The Sunshine Empire

Afghanistan is an interesting quandary. Wars no matter where they may occur are always supported by Republicans, unless they happen to have been launched by Democrats (see Kosovo.) Yet the Afghanistan war has always been the war that Democrats had no problems with. In the face of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban the purpose of the Afghan was has always been clear, and supported relatively across the board. But the focus that the American people begged for on the Afghanistan war is now suddenly starting to become unpopular and a majority of Americans are now not in favor of the war. As much as President Obama was right that the eye was taken off the ball with Iraq, in some ways I don’t think most Americans realized that there actually was still a war going on in Afghanistan.

With the war of choice raging in Iraq and the mass of U.S. causalities coming from Mesopotamia, the argument against President Bush’s handling of the war was a lack of an exit strategy. But the same now can be said of the Obama strategy in Afghanistan as much as it pains me to say this. No lessons seem to have been learned and nothing but more dead American GIs seem to be the result. Yet as much as “the surge” is credited with calming down Iraq, the surge in troops in Afghanistan is not nearly at the ratio of troops to citizens that was achieved in Iraq. There isn’t the capacity nor the political will at home to push that total to the same ratio either.

I don’t have any faith that we as a nation will find the right solutions to any of these problems that face our great republic. After electing a man with the belief that he would solve the greatest problems in a generation while walking on water, we’re now shocked to see him treading water after only six months.