It’s time to leave Afghanistan. President Obama has already announced that he wants to slowly withdraw from Afghanistan…giving the Afghan troops responsibility for their country’s security in 2014 and a continued American presence in Afghanistan for another decade at a minimum. Americans want to wind down the war without a cause…but as we have already written about before HERE - America is still in Afghanistan because of two main reasons that the average person doesn’t understand:
#1 – Geopolitics
#2 – Exploitation of their resources
We’re very busy ensuring security in the region so the TAPI pipeline will be built as planned…to ensure American oil and gas companies are able to efficiently ship oil and gas to India and China. But I suspect even fewer Americans would support the war in Afghanistan if they knew why we were really there.
You can find the entire poll HERE.
But as CNN notes – Mitt Romney wants to spend an additional $2.1 trillion more on defense over the next 10 years – article HERE:
But in one budget area, Romney is running the opposite direction. The former Massachusetts governor wants to increase defense spending by leaps and bounds. By one estimate, additional spending would exceed $2 trillion over the next decade.
Romney’s plan calls for linking the Pentagon’s base budget to Gross Domestic Product, and allowing the military to spend at least $4 dollars out of every $100 the American economy produces.
With the Pentagon’s base budget — which does not include war costs — forecast to hit 3.5% of GDP in 2013, a jump to 4% would mean an increase of around $100 billion dollars in defense spending in 2013.
The additional spending really piles up in future years.
And for those who argue the “support our troops” line…have you considered asking the troops yourself? There is no monolithic view from the troops but a majority do not favor perpetual war for perpetual war’s sake. And despite all of the challenges with the economy and a military not exactly in love with the President’s results – Reuters reports:
If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population.
