With what looks like war on the horizon in Russia, it’s not hard to wonder what our role, if any, will be in the coming weeks. As the globe’s largest military power, currently maintaining 900 bases around the world, it seems natural for the U.S. to step into the fray when a fight breaks out.
Warring with Russia yet again may be in our future, but as my parents always tried to teach me growing up, you need to finish one thing before starting something else.
Unfortunately, the difference between President Barack Obama multitasking beyond his proficiency and me multitasking beyond my proficiency is that Obama won’t just leave half-finished arts and crafts projects around the house.
Instead of strewn-about art supplies, he’ll require military men and women to give more of their time overseas separated from their families.
Now comes the part where you as the reader say, “But that’s what they signed up to do when they joined the military!” and we’re completely in agreement. There are currently about 38,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan, a country that we’ve been “at war” with since 2001.
Obama has repeatedly made promises to withdraw during his reelection, promising to reduce to numbers like 10,000, but not much has come to fruition.
The Afghanistan veterans I’ve talked to say that combat forces are stagnant since officers don’t want to send in their troops to potentially be hurt or killed when they’re being told they’ll come home soon.
So instead of the classic image of brave soldiers signing up to protect and serve and taking out the enemy, we have soldiers on bases far away doing computer or humanitarian work. These ventures are admirable, but do they require almost 40,000 people in a foreign country?
While we’re sitting around talking about what action should be taken in Syria, North Korea or Russia, we should be asking when we’re going to end America’s longest war.