Reply #27: And it's not just the soldiers [View All]

[jeanpalmer]

It's the mercenaries and all the people making the bombs, the guns, the airplanes, providing services, etc. Many more jobs are dependent on these wars than just the soldiers'. A lot of people are making money off these wars.

And the contractionary effect on the economy of ending a war is well known. Stop these wars and you probably add at least .5% onto the unemployment rate.

Still, it's immoral to keep a war going for economic reasons.

You ask, what other reason could there be for an escalation? Political. Obama doesn't want to risk the possible adverse consequences of stopping the war and being accused by the right of "losing the war," and all that goes with that. So instead, for political purposes, he follows Nixon's strategy of escalating the war while at the same time vietnamizing the conflict, i.e. training the locals to take over the fighting so we can leave. Nixon escalated for ~2 years, while increasing and training the Vietnamese army , then turned it over to them and withdrew our soldiers in the period leading up to the 1972 election. It worked out perfectly for his re-election in 1972 -- pictures of soldiers returning home in droves were on every tv news broadcast, just at the votes were being cast. I can see Obama doing the same thing. We already know a big component of the new strategy will be to rapidly train large numbers of Afghan soldiers, with the idea of turning the conflict over to them so we can withdraw. I've read several sources quoted in the last week saying we should be able to bring at least some soldiers home "starting before 2013." The year before 2013 just happens to be the election year 2012.

So the scenario is escalate now, train the Afghan soldiers, then withdraw our soldiers lleading into the 2012 election. That way if things turn to shit when we leave, Obama will already be in his 2nd term. A totally despicable politically nmotivated strategy.