Complacent America
Well, we could call it a win, that America doesn’t talk about the war against terror, I suppose, because complacency comes from a sense of security and no one is really worried about terrorist attacks, well, unless you live in DC near the Family Research Council, or go to the movies in Colorado or to Temple in Wisconsin. But the war that is still raging in Afghanistan has fallen off the public’s radar according to this article in the Associated Press;
Americans show more interest in the economy and taxes than the latest suicide bombings in a different, distant land. They’re more tuned in to the political ad war playing out on television than the deadly fight still raging against the Taliban. Earlier this month, protesters at the Iowa State Fair chanted “Stop the war!” They were referring to one purportedly being waged against the middle class.
By the time voters go to the polls Nov. 6 to choose between Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the war will be in its 12th year. For most Americans, that’s long enough.
If there weren’t still Americans dying everyday, I’d say “Good!” But it only shows the disconnect between Americans and the people who keep them safe. The majority of Americans have no skin in the game. While people with kids, husbands, wives in the military are looking at the end of the war in Afghanistan in 2014 means at least one more deployment, the rest of the country sees it as light at the end of the tunnel and they’re relieved. And, like South Vietnam, and now Iraq, the public won’t go back to save even one person in Afghanistan after the withdrawal is complete. The media and this administration has programmed them for it and that’s what they expect.
Candidate Obama promised to refocus America’s resources on Afghanistan. But by the time President Obama sent 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan had drained Western resources and sapped resolve to build a viable Afghan state.
And over time, his administration has grown weary of trying to tackle Afghanistan’s seemingly intractable problems of poverty and corruption. The American people have grown weary too.
Yeah, but Obama’s generals and the CIA told him that if he didn’t send at least 60,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2009, the surge would fail to have an impact on the enemy, and he didn’t listen, so we have the mess there that we have now and because the public is weary of hearing about it, we have to withdraw. The war in Iraq didn’t sap resources and resolve, Afghanistan was Obama’s to lose and he did. While we should have been talking about the war and the surge, instead we were talking about health care and tax hikes.
Joe Biden’s robot ninja zombie strategy disconnected us even more from the war. Fewer people were engaged with the enemy, and yeah, we got bin Laden – good job – but the Left told us during the Bush years that getting bin Laden wouldn’t end the war, but here they are telling us it’s over. And, surprise! It’s in an election year.
Category: 2012 election, Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
All I seem to hear from people these days in the SC area, at least the ones that aren’t affiliated with the military in any way, is ” bahhhhhhhhhhh!”. Fucking Sheeple! What is it going to take for them to wake up?
*DC area, fucking autocorrect!
I read this in the paper this morning.
It is sad, but true.
It makes me angry.
Well to me when I keep reading of the very same people we are supposedly training and handing over the country to, are the ones cowardly murdering our troops and our allies, of course that is going to cause a disconnect to me.
It has been bad enough that this war has been going on for so long, and the only thing we get for all this sacrifice and blood is to read of green on blue attacks. Perhaps the media can be blamed for focusing only on the negative, but then again our current administration is the one trying to minimize and whitewash these murders of our troops.
This is not rocket science people. Why, after over 10 years, the Afghans cannot get with the program and learn and adapt to the most simplest of military concepts is beyond me. Like I said before, you can take an overweight American 18 year old, who has spent much of his life playing Nintendo, and in the span of a few months have him trained up enough to join a fighting unit on the front lines of Afghanistan. Depending on his motivation and skill sets, maybe even become team leader not long after, then squad leader, and so forth.
Are people telling me the Afghani’s are THAT deficient in motivation, intelligence, etc., that they cannot do the same? Sorry but that to me is causing the disconnect. I am not even certain that if we sent 500,000 troops to Afghanistan, that it would have made any difference.
Well,
Al Qaida’s strategy was to wreck the US economy and break the will of the American public to engage in overseas interventions. Seems like that strategy has been successful.
Of course al Qaida and Co. didn’t destroy the US economy themselves. They merely contributed. Al Qaida must have been aware that American politicians were going to do a number on the US economy all on their own.
A US withdrawal withdrawal from Afghanistan will be spun by jihadists as a great victory for the forces of Islam and may greatly embolden Islamist movements while sending recruiting numbers through the roof.
Progressively more over the last 40 years, the American people do not go to war, the American military does. I suspect as long as this continues, we will continue to see a greater and greater disconnect between the folks who have skin or kids in the game, and the folks who haven’t a clue past their newest iPhone.
Americans are complacent for certain. They’ve been lulled by the media and successive Administrations to believe that the Taliban are a primary threat and that Iraq was an imminent threat. To believe that the Iraq surge was a victory is to deny that we removed the regional counter-weight to Iran and enabled a Tehran friendly regime next door. To believe that the AFG surge failed merely due to troop numbers is to deny that Operation Iraqi Freedom and Gen McKiernan’s denied request for more forces played no role in where we find ourselves today.
Americans are complacent because we have bobblehead journalists and wind-up politicians. As a nation collectively, we were asked to sacrifice nothing after 9/11…..and that’s exactly what we did.
This article DOES NOT show a disconnect between Americans and the people who keep them safe, but instead shows the close ties between the news media and the Democratic Party at the national level.
This administration does not want to talk about its abject failures, including its failure in Afghanistan, but they do want to talk about a “war on women” because they perceive that to be to their advantage. The demonstrators support the Democrats.
And, the AP goes along with the agenda of the present administration, writes its stories accordingly, and then uses the skewed outcome to pretend that the cause is “lack of interest” by the readers, instead of the writers.
War? There’s a war? Isn’t that over? (Well, if you talk to some careerist civilian gov’t employees… )
@1 Lucky, the answer to your question (what will it take?) is another direct attack on US soil, which no one wants.
Why are the Afghani people so unable to get with the program? Why should they, when we’re there to do it for them? They welcomed the Taliban when the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, but when that was over 10 years later, the Taliban wouldn’t leave, turned the country and its economy to rubble, and asked us to kick out the Taliban. We did, we left and the Talibana and al Qaeda moved right back in. so they asked to come back and do it again, and we did, so why on earth should they do it themselves if they can sucker someone else into doing it for them? Have you never had to deal with spoiled children before?
That is what it seems like Ex-PH2.
Why is it that every time we read of another report out of Afghanistan about the “progress” of training these people, it seems to read the same year in and year out. That is, no matter what part of Afghanistan, there will be a few soldiers that are brave and willing to fight, but plenty more seem to have no clue as to what to do, or worse, simply do not care, content to collect a paycheck and let the Americans cover them time and time again?
Over 10 years and they do indeed act like spoiled kids. Look, I get that we fight over there to prevent the war from coming to the U.S. But that does not mean we hold their hands for another 10 years over there, when all we get in return is an increase in green on blue attacks, and lazy, unmotivated, and untrustworthy Afghan troops.
If it ain’t happened in over a decade, what makes anyone think it’s going to happen in the near future (or ever for that matter).
I thought the country would have woken up after 9/11. But the attention span on that one was maybe 3-4 years, if that. Once people saw that cities weren’t destroyed wholesale and millions killed, the falsely assumed all is normal again. It’s what they don’t see or aren’t being shiw that’s gonna bite us in the collective asses sooner rather than later.
The liberal, ivory tower elite only take notice when their grant money is cut, re-allocated or they are not allowed to travel due to State Department travel restrictions.
We should let them travel and then turn a blind eye when they run into trouble, which will happen.
Then hear the moans and groans about why the US (military) does not come to rescue them in their (entitled)time of need.
Only to bash them (military) a year later when the cycle repeats itself.
I am a grad student but FUCKING HATE the world of academia.
How about we stop all forgein aid. Stop all 2nd and 3rd generation welfare families. use this to lower our natioal debt. Tell the UN everybody is going to pay their share or leave. Use sanctions, tariffs and embargos instead of our troops. Crazy but might work,who knows? Joe Oh yeah keep the politicos from making ROEs.
Ex-PH2: the short answer is that there really isn’t an “Afghan people” per se. Rather, there are eight major tribal/ethnic groups (Pashtun, Tajik, Turkoman, Aimaq, Wakhani, Kyrgyz, Nuristani, and Balochi). Only the Pashtuns approach a majority nationwide (about 50%) – but there are significant minorities of the other groups even in parts of the Pashtun lands, and in other areas the Pashtuns are either absent or a minority. Each speaks a different dialect or language (though Pashtun and Dari are widely spoken). And even religion doesn’t necessarily unite them – the Hazara and, if I recall correctly, the Aimaq are Shi’ia, while the rest are generally Sunni Muslim). Each of these ethnic/tribal groups has sub-groups and internal feuds, and has had varying degrees of good/bad/indifferent relations with the others. They’ve been fighting with each other since before Alexander the Great conquered the area roughly 2400 years ago – and ever since. Even the term “Afghan” is somewhat of a misnomer, as it was a synonym for “Pashtun” misapplied by the British to the entire region when it was an empire ruled by the Durrani clan of the Pashtun people. In short: the area that is now present-day Afghanistan is the central Asian equivalent of the North American continent prior to the arrival of European settlers, fast-forwarded to maybe the mid- or late-19th century. It’s an area filled with a number of essentially unrelated tribal peoples with a history of fighting each other (and foreign invaders) for at least two and a half millenia. IMO, there are two ways you’ll see “peace” there. One is foreign conquest and domination – and that will be an uneasy peace, as all the groups are independent as hell. The other is domination of the entire area by one of the eight ethnic groups (or maybe a coalition). That too will be an uneasy peace, as the dominated have historically eventually reasserted their independence under such conditions. In short: long-term, prospects for peace and stability aren’t good. The situation there has always been chaotic and violent, and we aren’t going to change that. The best… Read more »
Hondo, you forgot the third way to see ‘peace’ over there.
Take off, nuke the place from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Wait — that’s Israel’s plan for Iran.
As one of those “on the left” who stumbled upon here, I’m a bit confused. You say we are complacent, but to what? The existence of war? Terrorist threats?
Speaking again as just one of the american’s “on the left” I perceive the war as a failure. I don’t perceive it as a victory that we can leave from proudly and say “woohoo!, time to focus on domestic issues” But I’m ok with that. I’d rather not waste 12 more years, lives, money, attention, human resources, in what is going to be a defeat. Even if there were to be a “victory,” that’s completely undefined. The downside potential is basically unlimited while the upside is really not that great. We’re better off defending against attacks with vigilance at home than abroad.
One of the gripes sees to be that we “on the left” are not aware of the war, and thus are somehow deficient. We are not willing to “sacrifice” enough for the war. Most of us (myself included), were against the war to begin with. We were upset about 911, but come on! It seems to me that we have “sacrificed” plenty by paying for a war that we didn’t even want.
To the ones who suggest that we not save liberals or academics when they are captured abroad, this seems a far cry from an entire war and the construction of a nation in the middle of afghanistan.
As a human being, I think there is a legitimate bone to pick with our nation. War always has casualties, and America has been active in the region for decades. The war just sends more extremists into training camps.
I think, realistically, that there will always be threats to America’s national security. We disagree on how to deal with them. A 12+ year occupation is not how to deal with them.
Please don’t respond violently to my concerns! I am legitimately confused and would like to hear the response.
Chuck, you actually answered your own question. When we talk about complacency, we’re referring to folks like you. You are simply too comfortable to care. Until YOUR skin ends up in the game, you won’t be able to focus on what is wrong and what is important.
Chuck: the complacency refers to the fact that many feel it “can’t happen here” and “doesn’t affect us”. The reality – as 9/11 shows – is that it can indeed happen here and Islamic terror directed against US interests does indeed affect us. We’re in this “game” whether we want to play or not.
If you’d like to compare costs: total GWOT operations to date over 12 years (this includes operations in Iraq) have cost the US taxpayer on the order of $1.2 trillion (FAS, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf ). In contrast, the single incident of 9/11 has been estimated to have cost the US approximately $0.75 trillion in and of itself, exclusive of military costs (NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/cost-graphic.html ; I would recommend ignoring their estimate of the military costs, as even a cursory analysis shows that the NYT grossly inflates the military costs through including damn near anything it can think of which might be tangentially related in order to further their antiwar political agenda).
Fortunately, engaging the Islamics terrorist assholes elsewhere has largely kept us from having another 9/11. What you are advocating above would be to merely set back and let them “have at us” here at home. We’d probably have seen several similar attacks by now under that scenario. We certainly did during the 1990s when we ignored the problem vice acting to limit or eliminate it.
I’ve seen what a war zone looks like, fella – and the destruction inherent in same. I do not want to see that in my homeland.
Thanks for the replies, I’ll be thinking in the next day or two for some fuller replies. What about my last criticism, that the war is just sending extremists into training camps? I hear that a lot and I’d like to hear the retort.