How the War Could Have Been Won

Since it was Bin Laden who orchestrated the attack on this country, it was Afghanistan that should have been the primary target of our response. But it was Bush who decided early on that the way to retaliate was to cook up a make-believe need for revenge by invading the country without blame, but with the most oil.

In order to accomplish this war, which was both immoral and costly in terms of troops and funds, Bush chose to seek extra troops from those fighting in Afghanistan, troops who should have been augmented rather than “borrowed.” And he chose to let our fighting forces continue to consist mostly of those who enlisted out of loyalty and those with little education and/or chance for making a living in civilian life. The result is that our armed forces are running out of recruits and have recently been reduced to those with unsavory, even criminal backgrounds.

Rather than subject the upper classes and the rich (who for some reason have not felt called upon to enlist) to a draft, our noble president still chooses to subject those who are currently serving to long and repeated periods of active combat. Thank God, though, that those who don’t have the moral courage, or are just too busy to enlist are still wearing flag pins and flying flags from their cars. In the meantime, neither war is going well. Various members of the government and the armed forces are calling upon the president to send them additional men and supplies, but recruiting is getting harder to be successful as a means of acquiring the first, and as for the second, it’s the money, the money.

There have been wars where even old men flocked to the recruiting office and women knitted and cooked and sewed. Those were the days when our president inspired us to give of ourselves and to think of others. But in this time of tremendous technological achievement, not now, not now.