After two years of sending millions from homes to shelters, unemployed to streets and hungry to poverty.
Finally, tens of thousands line the streets of Wisconsin and across the nation to protest... wages and benefits? - WTF
Sure I "get it" being upset about increased health costs, salary caps and dwindling benefits but nearly everyone in the private, non-union sector already sacrificed these areas of their job, if their lucky to have one the last few years.
But where were these protesters 10 years and a trillion dollars ago?
Or does it only matter when they see their pay checks.
Instead of Americans starting a "war within" fighting over the last few good jobs and wages why do we not understand and stop the source of our economic problems?
Really? Are we choosing to:
- Cut cops & firefighters?
- Cut food programs?
- Cut home heating aid?
- Increase unemployed?
- Water protection?
- Health services
- Close schools?
- End unions?
Yep, and for what? Ohh yeah, war...
- The 10 year War in Afghanistan is the longest war in our history.
- Cost of Wars Since 2001...$1,154,263,213,866
- Over 1,400 American service members lost their lives in Afghanistan;over 8,800 have been wounded in action.
- Tens of thousands have suffered - Veterans with disability over 700,000
- The total cost to our economy could be over 4 Trillion, in health, oil, resource and disabilities
Vice President Biden said in Afghanistan last month that
"we are not leaving if you don't want us to leave." (AKA - Dan Quayle?)
Combined with the war in Iraq, they account for 23% of our deficits since 2003.
Washington Post - Where is the outcry from the Tea Partyers and the deficit hawks?
Fiscal conservatives should be howling that this war is being financed with borrowed money.
Those who support the war should be willing to pay for it.
And where is the liberal outrage? Those of us who are tired of being told that we can't afford green jobs, unemployment or health care should be screaming over our Treasury being used as an ATM when it comes to supporting the Karzai government.
To be fair, there are a handful of prominent critics on the left, center and right.
But most Americans are silent about the enormous sacrifice our country has made in blood and treasure.
They should be calling, writing or otherwise speaking out.
What are we giving up to maintain the status quo?
Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz told the House Veterans Affairs Committee in September that the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, including interest payments on the money borrowed for these wars and care for our wounded soldiers and veterans, is likely to total $4 trillion to $6 trillion.
Simply put, we believe the human and financial costs of the war are unacceptable and unsustainable.
It is bankrupting us.
The United States should devise an exit plan to extricate ourselves from Afghanistan, not a plan to stay there four more years and "then we'll see." This doesn't mean that we abandon the Afghan people - rather, we should abandon this war strategy. It is a failure that has not brought stability to Afghanistan and has not enhanced our own security. As the retired career Army officer Andrew J. Bacevich has written, to die for a mystique is the wrong policy.
It is easier for politicians to "go along" rather than make waves. But we were elected to do the right thing, not what is politically expedient. The discussion of Afghanistan shouldn't be about politics, which we acknowledge are difficult, but what is right for our country. And the right thing is to end this war.
Read more from By James P. McGovern and Walter B. Jones at the Washington Post
