What does “Finish the Job” Mean?
By Phil Giraldi
In a press conference this afternoon President Obama told visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the US will “finish the job” in Afghanistan and wipe out every last known terrorist. “Finish the job” is an expression that politicians use a lot when they don’t really have anything substantive to say. It is generally believed that Obama will approve a 34,000 soldier increase for the Afghan conflict when he addresses the nation next week. US soldiers cost the taxpayer $1 million each per year in Afghanistan, which means that the new troop level will cost $170 billion per year. If the insurgents disrupt the Khyber Pass supply line, which they have been successfully doing, it will cost more, possibly much more. It might be cheaper to give the insurgents good jobs working for the Afghan post office or something similar to wean them from their criminal ways. How much more surging can we afford at this price, particularly as it doesn’t seem to be working?
I am all for finding and killing ACTUAL terrorists (as opposed to farmers or wedding party guests) who threaten the United States but I have to wonder who Obama has been listening to lately. There is no coherency to the policies that he appears to embrace, which are little more than mission creep seeking to reconstruct central Asia. There is little or no al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan while the presence in Pakistan appears to be fairly small and largely preoccupied with scurrying from one bolt hole to another. If the US successfully eliminates al-Qaeda it will just move somewhere else and continue doing what it is doing, which does not appear to be very much or very effective. Is it really worth 100,000 troops on the ground at enormous cost? Not to mention lots of dead American soldiers and Afghan civilians.
There is no US national interest in fighting the Taliban – which do not threaten the United States in any way, shape, or form – while shoring up fraudulently elected President Hamid Karzai and his merry band of cutthroat thieves. Is Obama also hinting to the Indians that he will next turn on the Muslims seeking to liberate Kashmir, who also do not threaten the US? Do we keep endlessly going after terrorist groups after that and where does it all end? If Obama seriously wants to “finish” it in Afghanistan he would gather all of its neighbors in a latter-day Congress of Vienna to work out a security formula that is acceptable to most of them and then pull out. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to tell the troops by Christmas that they are coming home by? – Phil Giraldi, American Conservative Defense Alliance