$39 Billion For What?

Dear Mr. President,

On Saturday I received a 2-page letter from The White House in response to my foreign policy letters. It dwells at length on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—“…the tide of war is finally turning. The war is Iraq is over. The number of troops in harm’s way has been cut in half….In Afghanistan we have begun a transition to Afghan responsibility for security, and we have a clear path to fulfill our mission.” Yes, the war in Iraq is over after 8 years and a trillion dollars and nothing accomplished except to inflict horrific death and destruction; we left behind a country in tatters with a government neither democratic nor an ally which wants nothing more to do with us. Meanwhile, your “smart” war in Afghanistan also accomplished nothing except to create more hatred, death and destruction on another people and culture we neither understand nor respect, squandering even more hundreds of billions of dollars in a senseless unwinnable war and saddling that country with one of the most corrupt governments in the entire world. Karzai and his government of crony criminals is commonly referred to by diplomats and generals alike as VICE, Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise, where gold and cash is being smuggled out in suitcases, boxes, even shrink wrapped bundles of cash on pallets, at an alarming rate—estimated at $4.5 billion last year—in anticipation of the U.S. pullout and return of the Taliban. Sunday’s local paper carried an AP article, “US military reports upbeat on Afghan war progress” cites Maj. Gen. Robert Abrams reporting “astounding” progress in the Kandahar region where Afghan forces are now “dominating,” but the lead editorial in today’s New York Times calls the same report “bleak” and says it’s pointless to keep 68,000 troops there until the end of 2014. The editorial states that we’ve spent $39 billion to train and equip a 350,000 man combined army and police force with a 20% desertion rate, with most recruits illiterate, and with only 1 of 23 army brigades capable of operating on their own without our help. And $39 billion is only a tiny portion of what we’ve spent on war over the past decade—easily near $2 trillion—while at home, education, health care, social services and infrastructure are starved for lack of funds and our cities and citizens face a bankrupt future. Have you learned nothing, Mr. President? What will it take for you to send a letter admitting that all wars are dumb wars, that every war devastates both sides.