AMERICA CANNOT AFFORD WAR

Everyone is concerned about the deficit. At least they were until they decided to increase the deficit by trillions of dollars by extending the Bush tax cut. The question now is how to pay off the deficit. The obvious first step is to stop waging war. America has become the most militaristic nation on earth. We have more weapons and spend more money on military causes then most other nations combined. It is time to stop. America cannot afford war.

There are only a small number of troops actually fighting our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are all exhausted and suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. We do not dare re-instate the draft. Americans would rise up in rebellion. The American people do not want these wars and they do not want to fight these wars. Actually the wars have decreased our national security. Korea and Iran know that they can go their own way and ignore us, because our army is tied up in Afghanistan. The Pentagon does not seem to understand how to fight the war on terrorism. There are specific people who are terrorists in every country of the world. Going to war in one of these countries accomplishes nothing except to tie us up and prevent us from other options. Most of the attackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. We did not attack Saudi Arabia because it is our "ally". But we "had" to attack someone, so we attacked Afghanistan, because that is where many terrorists had their camps. But they can move back and forth from Afghanistan to Pakistan; so we have not accomplished much.

We are now being told that we are making progress in Afghanistan (after 10 years!). However, the war is costing us two billion dollars per WEEK. We cannot afford this. 2010 was the deadliest year of the war for American troops; 472 died. It was also the deadliest year for near-by civilians; 2,400 have died. The International Committee of the Red Cross has held a news conference to announce that they have deep concern over the security situation in Afghanistan. Security has deteriorated to its worst point since the overthrow of the Taliban nine years ago, and it is preventing aid groups from reaching victims of this conflict. By every measure that the Red Cross tracks , the situation has worsened throughout the country for civilian casualties. The number of displaced civilians has risen 25%. The Red Cross can no longer travel to many parts of the country to help these people.

At this point, we are not helping the Afghan people. We would accomplish more if we simply helped the people build schools and hospitals as in THREE CUPS OF TEA. The author of this book has probably accomplished more than our army in ten years. And the billions of dollars we are spending could help build the American infrastructure which is crumbling, provide health care for the American people, and improve education for our own children. We need to try to use peaceful methods to accomplish our goals at home and abroad.