The Deep Insight

Over the last year we have seen the war in Afghanistan go from bad to worse and our political leadership following suit. No one seems to know what to do about Afghanistan which is shocking considering the amount of time that the United States and NATO has been in the country.  Let us look back at what we have accomplished in the last eight years. This is pretty simple because it isnt’ much.  The Taliban was toppled and Al-Qaida base for international terrorism was shut down.  These are the only two goals that have actually been achieved in Afghanistan since 2001.

 Since then Afghanistan has been marred by violence, corruption,  fraudulent elections  and ineffective governance.  With this as the current reality on the ground our leaders in Washington have to ask themselves is it worth it?  Eight years, thousands of dead and wounded soldiers and billions of dollars spent this war would make this a easy decision right?  It should be clear as day that the strategy of going about this mission piecemeal is not working. Sending 68,000 into harms way in a country the size of Afghanistan is woefully irresponsible and borders on criminal negligence in my opinion. To me this shows a utter disrespect of the troops on the ground by former President Bush and President Obama.

President Obama has two option, either send the necessary troops to fully do the job in Afghanistan, or withdrawal from Afghanistan period. Its either one or the other.  I would be inclined to pull out troops because after eight years the Afghan government is riddled with corruption from top to bottom, the police force is not existent, and the Afghan people have lost faith in their government if they ever had it in the first place.

I think the United States and the rest of the international community has to realize that we cannot force the Afghan people to support a government they deem corrupt and ineffective.  Propping up this regime is a waste of our  blood, treasure and time.  I say let the Afghan decide for themselves what type of society they want to live in.  They have a right to self determination just like anyone else in the world.

  If the Taliban comes back into power so be it, as long as we monitor Al-Qaeda activity in the country if it returns we can take action.  This might be too far out of the box thinking but if the Taliban came back to power wouldn’t it bring the leaders of the Taliban and possibly Al-Qaeda out from hiding?  From there appropriate action could be taken i.e predator drone attacks or some sort of special forces mission to capture them.  I think this idea is so crazy it might work!  Let me know what you think guys and gals.

Its been awhile since I posted, sorry for the spotty post lately but I felt the need to speak out on this issue. Lets recap, last week President Obama gave a speech to both house of congress about his “plan” for health-care. It sounded like the same old talking points to me but thats besides the point.  I want to touch on what happened during the speech and the media frenzy after the event occurred.  Did any of you watch the speech?  I watched parts of President Obama speech, which I thought was nothing more than a typical Obama speech with high flying rhetoric and not much detail.   I wasn’t all that interested in the speech until I heard Reprsentative  (R)  Joe Wilson call President Obama out on his own healthcare plan.  I don’t care who you are, you got to be pretty ballsy to call out the President on national TV!! I was stunned that someone had the guts to call him out.  I would like to applaud Mr. Wilson for calling it how he saw it.

Sure it wasn’t the best place to make such a statement but I think it is the job of the congress to keep the executive office in check and question their policies.  I think we need more of this in our congress to be honest.  Check out the House of Commons in the UK, they are much harsher on their heads of state than what Joe Wilson did!! I think the Democrats in Washington need to toughen up.  They are the party in power of both houses and the Presidency, they should expect to be taunted, and grilled by the opposition.  If you can’t handle the heat get out of the kitchen!! Learn to take criticism!

 I am amazed how the media has turned this into a race issue.  The only ones making this case is the mainstream media who are very sympathetic to the Obama cause. i.e MSNBC  How is calling out the President on his healthcare plan make him a racist?  If you look at the bill it would allow illegal immigrants to get healthcare benefits.  Joe Wilson was telling the truth and President Obama was the one that was omitting the truth.  I wish the media would stop using the race card every-time someone opposes President Obama.  If someone was called a racist every-time you disagreed with the man, you could never question anything he.  This is not how a democracy should work!  Dissent is a vital part of our democracy and every voice needs to be heard no matter what.  The President isn’t making this a race issue, so I think the mainstream media should stop too… ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

Since 9/11 our policy makers have been telling us that Afghanistan is the right war and the central front on the war on terror, but is this accurate?  I was thinking about this idea the other day and wanted to flesh this idea out a little more.  Is Afghanistan worth the time, effort and money anymore?  We have been in Afghanistan for eight years with no clear definition of what victory looks like, or any clear signs of progress to speak of.  Sure Afghans just had a recent election but that is probably the only notable event to take place in sometime.  Hamid Karzai’s government is rife with corruption and ineffective beyond Kabul city limits. The Taliban is growing bolder everyday and there are not enough troops to pacify the country. What do we do know? Do we stay the course? Increase troop levels? Leave?  It is obvious that this is a tough choice but I think that it might be time to leave Afghanistan. 

My problem with our current strategy is that we are taking our eye off the ball.  According to President Obama our national security objective is to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and dismantle his Al-Qaeda organization, not nation building.  Instead of focusing all of our efforts on this task, we are instead trying to build a democracy in Afghanistan in the hopes that it won’t become a terrorist breeding ground again.  How do we know this strategy is even going to work? Who is to say that if Afghanistan becomes a stable democracy that it still won’t harbor terrorist?  Just because a country  has a democracy doesn’t mean that it will be immune from the blight of terrorism.  We had home grown terrorism with the Oklahoma city bombing, the UK had the IRA, and Spain has the Basque seperatist, all democraies that suffered from terrorism.  Helping Afghanistan become a stable democracy is a laudable goal but I think this should be secondary to our main reason why we are over there.  When is the last time the media or our government has mentioned anything about killing or capturing Al-Qaeda militants?  Its been awhile right? We hear about the Taliban all of the time but in my opinion is not our main enemy. 

How does our government even know that Al-Qaeda is still in Afghanistan in the first place?  Media reports on numerous occasions stated that they are in Pakistan. So why stay in Afghanistan?  Fighting a Taliban insurgency will take years to defeat if at all.  Only 25% of counter-insurgency campaigns end up in success and given the vasts amount of money the Taliban get from opium, safe havens and a porous border means the odds are in their favor to out last us. So with this knowledge, why do we continue to waste our time there?  Al-Qaeda is a stateless actor, that can vanish and re-appear anywhere in the world. They can leave Pakistan and establish a base for example in the West Bank, are we going to send our military there?  Defeating the ideology is vastly more important than killing all of the foot soldiers.  Fighting smarter not harder is the only way we are going to win this war.

All I have to say about this is wow.. how could she be so classless and rude.  Those are the people who put her in office! She doesn’t even have the common decency to listen.  Her action is a microcosm of our current political climate in this country. Our politicians expect us to shut up and follow what they say. Screw that I urge anyone who cares about this country to let your voices be heard.  This is democracy and everyone has a right to voice their concern.

President in Thief Obama is at it again. Obama and his “democratic” allies claim that they don’t not want to implement a single payer government run healthcare system. Do you really believe him? Remember the old saying ” seeing is believing”? Well there is video evidence dating back to 2003, where President Obama is on record stating that he is a staunch supporter of a single payer system.

 How could he change his tune in a matter of six years? I feel that Obama is hiding his true ambitions behind the cover of a “public option”.  Anyone familiar with how Washington works knows that change is more of a leaky faucet than a giant tidal wave. President Obama has made the political calculation that it is easier to settle for something less intrusive in hopes that it will turn into something much bigger.

 An example of that is Social Security and Medicare.  These programs started small with very targeted ideals but then ballooned to what it is today.  I envision that this would happen to the public option if it came into being.  I view this as a back-door way to get a single payer system. Slowly bleed the private healthcare system into extinction is the plan people. If this plan passes, this only going to hurt our economy in the long run. 

One of the ideas that came out out of the house of reps was to tax small businesses who make $250,000 and over.  It is a known fact that small business create 60-80% of new jobs annually over the last decade. Small business also pay 45% of payroll taxes in this country.  http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf  Why does our government want to hurt the very sector that would bring us out of this recession? 

 Levying this healthcare tax will hurt small business because they will not be able to expand their businesses and hire more workers. Here is an example that I want you guys to consider. Say a business makes $249,000 a year. They know they could increase production to make more money but if they make one dime over $250,000 they would get hit with the healthcare tax.

Would you want to increase profits just to have uncle same take even more than they do already? I think this would make business owners think twice about hiring any more people. I think this tax would stymie job creation and cripple our economy, which would hurt tax revenues for the government. For the government to tax the very source of most of its tax revenues is absurd to me. That smart thing to do would be to lower taxes on businesses so they can grow and employ more people which add more taxpayers to the government. More people employed=more revenues for the government. Duh! You would think our so called elected ‘leaders” would know basics of tax policy.

I personally think that the healthcare system works fine but could use some tweaks. I think since most healthcare needs are not used until people are 65 and older, the government should mandate that everyone get a HSA with government matching. If someone had an account from the time they were 20 for example, they would have 45 years to build their fund for the medical expenses. For example, a person would contribute $50 and the government would contribute $50 every time you put money into a HSA. Building up the money to cover medical costs up to the deductible would rack up pretty fast. 

This way everyone has a little skin in the game. People get the benefit of having insurance, and having money to pay for medical expenses.  I think this approach would allow to keep our free market system intact and keep our economy from being taxed to death by government. Anyway here is the video where President Obama stated that he wants a single payer system. Lets hope he doesn’t get his way!