McGovern Blasts Sacrifice Of Domestic Needs For Afghan War
A headline from Rethink Afghanistan points to the problem with current coverage of the war in Afghanistan: McChrystal’s Gone; Afghanistan’s Not. Focus on the political struggle over the replacement of General McChrystal with General Petraeus misses the point that the problems in Afghanistan aren’t caused by bad public relations. They’re caused by bad policy.
The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in American history. That’s the case because there was never any reasonable plan for a sustainable victory. Blasting into the country was easy. Establishing a reasonable replacement for the Taliban, free from corruption and oppressive Islamic theology, hasn’t been so easy. It’s not a task that the U.S. military is well designed for.
Now, there are even some Americans who propose restoring a king to rule over Afghanistan instead of a democratic government. What has become of the United States of America, to even be considering monarchy as a tool of control?
In Congress, some leaders are expressing exasperation with the continued news of failure in Afghanistan by opposing a request for tens of billions of extra dollars to pay for the war in Afghanistan – much of which will disappear from the American economy altogether. Representative James McGovern is one of these leaders. He spoke this week in favor of a shift of spending away from Afghanistan and back toward domestic needs.
“My Republican friends have refused to support extending unemployment benefits for our out-of-work Americans because they say we can’t afford it. We are told we can’t afford to help States’ avoiding laying off teachers. We are told we can’t afford to improve our roads and bridges or to help more families afford a college education. We are told we can’t afford to prevent foreclosures or to improve child nutrition. Now we are being asked to borrow another $33 billion for nation-building in Afghanistan.
We don’t have the money to help American working families, but when it comes to supporting a corrupt and incompetent Karzai government, we are supposed to be a bottomless pit.”
