The Pentagon thinks it’s killed a Taliban official (Akhtar Mansour) by drone. But what difference does it make to us to kill this man (meaning a positive difference, a gain, a benefit)? Whether or not some outfit in Pakistan applauds this or hates it, what difference does it make to Americans? Why is the U. S. still trying to kill off Taliban or stop them? Why is the U. S. still in Afghanistan 15 years after it went there to get bin Laden? Why did the U. S. start a war with the Taliban anyway? The humongous cost of this killing is already $700 billion. When other costs are factored in, the cost will be 2 or 3 times that, or about $2 trillion. For what? What did we get out of it? What are we supposed to be getting out of this?
Hillary Clinton strongly supported the U. S. going more deeply into Afghanistan. Obama approved the surge she supported. He’s had 7 years to end the war and he didn’t.
Hillary Clinton is an idiot. An official like her who bases decisions on anecdotes, emotions, images, and biases is an idiot and dangerous to boot. This is Hillary:
‘It’s clear that if I had been president, we would have never diverted our attention from Afghanistan. When I went to Afghanistan the first time and was met by a young soldier from New York, in the 10th Mountain Division who told me that I was welcomed to the forgotten front lines in the war against terror, that just struck me so forcefully.’ For God’s sake, is this how she’ll make decisions if elected? If she had sound instincts in foreign affairs, this kind of emotional basis for forming policy might be negated, but there is no evidence at all that she does. It all points in the opposite direction.
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner on May 22, 2016.
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