The US has officially lost in Afghanistan and Iraq

It is now almost ten years ago that then US President George W. Bush declared a worldwide war on terrorism aimed at targeting and defeating those loyal to the late Osama Bin Laden. The truth is that the United States military has officially lost the war in Afghanistan as well as the conflict in Iraq. That war was started in March 2003 by the US, United Kingdom and several other countries that were part of what George W. Bush called the “coalition of the willing.”

It is often said that wars are won by political means and never by the use of military force. It is now 2011 and US forces have been in Afghanistan for almost ten years. Think about this for a moment. Ten years spent fighting a war against a proud group of people that are willing to fight to protect their homeland from other countries is a very long time. Even President Barack Obama has failed to recognize that you can never win against a nation like Afghanistan that is so proud and dedicated to make sure that no foreign forces occupy their country. In addition to the length of time that the US military has spent fighting in Afghanistan, they have spent a huge amount of money.

Columnist Eric Margolis in his latest article says that according to the latest figures, the United States spends at least $10 billion dollars every month in Afghanistan (Margolis). Ten billion dollars in one month spent on any war is too much money. The United States has a deficit that is now approaching a staggering high amount of $1.4 trillion (Margolis). The big cause of the deficit is due to the US having to borrow money from China and Japan in order to finance these two lost wars. Both China and Japan will become wealthier in the long term at the expense of the United States. All of this money is being spent on these wars while there is a government shutdown in the entire state of Minnesota as of yesterday. Statistics say that at least 44 million people in America are now on food stamps and the official unemployment rate is said to be at 9.5% but is probably close to 20% (Margolis).

There is no such thing as a stalemate for the United States military in Afghanistan or Iraq. In Afghanistan, the US has been unable to defeat the Taliban who still control the majority of the country. Current president Hamid Karzai is seen as a leader loyal to the United States who has very little power and controls just a small portion of Kabul. The Afghan people should be allowed to elect their own leaders without the influence of other countries. But the US has kept trying to make sure that Karzai stays in power because they want to have a leader in Afghanistan who will abide by US interests and give the US whatever they want. These policies are against what the Founding Fathers of the United States originally had in mind.

The US cannot defeat the Taliban people by the use of airplanes, missiles, bombs and other advanced weapons. It is time that the United States military admitted what is obvious. The obvious fact is the United States military has been defeated in Afghanistan. What is the main objective for the United States army in Afghanistan? The original stated objective was to capture the late Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar and defeat the Taliban. Osama Bin Laden escaped from Afghanistan long before the US military could capture him. He was eventually killed by US Navy Seal personnel in Pakistan in May 2011. It took almost ten years to find and get rid of a man that was on the minds of so many people in America. Mullah Omar’s whereabouts are not known. And the Taliban can never be defeated through the use of military power. And the US is not going to be able to bring a true Western style democracy to Afghanistan. The population of that country is not familiar with what a democracy is.

It is time that the United States military withdraws all of its troops from this Southwest Asian nation as soon as they can. If the US does not withdraw, more of its soldiers will get injured or killed in a war that was lost a long time ago. No one in the Obama Administration seems to want to admit that the US cannot win in Afghanistan. They are convinced that they can somehow defeat the Taliban and bring stability to that country. You can never bring peace and stability to a country by fighting to save it. The use of bombs, missiles and machine guns do not bring success in a country that uses guerrilla warfare to fight and defeat any foreign occupiers. The minute that the US forces leave Afghanistan all the different groups in that country will still fight for control and the security situation will still be tense. All of the true military experts agree that Afghanistan is a lost cause.

And in Iraq, the US military is still stuck there with at least 47,000 troops remaining in that country. The Iraq war is now over 8 years old and still going on. The stated objective for that war kept on changing and the US really had no real clear objective for Iraq. The US military thought that it could walk into Iraq and the soldiers would be greeted with flowers and celebrations, hugs and kisses. Instead, the United States military has had to face snipers, rocket attacks, roadside bombs and small arms fire. Where are the flowers that we were promised by Bush Administration officials such as Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld?

Clearly, these two men had no knowledge of the region and the things they promised are not there and they never will be there. The Iraqis will never allow US troops to remain in their country. Now with the Shiites having the majority in Iraq, Moqtada Al Sadr, one of the top Shiite leaders in Iraq has said that all US troops must be withdrawn from the country by the end of 2011. If the US does not withdraw from Iraq, they will face even more resistance from a people that do not want foreign troops in their country. The death toll of US troops recently shows that the casualties will increase the longer the US forces remain in Iraq.

Barack Obama said that he opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. But he has failed to live up to his promise of ending the war responsibly. He has continued a war that is now lost and was lost a long time ago. The Iraqis had it better under Saddam Hussein no matter how bad of a leader he was. Saddam Hussein’s death did not make the world a safer place as I have said before. Saddam’s death has actually made Iraq into a more unstable country. Now Shiite Muslims that have relations with Iran are the dominant group in Iraq because of the actions of President George W. Bush.

We need to spend more money educating the young people of this country for them to have better manners and we must take care of our citizens. Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 warned against nation building in his Farewell Address 50 years ago. The United States has not learned from history and if the recent events are any indication, they will never learn from history. The United States is almost on the verge of bankruptcy as a country and they are busy spending money on their military. The entire state government of Minnesota is shut down because the major political parties could not agree on how to balance the state budget. In the world’s most wealthy nation, events like this prove that there is something that has gone terribly wrong.

There is no excuse for a country like the United States to have 44 million people that need to depend on food stamps just so they can have food to eat every day. The United States has enough money to improve the lives of its citizens if they really wanted to and if they spent the money properly.

It is time for the United States military to do the responsible thing by withdrawing all of its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible. These two wars have been lost and the people in those two countries will not stop fighting until the last troops have left those countries. We need to stop fighting unnecessary wars that have almost bankrupted our country and instead we need to focus on what we can do to help our people live the life that they deserve.

Our politicians in Congress and Mr. Obama must admit the obvious: our nation cannot handle any more money being spent on fighting two wars that we have lost. The problem is that they are too out of touch with reality to realize this. Our nation will most probably be in bad economic shape for many years to come.

Works Cited

Margolis, Eric.Graveyard of Empires. 29 June 2011. 2 July 2011 <http://lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis247.html>.