I wish this was about economics.
It is only tangentially so.
No, this is about the war in Afghanistan. The FT reports:
Some time in the next two weeks, Mr Obama is likely to bring months of agonised deliberation to a close when he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan. The number, which could be as high as the 40,000 recommended by Stanley McChrystal, the general in charge, will be analysed minutely for what it can achieve on the ground in Afghanistan.
But as Mr Cheney’s contrasting observations illustrate, the more influential war is being fought politically on the ground in America. Somehow, the compulsions of US politics have brought the candidate who electrified America by promising to pull out of Iraq to a position where many of his most ardent backers fear he may be about to get America into another Vietnam.
We have already done that.
We must as a nation choose whether we are going to prosecute this as a war, or leave.
We have not fought a war since WWII. None of the engagements we have entertained as a nation since with our military power have been wars, irrespective of what someone has called them.
There is only one way to fight a war. You commit your nation's resources - material and the most precious of all, human - to the complete obliteration of your enemy.
You mass those resources against each objective in turn, without reservation, without holding back, without care for collateral damage or world opinion.
You do so until your adversary sues for peace, not because it is the political thing to do, not for expedience, but for one and only one reason: they're tired of dying.
There is no "armistice" or "cease fire" in a war. There is only victory or defeat. There is only death or life. Collateral damage, including the loss of innocent life, is a known price that will be paid, although the toll is not of concern in that regard - only the certainty that it will occur.
If we are justified in utilizing military force - the last resort of any nation in the resolution of grievance - then we are justified in utilization of every bit of force we can muster, without mercy, without limit, without fear or favor.
If we are not justified in doing so we have no business placing our nation's resources, including and most especially the lives of our men and women in uniform, in harm's way, since each such excursion guarantees that some of them will not come home to their families and friends.
This nation once knew these facts. We fought two World Wars, the first of which was arguably without risk of invasion or damage to our territory, the second of which began the same way but escalated dramatically on December 7th, 1941. In both cases we mobilized not just our men and women in uniform but also every man and woman at home - we realigned factories to produce the machines of war, we rationed goods and services in our nation, we sacrificed. We applied the full force of this country and its people to the task at hand, and we were victorious. In the process we all honored those who fought, for behind each infantryman on the ground or airman in the sky there were a hundredfold more at home building the guns, ammunition and fighting machines - day and night - that they required. When each of those who died on the battlefield fell, they gave their life knowing that our nation and her resources - all of them - were behind each and every fallen soldier, without limitation or exception.
If we are to press a military engagement in Afghanistan or elsewhere we owe it to our fighting men and women to approach that engagement with no less vigor than we did in World War I and II.
We dishonor those who serve in our uniform when we ask them to fight and die with less than a full commitment of our national resources to the task we set before them.
These fighting men and women, each and every one of them, takes an oath to uphold not an office, nor a person, but our Constitution - the defining difference between America and all other nations.
We must honor them in return, in that when our President and Congress determine that the use of military might is our right and duty as a nation, we the people must demand and our President and Congress must make a full declaration of war and the commitment of every resource within our nation, both military and civilian, without reservation.
President Obama, do what your predecessors did not in Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo and Iraq.
Either fully commit our nation to war with all of her resources or bring our troops home.
Audio Streams
