Santorum wins the deep south and I really don't care...

New polls are showing that Obama’s approval ratings have dipped recently, driven down by rising gas prices.  This is a cogent illustration of how abysmally ignorant people are and how his desperate enemies on the right will stoop to any lie, distortion or overwrought hyperbole to try to wound him as their pea-brained candidates continue their feverish pie fight for the right to run against him.  Hey voters; here’s a news flash – nothing Obama does can lower the price of oil.  He could agree to the republican red herring, the Keystone Pipeline, open the north slope to new drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and agree to litter both coasts with new oil drilling platforms and it wouldn’t drop the price of oil one cent.  There wouldn’t be one drop of oil from any of those witless endeavors hitting the market for 10 years, by which time – if we’re lucky and there is enough money for the necessary R&D – we won’t need the god damned stuff.  

Of course, republican after republican rises on the floor of the House and Senate and gets all red faced with outrage that Obama WANTS the price of oil to rise in order to further some nefarious liberal plot against cars and to promote god damned mass transit, a disgusting exercise in involuntary cooperation and communism disguised as something necessary for the greater good.  You have to sit on those filthy seats next to some mouth-breathing immigrant criminal instead of getting in the Caddy or the Towne Car and just driving your ass wherever you want to go.  And buses…!  Christ, they’re like a county jail on wheels, full of delinquents and perverts and poor people.   You’re lucky to get off one of the things alive. 

Needless to say, this is nonsense.  And it’s curious how the party that is rife with belligerent chickenhawks who – if given their way – would bomb the entire Middle East into a smoldering pile of cinders and broken glass can’t connect the dots and see that the endless unrest to the region that this attitude enables is what really drives up the price of oil.  For example, take the sanctions on Iran.   These sanctions, which you feisty little guys repeatedly say are far too lenient, are already reducing world oil supplies by some 1 million barrels a day.  The threat of the pissed off Iranians disrupting supply lines further has the oil futures market in a tizzy.  And Santorum and Romney and Gingrich all want to get tougher and all loudly proclaim their intent to use military force on Iran to remove the threat of the developing a nuke.   So who is more to blame for high gas prices again? 

The other striking news of the last few days is the inexplicable slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians by a US Army Sergeant who wandered off into the night and went nuts in a nearby village.  So we again find ourselves having to apologize to grieving next of kin.  We have had to do that a lot lately; from mistaken drone strikes to idiot child-soldiers pissing on corpses or burning Korans and now this.  The local Taliban decided to avenge this awful random burst of hyper-violence by bombing a mosque during a wedding…or a marketplace in mid-day.  There were riots after the Koran burning in which six Americans were shot.  The recent killings prompted riots in Pakistan by sympathetic Islamic militants and anti-American agitators, as if it was any of their business. 

By some twisted 16^th century logic, it’s OK for the local criminals to kill Afghan civilians – horribly - but it’s really, really not OK for the infidel soldiers to do so.  It’s perfectly fine to stone young people because of their haircuts but if a GI farts walking past a mosque it’s time to go set something on fire or strap on a suicide vest.

 The point is, there is no longer any reasonable justification for staying there.  The only regret is that there has been such enormous sacrifice, death and destruction that to leave makes it seem like the foolish and empty exercise it very quickly turned into - so many good men and women wasted on the proverbial “noble quest” that was really just a savage and justified spasm of rage and revenge.  Sadly, it was followed by 10 years of trying to figure out what to do next.  After the first 6 months it was a horrible and tragic nightmare you could see coming from 10,000 miles away.  And yet we persisted.   We will leave and soon the weeds will grow tall and the fields our military toiled in will turn to dust and blow away in a nasty return of the cold winter of 500 years of tribal hatred.   Do gooders will swarm the streets of Kabul doing interviews with the tiny merchant class who will all say they want the Americans to stay so they can sell more tea and bread and t-shirts and Nike’s but that will ultimately mean nothing to those who want Afghanistan to stay frozen in time. 

It seems to me that the question we need to ask is, are we doing more harm than good there?  What’s the ideal ending to this ill-advised adventure?  There isn’t one.  Unruly tribes of primitive people will still grow opium poppies and a corrupt central government will spin its wheels in a futile attempt to join the 20^th century – never mind the 21^st – in a country with no discernible exports aside from the aforementioned opium, no infrastructure, no democratic tradition, no legacy of industry of any kind – nothing.  Just what did we expect to accomplish?  Under the best scenario we should have gone in and kicked the Talibans’ asses and rounded up the cockamamie al Qaida rabble and gotten the hell out of there. 

Instead, after ten years of incredibly random violence we have a generation of soldiers with PTSD and missing limbs and the enduring enmity of ultra-volatile Pakistan and an entire region.  The military experts continue to say that victory is achievable if only we stay a little longer, add a few more battalions and kick down a few more doors in the middle of the night.  Shades of William Westmorland and Robert McNamara…

 Obama is right, however, to abhor the violence perpetrated by one half-mad soldier; we’re the civilized ones.  We understand that there is no justification for random killing done on purpose.  But in the end, it changes nothing; they hated us 10 years ago, they’ve hated us ever since, and they’ll continue to hate us long after we’re gone.  Village elders will teach the children to hate us for the next 50 years.  If it wasn’t for the pallets of $100 bills falling from the sky, Kabul would be on fire by now.   It’s long past time to get out.