Trump Is Wrong In Thinking Attacking Iran Will Get Him Reelected

Being of a "certain age" I remember the Vietnam War debacle well and lost friends to America;s folly in the late 1960's and early 1970's. When the George W. Bush - sometimes known as the Chimperator on this blog - launched the Iraq War, I had a huge sense of deja vu which sadly proved all too accurate. Indeed, when a former law partner who had served in Vietnam saw "Fog of War" with me back in the early 2000's, his reaction was that Iraq was Vietnam all over again. In each of these poorly conceived wars, individuals Americans paid with their lives and the nation squandered billions of dollars.  Now, it seems, Donald Trump - a man who doesn't read, knows little history and wants one page bullet style briefing reports - wants to launch an even more insanely conceived war against Iran - a nation far larger and better educated and wealthy than Iraq - in the hope that it will win him re-election. A piece in New York Magazine makes the case of why Trump's insane desire for a war with Iran will not assure him re-election.   Here are article highlights:

Beginning in 2011, and continuing through the next year, Donald Trump began obsessively predicting that President Obama would start a war with Iran in order to be reelected. Trump stated it publicly, on at least a half-dozen occasions, explicitly positing that attacking Iran would help Obama win reelection.

Trump’s attacks on Obama were the purest form of projection. They reflect his cynical belief that every president will naturally abuse their powers, and thus provide a roadmap to his own intentions.

And indeed, Trump immediately followed the killing of Qasem Soleimani by metaphorically wrapping himself in the stars and stripes. No doubt he anticipates at least a faint echo of the rally-around-the-flag dynamic that has buoyed many of his predecessors. But Trump’s critics need not assume he will enjoy any such benefit, and should grasp that their own response will help determine it.

One salient fact is that it’s not 2001, or even 2003. A poll earlier this summer found that just 18 percent of Americans prefer to “take military action against Iran” as against 78 percent wanting to “rely mainly on economic and diplomatic efforts.”

It is in part due to public war weariness that Republicans have sworn repeatedly, for years, that they would not go to war with Iran. The possibility of such a military escalation was precisely the central dispute between the parties when the Obama administration struck its nuclear deal. . . . And as Trump mulled following through on his threat to abrogate the deal, conservatives furiously denied that doing so would lead to military conflict.

Trump’s allies have framed the issue as being about Qasem Soleimani’s moral culpability, or Iran’s responsibility for escalating the conflict. And it is certainly true that Iran is a nasty, aggressive, murderous regime. But none of this refutes the fact that Trump’s Iran policy is failing on its own terms. Having violated a diplomatic agreement on the premise that doing so would not lead to war, they are now blaming Iran for the war they insisted would never happen.

Americans historically support their presidents in foreign conflicts, both the wise ones and unwise ones alike, at least initially. Trump no doubt believes the halo effect will last at least through November — that he might undertake an action that would harm his reelection out of some larger sense of duty to the nation or the world is unfathomable.

But presidents traditionally benefit from a presumption of competence, or at least moral legitimacy, from their opposition. Trump has forfeited his. He will not have Democratic leaders standing shoulder to shoulder with him, and his practice of disregarding and smearing government intelligence should likewise dispel any benefit of the doubt attached to claims he makes about the necessity of his actions. Trump has made it plain that he views American war-fighting as nothing but the extension of domestic politics.

I fear for members of the military who may loose their lives - and for their families - as a result of Trump's self-centered war mongering.  I nearly lost a family member in the Afghanistan disaster. Others may not be as luck as we were. 

Trump’s Takes America Closer to War in Middle East

Apologists for Donald Trump's reckless action in announcing that that America will withdraw from the nuclear deal struck with Iran three years ago are engaging in all kinds of untruths and gyrations to avoid the obvious.  Namely, that Trump's action in trying to abrogate the agreement - an agreement that every other member of the UN security council signed - will (i) serve to further isolate America diplomatically (one of Vladimir Putin's dreams/goals) and (ii) open the way to potential war which will delight the Christofascists who yearn to start armageddon and the neocons who learned absolutely nothing from the Iraq War disaster where America threw away more than a trillion dollars and thousands of military members' lives.  Equally delighted will be military contractors like Halliburton - Dick Cheney must be salivating - and  oil company interest who foolishly believe they might get their hands on Iran's oil reserves.  I am very happy that my son-in-law left the military after his severe injuries in Afghanistan.   While he may be safe, other men and women will likely end up dead or maimed before Trump's misrule is over.  A main editorial in the Washington Post looks at the dangers Trump's actions pose to America and the world.  Here are excerpts:

THE NUCLEAR deal struck with Iran three years ago was far from perfect, but President Trump’s decision to abrogate it over the opposition of our European allies and without a clear strategy for replacing it is reckless and, most likely, self-defeating. Mr. Trump has opened a rift with Britain, Germany and France, who were partners to the pact along with Russia and China, and he has handed Iran’s Islamic regime some unfortunate opportunities.

What he [Trump] did not acknowledge is that international inspectors as well as senior members of his own administration have confirmed that Iran has complied with the accord, which has vastly reduced its stock of enriched uranium and made it extremely difficult for the regime to develop nuclear weapons in the next decade. The president held out the prospect of “a new and lasting deal” that would cover not just nukes but also Iran’s development of missiles and interventions in Middle Eastern wars. But he offered no road map for achieving that ambitious goal.

The first consequence of Mr. Trump’s decision could be conflict with the Europeans. . . . . European governments, which have said they will not renounce the nuclear deal, may fight any U.S. attempt to enforce the restrictions, including with their own sanctions. Having tried and failed to satisfy Mr. Trump’s objections to the agreement without breaking it, they are unlikely to willingly collaborate in a new U.S. attempt to crush the Iranian economy.

Iran and European governments could agree to continue the pact in defiance of Washington. But Iran’s hard-line military and security apparatus, which has always opposed the accord, will press to resume uranium enrichment, restrict inspections or perhaps even race for a bomb. How would Mr. Trump stop such a breakout, short of war? One reason the nuclear deal was struck was a conclusion by the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama that military action was a risky and uncertain means to prevent an Iranian bomb.

Mr. Trump was pushed to exit the deal by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, whose countries are already engaged in low-level wars with Iran. But the chief of staff of Israel’s own army has said that the nuclear deal is “working and putting off realization of the Iranian nuclear vision by 10 to 15 years.” Mr. Trump’s decision could eliminate that grace period . . . .

[Trump] has frequently said that he has no wish for further Mideast wars; his decision has made one more likely.

Let's be clear on something else: neither Netanyahu nor Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman are true friends of America.   Netanyahu suffers from his own form of megalomania and the Saudis, not Iran, remain the main financiers of Islamic extremism across the globe.  Neither cares about the damage done to America and the squandered monies and American lives that Trump may yet cost the nation.

The Benghazi Committee’s Dead End

Witch hunt leader, GOP Rep. Try Gowdy

Being the political junkie that I am, I listen to a lot of political news and call in shows on satellite radio.  What strikes me is that time and time again right wing callers will bring up Benghazi as a reason to hate Hillary Clinton.  Never mind that the Republican controlled Benghazi Committee in Congress has failed to turn up anything to damn Clinton.  Indeed, the Committee's sole agenda has been to try to damage Clinton's presidential run.  Like so much in today's GOP, facts and the truth simply no longer matter.  It's all about pushing the GOP's reverse Robin Hood domestic agenda and leading the nation on more military fool's errands overseas - something that would likely sky rocket if the mentally ill Donald Trump makes it to the White House.  As the New York Times points out in an editorial, despite wasting millions of taxpayer dollars, the Benghazi Committee has come up empty handed.  Would that the members of the GOP who have pushed this kangaroo court endeavor had to personally pay for the wasted millions of dollars.  Here are editorial highlights:

If things had gone his way, [GOP Representative Trey] Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, would have found a way to torpedo Mrs. Clinton’s presidential ambitions. After all, Republican lawmakers have admitted that this is precisely what they set out to do.

But things have not gone well for Mr. Gowdy, who has run the investigation with the dexterity and grace of a blindfolded toddler swinging at a piñata. Having pored over reams of documents, grilled Mrs. Clinton in an 11-hour session in October and hauled in more than 100 people for interviews, the Republicans seem to have come up with nothing.

In recent months, Republicans on the committee have pestered the Pentagon to track down potential witnesses who might have damning things to say about Washington’s response to the attack on American government facilities in Benghazi, in eastern Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. They include a man who identified himself as a military mechanic in an intriguing Facebook post, and “John from Iowa,” a person who claimed to be a drone operator who had called into a right-wing radio talk show.

Stephen Hedger, the assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, complained to Mr. Gowdy in a letter in April about the “recent crescendo of requests.” The Pentagon, Mr. Hedger wrote, couldn’t find John from Iowa after expending “significant resources to locate anyone who might match the description of this person.”

The Benghazi committee, which was set up in May 2014, has been operational for longer than the 9/11 Commission was. It has dragged on longer than congressional investigations into the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, Watergate, the Iran-contra scandal, the 1983 bombing that killed 241 American service members in Beirut and the response to Hurricane Katrina.

The committee has spent nearly $7 million looking into an incident that had already been the subject of an independent investigation commissioned by the State Department and nine reports issued by seven other congressional committees. Those reviews faulted the federal government for failing to provide proper security for the American ambassador in Libya and three of his colleagues who were killed, but found no evidence of a cover-up or gross negligence by Mrs. Clinton.

The Swaggering Idiot Returns: George W. Bush Seeks to Give Advice on Middle East Mess He Created

To say that I despise George W. Bush is probably an understatement.  He is without a doubt the worse president of my life time - even Richard Nixon may have been better, although it is a close contest.  Having set in motion all of the elements that have given rise to ISIS and destabilized the Middle East, having squandered thousands of American lives and flushed down the toilet billions of taxpayer dollars, the idiot-in-chief is now trying to give advice on Middle East affairs and in the process rehabilitate his horrific legacy.   Oh, and did I mention that he and Dick Cheney authorized war crimes?  The man is nothing short of a blight on America.  Even more scary is that his brother Jebbie wants to be president and is surrounding himself with the same war mongering cretins who got us into the Iraq/Afghanistan quagmire in the first place.  A piece in Salon and another in Vanity Fair look at Bush's outrageous amnesia about the horrors he has wrought.  First these highlights from Salon:

Arguably the best thing George W. Bush ever did for his party was to keep quiet in the years following his presidency. Winning elections in a political environment shaped by Bush’s legacy – a bloody and unpopular conflict in Iraq and a cratering economy – was difficult enough. The last thing Republicans needed was W. out in the public eye smirking and drawling about staying the course. So he exiled himself to the ranch in Crawford and took up painting.

But Bush’s political hermit act couldn’t last forever. His brother’s likely entrance into the 2016 presidential race guaranteed that we’d hear from him sooner rather than later, and it’s only natural that after years of self-imposed silence, Bush would feel the urge to get out there and talk politics again. And so this past weekend, Bush spoke to a Republican donor conference in Las Vegas about the Middle East and served up some harsh critiques of his successor’s foreign policy. It was classic Bush, in that he seemingly refused to consider for even a moment that much of what we’re dealing with in the Middle East are the unintended consequences of his own epic policy failures.

According to a transcript of Bush’s remarks provided to Bloomberg’s Josh Rogin, Bush came down hard on Barack Obama for ruining all the good work he and his administration had done in Iraq . . . 

The “plan” in Iraq had not been working for years, as evidenced by the ever-rising death tolls of American troops and Iraqi civilians. But Bush, as you might recall, was something of a stubborn man, and he stuck with the “plan,” insisting all along that it was working, even as the country fell apart before our eyes. Also, anyone who questioned the “plan” was immediately slimed by Bush, Karl Rove, and/or Dick Cheney as a traitorous, terrorist-appeasing, cut-and-run coward. 

[O]ne could go on and on in this vein. It’s silly to think that Bush would ever cop to the enduring failures of his disastrous Iraq adventure, but he at least had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. Now he’s out there defending the Bush record and letting it be known that he’s very concerned about how all the catastrophes he helped author are playing out.

Vanity Fair echos much of the same and also underscores that Americans need to remember that a Bush brought us these disasters and, by implication that we don't need another Bush to make matters even worse once again.  Here are highlights:

It has been an unbelievable 25 years since George H. W. Bush started us on the adventure that still isn’t over in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are American soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East right now who weren’t even born when Bush the Elder declared the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait to be an intolerable situation and sent roughly half a million Americans halfway around the world to reverse it.

Twenty-five years down the road is not a bad moment to stop and ask, What the heck was that all about? And what did we accomplish for our pains, especially the sacrifices of individual American soldiers?

I’ve never understood how it honors dead and wounded troops to perpetuate mistaken wars, in which their numbers can only increase.

[The] goal, which had democracy spreading from Iraq to Saudi Arabia to Syria and beyond, never came close to being realized. . . . . The Arab Middle East today offers various forms of government. There is “royalty” of dubious provenance, as in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait—generally pro-American but ungrateful and untrustworthy. There are strongmen, but they can be longevity-challenged. Some regimes last weeks, others last decades, and none is a totally reliable ally. Then there is government by no government: the chaos of anarchy punctuated by atrocities in places like Syria, Libya, and much of Iraq. 

Nothing better exposes the disingenuousness (or, at best, the confusion) of America’s motives in the past 25 years than the palpable disappointment of Bush and his administration—notably Vice President Dick Cheney—at not finding weapons of mass destruction.

[I]f the war was a mistake, even an innocent or well-intentioned mistake, any justification for staying on and on has disappeared as well. More than a decade later, why are we still there? Max Boot, writing in Time magazine, used the word “credibility” to explain why we had to stay somewhere we never should have gone. I thought that, after Vietnam, we had pretty much killed that notion. But no, it’s back. 

Where did ISIS come from? What ever happened to the other Middle East groups we used to know? Where is al-Qaeda? How about the Taliban? Does anyone remember the mujahideen? If you do, you’re really showing your age. The mujahideen were the freedom fighters we armed and trained in order to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan—a shrewd bank shot, everyone agreed, until, after the Soviets slunk away, we counted the leftover Stinger missiles in the freedom fighters’ broom closet and realized that many were now in the hands of unfriendly elements. And a lot of the mujahideen had gone with them. 

Twenty-five years of this! And we were almost out of there when ISIS came along, through a door we opened to them in the first place. 

 We do not need another Bush in the White House.  We are still paying the price of having put the Chimperator in the White House.  Even more sadly, thousands of young Americans paid the ultimate price for Bush's swaggering idiocy.  Jebbie needs to NEVER reach the White House.

Jeb Bush - A Reprise of His Brother's Failed Policies

Despite his claims that "he's his own man," the prospect of a third Bush presidency suggests that we'd see a return of the disastrous policies of the Chimperator, George W. Bush, both domestic and in foreign policy.  Sadly, Jebbie has surrounded himself with his brothers past advisers who crafted the debacles most Americans would like to forget.  Worse yet, these advisers still refuse to admit that they were nearly 100% wrong about just about everything.  Do we really want a return to policies that caused so much economic havoc, bankrupted the country, and caused so many deaths?  A piece in the Washington Post looks at what Bush III might bring.  Here are excerpts:

If Jeb Bush is elected president, the United States won’t be on speaking terms with Cuba and will partner more closely with Israel. He’ll tighten sanctions on Iran and urge NATO to deploy more troops in Eastern Europe to counter Vladimir Putin. And he’ll order the U.S. military to root out “barbarians” and “evildoers” around the globe.

Far from running from or playing down the views once expressed by his brother George W. Bush, Jeb Bush is embracing them — and emphasizing them.

It is clear when he calls for closer engagement with Arab leaders to combat the growing threat of the Islamic State. Or when he criticizes President Obama for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq. It is most apparent when he refers to “evildoers” — a formulation used widely by his brother — and argues that the United States needs to engage but doesn’t have to be “the world’s policeman,” a view voiced by his brother that was also embraced by their father, George H.W. Bush.

Bush’s views put him squarely in the middle of GOP consensus on foreign affairs — a consensus that formed as his brother reshaped U.S. engagement with the world. But by endorsing some of his brother’s views, he puts himself at odds with most Americans, who remain wary of the two wars launched during the last Bush presidency.

In recent years, nearly 6 in 10 Americans have believed that the Iraq war was not worth fighting, though Republicans have been slightly more supportive, according to polling by The Washington Post and other organizations. In more recent years, public opinion has similarly turned against the war in Afghanistan.

Early in the exploratory phase of his likely campaign, Jeb Bush unveiled a foreign policy advisory team that reflects the disparate views of GOP thinking on the world. The group includes two former secretaries of state, George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III; two former CIA directors, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden; former attorney general Michael Mukasey; and Paul Wolf­owitz, a former deputy defense secretary and a lead architect of the Iraq war.  

When it comes to Iraq, Bush is mostly supportive of his brother’s legacy there.  “There were mistakes in Iraq for sure,” he said during a speech in Chicago in February. “Using the intelligence capability that everybody embraced about weapons of mass destruction, it turns out to not be accurate.”

Undeterred by public opinion polls that suggest his views are not shared by a majority of voters, Bush believes that global events might prompt Americans to eventually embrace his thinking. During an appearance in San Francisco in January, he accused Obama of exploiting America’s war fatigue to justify withdrawing U.S. military forces abroad.

Claiming that "intelligence was not accurate" is Jebbie's euphemism for dodging the fact that his idiot brother deliberately lied to the American people.

Virginia to Pay $520,000 to Plaintiffs' Attorneys in Same-Sex Marriage Case

My former law partners, Tom Shuttleworth and Bob Ruloff

Across the country we see Republican elected officials - usually bent on prostituting them selves to Christofascists in the GOP base - opposing same sex marriage and filing one motion and appeal after another seeking to stop the inevitable.  Not only does this run up huge wastes in government funds and legal staff time, but when the opponents of marriage equality ultimately lose, the state gets hit with paying the legal fees of the plaintiffs who had been discriminated against all because the "godly folk" seek to inflict their beliefs on all of society.  And these legal fees can be high as demonstrated by the fees Virginia must pay to the attorneys for the plaintiffs in Bostic v. Rainey: $520,000 better spent on the needs of Virginia's citizens.  The Virginian Pilot has details:

Virginia will pay $520,000 to the lawyers for two same-sex couples who successfully challenged the state's gay marriage ban.

The settlement agreement was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Norfolk. The attorneys had sought more than $1.7 million.

The law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher will receive $459,000. Shuttleworth, Ruloff, Swain, Haddad & Morecock will receive $61,000.

Court papers show that attorneys logged 2,372 hours on the case. Their fees will be paid by the state Department of Treasury's Division of Risk Management.

U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen declared Virginia's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional last February. A federal appeals court upheld the decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case.

I hope Victoria Cobb and the hate merchants at The Family Foundation are happy with what their religious based anti-gay animus has cost the state.

Is Obama Drinking George W. Bush's Kool-Aid?

Other than perhaps America's bungled intelligence that allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked 73 years ago today and the Vietnam fiasco which began in earnest 50 years ago, perhaps the biggest military/foreign policy mistakes America has made during the last century is the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Anyone with any knowledge of the history of the region and not blinded by American hubris should have known from the outset that these invasions would end in disaster.  Yet, after working to get American troops out of the nightmare Bush/Cheney created, Barack Obama seems headed towards throwing away more American lives and squandering billions more of American tax dollars.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at Obama's moves to commit more American resources to this fool's errand.  Here are highlights:

No one has sounded more determined to extricate the United States from Afghanistan than President Obama. It is “time to turn the page,” he said in May when he announced plans to reduce American forces to 9,800 troops by the end of December, with a full withdrawal by the end of 2016. That goal appeared to be on track — until now. Mr. Obama’s recent turnabout and other developments seem to be sucking America back into the Afghan war, a huge mistake.

First, Mr. Obama authorized a more expansive mission for the American military in 2015 than originally planned. His order would put American troops right back into ground combat by allowing them to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militants. He had previously said that the residual force would be engaged only in counterterrorism operations aimed at remnants of Al Qaeda. The new order also permits American jets and drones to support Afghan military missions.

Already, the number of American troops to remain in Afghanistan after December has been increased by 1,000, up to 10,800. NATO allies are supposed to provide 4,000 troops next year, bringing the total of foreign forces to 12,000 to 14,000. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that any additional American troops above 9,800 are temporary and are merely covering for NATO allies that are still trying to decide how many forces to contribute.  But if NATO fails to contribute sufficient troops, then what?

Mr. Obama seems to be having second thoughts about his Afghan strategy after the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the sudden collapse of the Iraqi army. He may be trying to avoid blame if something similar happens in Afghanistan, where Taliban attacks are on the rise.

But he should resist the advice of military commanders, who are again pushing for broader involvement. They were unable to defeat the Taliban when more than 100,000 American troops were in the country; there is no reason to think that a very limited American force will be more effective now.

One lesson learned over the last 13 years is this: No amount of foreign assistance — not tens of thousands of troops, billions of dollars or unlimited amounts of military equipment — will make any real difference if the Afghans cannot or will not pull together a functioning, relatively uncorrupt and competent government, and take primary responsibility for themselves and their country.

Administration officials are still insisting “the combat mission ends” by the end of this year, but that’s simply not credible. Mr. Obama should stick to his original plan. . . .

Living in an area with a huge military presence, one thing you learn quickly is that military commanders will ALWAYS claim that with more troops and more money they can succeed no matter how much such claims are opposed to objective reality.  Anyone who believes these commanders is a fool - or drinking Bush/Cheney Kool-Aid. 

America's Continued Fool's Errand in Afghanistan

After 13 years, thousands of squandered American lives and billions of wasted dollars, Afghanistan remains a disaster and horrific backwater rivaled only by some of the failed nations in Africa where colonial rule gave way to gross corruption and often a worsening of local economies.   Yet if one listens to statements by politicians and perhaps worse yet, military leaders, they continue the myth that America has accomplished something in Afghanistan and that democracy and societal modernization are just around the corner.   Not only is such blather wishful thinking, its an outright lie.  A column in the New York Times looks at the reality in Afghanistan and what politicians of both parties and the ever eager for war generals prefer Americans not understand.  Here are excerpts:

John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, apparently is the only official in Washington who dares speak truth to power. In a Sept. 12 speech at Georgetown University, he said that Afghanistan “remains under assault by insurgents and is short of domestic revenue, plagued by corruption, afflicted by criminal elements involved in opium and smuggling, and struggling to execute basic functions of government.” His comments were largely ignored by the American media, and there was no immediate reaction from the Obama administration.

And yet anything less than a heavy dose of honesty and fresh thinking by Afghans and their Western supporters will almost certainly mean the relapse of Afghanistan into civil war and the emergence of groups even more extreme than the Taliban, as has happened in Iraq and Syria.

Moving from the lengthy U.S. military presence to full Afghan sovereignty was premised on the completion of four distinct transitions. But none has been successfully carried out, despite more than $640 billion in U.S. direct spending in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2013.

The most critical transition, the one on which everything else rested, was political. Rather than build state institutions or carry out much-needed electoral reforms, President Hamid Karzai spent his long tenure encouraging a form of crony politics that failed to sap the power of the warlords. He won a second term in 2009, after a vastly fraudulent election. The following year, according to U.N. officials, he asked that the United Nations stop supervising elections in the country, and Washington and NATO went along.

The second promised transition was military. U.S. forces were to hand over security matters to Afghan forces, proving that the new, U.S.-trained Afghan Army would then be able to hold back the Taliban on its own. Yet Interior Minister Mohammad Omar Daudzai told Parliament in Kabul on Sept. 16 that the previous six months had been the deadliest ever for the Afghan police. Today there is fighting in 18 of 34 provinces, Afghan and NATO officials have told me. In many areas, Afghan soldiers are barely able to secure their own bases, much less retake lost territory. Helmand, the critical drugs-producing province in southern Afghanistan, is at risk of being taken over by the Taliban. If it falls, all of southern Afghanistan might too.

The third failed transition has to do with economics.  . . . . here has been little large-scale investment in agriculture or basic industry; instead, the bulk of the economy has focused on servicing foreign troops and on their spending. And now the troops are about to withdraw.

When I first visited Afghanistan in the 1970s, the country was desperately poor, but it was almost self-sufficient in food and had a small yet thriving export trade in fruit, handicrafts, furs and gems. Today, Afghanistan imports much of its food and it produces very few commercial goods. The service economy, which is run by the middle class, has been collapsing, as both educated people and billions of dollars in capital have left the country. 

The fourth contribution expected of the U.S. presence was insulating Afghanistan from foreign interference, which many Afghans fear as much as the Taliban . . . . that, too, has not happened, and the country remains vulnerable to meddling from outside.

2015 is supposed to mark the start of Afghanistan’s “Transformation Decade.” But if the country is to even get to 2015 in one piece, its new leaders must act fast to correct course after the failed transformation of the last decade.

Rand Paul’s Michael Moore Moment

I'm not a fan of Senator Rand Paul, but occasionally he does get things right and as the lead up to the 2016 presidential contest heats up, one of the most true things Paul has said will hopefully get much more attention: he accusing Dick Cheney of pushing America to go into Iraq to help Halliburton, Cheney's former company in which he continued to hold a great deal of stock in a euphemistically described "blind trust." Halliburton made billions in Iraq and Cheney made out like a bandit by all estimations.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at Rand Paul's accusations and how Cheney's greed lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.  Cheney is, in my view, nothing less than evil incarnate.  Here are article excerpts:

[I]n the current struggle for the soul of the Republican Party, few skirmishes offer better drama than the ongoing clash of the Cheney and Paul clans. Pick your permutation—Dick firing on Rand, Ron firing on Dick, Rand on Liz, Dick on Ron, Rand on Dick—this display of isolationist Hatfields vs. neocon McCoys . . . . 

[W]ith Rand gearing up for a run at the big chair in 2016, the feud promises to get even hotter as the ex-veep, prodded by fellow hawks, stews over the mere possibility of a Republican POTUS so intervention-averse that he’d make Barack Obama look like, well, Dick Cheney.

Case in point: On March 29, during Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas cattle call for 2016 contenders, Cheney took a slap at “an increasing strain of isolationism” in his party.  . . . . Cheney didn’t bother mentioning Rand’s name. I mean, really, why bother? Safe to say everyone in the audience knew precisely whom he meant by “some candidates.”

But in case anyone failed to make the connection, David Corn over at Mother Jones helpfully stirred the pot, using the ex-veep’s remarks as a hook upon which to hang a four-year-old video of Paul peddling a whopping good conspiracy theory about Cheney and the Iraq War. Specifically, shortly before entering the Senate race in 2009, at an April 7 address to college Republicans at Western Kentucky University, Paul posited that Cheney had pushed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq because it would fatten Halliburton’s bottom line.

As Paul apparently sees it, the timeline makes perfect sense: Back in 1995, Cheney was running around vigorously defending the first Bush administration’s decision not to invade Baghdad during the first Gulf War. But then, ka-boom! (Or rather, ka-ching!) “Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton,” Paul said in 2009. “Makes hundreds of millions of dollars, their CEO. Next thing you know, he’s back in government and it’s a good idea to go into Iraq.”

Lest someone mistake Paul’s college talk as some sort of overly enthusiastic “one off,” Corn points to a second Paul speech, this one at a Montana rally during his dad’s 2008 presidential campaign, in which Rand got even more explicit about his view of Cheney’s conversion:

But, you know, a couple hundred million dollars later Dick Cheney earns from Halliburton, he comes back into government. Now Halliburton’s got a billion-dollar no-bid contract in Iraq. You know, you hate to be so cynical that you think some of these corporations are able to influence policy, but I think sometimes they are.

Forget “No blood for oil.” For Paul, America’s Iraq debacle was a mercenary swap of blood for several billion dollars in federal contracts to Cheney’s former company to do everything from put out oil field fires to provide housing for soldiers.

I enjoy watching Cheney get slapped around on the issue as much as the next gal. But it’s one thing to accuse the former veep of ideologically driven Machiavellianism; ’tis quite another to suggest that he did what he did out of loyalty to his Halliburton cronies. That is a far darker charge . . . 

As Paul moves closer and closer to the presidential trail, however, legions of journalists, oppo researchers, and even garden-variety voters will be rooting around in his past like hogs digging for truffles. These two speeches swiping at Cheney are unlikely to be the only colorful nuggets unearthed. Paul is a passionate, quirky pol who, until very recently, didn’t see much need to watch his tongue. Whatever else it’s doing to prep for 2016, Team Rand had better be bracing for Americans to learn about some of the senator’s fringier thoughts and theories.

Let the cat fight begin.  It should make for great sport and just maybe it will  cause the media to focus on Cheney's self-enrichment at the expense of thousands of Americans and Iraqi lives.  Iraq was a fool's errand and Cheney was Chimperator Bush's principal puppeteer.

Bush and Cheney's Foul Legacy

Squandering billions and billions of dollars on wars that could never be won was but one of the disasters that George W. Bush's toxic administration brought to America,  There are many other things many Americans would like to forget (the GOP base still hasn't admitted that they happened) such as torture as US policy, the biggest security lapse since Pearl Harbor, spying on US citizens, and actions that were clearly unconstitutional.  Despite this foul legacy, Bush and company is trying to make the public forget the damage done by this cretinous president and his megalomaniac vice president.  Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times that looks at the Bush Presidential Library's effort to airbrush history in the hope history will forget the damage Bush/Cheney wrought on America.  Here are excerpts:

After four years of bending the Constitution, the constitutional law professor now in the White House is trying to unloose the Gordian knot of W.’s martial and moral overreaches after 9/11. 

In a speech at the National Defense University, Obama talked about how we “compromised our basic values,” and he concluded with a slap at W.: “Our victory against terrorism won’t be measured in a surrender ceremony at a battleship or a statue being pulled to the ground.” 

On the eve of the president’s speech, I was at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum here, watching the film of Saddam’s statue being pulled to the ground. 

It’s remarkable that Obama is trying to escape the shadow of the Bush presidency just as W. is trying to escape the shadow of the Bush presidency. Browsing the library, you wonder if these two presidents are complete opposites after all, as you see how history was shaped by an arrogant, press-averse, father-fixated, history-obsessed, strangely introverted chief executive.

W.’s library highlights his role in launching the Global War on Terror, an Orwellian phrase designed to conflate the sins of Osama, who was responsible for 9/11, and the sins of Saddam, who was not. That was the fatal mistake and hallmark of the Bush era. W., Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld declared war on a tactic, stoked fear as a smokescreen and treated pre-emptive attacks as just. 

Conservatives can honk, as Senator Saxby Chambliss did, that Obama’s speech “will be viewed by terrorists as a victory.” But this president has killed more top Qaeda operatives than Bush did. While W.’s bullhorn vow after 9/11 to catch the “people who knocked these buildings down” plays every few minutes at his library, I couldn’t find any photos of Osama or acknowledgment of Bush’s failure to catch him. Obama’s library will have a wing for that feat. 

You could fill an entire other library with what’s not in W.’s. Cheney and Rummy have been largely disappeared, and it is Condi Rice who narrates the 9/11 video. You won’t see the iconic “Mission Accomplished” photo, or that painful video in which W. keeps reading “The Pet Goat” to children after learning that America is under attack, or the notorious “flyover” photo of a desultory Bush jetting from Crawford to the White House and looking through the window of Air Force One at Katrina’s devastation. 

Mostly, aside from the word “freedom” reverberating endlessly, we see the kinder, gentler W. conjured by Laura the Librarian.   .  .  .  .  Proving that the library is more a monument to Laura’s artful airbrushing than W.’s artless leadership, there’s a swank Café 43 with fancier fare than W.’s cherished PB&J’s, and a gift shop featuring Laura’s favorite books, from Dostoyevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov” to Truman Capote’s “Music for Chameleons.” 

We need to never forget the disasters Bush and his Republican sycophant brought to America lest we be doomed to repeat the same horrors in the future.  Jingoism and waving the flag and talking about patriotism do not make one a true patriot or protect the nation.  Sometimes, the biggest patriots are those who call out the errors made - and horrors created -   by those who warp themselves in the American flag.  George W. Bush and Dick Cheney betrayed thousands of our nation's service members and thousands paid with their lives or now find themselves horrible maimed.  We need to honor our fallen.  But we cannot forget those who sent many to needless deaths.

Is Iraq Descending into Chaos - Did Bush/Cheney Make Us Less Safe?

I have never supported the war in Iraq and I can still see my former living room where I watched the televised address of George W. Bush announcing that he had sent America to war.  We now know that his entire premise for the war was based on deliberate lies - lies which a lazy media never bothered to expose.  As of the lies of Bush and Dick Cheney, thousands of American died needlessly, billions of dollars better spent on America's infrastructure were squandered, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died.   Increasingly, it is becoming clear that the war was ultimately all for nothing.  Current circumstances in Iraq show a county spiraling towards chaos and an internal religious war that must have extremists in Iran salivating.  And Bush and Cheney set it all in motion.  And committed war crimes along the way.   Yet many American still can't understand why some Muslims came to hate America even if they had not done so before.   American actions have been the best terrorist recruiting program Islamic extremists could have asked for.  A piece in Foreign Policy Magazine looks at what Bush/Cheney and American hubris has likely wrought.  Here are excerpts:

Iraq is spiraling out of control. Following the arrests in December of the bodyguards of Finance Minister Rafi Issawi, Sunnis took to the streets, revealing their widespread sense of alienation in the new Iraq and demanding the end of what they consider a government policy to marginalize them. As with other protests in the Arab world, they were initially driven by legitimate grievances. But against the backdrop of provincial elections, little was done to address the concerns of the protesters -- despite calls to do so from the top Shia cleric, Ayatollah Sistani. Politicians instead exploited the demonstrations for electoral gains. President Maliki took the opportunity to distract attention away from the lack of services and rampant corruption, presenting himself as the defender of the Shia, in the face of Sunni regional powers intent on overthrowing Shia regimes -- Syria first, then Iraq. Sunni politicians, for their part, sought to benefit from the demonstrations to rail against government oppression to gain support for their own electoral campaigns.

Last week, the Iraqi Army entered Hawija, near Kirkuk, to arrest people accused of attacking Iraqi Security Forces. In the ensuing violence, 200 people were killed. There are reports of desertions from the Iraqi Army. Kurds have moved peshmerga into positions in the disputed territories. Tribes are forming militias to protect themselves from the Iraqi Army. Five Iraqi soldiers were killed in Anbar -- and the province has been put under curfew. Ten satellite channels, including al-Jazeera, have been banned, accused of spreading sectarianism. Bombs exploded in Shia towns. The speaker of parliament called for the government to resign and for early elections.

By seeking to eliminate his Sunni rivals, Maliki has removed the wedge that the U.S. military drove between Sunni extremists and the Sunni mainstream during the Surge, at such great cost. There is a growing sense that the conflicts in Syria and Iraq are merging into one, with Shia regimes, backed by Iran, battling against Sunnis, including al Qaeda elements. We may be witnessing the breakdown of the post-WW I settlement and the nation-states established under the Sykes-Picot agreement. 

Will our legacy from the Iraq war be a regional power struggle ignited by the resurgence of Iran, the contagion of sectarianism into Syria, the horrific violence of jihadist groups? Is this in our national interest? Can we not do more to make Iraq a more positive influence in its neighborhood? 

There were those who saw the likelihood of this disaster even before the fools and power made in the Bush/Cheney regime took America to war on a campaign of lies.  Sadly, their voices were drowned out by jingoism and the willingness of too many Americans to fall into the dangerous "America, love it or live it" mindset which always seems to bring disaster.  Remember Vietnam?  America learned nothing.  I continue to believe that sometimes the most patriotic thing one can do is challenge the conventional thinking, especially if it is sourced in ultra conservative factions.  Time and time again, America has been the loser when patriotic critics of adventurism in foreign policy over rides logic, reason and hard objective facts.  For what they did, I remained convinced that Bush and Cheney are war criminals who deserve to be tried and severely punished.

GOP Amnesia: U.S. Wasted Billions Rebuilding Iraq

With the Congressional Republicans whining incessantly about the budget deficit which they try to hang on Barack Obama, they conveniently have amnesia when it comes to the billions of dollars squandered on the Iraq War and the so-called nation building that followed (they also have amnesia on the role that the Bush tax cuts played in exploding the deficit).  Countless needless deaths, waste, corruption and incompetency seem to be the main hallmarks of the Iraq fool's errand launched by Chimperator Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  An article in Think Progress looks at some of the sums of money that might just as well have been heaped in a pile and set afire for all that they did not accomplish.  Here are some highlights:

As the 10th anniversary of President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq approaches, the body charged with overseeing Iraq’s reconstruction has issued its final report, capping a tale of spending far too much money for very little results.

Appointed in Oct. 2004, over a year into War in Iraq, the Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) was charged with being a watchdog over the use of funds provided for rebuilding the Iraqi state after the downfall of Saddam Hussein. Those reconstruction and stabilization efforts wound up costing nearly $60 billion — or about $15 million per day — with up to $10 billion of that amount wasted, according to SIGIR Stuart Bowen.

The examples provided of fraud and abuse of the system are staggering both in number and nature. Among the most telling boondoggles is an $108 million waste-water treatment facility in Fallujah, Iraq that will be completed eight years over schedule. Once finished in 2014, it will only service 9,000 homes and require an additional $87 million from Iraq to provide service to the rest of the buildings in the city.

In terms of outright abuse, Iraqis and Americans alike were culprits, with one former Iraqi Defense Minister’s squandering $1.3 billion.  .  .  .  . former U.S. Army Major John Cockerham was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for siphoning off millions of dollars from reconstruction projects by accepting bribes from various contractors.

The majority of Bowen’s lessons learned provided to Congress deal extensively with the completely unprepared way in which the United States chose to rebuild Iraq.  Bowen gives seven ways to better perform rebuilding operations in the future.  .  .  . 

Many of those suggestions belie the cavalier attitude struck by Republicans at the beginning of the war in 2003, despite a near complete lack of planning by the Bush administration to provide for rebuilding Iraq. “Each day it gets better,” then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in May 2003 of the reconstruction efforts. Rumsfeld also insisted that “the bulk of the funds for Iraq’s reconstruction will come from Iraqis” in October of that year. $60 billion later, Iraq has proved to be nowhere near the “cakewalk” predicted by George W. Bush adviser Kenneth Adelman predicted in 2002.

The GOP lies about the real sources of the nation's deficit are brazen to say the least.  The GOP voted for and approved all of the Bush/Cheney disasters that continue to haunt us to this day.  Yet the GOP demagogues now pretend to be the GOP is party of fiscal restraint that will save the country.  Would that they had shown some fiscal restraint and not taken the country to war needlessly a good portion of the nation's debt would not now exist.

Afghanistan: A Betrayal of Our Troops - Family Update

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From the latest reports, my son-in-law is now in Germany and should be back in the USA within a day or two to continue his lengthy recovery from his combat related injuries in Kandahar Province on Tuesday.  Beyond that, I cannot say too much about the incident in which he was wounded.  Needless to say, I am relieved that he is out of Afghanistan.   And while he is badly injured, at least he's alive.  Many, including one of his compatriots, have not been so lucky.  

A roster of squandered lives in the continuing fools errand in Afghanistan can be found here.   That's right, 2,155 wasted American lives (3,229wasted lives if coalition nation casualties are included).  If one includes the number of wounded, the number increases by another 17674 through the end of September.  And for what?  I suspect as we saw after the fall of Vietnam, the deaths and squandered billions of dollars will end up having changed nothing other than enriching defense contractors and corrupt Afghan officials.

For those not as knowledgeable about the history of Afghanistan, here are highlights from a CNN piece from December 2009 that we should reflect upon three years later:

Known as the "graveyard of empires," Afghanistan has a reputation for undoing ambitious military ventures and humiliating would-be conquerors, a fate his [Obama's]  opponents at home say is not worth risking more American lives for.

In the past two centuries, both Soviet and British invaders have been forced to beat bloody retreats from Afghanistan, deprived of victories that, on paper, looked easy, but ultimately proved futile.

And can it only be coincidence that in the wake of their Afghan disasters both the British and Soviet empires -- like that of Alexander the Great's, which extended over the region more than two millennia earlier -- crumbled? Almost immediately, in the case of the Soviets, a century later for Britain.

"The geography is very hard: It is a country of mountains and deserts, of quite severe winters and that makes it difficult not only to fight in, but also to operate logistically. It limits your mobility and it is difficult to project power."

 This, say some, is the inevitable Afghan experience. Isolated, poverty-stricken and brutalized by interminable conflict that technological advances in warfare fail to end, the country apparently remains as impervious to today's military adventurers as it was to yesterday's.

"It's a hard place to fight, to conquer and rule," says Patrick Porter, a lecturer in defense studies at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Kings College London.

"It is possible in wars against guerrillas to flood cities with troops. It is much harder to flood mountains. And Afghanistan is a country not of very powerful cities but of thousands of isolated villages cut off in severe winters, allowing guerrillas and insurgents to melt away and return."

For Gen. Victor Yermakov, a former Soviet commander in Afghanistan, the situation is more clear cut. Summed up by what he says are the words of Babur, founder of the Mughal dynasty that ruled much of central Asia in the 1500s: "Afghanistan has not been and never will be conquered, and will never surrender to anyone."

The article goes on to quote naysayers who say the past history of military failures by outside armies are not determinative.  I wonder if some of those windbags would say the same things three years later with the situation no better and perhaps deteriorating.  As the saying goes, "he who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it."  Our senior military leaders (perhaps some of those most guilty of American hubris) have obviously learned absolutely nothing from history and civilian officials - including Barack Obama - have stupidly listened to the generals.  Worse yet, some of these generals, as we now know, seemed to focus more on affairs and flirtations than running the war effort.

Those in Congress and the White House who say that they "support our troops" need to do so by ending the Afghanistan fiasco NOW.  Bring the troops home now.

GOP Lies About "Tax and Spend" Administrations

Admittedly, compared to the dishonesty of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Republican Party demagogues who spin deliberate lies about Democrats and Obama being a "tax and spend liberals" come off looking somewhat honest.  But then again, that's not saying much in the GOP's favor.  One of the biggest lies -  outside the birther lie that Obama is not really an American citizen - is the depiction of the spending levels of the current administration.  As the chart above indicates all too plainly, the real big spenders over the last 35 years have been the Republicans presidents.  In particular the demented Chimperator George W. Bush.  Yes, you are reading the chart correctly.  After Ronald Reagan, the biggest spender since 1985 was the Chimperator who was aided and abetted by the GOP Controlled Congress.  

It is also important to remember that during the spending spree of the Bush/Cheney regime, we heard not the first whimper about spending levels.  For the GOP controlled Congress fighting unfunded wars was no problem.  Granting huge tax cuts to the wealthy while squandering billions in Iraq was no problem.    All politicians take some liberties with the truth.  But to depict the Obama administration has recklessly taxing and spending when spending has in fact increased at roughly 1/6 of the rate in the second Bush/Cheney term is outright deliberate lying. Sadly, the cretins who make up the Christianist and Tea Party base of the GOP will likely never know the truth if they limit their news sources to Fox News and the Drudge Report.  Nor will they know that they are being played for ignorant morons by their own political party. 

I don't countenance liars and there is little escaping the fact that the GOP is lying on this issue.

Afghanistan - A Fool's Errand

America's continued presence in Afghanistan defies all logic and reason.  Yet the waste of money and American lives continues and the deal recently signed by Barack Obama guarantees that the idiocy will continue.  The phenomenon is akin to the conservative mind described in the last post: select supposed facts no matter how wrong to support the war's continuance even though all of recorded history and the experiences of other empires (e.g., British and Soviet) in Afghanistan underscore the fools errand nature of the endeavor. A column in the Washington Post looks at this upsetting refusal by Obama and others to face reality and get the Hell out NOW!  For the record, I have a son-in-law scheduled to go back to Afghanistan this fall for his 3rd deployment.   Here are column excerpts:

Show of hands: Does anybody really understand the U.S. policy in Afghanistan? Can anyone figure out how we’re supposed to stay the course and bring home the troops at the same time?   I’m at a loss, even after President Obama’s surprise trip to the war zone. The president’s televised address from Bagram air base raised more questions than it answered. Let’s start with the big one: Why?

According to Obama, “the United States and our allies went to war to make sure that al-Qaeda could never use this country to launch attacks against us.” I would argue that U.S. and NATO forces have already done all that is humanly possible toward that end.

That smells like victory to me. Yet 94 American troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan so far in 2012, U.S. forces will still be engaged in combat until the end of 2014, and we are committed to an extraordinary — and expensive — level of involvement there until 2024. Why?  Of the U.S. troops who died this year as a result of hostile fire — as opposed to accidents, illnesses or suicide — at least one of every seven was killed not by the Taliban but by ostensibly friendly Afghan security forces.

A report by military and political behavioral scientist Jeffrey Bordin, commissioned by the Pentagon last year and now classified, concluded that “the rapidly growing fratricide-murder trend” of attacks by Afghan soldiers and police against U.S. and allied troops reflects “the ineffectiveness in our efforts in stabilizing Afghanistan, developing a legitimate and effective government, battling the insurgency [and] gaining the loyalty, respect and friendship of the Afghans.” 

These friendly-fire killings are not just isolated incidents, the report says, but a “continuing pattern” that is leading to a “crisis of trust” between allied and Afghan forces. Unless there is reform of “profoundly dysfunctional Afghan governmental systems and key leaders,” the report predicts, “any efforts in developing a legitimate, functional and trustworthy Afghan army and police force will continue to be futile.”  It should be noted that U.S. commanders in Afghanistan strongly disagree. They express confidence that the Afghan army is becoming a much more competent and professional fighting force.

Another question: Obama said we will establish no permanent bases in Afghanistan. But the agreement he signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai gives the United States continuing use of bases that we built and intend to transfer nominally to Afghan control. What’s the difference?  The United States has agreed to support Afghanistan’s social and economic development and its security institutions through 2024. Does this sound like nation-building to you? Because that’s what it sounds like to me.

Obama and the military leaders need to get their heads out of the asses and end this idiocy NOW.  Chimperator Bush began this fools errand and Obama needs to tell the nation that we cannot accomplish the impossible in a nation where much of the population despises us - and all westerners.

America's Fool's Errand in Afghanistan

I've noted before that if one bothers to learn some history - something Chimperator George Bush and his military leaders should have done a decade ago - one thing becomes shockingly clear: every would be imperial power that has gone into Afghanistan over the last 2,300+ years has met with disaster. The list of those who have squandered treasure and lives include the British Empire, the former Soviet Union and, of course now, the United States. No one has ever succeeded in ruling or taming Afghanistan. Even Alexander the Great maintained a veneer of control by marring Roxane, a princess from the region and handing control to her already entrenched family. Sadly, America never learns from the past and time and time again rushes in where only fools would tread - all too typically blinded by the myth of "American exceptionalism" and an overwhelming hubris that makes leaders, both civilian and military, believe that they can do what others have found impossible. Vietnam was but another of such fool's errands. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times that looks at the fact that even the often hawkish and delusional North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones has belatedly realized that America needs to get out of Afghanistan now before even more treasure and lives are squandered for nothing. Here are highlights:

On Tuesday morning, members of the House Armed Services Committee tried to grill Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, the commander in Afghanistan who succeeded David Petraeus, about the state of the mission.

The impossible has happened in the past few weeks. A war that long ago reached its breaking point has gone mad, with violent episodes that seemed emblematic of the searing, mind-bending frustration on both sides after 10 years of fighting in a place where battle has been an occupation, and preoccupation, for centuries.

There was an exhausted feel to the oversight hearing, lawmakers on both sides looking visibly sapped by our draining decade of wars. Even hawks seem beaten down by our self-defeating pattern in Afghanistan: giving billions to rebuild the country, money that ends up in the foreign bank accounts of its corrupt officials.

The White House seems ready to forget eliminating the poppy trade and expanding education for girls. We’re not going to turn our desolate protectorate into a modern Athens and there’s not going to be any victory strut on an aircraft carrier.

When you’re buried alive in the Graveyard of Empires, all you can do is claw your way out.

Congressman Jones directly confronted General Allen on the most salient point: “What is the metric?” How do you know when it’s time to go? “When does the Congress have the testimony that someone will say, we have done all we can do?” he asked. “Bin Laden is dead. There are hundreds of tribes in Afghanistan and everyone has their own mission.”

Jones was once so gung ho about W.’s attempts to impose democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . . But now he thinks that both wars are sucking away lives and money, reaping only futility, and that he was silly about the fries. He said he’s fed up with having military commanders and Pentagon officials come to Capitol Hill year after year for a decade and say about Afghanistan: “Our gains are sustainable, but there will be setbacks” and “We are making progress, but it’s fragile and reversible.”

Jones also read an e-mail from a military big shot whom he described as a former boss of General Allen’s, giving the congressman this unvarnished assessment: “Attempting to find a true military and political answer to the problems in Afghanistan would take decades. Would drain our nation of precious resources, with the most precious being our sons and daughters. Simply put, the United States cannot solve the Afghan problem, no matter how brave and determined our troops are.”

He concluded: “We can declare victory now. But there’s one thing we cannot do, and that is change history, because Afghanistan has never changed since they’ve been existing.”

The epitaph of our Sisyphean decade of two agonizing wars was written last year by then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates: “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to send a big American land army into Asia, or into the Middle East or Africa, should have his head examined.”

How many more young Americans have to have their lives thrown away for nothing before we get the Hell out of this fool's errand? We need to exit NOW.