The Afghanistan War is a bipartisan failure that should end with the immediate withdrawal of troops from that country. Instead, Donald Trump is making a profoundly stupid mistake by adding military forces, despite the clear evidence that the war isn’t making us safer and isn’t worth the costs.
Osama Bin Laden is dead, along with more than 104,000 people. This war created the second largest number of refugees and internally displaced persons behind Syria. Despite these facts, the United States continues to spend $4 million per hour on a war in which Washington, D.C. has lost the plot.
House Speaker Paul Ryan made the incredible statement on CNN Monday night that our enemies will just ‘wait us out’ if we put an end date on our military deployment in Afghanistan. I’d like to discuss with Speaker Ryan what he thinks is happening now in the longest war in U.S. history. There are people finishing graduate school now who were in fourth grade when this war started.
Continuing the Afghanistan War in any way at this point is a profoundly status quo decision, one that will send many more U.S. troops home with deep physical, psychological, and moral injuries, to say nothing of the civilian deaths and maimings that will result as we reheat the conflict. Congress must immediately repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force and bar President Trump from tearing another festering war wound into the painful history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy.
Derrick Crowe is a former congressional staffer, small business owner, and nonprofit professional running for Congress in TX-21. He has gained national notoriety as a “nerd for science” taking on “Congress’s most detested climate change denier.” He is also the former political director at Brave New Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistan project and former communications director for the top Democrat on counter-terrorism in the U.S. House. His platform includes support for Medicare For All, real climate change action, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, and debt-free college. Learn more: https://electcrowe.com.