Looks like Mr. Obama is finally going to earn that Nobel Prize of his. In one of the more devious moves in recent presidential history, the big O has sent out nearly the entire US army to lamely wander the deserts in Afghanistan.
Under the auspices of a “Surge” (or possibly a Belgian cook named ‘Serge’) the bulk of America’s Army has been sent to the Great Elephant Graveyard of Empires; The Country That Wasn’t; The Stan of Afghans; The Most Useless Pile of Rocks This Side of the Moon. The O man has done this with no apparent mission (unless you count hunting down 97 or so bearded, cave-dwelling recluses as a worthy mission for 100,000 soldiers), and he has attached it to a ‘soft’ withdrawal timeframe in 2011. Of course, if ‘conditions on the ground’ don’t meet expectations in 2011 (read this as: if Afghanistan is still Afghanistan), then the timeline for withdrawal ceases to exist.
This is the military equivalent of putting a lame racehorse out to pasture. Resembling a Texas-sized bomb-testing range, Afghanistan should serve as a familiar and comforting surrounding to put our Army out of its misery. Like Old Yeller before it, the Army might put up a fuss before floating off to that giant Humvee in the sky, but you simply can’t keep an outdated, diseased, incontinent fighting force around forever. It’s inhumane.
After all, the future belongs to other fighting forces. Perhaps we’ll go the way of smaller robot and/or cyborg-hybrid death squadrons, perhaps we will resort to satellite shoot’em up with China, perhaps we’ll develop a boutique arsenal of “tactical” nukes to do away with future pesky cave dwelling insurgents, but there simply is no longer any room for a giant herd of half-trained human warrior cattle that need to be fed, watered, and salaried.
Like corporate America before us, we’ll leave the in-person soldiering to newly outsourced mercenary armies who don’t have to be trained, paid-for, and supervised by loathsome bureaucrats. Like ‘Starter School’ students, privatized mercenary forces will have better equipment, better textbooks, better computers, and carry a better killing GPA. The ‘Public Army’ boys simply don’t have the faculties to properly compete on the same level.
So, say goodbye to your Army. It was the best that it could be, but sometimes, that just isn’t good enough.
