Bob Herbert: We desperately need a campaign of nation-building in the U.S., not in Afghanistan

[Better Believe It]

Op-Ed Columnist
No ‘Graceful Exit’
By BOB HERBERT
August 16, 2010

The truth is that we have no idea how the president really feels about the deadline he imposed for beginning a troop withdrawal. It always seemed peculiar to telegraph the start of a troop pullout while fighting (in this case, escalating) a war. And Mr. Obama has always been careful to ratchet up the ambiguity quotient by saying the start of any withdrawal would depend on conditions on the ground.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that conditions on the ground right now are awful, so it looks as though we’re going to be there for a long, long while.

This is a terrible thing to contemplate because in addition to the human toll (nearly half of all the American troop deaths in Afghanistan have occurred since Mr. Obama took office), the war is a giant roadblock in the way of efforts to deal effectively with deteriorating economic and social conditions here in the United States.

Look around at the economy, the public school system, the federal budget deficits, the fiscal conditions plaguing America’s state and local governments. We are giving short shrift to all of these problems and more while pouring staggering amounts of money (the rate is now scores of billions of dollars a year) into a treacherous, unforgiving and hopelessly corrupt sinkhole in Afghanistan.

President Obama does not buy the comparison of Afghanistan to Vietnam, and he has a point when he says that the U.S. was not attacked from Vietnam. But Sept. 11, 2001, was nearly a decade ago, and the war in Afghanistan was hopelessly bungled by the Bush crowd. There is no upside to President Obama’s escalation of this world-class fiasco.

We are never going to build a stable, flourishing society in Afghanistan. What we desperately need is a campaign of nation-building to counteract the growing instability and deterioration in the United States.

Read the full article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17herbert.html?ref=bobherbert

[WhiteTara]

1. Thank you Bob Herbert!

That is exactly what we need.

[Better Believe It]

6. He's one of the best mainstream journalists around.

[fogonthelake]

2. Truer words are hard to find.

[LaurenG]

3. Hell Yes! K&R

[LWolf]

4. k&r

[Little Star]

5. He's right! k&r

[WinkyDink]

7. Destroying both countries, one battle at a time.

[Better Believe It]

8. And both wars have been built on a mountain of lies.

[Lugnut]

9. K & f'n R! n/t

[TheKentuckian]

10. Amen Brother Bob

[leftstreet]

11. K&R

[The Magistrate]

12. Mr. Herbert Is Quite Right, Sir: War Is A Luxury we Can No Longer Afford....

[Jim Sagle]

13. Fuckin' A.

[Dr.Phool]

16. You took the words right out of my mouth.

Is that plagarism?

[Lost4words]

14. K & R!

:kick:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. Bob Herbert is the only NY Times columnist who seems to know or care

what life is like for the bottom 90% of Americans. Paul Krugman's heart is in the right place, but he remains on the detached, theoretical level.

I sometimes marvel at the out-of-touch nature of some of that paper's feature articles, which assume that all its readers are affluent, such as the one about the college graduate who lived at home (with his parents paying his cell phone bill) because he couldn't find a job that paid more than $37,000.

But Bob Herbert gets it. His Pulitzer Prize is way overdue.

[tblue37]

20. Wow. I am a 60-year-old *full time* adjunct college instructor. I make

just under $37,500/year after 38 years of teaching at the same university--and no one else pays my phone bill for me.

I am often amazed at the sense of entitlement soem people have.

[OwnedByFerrets]

17. Big K and R

[KakistocracyHater]

18. he is so on target here, & the sooner Obama acknowledges things here

& changes course the better.

[Panaconda]

19. What was discovered

in the early 1900's was that war machinery and all the accompanying "national investment" was one of the grandest ways of transferring wealth.

And here we are...

These wars aren't wars in the first place. Anyone who spins it that way makes a grave error of soft propaganda.

[DemocraticPilgrim]

21. Yep we need to get this going and stop all the pointless talk of cutting back.