Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

The following could be from 2-3 years ago:

(July 14) -- Warning that the military could run out of money as early as next month, the Pentagon is putting pressure on Congress to pass the wartime budget before lawmakers leave for the August break.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates was "disappointed that the Congress did not pass the defense supplemental before the July Fourth break," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said at a press briefing today.

The Pentagon is seeking another $33 billion to cover ongoing wartime operations . . .

Of course this is from today, not when a prior administration was surging in Iraq.

The more things change, the more they remain the same, it would seem.

Except there's less and less credit money available for elective wars now. One thinks of LBJ posing as the peace candidate in 1964 and immediately escalating in Viet Nam in 1965, or Richard Nixon with his "plan" for peace in Viet Nam and nobody caring once he was in charge that he bore no responsibility for the U. S. involvement there. Similarly, it's Barack Obama's surge in Afghanistan, and he therefore owns that surging war more than he owns the (allegedly free market) economy. And his party controls Congress. The country is turning against this surge, because it appears to be failing. And because there's no money to pay for it.

In Treasury auctions, they call the inability to sell all the debt it is desired to sell a FAIL. Afghanistan is turning into a financial FAIL as well as a military-political FAIL.

As an American I would much prefer a WIN.

But every day, in every way, the U. S./NATO effort in Afghanistan seems to be getting worse.

Is the genius of General Petraeus and perhaps some good fortune going to turn the tide and at least let us call Afghanistan a draw? We can only hope . . .

Meanwhile even the financing of this war reflects incompetence within the governing party.

Americans of all political persuasions deserve better.

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