Out Now, At Last, Mr. President?

[SecularMotion]

As we know, in Vietnam, the U.S. Government never took the advice to declare victory and get out. Of course, I suppose that there were few people who ever really thought they would do that. Instead, the fear of losing face kept us there year after year until, when we finally did leave, there was no hiding the fact that we did so in defeat, even if that was never declared.

Today, this all reads like a matter of dates in a history book, but in real life it meant that a lot of Americans – and a lot more Vietnamese – didn’t have a real life any longer. So when we now see a face saving opportunity to get out of Afghanistan with a declaration of victory, which the death of Osama bin-Laden presents to President Obama, we should move heaven and earth to see that he takes it.

For some time now, it’s been obvious to anyone not caught up in the ten-year old War on Terror rhetoric that it no longer made sense to pursue the Afghanistan War – if it ever did. (I don’t think it did, but we can argue about that later.) Officially we invaded the country because the Taliban would not agree to turn bin-Laden over to the U.S. – if they ever got him in their custody – but only to the government of another Islamic country. That wasn’t good enough, so we set out to overthrow the Taliban and eliminate the al Qaeda forces in their country.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/02-1

[CTyankee]

1. I would love to think that Obama's decision on taking out Osama will ultimately result

in the end of this war. It would be a huge turning point in our country's history and would save not only lives, but badly needed money that could better be put into rebuilding our own infrastructure and thus, repairing our economy.

Should I even DARE to dream that?