Sending 30,000 More Troops to Afghanistan a Logistical Challenge

Barack Obama his bought into the notion that the United States actually has the potential for a winning hand in the "war" against terror. That saddens me greatly, but I'll still give our president a pass and defer to his judgment. My own view is that there can be no victory against an essentially invisible enemy, an enemy willing to give up their lives one by one in little victories--one terrorist bomber for a few lives taken in return.

We cannot defeat that kind of enemy without LONG-term resolve and a commitment few Americans seem now to have. Some past presidents have failed in exactly the way Obama stands to fail, and I can't see that he's offered a new approach that will avoid past failures.

What Obama could have said, but did not, is as follows:

(1) If we're going to play war yet again. let's ALL be

involved, not just those we hire to do the job for us

while we sit at home essentially unaffected. Maybe

we'll learn not to be international meddlers if each

of us is required to serve.

(2) The cost of combat deployment should be immediately

translated into tax increases on US and not on our

children. Our wars, our tax obligation.

(3) Anyone deployed to fight receives a significant

increase in pay and post-military benefits when

deployed a second time. A third deployment, and any

successive ones, receive at LEAST triple pay and

post-military benefits.

The fact that Obama said none of these signals to me that he

has something up his sleeve. Does that something have to do with Iran? (Maybe there's a plan afoot to make sure Iran no longer supplies materiel to insurgents.) Does that something have to do with Israel? (Maybe there's a great Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in the works that will defuse the animosity most in the Middle East feel toward Israel and its "right to exist.") Does that something have to do with

an end to drugs as a way of financing insurgency and terrorism? (Maybe there will be an end to opium use in the West, the large market for sales of it from Afghanistan.)

I never thought Obama would invoke America's self-interest as a reason for extending operations in Afghanistan, hence that small list. What self-interest can there be that does not GUARANTEE success and, instead, guarantees only that many more American lives and much more American treasure will be lost?

As I said, I'll defer to our president's judgment despite my doubts. He deserves my support and maybe yours.

Ron W. Smith of UT 8:39PM December 02, 2009