REDO THE MATH
Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:59:14

Let's do the math:

• We're down 11.5 million jobs since 2008 and won't replace them for twenty years.


• Official unemployment is hovering around 10% and actual unemployment is closer to 18%.


• Municipalities and states, perched on bankruptcy, are shedding cradle-to-grave jobs.


• The infrastructure is crumbling, the public school system is in crisis, and foreclosures are at an all-time high.


• Corporate America has chosen to sit on 1.5 trillion dollars in cash rather than invest in our economy.

Just think what two billion dollars a week would do to change the math. Two billion dollars, that's what we're spending every week in Afghanistan.

It might be worth the sacrifice if two billion a week were bringing democracy with all its bells and whistles to Afghanistan, suppressing its heroin trade and securing the country from the local jihadists who stone women and behead villagers to satisfy their thirst for power and sexual domination.

It isn't buying any of that. Proof positive is the recent admission by our Secretaries of State and Defense that the U.S. is facilitating talks between the Taliban and what's left of Karzai's government. Our nine-year occupation of Afghanistan has been a failure. All that blood and treasure for nothing.

When we leave Afghanistan and sneak back home, that country will be a lot worse off than when we charged in post-9/11. Back then, the Taliban were contained in the Kandahar region by Masoud's Northern Alliance and a relatively stable regime in Kabul. Now those vicious freaks are everywhere. What we'll leave behind is anarchy, the same gift we're leaving behind in Iraq.

And we'll come home to anarchy. Where are we going to find jobs for a hundred thousand shell-shocked G.I.s? What have we got here for the other hundred thousand contract mercenaries to guard?

The empire is collapsing simply because we can't afford it. So, we redo the math.

We beat our swords into solar panels and do a hell of a lot more with a hell of a lot less.

We learn to live with the reality that other cultures aren't a failed attempt at being us; and we get straight with the fact that nation-building begins at home.