Time to Pull Out of Afghanistan Too

While Obama is removing our troops from George Bush's idiotic preemptive invasion of Iraq, he should send them home rather than to Afghanistan.  It seems clear to me that there is little to be gained from the loss of more blood and treasure in the mountains of Afghanistan.  The Europeans are painfully lukewarm to sending their men and women there and we should follow that example for a change.  Emiliano Zapata, the great Mexican liberator. once said, 'I'm not the savior of the world!' when he was asked to extend his campaign even farther. We are not the savior of the world either.

Columnist Bob Herbert writes today, "The government we are supporting in Afghanistan is a fetid hothouse of corruption, a government of gangsters and weasels whose customary salute is the upturned palm."  No kidding.  Apparently the Bush Administration was too naive to understand trivial realities such as that.  Who could have known?

“Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.”

Herbert suggests and I agree that President Obama ought to go before the cameras and tell the American citizens exactly why sending more of our men and women to Afghanistan will make us more safe back home.  Isn't it time to fix America?  Surely we Americans ought to be afforded a bit of narcissism and look after our own.  Enough with playing world policeman.  It's time to play a home game for a change.