The Afghan Surge

This is my first response to President Obama's announced surge of military personnel in Afghanistan.
    I would have responded sooner, except I did not know what to say. It is easy for extremists to fall on either side of this question, and they do. It is their ease of conviction that makes extremism so attractive no doubt. One does not have to think about right and wrong in a realistic context. Whichever side you choose, you have nodding heads telling you that you are right, and that the other side is wrong.
    That is how we get into trouble in this country. After 9/11, outrage managed to unite the nation with a call for blood, just long enough to start a war. We quickly won that war, and felt pretty good about it, even though bin Laden escaped. We showed the world that you don't push the United States around and not suffer for it. Our ideals were stroked by liberating the Afghan people from the oppressive Taliban regime.
    We could have taken this opportunity to make our victory significant in that primitive, war torn country. But we stopped. Our bloodlust was not over yet. Iraq was another thorn in our side, and Neocons felt so powerful that they convinced many Americans that Saddam Hussein was a threat to these shores. We gave away our advantage and our conscience by not finishing our mission in Afghanistan, and shifting resources and attention over to Iraq. A tragic mistake. Now that the surge in Iraq is bringing a modicum of peace over there, we are patting our backs like the war was a good thing, despite the hundreds of thousands of people who were killed, and immeasurable amount of suffering.
    The Neocons fell from grace, and Democrats inherited their mess.
    Conservatives are hell bent on blaming Obama for everything he is trying to repair, from the broken economy that conservative deregulation caused, to the war in Afghanistan. They are fanatically relentless in their crusade against liberalism, and therefore outside the bounds of reason. They offer us nothing constructive at all. Just the opposite. They want to spread the cause of unreason, so that they can reclaim their power, which is based on the same. We cannot allow that.
    Unfortunately, the liberal extreme is starting to raise its ugly head. Like spoiled children, they want what they want, and they want it now—no matter what the feasibility or consequence. In this regard, they are mirroring their conservative opponents by indulging in unreason. Thankfully, they are not very good at it. They are causing problems for the administration, however, to the glee of the other side.
    Unlike many of my countrymen, I admit that I do not know what the answer is to the war in Afghanistan. What we did there and in Iraq under the Bush administration was unconscionable. Now we are paying for our sins. After liberating so many people from the being crushed under the heel of the Taliban, can we just turn our backs and let them face the punishment? I don't know about you, but I'm not comfortable with that. In fact, I hate it.
    Thanks to our subdued actions in Afghanistan, we now see a crisis in Pakistan which dwarfs the imaginary threat of Iraq that brought us into war over there. This was of our own making. We chased the Taliban over there, and now they are within arm's reach of nuclear weapons.
    I don't know how it is that we charge into war without thought of the consequences. Hubris perhaps? Or a belief that God makes everything we do right, despite all proof to the contrary?
    Pro-life? Pro-choice? Liberal Americans? Conservative Americans? Dare we define our differences with such words? Wars that kill obliterate all rights, and should always be either defensive or truly a last result. Otherwise we fail every ideal that America is supposed to stand for. We become barbarians, and the world takes note of it. Grandstanding propagandists like Sean Hannity beat the drum of patriotism, but it is not the drum of Americanism. It is something tribally irrational instead. Destructive. Evil. Not at all what our Enlightenment founders intended.
    In my heart of hearts, I feel the only recourse we have right now is to trust this president. Because I see hateful propaganda for what it is, I do trust him. The fact that both extremes oppose him, makes me trust him more. Right now he is the sanest voice we have. He actually considers his decisions before making them.
    This president, who faces the trials of rescuing us from massive conservative mistakes of the past, needs and deserves our every support. Of course pundits will be critical. Of course conservative talk show hosts will lie and slander to the point of being traitors to truth, God and country. That's how they make a living. And God knows money excuses everything, and makes charlatans like Glenn Beck and his angry tea baggers possible.
    I trust Barack Obama more than I trust media personalities on either side. I trust him more than legislators and senators. He has tried to be a real president by not acting unilaterally, by holding congress to make the decisions that the constitution says they are supposed to make. I trust his intelligence and good will. I I do not see a single politician or advocate who comes close to his integrity. That people hate him for doing so well is a travesty that reflects poorly not on him but on us.
    Until I see him betray that trust, I will stand by his side even if the nation moves against him because of conservative lies and liberal discontent. That is my stance. I I pray he can deliver us despite our immaturity and fickle self-righteousness. Furthermore, I hope that his eventual success will indeed usher in a new age of Americanism that we can legitimately be proud of.

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