War That Never Ends

Johnny came marching home for Christmas from Iraq only to learn that he’ll be marching straight back to Afghanistan in six months time.

That’s because former president George W. Bush spawned a war that never ends.

World War I, the war to end all wars, lasted about four years, from 1914 to 1918.

World War II, the greatest world conflict in history, lasted about 6 years, from 1939 to 1945.

The Korean War, though technically not formally ended, lasted just over three years, from 1950 to 1953.

U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War escalated in the early 1960’s, peaking by 1968, and ended in ignominious defeat in 1975, after about 14 years.

Bush’s so-called “War on Terror” started shortly after September 11, 2001, and there is no end in sight.

U.S. Soldiers who just returned from Iraq are being ordered shortly to Afghanistan as part of a mission designed to beef up Afghan forces ahead of a planned 2014 U.S. military withdrawal.

The Obama administration supposedly has a plan to withdraw forces, beginning by pulling 33,000 "surge" troops deployed to help quell the violence by the end of 2012. The remaining 68,000 troops would be withdrawn by the end of 2014. It’s a plan that many military commanders have said is unreasonable. They want to halt it.

It looks like the military brass is going to get their way.

Commander of the International Security Assistance Force, Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, wants to keep a U.S. "military presence" in Afghanistan beyond 2014 when NATO is scheduled to withdraw its forces. He has indicated that forces should remain as long as 2016 when the Afghan Air Force is completed.

Meanwhile, according Reuters, to the Obama administration is considering transferring to Afghan custody, at their request, Mohammed Fazl, a senior Taliban official and "high-risk detainee" held at the Guantanamo Bay, suspected of major human rights abuses, as part of a long-shot bid to improve the prospects of a peace deal in Afghanistan.

Fazl is said to be responsible for the killing of thousands of Afghanistan's minority Shiite Muslims between 1998 and 2001. Military documents also indicate that he was on the scene of a November 2001 prison riot that killed CIA operative Johnny Michael Spann, the first American who died in combat in the Afghan war.

Now, senior U.S. officials are proposing an exchange of "confidence-building measures," including the transfer of five detainees from Guantanamo and the establishment of a Taliban office outside of Afghanistan in an attempt to set up negotiations between the Taliban — a fundamentalist group that refers to Americans as infidels and which is still killing U.S., NATO and Afghan soldiers on the battlefield — and government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

All of this despite the fact that supporters of the potential deal admit that the odds of striking a peace accord are slim.

That’s right; Obama is considering handing over without a trial the worst of the worst Taliban thugs as a “bargaining chip” for a peace that will never happen. He knows like you and me and everyone else that the moment U.S. forces are gone in Afghanistan the place will return immediately to what it was before 9/11 – a Taliban controlled nation.

The same is true in Iraq. Very soon now that place will be worse off than it was under the tyrant, Saddam Hussein.

George Bush’s “War on Terror” never ends.