Posted: Wednesday, 02 December 2009 11:49AM
Get Ready For The Funeral Bowl
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
So far I don’t know anybody who died at war in Afghanistan.
I haven’t yet attended any funerals for local men or women who fell in that barren land of warlords, ancient blood feuds, opium poppies, wild mountainous terrain and unforgiving swings in temperature.
That will likely soon change.
President Barack Obama announced last night at a speech at the military academy at West Point that he will send 30,000 more troops to war in Afghanistan.
That means us.
Northeastern Pennsylvania has always offered its own to the pursuit of war and national honor. But even some soldiers question this one. And they wonder if in the end the cost will be worth the sacrifice.
I don’t think so.
I believe with all my heart that this foray into a land that time forgot will not serve the cause of liberty, justice or freedom for them or for us.
Afghanistan is a “them vs. us” war.
The “enemy” is elusive and hard to know. The government is corrupt and the people are drawn to fight any army they perceive as invaders. As of now, we’re the invaders. The Soviet Union once carried that mantle but now we’re the bad guys in their eyes.
How can that be?
They’re supposed to be the bad guys – the Taliban and al-Qaida and the warlords.
We’re supposed to be the good guys.
Haven’t our leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, sold us on the superficial battle between good guys and bad guys?
Of course they have.
Then why isn’t this mess simple?
Why is it a complex maze of corporate and government interests where the average Afghan citizen and the average American citizen get so little when the leaders and the bosses and the corporate warlords get so much?
And who are we anyway to dictate the terms of “democracy” to people living in faraway lands when we can’t even nurture the seeds of democracy in our own country?
Democracy in the United States is under attack by our own leaders.
We’re not sure who the enemy is among us or who is intent on creating an even greater divide between the rich and poor than already exists. But we do know that unemployment, sickness, homelessness, hunger and other deadly social ills are gutting whatever sense of liberty we once built upon and tried to spread among ourselves.
We need jobs, health care, compassion and protection.
Instead we get an egomaniacal president intent on showing the world that he’s a tough guy, a player who likens war to a video game or an NBA play-off.
Afghanistan is not the Super Bowl.
Afghanistan is the Funeral Bowl.
In many ways, we’re losing ground here faster in our own country than we’re losing ground in Afghanistan.
Our situation at home scares me.
And I don’t like fearing my leaders, my president and even my neighbors who will now be forced to take sides in the war.
“Support our troops” will become the same trite rallying war cry it’s always been whenever America finds itself in a bad spot we shouldn’t have been in the first place.
But more and more people seem less and less willing to accept this blind allegiance to a war without a purpose other than to enrich the rich at the expense of the rest of us.
Count me out of this one. My opposition to war in Afghanistan is rooted in my belief that America has no right to enforce its ideals on anybody. I believe in independence and self-determination for small nations.
Presidents used to agree with me.
But Obama is now a warlord.
And America the beautiful is one big poppy field in which we will bury more and more of our warriors who will soon begin the long journey home from a primitive place where they should have never been sent to die.
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Corbett
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