It’s lunacy to think that what is going on in Afghanistan–an internal drug war (yes, our troops are running interference on the opium trade) compounded by the infiltration of Al Qeada–is somehow fixable or even manageable. And the slow bleed into Pakistan as a second (or third, if we are still counting Iraq) front has just served to expand and extend any escalation that occurs. How long before we are actually told that we need troops sent directly to Pakistan.

It seems inconceivable that this Administration has the arrogance to believe that sending 35,000 more American troops will somehow end this war. There are few nations as corrupt at their core as Afghanistan. Zimbabwe and Somalia may be the only ones that qualify. We do not have a strong partner in the war in Hamid Karzai who definitively was involved in manipulation of the votes in the recent election. Karzai was implicated to such a degree that the run-off election was called off when the Karzai’s opponent, Abdullah Abdullah protested the insidious nature of the ballot-fixing and withdrew from the election, leaving Karzai the erzatz winner in an election that was deemed by all standards–local and international—corrupt, flawed and even illegal. When you fix hold an election and can’t win 50 percent of the vote despite jailing, killing, threatening and coercing voters, what does that say about your ability to lead?

And yet this is the man that Obama has decided will be our partner in what the Pentagon and generals on the ground have determined will be at least five more years but more likely ten more waging a war that will not, as Obama clearly stated before Thanksgiving, be “nation building,” but will rather be to keep al Qeada from our shores.

Deja vu  all over again.

Meanwhile, what is the cost for this war—apart from the harrowing toll of dead and maimed and collateral damage like those assassinated at Ft. Hood?

Every network has followed ABC news in reporting last week a staggering $1 million per troop per year.

DP notes that we don’t have this money to begin with–we are borrowing it–from the future, from our children and of course, from China, our big banker to the East.

Do we institute a war tax? A handful of Democrats with spines are suggesting that’s the only answer.

Personally, I’d like to see some Vietnam-style protests. If the teabaggers can get their little legions out there, why can’t majority America which opposes this war take to the streets en masse?

I also think unless and until we reinsitute a draft which starts to cull the children of the privileged, these wars can and will go on indefinitely. No one cares about people they don’t know being killed and maimed except in some abstract way. Take their sons and daughters (and there is no front line anymore, so daughters are fair game) and the wars would end tomorrow.

It’s difficult to understand how anyone, particularly someone as obviously smart and well-educated and well-advised as Obama could believe that we can “win” in Afghanistan and “finish the job.”  That’s positively Cheneyesque.

Lest we forget what’s most at stake in this arrogant escalation, below are the latest numbers of what we’ve lost to these wars thus far. It will make your stomach churn. Or should.—VAB

Last Week: US Iraq Casualties Rise to 75,172