How Long is too Long?

It has been ­­­six years since former President George W. Bush appeared on television screens across America with a colorful banner declaring ”Mission Accomplished” on it. Six years have gone by since we invaded Iraq, and eight years have passed since we invaded Afghanistan. This blog, upon completion, I hope will demonstrate some very clear points: that the “War on Terror” has cost America very dearly in more ways than one and that we must at some point ask ourselves when enough is enough.

It seems strange to me now looking back on May 1^st 2003 when President George W. Bush had his happy little banner because I really believed in my maybe somewhat naïve young mind that the war was really over and everyone would be coming home. Reasons abound as to why exactly the war hasn’t ended, much less expanded throughout the years. Suddenly “Mission Accomplished” seems like a fairly lofty goal when I look back at it in retrospect. I suppose then that the question becomes what would it take for that banner to finally ring true?

Before one gets too concerned with what needs to be done we must first ask ourselves “what was the mission in the first place?” The “mission”, once upon a time, was to retaliate for the 9/11 attacks. Well if that was the only case then mission accomplished indeed! Retaliation quickly turned to a “War on Terror” and it seems to this blogger like a superfluously impossible task to complete something that has no determinable end. But then maybe that is because the “War on Terror” isn’t over and a withdrawal could only take place once “terror” itself has been extinguished from around the world. Ok, then let’s define terror…well that might be even more difficult, because “terror” as it were is a very vague statement, if I get “terrorized” at night because of watching a movie that doesn’t make the makers of “Paranormal Activity” terrorists now does it? So then terror by any definition is an extremely subjective idea, one left completely up to the speaker using it.

As part of his platform President Obama promised to set a timeline for withdrawal for American troops from the countries that we occupy. The timeline for Iraq has tentatively been set for August of 2010 as per the speech in the videos below. Afghanistan however is a much different scenario. Throughout the Bush administration the general idea put to the public was that Afghanistan was meant to be a long occupation; an occupation that would end years, maybe even decades down the road when Afghanistan had been re-build with a stable government and it could be assured that the Taliban would not re-claim power.

“Obama’s Vietnam” as it is now being referred to by some, in conjunction with the war in Afghanistan has cost the American people over 1 trillion dollars by the end of the fiscal year for 2010. The American people have also paid another price, 5130 sons, daughters, husbands, brothers, wives, and sisters. Such out of control spending can also be held responsible for the current economic crisis in which we struggle, and now many politicians that once believed we should expect to occupy Afghanistan for years to come are calling for a withdrawal.

So mission accomplished isn’t as easy as it seemed back when I first saw that banner. In fact I might even be tempted to say that the term “mission accomplished” is every bit as vague as the “War on Terror”. So then, when is enough enough, when have enough American dollars been spent or more importantly when have enough American lives been lost before this conflict is ended? It seems to this blogger that whether we leave now or 3 years from now the result will be the same. As former presidential candidate John McCain said “When you aren’t winning in this kind of war, you are losing. And, in Afghanistan today, we are not winning,”

So if we aren’t winning anything and aren’t going to, why are we still their, and how long is too long to wait for the “mission accomplished” banner to be true?

A Blog By:

Kyle Forry