A New Hope of Hemmoraging Blood and Treasure
Obama's foreign policy: Slowly and painfully closing down our lame revival of The Arrogance of The British Empire while simultaneously remounting The Last Days of The Soviet Union, plus a re-release of the classic Nixon album Vietnamization.

While it was dramatic to see a nation's economy and infrastructure collapse while getting their asses kicked in the Hindu Kush, I don't want to experience it firsthand.

Obama admits we're spending money at an insane pace, but his plan to keep going summer 2010, which is unlikely to be less than present spending, means at least 240 BILLION DOLLARS not counting the price of a new, improved Afghanistan front.

Like Carlin said, these guys are obsessed with not pulling out. Has Obama noticed we are on the brink of a bail out as big as the Savings and Loan crisis? Has he not noticed the whole food and energy crisis? Has he been told the Magic Fucking Unicorn brigade went AWOL months ago?

Actually he did notice, but doesn't seem to get it:

We could have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan...We could have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in alternative sources of energy...strengthened old alliances, formed new partnerships, and renewed international institutions...called on a new generation to step into the strong currents of history, and to serve their country as troops and teachers, Peace Corps volunteers...We could have rebuilt our roads and bridges, laid down new rail and broadband and electricity systems, and made college affordable for every American to strengthen our ability to compete.

We could have done that.

But we didn't and now it's too late. We never had the ability to do it all, and now we have less than that. Grand intentions will not change seven years of wasted resources. Obama can't say this to himself, let alone out loud.*

The idea of careful exit, residual forces and a new Marshall Plan went in the shitter two years, 100 billion dollars and several stop loss orders ago. It's time for us to admit we're done. No more left.

Time to bow out gracefully while we can still make good on asylum promises to our helpers. We can toss a bunch dollars from afar and hope for the best - perhaps the Iraqis will be able to stop more from being stolen if Haliburton isn't there. The longer we pretend we've years of resources left, the more it's going to look like this:



Except this time, they'll shoot down the helicopter.

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Edited to Add: Yes, he can't say otherwise and the rhetoric is stirring. We need to realize the Bush administration also involves Norquist politics: ending big government by bankrupting and looting it. It relies on the Nation being to proud to abandon intentional misrule. One can dream that our next president has the sense to say "fuck it, we're done".