The question is; has President Obama learned anything from our history of recent wars to use in determining the best course for America in Afghanistan? Unfortunately, it appears that he has not. Mr. Obama, after assuming the presidency, wasted no time in making Afghanistan "his war . It wasn t long before he decided to send more than 20 thousand more troops into that nation that has over hundreds of years expelled every invading empire that attempted to conquer it.
I think that it is high time that America develops completely new strategies on how to confront and deal with the dangers posed by those who hate us and wish to harm us. The way that we have conducted military actions in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have not worked and never will work in this current world where the enemy no longer uses large stand up armies, ships, planes and mechanized equipment to fight off invaders. The old ways of conducting warfare are obsolete.
Our invasions and occupations have multiplied our enemies and consistently led us into quagmires. We don t really win but we lose so much and so do those nations. The cost of conducting unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, together with the massive costs of maintaining our empire of more than 750 military bases and installations around the world, is rapidly fueling economic chaos in America.
What should we do with this empire of bases? First, we need to get out of both Iraq and Afghanistan in two years. We have plenty of other military installations in those regions that will provide all sorts of protection to safeguard our "national interests . It makes no sense to continue a presence where our unwelcome occupation and actions serve as fuel to motivate and energize thousands more new enemies who will die before they will let us dominate them. Stubbornly continuing military actions is a good example of the law of diminishing returns.
Next, we need to reduce our vast system of bases by 50%. That is not inconceivable if the entire network is totally reworked to strategically locate bases to adequately protect those very important interests. Would that move render our nation defenseless and at the mercy of those who want to harm us? Not hardly. Even with that severe reduction we would be left with more foreign military bases than all of the other major industrial nations combined; actually, more than the all the nations of the world. Â
If we do not make these critical changes now we will have to, yet again, learn the lessons of history the hard and painful way. If the best military minds in America and the world were to sit down to discuss the probabilities of the U.S. and NATO forces ever pacifying and controlling Afghanistan, I would bet heavily that the probability of military success would be infinitely small and most probably impossible.
This combination of military expenditures in Iraq, Afghanistan and our empire of world bases are becoming so very massive in relation to our GDP that this situation will soon become unsustainable. And then no matter what may be the plans for continuing these worldwide military operations, the empire will begin an involuntary collapse as the funds begin to dry up.
The future of America hangs in a delicate balance. Our economic system, now almost devoid of the manufacturing base that made this nation the world s industrial leader, is rapidly eroding. At the same time, our involvement in foreign wars is ever escalating. America is quickly approaching a point of no return. National insolvency beckons.
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