Afghanistan, the Grave of Empires, the Final Resting place for foreign forays and fighters, may become the tombstone of the American Empire as American Dream, as well. As American forces prepare to leave the land of opium and opprobrium, the Obama Administration has inappropriately decided to leave $7 billion worth of military equipment in the war torn, warlord wasteland because of the cost of returning equipment, either too complex or obsolete, back to the United States. In Afghanistan, “Cut and run” has turned into “drop everything and depart”. Twelve years and trillions of dollars later, what do we have, following the American military’s expensive, expansive ventures into Central Asia, and thus the rest of the Middle East, which have cost us more time, treasure, and manpower than even Vietnam? In a sense, Americans should be happy. Bin Laden is dead, and we are leaving. However, there is much to regret. We are leaving, and whatever we were looking for, we never found. What we were seeking to achieve, we never received.
Why did the Bush Administration and then the Obama Administration pursue this expensive, reckless foreign policy? They had revenge, retaliation, and reelection on their minds. When the Twin Towers fell in New York on 9-11, the American people were mad. They had every right to be, but they were also scared, jarred by the badly shaken sensibility that even a “Superpower” is not impervious to attack, but no one abandoned the outrageous expectation, either. September 11, 2001 should live in infamy, yet the commemoration of the other “Day of Infamy”, December 7, 1941, commands more attention still. As more events require commemoration, no wonder that what we had celebrated more often will still be remembered, yet the more recent, however more horrific, do not feature as prominently. Just three years ago, middle school students were claiming that millions had died at the World Trade Center. Quick to forget the wreckage of the past, the United States still suffers in the present for the responses to those failures.
The practical consequences of then set the stage for the crises of today. Pensions and benefits spiked for police and fire in statehouses throughout the country, and today governments local, state, and federal face bankruptcy. Our armed forces carried military excursions to take down the Taliban and then remove Iraqi “President” Saddam Hussein from power. Arab leaders paid attention. Libyan dictator Moammar Ghadafi abandoned his nuclear weapons program. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad removed his troops from Lebanon. However, the Purple fingers of voter registration in Iraq turned red once again with bloody sectarian violence. The Bush Doctrine of establishing our domestic peace on the democratic process in other countries instead instigated incendiary insurrections. American military power demonstrated that terrorists and dictators can be defeated, but the populist uprisings which followed in the Arab Spring have replaced the rule of law with the arbitration of Allah and Sharia, fatal to peace and deadly to liberty, both there and throughout the world.
The United States military is leaving Afghanistan. The massive abandon of military equipment is a telling sign of the Obama Administration’s systemic fecklessness in the face of evil, and it makes no difference that Osama bin Laden is dead. While spending trillions for domestic spending which the United States treasury does not have, including health insurance exchanges, mandates, and a public relations campaign for both, the Obama Administration has ham-strung our military throughout the world. Drones not only attack terrorists abroad, but they may also abound over American soil. It took an eleven-hour filibuster from US Senator Rand Paul to incite an eleventh-hour response from the embattled Attorney General that “No!” the President of the United States would not have unilateral authority to target American citizens on American soil. Moreover, with growing regret foreign policy experts may concede that in the long run, Osama bin Laden accomplished exactly what he wanted. Islamic terrorists had nothing to lose, since they willingly sacrifice their own lives along with taking down as many innocents in their wake. The moral equivalence of the West, plus the depleted financial streams of an entitlement culture masked with unchecked liberalism, has created weakened, depopulated states in Europe, a malaise infecting the United States. The War on Terror hastened this dysfunction.
To stretch the resources of the Policeman of the World, worked for Al-Qaeda operatives quite well. With the stirring withdrawal of troops out of Afghanistan, plus the billions of dollars left to rot or dilapidate in the Central Asian desert, the United States venture from Republic to Empire should be abandoned, the notion that a nation cannot longer endure which refuses to police its own borders, let alone serve and protect the citizens of this country, yet seeks to manage and control the rest of the world. Such is the fate of any dysfunctional state, or human being. Our leaders have refused to take care of the problems which afflict us from within, and so they went about looking for other things to fix. With the draw-down from Afghanistan, perhaps we can fix our eyes on our nation again.
