Shame On You, Mr. President: Afghanistan 2011

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I’m starting up a new category/series today, and I’ll just let the lead on this article start us off.

The Obama administration has decided to begin publicly walking away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to de-emphasize President Barack Obama’s pledge that he’d begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011 (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/09/103468/obama-administration-moving-away.html#ixzz150KVPqDp)

In the interest of full disclosure, my sister is currently active duty in the USAF, and while I would give anything to keep her from having to eventually deploy to a theatre of war, my wish for her survival is not my sole point of contention with our wars.

Firstly, there’s the cost of the wars. Since the numbers are continuously climbing, and therefore impossible to copy/paste, allow me to type out the cost of the Afghanistan war at exactly 1:45:33pm CT

$364,213,270,797

For those more textually inclined, that number is

Three hundred sixty-four billion, two hundred thirteen million, two hundred seventy thousand, seven hundred and ninety-seven dollars.

In the course of the 45 seconds or so it’s taken me to write that out, the price has gone up almost a million dollars. The more and more Republicans go on and on and on about lowering the deficit, the more and more crazy they seem when it comes to their insistence that discretionary defense spending being off-limits for cuts.

Secondly, there’s 2008. Do you remember all of the nice things you promised us progressives? Before we found out you were a war-criminal hawk like Bush? Here’s what you said:

There’s starting to be a broad consensus that it’s time for us to withdraw some of our combat troops out of Iraq, deploy them here in Afghanistan. And I think we have to seize that opportunity. Now’s the time for us to do it. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/20/ftn/main4275864.shtml)

What happened to that, Mr. President?

Finally, let me just link you all to this. I won’t make any commentary about it.

Happy Veterans Day