“There’s plenty good money to be made, supplyin’ the army with the tools of the trade …”
When Country Joe McDonald, who may or may not have ever had a farm, first recorded “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die” in 1965, the song had nothing to do with Afghanistan. We might have been crazy enough to fight a land war in Asia, but we certainly understood there was nothing to be gained in the “graveyard of empires.”
Boy, did we get stupid in half a century.
Would-be conquerors all the way back to Alexander the Great failed to conquer Afghanistan. World powers like the British Empire and the USSR failed, and particularly in the case of the Russians, were damaged severely because of it.
It has been nearly 20 years since we invaded, ostensibly with the purpose of capturing Osama bin Laden, the architect of the 911 attacks. Well, we got bin Laden, but it was a decade later and in an entirely different country.
But we’re still in Afghanistan, thousands of deaths and more than a trillion dollars later.
We’re told we cannot leave, that if we pull out of Afghanistan, it will once again become a haven for terrorists who will plot future attacks on the Fatherland, er, Homeland.
It’s more than a little telling that people call this particular war a “forever war,” that if you ask them, the honest ones will tell you we would need a permanent military presence if Afghanistan to be successful. They point to the fact that we still have troops in Korea nearly 60 years after the fighting stopped.
Of course they don’t tell you those troops are there to protect South Korea from invasion.
If anyone wants to invade Afghanistan, put out the Welcome mat and get out of their way.
It has been said of other invasions before this one that six months after we leave Afghanistan, there will be no sign that we were ever there. That’s not quite true. There will be plenty of signs in America, from empty seats at kitchen tables to burgeoning bank accounts of defense contractors.
Once was the time we were honest about the department that runs our military. We called it the Department of War. Since 1948, though, we have called it the Department of Defense.
George W. Bush took us into Afghanistan and Barack Obama and Donald Trump kept us there. Just the other day, Joe Biden said no more. He said the forever war has to end and that he will withdraw all our troops from Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2021.
All I can say is that it’s about damn time.