The Rocking Horse War
Earlier this week, President Obama evidently was presented with a state of the war report from his new commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal. While the contents are largely classified, this much is evident. McChrystal appears poised, not surprisingly, to request an increase in troop presence to "protect the people" of Afghanistan.
Given the escalating national deficit and, by some accounts, the $3 trillion we spent so far on the war in Iraq, our current military exploit in Afghanistan may someday come to be known as the rocking horse war.
You may recall, in the late 1950's, many drug stores and five and dimes kept a mechanical horse. For a quarter, one could climb upon the horse and blissfully ride. Often, while my mother was inside shopping, I'd climb upon the rocking horse, and will never forget the sensation of having the horse abruptly stop after, say, about five minutes whereupon we were expected to deposit another quarter to ride some more. Needless to say, I ran out of quarters.
Running out of change for the meter is okay if the largest penalty one can accrue is a traffic ticket, but it's a hell of a way to run foreign policy. We'd better climb off that horse before we lose not just the mortgage, but the house, too.
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