America: Love it or Leave It!

It looks like this to me:

9/11 Afghanistan WMDs Mushroom Cloud
Smoking Gun Lie Lie Lie
Colin Powell UN Lie Lie Lie
2003 Shock and Awe Greetings to Liberators chaos
Mission Accomplished Sunni Shia Kurd
Fallujah Abu Graib Sammara Green Zone
Guantanamo Secret prisons Torture
Odierno Petraeus Surge Reconstruction Fail
Iran Iran Iran Give Up and Go Home
--Drinking to Forget,
Peter Van Buren (We Meant Well)
_________________

How many times have you seen the happy horseshit bumper stickers -- "America: Love it or Leave It"? Ranger proposes a new one that cuts to the chase: "Afghanistan: Love it or Leave It".

Does anyone amongst us love anything about Afghanistan? Why do we continue to nation-build a nation that will never be a long-term ally or asset to U.S. taxpayers? Why do I care anything about Afghanistan when Cleveland, my boyhood town, is living through it's own surge -- a surge of poverty and foreclosures, both in the city and most of its suburbs? (Outside Cleveland, Snapshots of Poverty's Surge in the Suburbs.)

From the article:

• "For the first time, more than one-half of the metropolitan poor live in suburban areas."

• "Many suburbs are facing these challenges with the tightest budgets in years."

• "[T]he suburban poverty rate — 11.4 percent in 2010 — is still far below the city rate of 20.9 percent . . ."

• "The unemployment rate among black Americans was 16 percent in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — nearly double the national rate, a painful statistic in a suburb that is majority black. "

While my country withers, we continue to fund endless wars that enrich Kabul and Islamabad at the expense of our Rust Belt. Where is the sense in this, and yet neither political party will elevate this question to a place of primacy in its platform.

Shouldn't we citizens be given a clear choice to love or leave Afghanistan before the 2012 elections? Or will the Department of Defense de facto determine the fate of our inner cities by spending our funds on endless, useless wars?

Note: Please remember that the U.S. military would still be fighting in Vietnam if Congress had not cut off funding for the war. Since neither party will address this issue and place it before the voters, the wars will continue. Not only the current ones, but African Command will hop on with some new endeavors, like rebuilding Libya's military, such as it is, a military we just helped to destroy -- Iraq, redux (U.S. in Talks to Help Revive Libyan Military).

How can we claim to export democracy when our voters do not get to vote on these issues? U.S. foreign policy is divorced from the daily reality of our lives.

Does anyone believe Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia or Iraq will ever lift a finger to help the U.S.? You're drinking three cups of something other than tea if you believe that.

Our vote is to leave Afghanistan before the sun goes down on America.