Rethink Afghanistan really needs to get a clue.

I mean ever since I found out about the group from Derrick Crowe I have disagreed with most everything that they have put out. But more and more the statements seem to be more about wanting money for their own projects rather then any concern for Afghanistan. (Also I do not know why DC still is a member the IVAW on Facebook with links to “notyourSolider” on his Word Press page”)

But stories like these really show where the priorities are for these groups.

A trillion dollars is a baffling amount of money. If you write it out, use twelve zeros. Even after serving in Congress for over a decade, I, like most Americans, still have a hard time wrapping my head around sums like this. (Yet the Stimulus Bill was passed this year and she does not seemed as phased by it)

This month, we mark the seventh anniversary of President Bush’s declaration of “mission accomplished” in Iraq, yet five American soldiers have been killed there in May alone. Iraqis went to the polls nearly three months ago, but the political system remains so fractured that no party has been able to piece together a coalition. There are some indications that sectarian violence is again on the rise.

Or another one with the same theme.

What could we have purchased with this $1 trillion? Today, we might be enjoying the fruits of a green economy, spurred by New Deal-like investments in wind and solar. Perhaps we would have created a single-payer health care system and used this $1 trillion to provide health security to every man, woman, and child in the United States for an entire year. Or, we might have made the smart investments in our domestic law enforcement capabilities and homeland security apparatus to provide true protection from Al Qaeda and others who would wish us harm. Sadly, we’ll never know, because our political leadership never explored alternative means of achieving peace, such as emphasizing rigorous regional diplomacy, and instead overextended our military forces abroad.

If sacrificing progress at home wasn’t bad enough, it is now clear that the injection of our troops into a 35 year civil war is actually fueling the insurgency in Afghanistan and further destabilizing the region.

Because in all of it it comes down not on if our efforts are helping, not on what will happen to the population when we leave, but how “cost effective” it is. I mean it is really all about the money.

I know that I will still have disagreements on what should be done with DC and Our Journey to Smile who is working over there right now. But at least they seem to care about the Afghanistan people there. But these are the people that are going to be left high and dry to the Taliban. That is one of the reasons that I stopped watching OJS videos of the people of Afghanistan because I have a bad feeling that these people are going the be killed or worse.

In the end if we leave this issue unfinished we will be dealing with it again in twenty years from now. Oh and the reason we will have lost it because “We” did not care because they were brown people.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Congress sucks, Terror War