Afghanistan – mnilitary – dwight d. eisonhower

Ike was wrong. There was no ability “to compel a proper meshing of America’s huge industrial and military machinery.” An alert and knowledgeable citizenry would have strangled the beast in the cradle. A six decades frenzied bacchanalia of over-consumption, effete emotionalism, and debauched selfism is not the stuff of an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.

One thing certain, we learn nothing, vigorously demonstrated by the shrill whines of the numerous grotesquely engorged leeches living off the military-industrial complex, who loudly decry Old Joe’s rightful decision to pull the plug on a twenty year debacle that was wrong from day one. The speed of the Taliban’s return is directly proportional to the completeness and totality of twenty years of failure. $2 trillion washed down the drain with countless volumes of blood, tears, and sorrow. Casting memory back, only one member of both Houses of Congress, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, had the courage to vote against this travesty. Nonetheless, no one will be held accountable and military spending will increase. Holding power accountable, the foundation of any self-government, is passe in America.

While there is no oil in Afghanistan, America was in Afghanistan because of oil. Call it a collateral damage operation, part of our three decades bipartisan oil policy of blowing up the Middle East. The alternative was the long avoided, by every means necessary, policy of ending our oil addiction. But no one wants to do that, just last week another White House, once again pleaded with OPEC to expand oil production.

US actions in Afghanistan were advertised as monster destruction. In 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams warned the citizenry, America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” For in doing so, “she might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.” Today, America may not be dictatress of the world, but the spirit is quelled.