In a nationally broadcast speech from West Point, President Obama last night revealed his plan for success in Afghanistan. “We’re going to beat the Taliban and Al Qaeda,” he told the assembled cadets and officers at the elite military academy. “For too long our brave soldiers have been led to believe that our presence in Afghanistan was the goal, just being there was our reason for being there. We know now that simply being a giant magnet for U.S. Dollars is not reason enough for the American presence no matter how rich it makes the private contractors and Burger King. From now on our goal will be to win. Some have asked how we can possibly prevail against an enemy as elusive as the foes we face in Afghanistan. How can we vanquish an enemy with no land to seize, no factories to bomb, no air force to destroy, no navy to sink, no people to win over and no flag to capture. And to this I say, good question.
There are those who say that at a cost of one million dollars per soldier per year spent in that godforsaken land that America can’t afford an open ended conflict at a time when the economy in our own country is so bad that even the illegal aliens are heading south in search of greener pastures. I would remind these naysayers that so far the Chinese have been footing the bill. We run our printing presses 24/7 cranking out Treasury bills and the Chinese suck them up like chop suey. Lately, however, they have been hinting that they worry about our ability to make good on our debt obligations. In my recent visit to Bejing I reminded their president Hu that our economy remains as solid as General Motors and that Hu’s on first. An attempt at humor that went right over the little guy’s head.
In any case, I say that if we can waste a trillion dollars in Iraq with nothing to show for it, then we can certainly pump a trillion into the black hole of Afghanistan and hope that we can buy off the terrorists before they get their hands on a nuclear weapon in Pakistan. We have nothing to fear but getting our asses handed to us; historically it happened to Alexander the Great, it happened to the British and it happened to the Soviet Union. There is a reason why Afghanistan is known as the “graveyard of empires”. For one thing it looks like a graveyard, except that there isn’t any grass and the main crop is opium poppies that serve to fund our enemies and flood our streets with heroin.
In closing I would remind everyone that our greatest hope for the people of Afghanistan is that some of the billions siphoned off by its corrupt government will be spent on better roads and additional Burger Kings so that just like in America, their young people can look forward to tenuous employment in a job where they say, ‘would you like fries with that’. Thank you and good night”.