A New Type of War

July 13, 2009

By Peter Amherst

Another 4 U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan yesterday. That brings the total to 649 .

While still a long way off from the 4,324 killed in Iraq, the number is inexorably rising. Will the number of casualties in Afghanistan ever surpass those in Iraq. With more than 60,000 troops slated to be there soon - and talk of further increases - that is not improbable.

In June, Congress passed another supplemental bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It totalled $83.4 billion. This brings the official total since September 2001 to $822.1 billion.

Many are asking why we are in Afghanistan anyway. The standard response is that because the Taliban allowed Osama bin Laden to have a camp there, and because Bin Laden plotted his attack on the World Trade Center from there, we must defeat the Taliban.

But is this an adequate justification for the loss of American lives in combat, and for the massive amounts of money being expended?

If it is granted for argument's sake that the Taliban did know what Bin Laden was plotting in his camp, does this justify the current war to defeat the Taliban? It seems not.

If the Taliban did come back into power in Afghanistan, and did allow Bin Laden to establish a camp there, a missile or two could solve that problem. There is no need for tens of thousands of troops and billions of dollars.

It is actually highly unlikely that Bin Laden would ever set up a camp again in Afghanistan. We have not been able to find him for all these years in those border regions of Pakistan. Why would he leave there and become a sitting duck for a U.S. missile?

But some people might argue, that the Taliban are not very nice people. They do not let girls go to school, they publicly flog people, they do not allow Western movies. Even if all this were true, that is no reason for us to commit American lives to change that, and to spend billions of dollars in the process.

There are many areas in the world where bad things go on, and it would be nice if they did not. But we cannot do everything. Interestingly, under Taliban rule, poppy production in Afghanistan was significantly reduced.

Now, with that $83 billion, we could stop a lot of foreclosures here in the U.S. While we splash a lot of money around the world - most of it borrowed - we could better use it to help our own citizens. In other words, we need a new kind of war - a war on foreclosures.

President Obama makes great speeches when he goes around the world. Yesterday, he made a great speech in Accra, telling Africans what they could do. If he translated some of that rhetoric into action here at home, a lot more Americans would be helped, and the country would be in better shape.

One final suggestion. Here in California, the state is on the brink of bankruptcy. It spends over $6 billion a year on its prison population, which is now over 150,000.

As we have outsourced basically everything else in America, why not send all the prisoners to China? China could do the same job far cheaper than we can.

We spend more than $30,000 a year to house and feed each prisoner. China could make a profit, and our cash-strapped airlines could do with an extra 150,000 passengers. How about shipping all the lawyers as well?? Now, China may not want that.