Intransigence is all Around, Military Still in Town

Last night a somber President Obama explained to a room full of young US military officers why he was sending them to Afghanistan. To begin, Obama effectively re-tied Afghanistan to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The President reminded us that nearly everyone agreed, at the time, invading that country was necessary to prevent further attacks on the US. Building on that, Obama argued that there is a resurgence of long-range terrorist strike capability in the region along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. His conclusion is increased military involvement in the short term is necessary to reduce the capability of harm and to stabilize the Afghan government so it can protect and provide for its people.

Put in other terms, it's a continuation of the belief that it is better to inflict violence and death THERE so we don't have those things HERE. Regardless of whether I judge that as just or as a necessary evil or as simply evil, I believe it's important to state it honestly. Even the stabilization of Afghanistan requires the calculation that it is okay to kill some innocent people as long as it saves other innocent people.

Securing our safety and their safety are virtuous objectives, the highest calling of the human race. But it seems to me that a misbelief continues, firmly entrenched, in our attempts to reach these objectives: the misbelief that violence will ever end violence.

I hope for the safety of that beautiful country and my beautiful Afghan brothers and sisters. I ache for the violence and fear brought to them by those with evil intentions, and those with virtuous intentions.



As I mentioned, the President gave his speech to West Point cadets. I noticed that the name of the hall was Eisenhower Hall. It seems appropriate, then, to quote President Eisenhower, to quote beliefs he formed after witnessing the horrors of war.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.