Obama's New War Plan: David Loftus

I was opposed to going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq from the start because I felt they would be a waste of time, money, and above all, human lives. I haven't seen anything to persuade me otherwise. The only thing certain to come out of this "new" plan will be higher casualty figures. There is no guarantee that anyone at all will ultimately benefit, and a lot more people will suffer and die. 

I should say that I have nothing in particular against Obama, who apparently is trying to make the best of an awful situation that was handed to him. My disgust is reserved for all the people who fell for the same old patriotic hooey and thought this war would turn out any different from all the other typical foreign incursions, from Cuba and the Philippines to Vietnam -- and that would be most of Congress and you, my fellow Americans. Even if anything resembling "democracy" were to result in Afghanistan (and I predict it won't; because if a majority of the people don't rise up and take control of a country on their own, then they're never going to be able to rule themselves after a foreign power has come in and done the heavy lifting), is anyone really prepared to say all the thousands of Afghan and American lives lost were worth it? I bet there'll be a lot of people over there who'll say it's not.

Once again, this brings to mind the comment by the Austrian journalist Karl Kraus (1874-1936): "War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off."