Better late than never

Joseph Farah flips on the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq:

For the life of me, I cannot begin to understand our objectives in either Iraq or Afghanistan any more.

Because I appreciate the sacrifice our men and women are making over there, it is with a heavy heart that I make this proclamation. But enough is enough. We have spent over $1 trillion on these two wars and spilled far too much American blood. We are obviously unwilling as a country to do what is necessary to kill the bad guys in either place, so what is the point? Isn’t it time to declare victory and get out? What is the point? Can someone, anyone, tell me?

I admit I was a supporter of both of these campaigns. I was obviously wrong.

Being one who flipped on the Iraqi War in 2004, I’m hardly in any position to condemn latecomers. I made the mistake of supporting the war under the misconception that the ceasefire Hussein had violated was an agreement between Iraq and the USA, (it was actually an agreement between Iraq and the UN and therefore had absolutely nothing to do with the USA or its national security), but I was always against any potential military occupation. Pat Buchanan, to his credit, was one of the very few who had it right from the start. As for Afghanistan, we never had any business fighting the Taliban in the first place, much less attempting to occupy the country.

Anyhow, it’s good to see relatively mainstream Republicans beginning to join the libertarians in opposing the ongoing occupations. What a pity that the anti-war Democrats have again decided that they like war after all so long as a Democrat is the Commander-in-Chief. But given the history of 20th century American military conflict, it is a mystery that anyone believes Democrats are anti-war.

WWI – Wilson (D)
WWII – Roosevelt (D)
Korea – Truman (D)
Vietnam – Johnson (D)

That is not the track record of an antiwar party. Which, of course, is why I predicted that Obama would not end the wars, but rather, expand them.