed by money spent to kick start our economy and they seem to want to squeeze every dime until it squeals like a stuck pig but time after time after time Bush and now Obama has gone to Congress for non-budgeted emergency funding for these horrible, ill-conceived wars and Ive listened hard and heard very few voices crying out against these wasted dollars. Many of us, especially the early supporters of Obama, supported him because he opposed the war and promised to get us out of Iraq . This newly allocated $96.7 Billion is not for financing our exit; it is for war business as usual. This bad news is actually worse than it sounds. Not only are we flippantly tossing almost 100 billion dollars to finance for more months of war, but some of that money, about 499 million is designated to help build up the Pakistani security forces ability to wage counterinsurgency warfare. Instead of extricating ourselves from this sticky stupid waste of life and treasure, the war is spreading out and threatens to add another country to our theater of war: Pakistan . And Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Bad is getting worse, and our plans, our hope for peace are falling apart faster than a Kleenex hat in a thunder storm.

All this spilled blood and waste of money is very likely to result in Iraq and Afghanistan ending up in a position very similar to the one they were in before we decided to stick our nose into their countries. We cannot save the Afghans from the Afghans. We cannot stop an Iraqi civil war when the population fears and hates segments of their population and they insist on civil war.

Obama promised to be a change agent, and has, generally been a change agent, but there are areas in need of change that are more important than other areas, and one of them is this unwarranted war. Afghans and Iraqis were and are filled with bad guys, but the United States doesnt go to war with other countries because they are filled with bad guys. Dorfur was filled to the brim with bad guys and the United States did less than nothing to address the genocide and chaos there. China is suppressing, and killing Tibetans and the Tibetan people deserve to have a super power defend their human rights and national sovereignty, but regardless how much they need and deserve intervention from the US we are not coming to their rescue. We dont go to war over every bad thing that occurs in the world, and we should have kept out of the fray in Iraq and Afghanistan . The difference between Dorfur or Tibet and Iraq and Afghanistan is that there was oil in Iraq and there was a desire to put an oil pipeline across Afghan.

These wars are like the La Brea Tar Pits and the more we struggle and plod on the deeper we sink, the more we must struggle, and in the end, we will be covered in death and never extricated. Money needed here to invest in the needs of our own citizens are, instead, going to pay for wars we never should have gotten into, wars we sink in more and more each day, wars we have no plans to win, wars for which we have no exit strategies.

Sometimes the more complicated a problem is, the only way to move on is to turn to a simple answer. If we dont want to be there, we should leave. We dont have to rebuild the countries and impose wide spread peace before we can leave, all we have to do is leave.

Some will object saying a blood bath may follow our absence. That may be true. It is equally true that we could stay another 50 years, and bankrupt our country and in the end there will still be a blood bath. Sometimes the best you can do is say, I screwed up, and it is time to cut my losses and just get back home and take care of things there.. Some shout, These wars have kept the terrorist acts OVER THERE. Perhaps. But for the money we have spent over there, had we used all of that money right here at home designing and developing and implementing security measures and defense we could be, perhaps safer, we could have created millions of jobs, and the blood of our children would not cry up from the ground asking us, Were these wars really worth what they have cost?

Article submitted Friday, May 15, 2009 & read 795 times.

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